Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

178
Paul Martin Howell
front 1840 to 1844, and new groups pursued the various elements of the eventual concession in 1852 and 1853. At the beginning of 1854, as the first boom period was petering out, the Cavour government simplified the competìtion by defining the contours and conditions of the basic Stradella concession. As recovery carne in the second naif of 1855, a broadly-based promotional group drawn from three sides of the Po valley frontiers emerged to claim the concession. Locai notables led the way and provincial and municipal governments shouldered much of the financial burden. The group had little trouble securdng officiai authorózation and by March 1856 the new Stradella company was fully constituted and in possession of its concession.48) Virtually as soon as the Cassa del Com­mercio's operational expansion was arpproved and its new capital starting to flow in, it bought its way into the new railroad company.
With dts initial purohase the Cassa del Commercio acquired nearly a quarter of the Stradella company's shares, investing more than 2.5 million lire. It did so by buying out locai governments whose support had been vital to the successful floating of the company in the preceding months. The bank eventually secured representation on the railroad company's board of directors, but it rnade no anove to acquare a dominant position similar to the one that it held on the Cuneo company's board. In 1857 and 1858 the bank's investment in the Stradella company grew by a million lire as it acquired shares from some of its hard-pressed debtors who probably had bought into the company when the bank first had. They may nave hoped for a speculative killing in the wake of an amalgamation with the Rothschild company or with a new grand centrai Sardinian company, which would result from a buy-out of the state's lines, or they may simply nave been making long-term investments and fortifying the Cassa del Commercio's position in the company. In any case, after the boom crested the bank was forced to take over shares from its elients. The company, in the meantime, progressed well, opening its first sections in 1857 and the rest in 1858. In the middle of 1858 it completed a merger with a company formed the year before in the Duchy of Parma-Piacenza, which had secured the concession for the line from the border with Piedmont, just beyond Stradella, to the city of Piacenza, which was on the line of the Lombard-Venetian and centrai Italian company. The Cassa del Commercio's investment in the Consolidated company amounted to nearly twenty percent of its share capital.49*
48) MA1C, b. 175, f. 55, Processo verbale di fondazione della Società Anonima per la Strada Ferrata da Alessandria ai confini Lombardi e Piacenza (Voghera, 1855); act of formation; Statuto della Società anonima per la Strada Ferrata da Alessandria a Stradella e Confini di Lombardia e Piacenza con diramazione da Tortona a Novi (Turili, 1856); b. 56, f. 397, Camera di Commercio, Genova, seduta del 24 Agosto 1855 ; Genoa Chamber of Commerce to Ministry of Fin ance, 24 Oct. 1855 and 7 Aprii 1856; AP, 36:979-1009, 37:2051, 91:3502; Atti della Commissione d'Inchiesta, 1:9-11; De Biase, pp. 87-88, 104-108, 118-119, 142-143; Gille, Les investissements, pp. 158-159; and Antonio Crispo, Le ferrovie italiane. Storia politica ed economica (Milaii, 1940), pp. 59-61.
49) MAIC, b. 155, f. 107, sf. 2, CCI company teport from shareholder meeting