Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-rxvq6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-18T01:41:23.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Laws to Encourage Manufacturing: New York Policy and the 1811 General Incorporation Statute*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Ronald E. Seavoy
Ronald E. Seavoy
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Bowling Green State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Continuing a long tradition, the government of New York attempted to aid domestic manufacturing in various ways during the troubled period of the Embargo, the War of 1812, and the war's aftermath. Among the most important legislative actions was the state's general incorporation law for manufacturing, passed in 1811 on a temporary basis and enacted without time limit in 1821.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , Spring 1972 , pp. 85 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Chamberlain, John, The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States (New York, 1961), xvii.Google Scholar

2 Quoted in Bruchey, Stuart, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861: An Essay in Social Causation (New York, 1965), 112.Google Scholar

3 Bruchey, American Economic Growth, 92; Clark, Victor S., History of Manufactures in the United States (Washington, D.C., 1929), I, 30–72.Google Scholar

4 Clark, Manufactures, I, 33-34, 31, 43.

5 Clark, Manufactures, I, 263; Bruchey, American Economic Growth, 72.

6 Ch. 56, 1790, Greenleaf, Thomas, ed., The Laws of the State of New York Comprising the Constitution and Acts of the Legislature since the Revolution (New York, 1797), vol. IIGoogle Scholar; Ch. 47, 1793; Ch. 45, 1795; Ch. 54, 1796; Ch. 68, 1797, Greenleaf, vol. III. Citations to the statutes of the state of New York hereinafter will be by capitulary number and year.

7 Ch. 66, 1805; Ch. 193, sec. 4, 1808; Documents of the Convention of the State of New York, 1846 (Albany, N.Y., 1846), Document 40, 2-5.Google Scholar

8 Ch. 216, 1808; Reubens, Beatrice G., “State Financing of Private Enterprise in Early New York,” (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1960), 140-46, 228–231Google Scholar; Ch. 186, 1808; Ch. 187, 1808; Ellis, David M., Land Lords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y. 1946), 143–49Google Scholar; Miller, Nathan, The Enterprise of a Free People (Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), 11–17.Google Scholar

9 Davis, Joseph S., Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations (Cambridge, Mass., 1917), 258Google Scholar; Angell, Joseph K. and Ames, Samuel, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations Aggregate (Boston, 1832), 1-8, 371.Google Scholar Each associated stockholder in a joint stock company was liable to the full extent of his assets for all the debts of the company. If one stockholder was sued and he paid the debt of the company, the law of liability was satisfied. To recover the proportional share of the debt from the other stockholder-associates, he had to sue each of them.

10 Lincoln, Charles Z., ed., Messages from the Governors of New York (Albany, N.Y., 1909), I, 622, 658Google Scholar, (Daniel D. Tompkins, January 26, 1808 and January 30, 1810).

11 Phillips v. Wickham, I Paige Chancery 598 (1829).

12 Journal of the Senate of the State of New York, 1811 (Albany, N.Y., 1811), 117, 162-64, 400Google Scholar; Ch. 67, 1811; Documents of the Convention of the State of New York, 1846 (Albany, N.Y., 1846), Document 40, 2-3Google Scholar; Ch. 12, 1814.

13 Lamb, Robert K., “The Entrepreneur and the Community,” in Miller, William, ed., Men in Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 97-103, 116Google Scholar; Laws of Massachusetts, Ch. 51, 1786; Ch. 65, 1809; Ch. 175, 1812; Ch. 150, 1813; Massachusetts Archives, 1812, 7289, “An Act Concerning Cotton and Woolen Factories.”

14 Quoted in Niles' Register, XI, 284.

15 Cole, Arthur H., American Wool Manufacture (Cambridge, Mass. 1926), I, 75-80, 144–48Google Scholar; laws of New York, Ch. 202, 1815; Messages from the Governors of New York, II, 855, 875-76, Daniel D. Tompkins, February 2 and November 5, 1816; Ch. 64, 1817; Fox, Dixon R., The Decline of Aristocracy in the State of New York (New York, 1919), 324.Google Scholar

16 Ch. 47, 1815; Ch. 58, 1816; Ch. 233, 1817; Ch. 67, 1818; Messages from the Governors of New York, II, 899, DeWitt Clinton, January 27, 1818; Ch. 102, 1819; Ch. 14, 1821; Ch. 231, Sec. 19, 1821; Cadman, John W., The Corporation in New Jersey (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 20–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Kessler, William C., “A Statistical Study of the New York General Incorporation Act of 1811,” Journal of Political Economy, XLVIII (1940), 877–882CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Legislative Documents of the State of New York, 1824 (Albany, 1824Google Scholar), Senate 32, for a list of loans made by the Comptroller to manufacturers; Reubens, “State Financing,” 201, 216.

The frequency of use of New York's 1811 statute compares very favorably with the number of special manufacturing charters passed in Massachusetts from 1800 to 1816. The Massachusetts legislature incorporated 318 business corporations, plus 86 in Maine. In all New England from 1800 to 1817, 280 manufacturing and mining charters were passed, all by special acts; Kessler, William C., “Incorporation in New England; a Statistical Study, 1800-1875,” Journal of Economic History, VIII (1948), 46–47.Google Scholar Maryland showed a similar spurt in manufacturing activity during the same years; Blandi, Joseph G., Maryland Business Corporations, 1783-1852 (Baltimore, 1934), 93–96.Google Scholar

The only litigation concerning the 1811 statute arose out of interpreting its liability clause. This was almost inevitable because of the large number of bankruptcies after 1815. The case of Slee v. Bloom (decided in 1821) began this controversy, and although the case was not until April 1819, the business involved had been bankrupt since 1816. See Slee v. Bloom 5 Johns Chancery 368 (1821); Howard, Stanley E., “Stockholder Liability under the New York Act of March 22, 1811,” Journal of Political Economy, XLVI (August, 1938), 501–513.Google Scholar