174 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
industry without them; and yet, they are all of them only the 
creatures of the legislative will of the people. Their early char¬ 
acteristics — that they were at first only special privileges 
granted for special public purposes and that they were only 
granted by special acts — have all been gradually lost sight of, 
more especially after the privileges of corporate existence began 
to be granted according to general laws. When such a law had 
been in force for some time, and it was found that everybody 
could obtain corporation privileges by conforming to certain 
requirements, it soon came to be looked upon as a right which 
was almost as inalienable in its nature as any belonging to citi¬ 
zenship. When, therefore, some states began to charge fixed 
sums for this grant, it was immediately designated by the peo¬ 
ple in general, and even by economists, as a tax on corpora¬ 
tions, or taxes on corporate charters. 
The forces which led up to general corporation regulations, 
have already been treated in a different connection. To put it 
briefly, the result has been, that in most states laws have been 
passed, requiring those applying for corporate privileges to 
conform to certain rules, the most common being that the char¬ 
ter, or articles of incorporation, stating the object, purpose, 
and so on, shall be filed with the secretary of state or some 
other state officer. Sometimes the official approval of the char¬ 
ter and a certificate of incorporation, or certificate of authority 
to do business, must be obtained. In some states they are also 
required to file a statement preliminary to the grant of cor¬ 
porate privileges. 
A. CHARGES FOR INCORPORATION PRIVILEGES. 
An incorporation fee is in most cases collected for filing the 
charter of articles of incorporation. A glance at the table in 
the appendix will show that six states charge only five dollars 
and two charge less than this amount, while all the rest charge 
amounts varying from five to one hundred dollars for this serv¬ 
ice. It should be borne in mind, however, that the incorpora¬ 
tion fees include all the charges made by the state under various 
heads, and that the total amount, instead of the individual fees, 
is the important consideration. The most common and the 
