ABSTRACT
That stage follows immediately upon the grant of incorporation, and is occupied with an attempt to use that privilege as a means of securing the objects aimed at in the previous agitation. The industrial monopoly conferred by the charter had the same kind of potential value as a modern patent granted for a new invention; and upon the guarantee thus afforded, the small masters who formed the main body of the new corporation hoped to raise a common fund, which would relieve them of the disadvantages, arising from the smallness of their individual capital, under which they had laboured both in buying their materials and selling the products of their labour.
