CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 327 



than one thousand marks each. The opinion of the United 

 States consul-general at Frankfort-on-the-Main is that all these 

 restrictions have not availed to prevent a regular "incorpora- 

 tion fever," from which he expects 'very disastrous results ere 



long. 



In France there has been some agitation in favor of returning 

 to the old system in operation till' 1863 of " special concessions r 

 by which the right to organize a joint-stock company was a favor 

 granted by the Government, and not a right conferred by general 

 statute. The weight of authority and influence is, however, 

 against this retrograde movement. Leroy-Beaulieu, in consid- 

 ering it, recalls the fact that the prefect of police of Louis Phi- 

 lippe refused Leclaire permission to organize the great profit- 

 sharing company which was afterward established with signal 

 success and which still bears his name. Leroy-Beaulieu adds, 

 " We can bear the guardianship of law, but not of government." 

 Certainly there should be no wish in this country to go back to 

 the old system of special legislative charter, under which men 

 made a business of lobbying for charters which were afterward 

 sold to the highest bidder. One of the things upon which we 

 can especially congratulate ourselves is of having got rid of this 

 old source of legislative corruption, which gave us our wild-cat 

 banks, and numberless other reasons for dreading it. 



Our own experience may help us in dealing with frauds in 

 founding if we will stop to consider the difference between the 

 old State banks and our present national banks. The greater 

 security of the latter comes largely from detailed legislation 

 which prescribes the conditions under which artificial persons, 

 designed for the transaction of a given business, will be permitted 

 to be born. What we need at present as regards miscellaneous 

 corporations is fuller knowledge of all the facts connected with 

 their history, and especially of their genesis. Massachusetts is 

 the only State that has collected statistics of private corporations 

 at all comparable with those of the English register of joint-stock 

 companies. Most of the States provide that all new corporations 

 shall register with more or less fullness ; but this is either a mere 

 formality negligently performed, or else its sole object is to bring 

 the corporation within reach of the tax-gatherer. The record is 

 usually not published, or in some cases, as in Ohio, there is no way 

 to trace in the published returns the outcome of the enterprises 

 whose beginning is chronicled. In fact, our greatest need in pre- 

 venting frauds in founding, as in preventing most other evils con- 

 nected with corporate management, is completer publicity, and, as 

 one result of this, fuller statistical data. 



2. The proper regulation of the borrowing power. It has 

 been stated on good authority, but is not true, that the evils of 



