Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

Banche e ferrovie in Piemonte
171
the Kingdom of Sardinia between 1850 and 1857 (and no more appeared until after the war of 1859).3I> Three of them, the Compagnia Vittorio Emanuele and the Susa and Novara companies, have already been discussed; they were iparticularly influenced by the action and investment of the centrai government. In 1856 and 1857 the government went so far as to arrange their merger, partly because of the logie of amalgamating ali the sections of the line from the French to the Lombard frontiers, and partly as an inducement to get the predominantly French-owned Compagnia Vit­torio Emanuele to make its conditdonal promise to help finance the arduous tunnel route.32) Of the remaining eleven companies, three fell into the first category described above (contractors), four into the second categary (locai governments and locai notables), and four into the final category (capitalists).
FOT .the most part, the ownership of ali companies quickly passed into hands of investors large and small throughout the kingdom and in neighbouring lands. Administration fell to boards of -directors which generally reflected the composition of the promotional groups which had put the companies together. One of the eleven companies was a Franco-Swiss venture attempting to touild a line west from Geneva, across Savoy and Switzerland, through the Simplon pass to Domodossola and down into Kedmont. It proposed to operate its own -road, but the scope of the project was such that its completion would take decades, so it falls well outside the boundaries of the present discussion.33) Of the ten private lines which remain, only two the Cuneo and Stradella companies, were operating companies. The rest were spurs operated by the state (4.5), the Compagnia Vittorio Emanuele (2.5), and the Cuneo company (1), in exohange for fifty percent of their gross revenues.
The Cassa del Commercio e dell'Industria in the railroad boom of the 1850s. The Cassa del Commercio e dell'Industria was from its very inception involved with the Kingdom of Sardinia's oldest private railroad company, the Cuneo line, and by the peak of the boom in 1857 it had become the largest investor in one of the kingdom's other private operating companies, the Stradella line. It had also become the principal owner of a spur which fed the state's trunk lines. Just as significantly, during
3t) They are listed in Table 3.6 of Howell, pp. 179-180.
32) AP, 44:901-928, 1178, 49:1112-1135, 1162-1177, 1235; Gille, Les investissements, p. 158; Cavour to Giovanni Lanza, 2 and 12 March 1856, and to Michelangelo Castelli, 26 March and 16 Aprii 1856, in Camillo Cavour, Lettere edite ed inedite, ed. Luigi Chiala, 3rd. ed. rev. by Marco Rossi, 6 vols. (Turbi, 1884), 2:404, 412-414, and 6:4-6, 10; Lanza to Cavour, 27 Feo., 7, 16, and 22 March, and 17 Aprii 1856, in Giovanni Lanza, Le carte di Giovanni Lanza, ed. De Vecchi di Val Cismon, 2 vols. (Turin, 1935 and 1936), 1:314, 321, 326, 329, 331, 340; Cavour to Lanza, 25 March 1856. in ibid., 2:334; MA1C, b. 57, f. 412, Novara company report from shareholder meeting of 30 May 1856; and Parnassi, p. 365.
33) AP, 49:813-828, 1223, 91:3503, 3511-3515; and Cameron, France, pp. 230, 239.