The colonial charter to Raleigh (1589) and to Virginia (1609-12) were for joint stock corporations, as was the Plymouth (1623), and Massachusetts Bay (1628), the seat of the latter being transferred to America. The grants to colonial proprietors, 1621 (New Scotland), 1629 (Carolina), 1632 (Maryland), 1634 (New Albion), 1681 (Pennsylvania), contained clauses broad enough to authorize the proprietors to create corporations, and in 1682, Penn incor porated the Free Society of Traders. Similar powers were conferred upon the royal gov ernors, but when Governor Seymour incorpo rated Annapolis (1708), the legislature pro tested. Other governors disclaimed such power. The concessions to the proprietors in Carolina and New Jersey (1665) authorized the legisla tures to create municipal corporations. There was much doubt about the power of the legis latures in other colonies to do so. Harvard College was authorized by an Act of 1642, but without an incorporating clause, which was not inserted till 1650, and then not published with the other laws. In 1652 a water company with quasi-corporate powers was authorized by the Massachusetts legislature. In 1649 the English Parliament incorporated the President and So ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England; in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and in 1709 the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. In 1693 William and Mary College in Virginia was chartered by the English sovereigns. The Bubble Act of 1720 was ex tended to the colonies in 1741, but without ap parent effect. The constitutions of Pennsylvania (1776) and Vermont (1786, 1793), conferred power to create corporations on the legislatures, and when Governor Livingston of New Jersey undertook to incorporate a Baptist church in 1778, the legislature objected and he acquiesced. In 1781 the Congress of the Confederation in corporated the United States Bank, although the Articles of Confederation were silent as to such power. So it became the rule that the power to create corporations was vested in the legislature, and not in the executive side of our governments, State and National. According to Davis, there were 335 charters granted in the United States to the year 1800; by United States, 2; Maine, 23; New Hampshire, 32; Ver mont, 20; New York, 28; New Jersey 13; Pennsylvania, 23; Delaware, 3; Maryland 21; Virginia, 22; North Carolina, 11; South aro lina, 10; Georgia, 1. Of these 34 were banking; 33 insurance; 75 inland navigation; 73 toll bridge; 72 turnpike; 32 water supply; 4 dock; 8 manufacturing and 5 miscellaneous. ,Since that time, nearly every enterprise requiring large capital, and many others, are carried on by cor porations. °They engage in commerce; build and sail ships; cover our navigable streams with steamers; construct houses; bring the products of earth and sea to market; light our streets and buildings; open and work mines; carry water into our cities; build railroads and cross mountains and deserts with them; erect churches, colleges, lyceums and theatres; set up manufactories, and keep the spindle and shuttle in motion; establish banks for savings; insure against accidents on land and sea; give policies on life; make money exchanges in all parts of the world; publish newspapers and books, and send news by lightning across the continent and under the ocean. Indeed there
is nothing which is lawful to be done to feed and clothe our people, to beautify and adorn their dwellings, to relieve the sick, to help the needy and to enrich and ennoble humanity which is not to a great extent done through the instrumentality of corporations." In recent years there has been not only wonderful growth in the number and size of separate corporations, but also an extraordinary tendency to combine, into authorized consoli dations, or unauthorized °trusts." About 1900, it was estimated that the capital of great cor porations formed in one or other of these ways was in the great industrial enterprises as fol lows: Railway consolidations, $9,000,000,000; in dustrial ( manuf actu ring) , $7,000,000,000 ; street railroads, $1,800,000,000; municipal service, $2, 700,000,000; telegraph and telephone, $280, 000,000; or a total of nearly $21,000,000,000, or about one-fifth of the total wealth of the United States. Very recently, too, there has been a great increase in corporation formation; corporations (having over $1,000,000 capital stock) were formed in the United States, with nearly $895,000,000 capital stock in 1914; with $426,000,000 in 1915 ; and $2,708,000,000 in 1916; and those (30,000 in number) with over $100,000 in 1916 had $3,529,000,000 capital. Similar, but not so great, increase in corporate activity has characterized other great commercial countries.
History: Baldwin, S. E.,
of Incorporation) (in (Modern Polit ical Institutions,) Boston 1898) ; id., (History of the Laws of Private Corporations in the Col onies and States) (ib., "1909) ; Davis, J. P.,
A Study of Origin and De velopment' (New York 1905) ; Davis, J. S.,
in the Earlier History of American Corporations' (Harvard University Press, 2 vols., 1917) ; Evans, F. (The Evolution of the English Joint Stock Trading Company' (in Columbia Law Review, Vol. VIII, pp. 339, 461, 1908) ; Lasky, H. J., (The Early History of Cor porations in England' (in Harvard Law Re view, p. 561, 1917) ; Radin, Max,