broad effort to increase their corporation practice and ours. We have carefully planned our methods to make the business connection mutually right. We do not solicit We solicit business solely through counsel. yours, if you have any regular correspondent in Maine. Our personal relations with the Maine bar are such that we cannot, directly or indirectly, interfere with the established business of others. We find that every case requires patient oversight. The organization of a corporation to invite public confidence calls for careful judgment and is safe only when in the hands of counsel of long experience. We by no means claim to have the best office in Maine. Other counsel are more eminent, none more painstaking. We do assert that every case will receive discriminating care at every step. Our senior partner has had twenty-six years experience having developed and drawn, in the legislature and out of it, a large part of the corporation legislation of the state. The junior partner has had seventeen years experience. We are general counsel for nearly all the electric railroads of Maine, some of its narrow gauge steam railroads, many water, electric light, lumber, pulp, telephone and general business corporations, being also general counsel for the Augusta Trust Company (deposits nearly $2,000,000) and Kennebec Savings Bank (deposits about $1,000,000) of which institutions the senior partner is a trustee. Our work is largely with corporations, but our office is so systematized that the work of organizing corporations for non-residents is never delayed, no matter what the pressure of our local work may be. We are located at the state capital and county seat, thus economizing time in filing corporation certificates with the secretary of state and register of deeds, furnishing us ready access to records and precedents. Our offices occupy nearly all of two floors in two blocks and are equipped with commodious filing rooms and vaults where all corporate records and papers are safely kept. Our system of books, forms, blanks, indexes, etc., all original with us, is such that we can handle any amount of business without delay and years hence furnish promptly copies of all papers or records material. We have a large force of stenographers and assistants, trained in this line of work, enabling us to work with great promptness and rapidity. If you cannot send your business to us, there are many offices in the state admirably fitted for such work from whose hands you would receive entire satisfaction. We have issued, at great expense, and intend to annually keep up our two pamphlets that the profession abroad may understand that Maine has to-day the most economical, the saftest and (in the absence of a national authority to incorporate) the best state system of organization. Send your business to some one in Maine, if not to us. We submit this pamphlet to a profession, always critical but generous in understanding that in so broad a field of compilation absolute accuracy is impossible, although we have sought to patiently verify every position taken. While troubled by the fear that it may contain some errors, we are gratified to know that our pamphlet on the Corporation Laws of Maine has, after a year's test, proved to be free from errors. The writer does not submit the views herein expressed as the ideal system were it possible in our present form of government to secure uniform legislation. Academic systems of restriction by a single state are powerless for good. Maine long since adopted the policy of statutory freedom, leaving to each corporation the responsibility of dealing fairly with the public under the penalty of loss of financial confidence for delinquency. Until the general government grapples with the problem and corporations become national, we respectfully submit that Maine has the best system adapted to present governmental conditions. The ideal system would be one purely American, where the interstate corporation will have over it the controlling hand of interstate authority, uniformity of creation and of control, a publicity that will be actual, a system that will safely and conservatively control great corporations to their own good and to the lasting good of the people at large. The incorporator of to-day deals, however, with no problem of social economics but with the world as he finds it. The compiler of this pamphlet, believing state regulation to be unwise, commends the Maine system for its liberality in putting upon the corporation the responsibility of so ordering its ways as to demand and command public confidence. The non-resident, seeking her laws, contemplating honest management, finds a degree of safety to be found in no other jurisdiction. The dishonest promoter, planning fraud, finds no more opportunity under her charters than under the letters-patent of states imposing the most burdensome restrictions. Maine invites the non-resident and promises him stability in her legislative policy. If the profession abroad would critically study her system, all corporations, large or small, would make their home under her laws, framed by a conservative people and interpreted by a court respected wherever known. Treasurer of State, capital $10,000 or less.. Treasurer of State, capital over $10,000 to $500,000... IO 00 50 00 IO OO Secretary of State INCREASE OF STOCK. $5 00 Treasurer of State, same as at organization. CHANGES. A uniform fee of $5.00 to Secretary of State for certificates for change of name, change of par value, decrease of stock, etc. CEASING TO TRANSACT BUSINESS. Attorney General .... ANNUAL FRANCHISE TAX. Payable to State Treasurer. Computed on capital authorized. Capital $50,000 or less.. $5.00 $5 00 IO OO 25 00 50 00 25 00 |