There are administrative, judicial, and educational fees collected. The departments or branches of the state government which receive fees which accrue to the general treasury are the state, comptroller's, attorney general's, banking and insurance, and public health and vital statistics departments, the department of agriculture, the land office, the railroad commission, the game, fish, and oyster commissioner, the state library, and the higher courts. The main University and the medical branch collect fees of matriculates which accrue to the available funds of the institutions. The asylums also collect charges, classed as fees, of their non-indigent residents. There are also numerous state boards which are self-sustaining because of the fees of fixed amounts which they are permitted to charge. These boards are the state board of mine examiners; the boards of examiners of those desiring to teach in the public free schools, to practice law, medicine, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, dentistry, embalming, and nursing; and the board of inspection of hides and animals and of feed stuffs. Except in the case of the last, there are not only no payments into the treasury, but no reports of the amounts collected and retained by the members of the boards. There are maximum amounts of fees which district and other local officers can receive, and any collections in excess go into the county treasury.

The oldest and until 1893 the most productive fees were those charged by the general land office for patents, certified copies, etc. Continuously since 1893, on account of corporation charter and permit fees, the state department has been the most important single source of fee receipts.

There was no change in the fee law of 1879 until 1883, when express companies were added to the list of corporations whose minimum charter fee was $100, and an increase of $25 for each $100,000 of capital stock above $100,000 was provided for in the case of railway, telegraph, street railway, and express companies.1 The minimum fee of other private corporations for profit was left at $25, but an increase of $5 for each $10,000 of capital stock above $10,000 was introduced. The fee for religious and similar corporations was increased to $10.

In 1887 a foreign corporation was required to file with the secretary of state its articles of incorporation and to take out a permit, and in 1889 permit fees were adopted varying from $25 to $200 according to the amount of capital stock of the corporation.2 The fees for foreign corporations were lower than for domestic corporations, except in the cases of railway, telegraph, street railway, and express companies. Thus a foreign corporation with a capital stock of $100,000 paid a fee of $25, while a domestic corporation with an equal amount of stock paid $70. A foreign corporation with a capital stock of $2,000,000 paid a fee of $200 while a domestic corporation of that size paid $1,020.3 Following the discovery of oil in South Texas the discrimination came to be felt, but there was no remedial change made until 1905.4

In 1907 a great increase in charter and permit fees was made but without any discrimination between domestic and foreign corporations.5 In 1909 the fee for corporations not organized for private profit was reduced from $50 to $10. At the same time certain other fee changes were adopted.6 The minimum fee chargeable to a foreign building and loan company was made $250; a maximum fee of $10,000 was stipulated for a foreign corporation engaged in the manufacture, sale, rental, lease or operation of all kinds of cars and for a foreign telegraph company; and the maximum for a foreign company doing a loan business was fixed at $1,000. Subject to the above, the charter and permit fees in effect in 1915 were as follows: For each charter or amendment of a charter of a private railroad, telegraph, express, or street railway company a fee of $200 was prescribed, and if the capital stock exceeded $100,000, an additional fee was charged of fifty cents for each $1,000 of authorized capital stock or fractional part thereof after the first. The charter fees of other corporations organized for private profit was $50, but if the authorized capital stock exceeded $10,000, there was an additional fee of $10 for each additional $10,000 of the authorized capital stock or fractional part thereof after the first. Each foreign corporation in obtaining a permit to do business in the state had to pay a fee of $50 for the first $10,000 of its authorized capital stock, and $10 for each additional $10,000 or fractional part thereof.1 The so-called "Blue Sky Law" passed in 1913, imposed upon corporations subject to its provisions the filing of a descriptive document with the secretary of state before it was permitted to sell or to contract to sell any stock, and the filing fee for this document was made $20.2

1 Laws of 1883, p. 72.

2 Laws of 1889, p. 87.

3 Reports of the secretary of state, 1898, 1900, 1902, 1904.

4 Laws of 1905, p. 135.

5 Laws of 1907, p. 500.

6 Laws of 1909, p. 266. Rev. Civil Stats., 1911, arts. 3837-3858.

The domestic charter fees received in the office of the secretary of state during the fiscal year ending August 31, 1915, amounted to $96,778; the permit fees of foreign corporations were $22,025, and the stock permits under the Blue Sky Law were $520.3 In 1881 fees, exclusive of those of the office of secretary of state, amounted to $105,572, and of this amount the fees of the general land office made up $94,665. The fees of the secretary of state's office were not important at this time. In 1910 all fees, including those of the state department, amounted to $430,155.4 Those of the state department furnished $313,214 of this amount, and those of the general land office contributed $32,377.

1 Rev. Civil Stats., 1911, art. 3837.

2 Laws of 1913, First Called Sess., p. 66.

3 MSS. Report in the office of the secretary of state. The total receipts of the office as given in the manuscript statement are subject to an addition of $28 and to a deduction of $1,217.24.

4 Included in this amount are all of the receipts of the game, fish, and oyster commissioner, not all of whose receipts were fees.