Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/730

694 694 HARVARD LAW REVIEW The question whether the national banks should be authorized to extend their business over these new fields is not perhaps a matter of much moment. The case is important because of its bearing upon the question of the scope and extent of the powers that may be conferred by Congress upon a corporation created by it for the execution of any of the powers given to it by the Constitution. Does it extend the doctrine of M'CuUoch v. Maryland and Oshorn v. Bank of the United States? Is it true, as was insisted by Justice Ostrander in the court below, that the decision involves the conclu- sion that if Congress has lawfully created a corporation in aid of the fiscal operations of the government, it may confer upon it the powers of a trading company or a transportation company, or to go further and to speak more generally, is there anything in this decision that indicates that Congress having created a corporation with such powers as in its judgment make it an appropriate means of executing the powers committed to the federal government, it may incidentally confer upon it powers not essential to its efiiciency for those purposes and having no relation to those purposes? Before considering the arguments that have been urged in favor of the extension of the field of the activities of federal corporations, it may be well to note that for more than a century Congress, except in legislating for the territories and the District of Columbia, has rarely exercised its incidental power to create corporations other than the national banks and the Pacific Railroad companies. Charters were granted to some interstate bridge companies and ferry companies, some canal companies and a few associations of a benevolent or social character of general concern; but the movement now is toward the incorporation by general law of rail- road and transportation companies, of large commercial corpora- tions engaged in interstate commerce and even of companies engaged in manufacturing goods intended to be carried in interstate commerce. There is a chapter in the first edition of "Thompson on Corpora- tions," 1895, entitled "National Corporations" containing an his- torical sketch in less than three pages. The chapter was written by Russell H. Curtis of the Chicago bar and the article appeared first in 21 American Law Review, 258 (1887). He says that in 1 791 Congress incorporated the earliest bank of the United States, the charter of which expired by hmitation iniSii. Ini8i5a bill