INCORPORATIONS MANUFACTORIES. 37 



INCORPORATIONS— MANUFACTORIES. 



INCORPORATIONS OF CAPITALISTS— ESTABLISHMENT OF MANUFACTORIES : HOW AND 

 WHEN BENEFICIAL TO AGRICULTURE. 



Seeing in the Marlboro^ Gazette that T. F. Bowie, Esq., and others propose to es- 

 tablish, Tit the county town of that opulent county, Prince George's, a Tobacco 

 Manufactory, leads us to remark that every man of candor will admit the bene- 

 fits which must accrue to surrounding agricultural districts, from the establish- 

 ment in their midst of prosperous factories when these are the spontaneous 

 growth of suitable power and materials for carrying them on, and of a compen- 

 sating demand for their fabrics. 



Where congenial circumstances thus combine to attract capital and consumers 

 to the doors of a farming community, how short-sighted, not to say stupid, is the 

 legislative policy which throws clogs and difficulties in the way, such as the 

 expense, delay, log-rolling and party calculations and maneuvering, and sometimes 

 worse than all these, which attend an application to the Legislature for a special 

 act of incorporation in every case ; and the imposition of unreasonable and fright- 

 ful responsibilities on capitalists who would risk a given amount of their means, 

 in manufactories that would consume the produce of the soil, and in banks that 

 would accommodate the farmer. Yet such has been, and still is, the short-sishted 

 policy pursued in many of our States. Instead of holding out encouragement to 

 capitalists who might be willing to associate for the purpose of loaning means to 

 struggling and industrious farmers, and for giving activity to the natural advan- 

 tages for manufacturing which may be found to exist in particular localities, the 

 barbarous policy has been to prevent all such associations, by making those who 

 form them individually liable, to the extent of their whole estate, for the debts 

 of the company, so that in reward for their willingness to risk a part of their for- 

 tune to build up a new business, they are admonished by wise law-makers that 

 if they dare do it, it will be at the peril of all the property they have in the 

 world. Could any device be better calculated to banish capital beyond the 

 sphere of such legislation, and along w^ith it the skill that often only needs capi- 

 tal to put in operation the most useful establishments ? How much wiser to pass 

 some general law, as in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, under which it should 

 be easy to form an association, either for banking or manufacturing purposes, 

 leaving each member bound for the debts of the corporation only in proportion 

 to his share of its capital and the corporation answerable only for the known and 

 advertised amount of its stock — taking care that the state of its aflairs be pe- 

 riodically and publicly exhibited. Exception might be made to the limited re- 

 sponsibility of the members in favor of debts due to operatives for work and labor 

 performed, as it would be easy for the Directors to see that they were paid — 

 daily, if need be. 



Instead of thus opening widely the doors of each State, and each county in 

 every State, for the attraction of capital and enterprise, and thus destroying the 

 "monopoly" of the rich by distributing the capital among a great number of 

 competing money and manufacturing institutions, it is too much the fashion to 

 denounce all such associations, and to make laws for their incorporation difficult 



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