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The Public Service Origins of the American Business Corporation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Ronald E. Seavoy
Ronald E. Seavoy
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Bowling Green State University
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Abstract

The corporate charter, so restricted in its use in England, found a constantly broadening range of applications in America from the colonial period onward. The test of importance to the general welfare, originally confined to municipal, benevolent, or at most public-utility enterprises, was being applied to manufacturing ventures by the second decade of the nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , Spring 1978 , pp. 30 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1978

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