In May, 1914, a small group of friends of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and admirers of James J. Hill took the initiative in founding a Professorship of Transportation in his honor and to bear his name. The group consisted of Robert Bacon. George F. Baker, Howard Elliott, Arthur Curtis James, Thomas W. Lamont, Robert T. Lincoln, and J. P. Morgan. Seventy-four persons contributed an aggregate of $125,000, and the endowment of the professorship was announced by President Lowell at the 1915 Commencement exercises with the statement that “the Chair marks an epoch in the life of the School, and by its recognition of transportation as a permanent object of systematic instruction, in the life of the nation also.”

The oldest business man genetically, and still the most important in numbers, is the petty capitalist. He is that man who owns and manages his relatively small business and often does some or all of the work himself—today we see him as the small contractor, garage-owner, storekeeper, banker, the commercial farmer, individual realtor, and so on. He is the only business man who is owner, administrator—that is, policy-maker and manager—and worker all in one. He is not always the worker, however, and at times he delegates part of the management, but he at least combines ownership and the top administration of his business.