FINANCIAL WRECKS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7722, 4 June 1903, Page 2

FINANCIAL WRECKS.

DISSOLUTION OF 927 AMERICAN COMPANIES. Governor Murphy, .of New Jersey (U.5.A.),. has prepared an annual proclamation, forcibly dissolving those trusts and companies organised und«r the State's laws which have not paid their annual tax. No fewer than 927 of these creations, capitalised at forty-eight millions sterling, are thus ushe&ed out of existence. Some were formed in good faith, but, met with reverses ; others conceived in fraud were purposely organised in Now Jersey, whose incorporation laws, requiring no test of honesty, are a national scandal. There are all kinds of financial wrecks in_the list, and their ruins axe scattered generally ,over the United States and Alaska. Nobody can tell how many hundreds of thousands of innocent persons have been deluded into buying their snWes, but the books of a few compaines recently exhibited in the courts indicate that the number is legion. Of course, a considerable proportion of their securities have always been "indigestible," but the losses run into millions, and fall more heavily on the citizens of New Jersey than on thos© of any other State. Within a few years, New Jersey has chartered twenty thousand companies, and in the last three years more than two thousand of them have heen forcibly dissolved. Others have passed out of existence by the vote of their own shareholders. There is a growing agitation in favou^r. of altering the laws by which New Jersey has ■been sowing the wind only to reap the whirlwind.