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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES AND ‘LIMITED LIABILITY.’
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
PENCIL-MAKING.
MR PUDSTER’S RETURN.
THE FORESIGHT OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG.
A BREAK-NECK VENTURE.
CURIOUS ANTIPATHIES IN ANIMALS.
CURIOUS NEWSPAPERS.
THE DAWN OF PEACE.
No. 37.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1884.
JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES AND‘LIMITED LIABILITY.’
Readers of newspapers must have frequentlyobserved in the advertising columns of most ofthe daily journals lengthy prospectuses settingforth in roseate terms the why and thewherefore of various public Companies. Theseprospectuses are published with the view ofinducing investors, or those having capital atcommand, to embark money in the projectedundertakings, the majority of which are new ventures,formed, perhaps, to work a tin or silvermine; to manufacture some patented article; toadvance money on land and house property; toconduct banking or insurance business; to constructtramways; to rear and sell cattle on someprairie of the Far West; or some other ofthe hundred-and-one openings that present themselvesfor commercial dealings. Indeed, thereis no end to the variety of objects that may beselected as fitting media for joint-stock enterprise.The titles of the Companies bear the word‘Limited’ tacked on to them. It is the purposeof this article to explain the meaning of theterm, and at the same time give a slight generalexposition of the law affecting such joint-stockCompanies.
A Company of the nature indicated above issimply an association or partnership enteredinto by a number of individuals—not fewerthan seven—who take shares, not necessarilyin equal proportions, in the joint-stock ofthe concern, the main object being the proportionatedivision of possible profits. When thejoint agreement complies with the obligationslaid down by statute, and is registered accordingto law, the subscribers become a corporation,and their Company has a common seal and ‘perpetualsuccession,’ to use a legal expression.It is only recently, comparatively speaking, thatjoint-stock Companies have existed in large numbers.Formerly, the formation of a Companywas a difficult and costly operation, as a RoyalCharter had to be specially obtained, or an Actof Parliament passed for t