A source of information concerning the early economic conditions in this country, and a source which has heretofore been little employed, is the tax records of local communities. I have run across some of them in an historical study of taxation in Massachusetts in which I have tried to press back the story to as early a period as possible. Undoubtedly, somewhat similar records are available in other states, and altogether they would supply many data upon the economic life in this country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for which other sources of realistic material are all too scanty.