Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

172 Paul Martin Howell
the boom years whìch followed the end of the Crimean War, the Cassa del Commercio pursued an ambitious pian to become an international rail-roading power of the first rank, a rallying point for investors in the Kingdom of Sardinìa's neighbours in northern and centrai Italy. The bank moved in two directions, seeking a concession across the Swiss Alps and purchasing shares in the Stradella line, whìch joined lines to be built by the newly-formed Lombard-Venetian and centrai Italian company. In both cases the Cassa del Commercio anticipated an eventual association with James de Rothschìld in larger, more comprehensive operating companies. In the background there loomed the prospect of acquiring the state's railroading enterprise in the Kingdom of Sardinia, again, in association with James de Rothschìld.34)
The Cassa del Commercio's involvement with railroading developed from a modest base, its relations with the Cuneo company. In fact, even though the bank was at first strictly a commercial bank, forbidden to invest in the shares or bonus of other joint-stock compandes, its appearance undoubtedly owed much to the railroading investments and ambitàons of its principal founder and first president, Luigi Bolmida of Turin. Bolmida was a silk merchant and manufacturer who moved increasingly into private banking as his fortune grew in the 1840s. Bolmida and Camillo Cavour worked together in various business deals in the early 1840s and they were fprominent leaders of a promotional committee put together at the beginning of 1846 to seek the concession for a railroad south from Turin to Savighano. After protracted negotiations the g-roup, like many others seeking locai lines, was forced by worsening business conditions in 1847 to withdraw its bid. It was the first group to resurface after the return of peace and stability, quickly securing its concession from the government and Parliament in the middle of 1850, mafeing it the first modem private railroad company in the kingdom. Bolmida and Cavour played leading roles in organizing the new company, but Cavour left before the end of 1850 for personal and politicai reasons. Bolmida remained.35)
In 1852 the Savigliano company increased its capital by nearly fifty percent and undertook to extend its line to Cuneo. The cities of Cuneo and Fossano (on the line between Savigliano and Cuneo) covered forty percent of the capital increase. Sometime after the company's expansion in 1852, Bolmida left its management, which since its beginnings had been
34) Gille, Les investìssemenls, pp. 165-166.
35) Einaudi, pp. 16-17, 20-21; Romeo, 2:166-172; Bulferetti and Luraghi, p. 167; Arese, pp. 63-69, 134-139; Cavour to De La Rue, 15 Oct. 1846, 4 July, 24 Sept., and 12 Dee. 1850, in Cavour, Nouvelles lettres, pp. 76, 390, 399, 405; Cavour to Bolmida, end of Sept. 1850, and Bolmida to Cavour, 1 Oct. 1850, in Arese, pp. 174-176; Arese, pp. 70-71; Michele Rosi, ed., Dizionario del Risorgimento Nazionale. Dalle origini a Roma capitale, 4 vols. <Milan, 1930-1937), 2:744; Telesforo Sarti, Il Parlamento subalpino e nazionale. Profili e cenni biografici di tutti i deputati e senatori eletti e creati dal 1848 al 1890, con appendici (Rome, 1896), p. 108; and Francesco Sirugo, Bolmida, Luigi , in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, voi. 11 (Rome, 1969), pp. 303-305.