I most heartily Congratulate You on the Completion of the Middlesex Canal, the Judgment and Perseverence with which that Stupenduous work hath been Conducted will deservedly render the Name of Baldwin as Immortal as the Middlesex Canal it Self.

Thus read a letter written to Colonel Loammi Baldwin, the able engineer, by his friend and former partner, Josiah Pierce, on December 25, 1802. But today that monument is but a dry ditch and “the canal in any complete form remains principally as a faint memory in the minds of some few members of the oldest living generation.” However, another monument, which none of the available biographical accounts has mentioned, remains to remind later generations of the feats of this pioneer engineer and Revolutionary hero — the town which bears his name — Baldwin, in Cumberland County, Maine.

Material on the methods of the dry goods business prior to the Civil War is almost as scarce as the proverbial “hen's teeth.” It was undoubtedly carried on in all parts of the country and undoubtedly, also, the manner of conducting it changed from time to time, yet the methods of operation and the changes therein have left surprisingly little trace. Something of this history may be secured from the chance remarks of the commercial newspapers of the period, and probably much may be acquired (the work being almost wholly yet to be done) from the account books and letter books of country stores and other mercantile establishments of those days.

Dr. O. T. Howe has given a Record Book and copies of letters of his esteemed ancestor Captain Octavius Howe to the Business Historical Society. These letters were used by Dr. Howe in his book Argonauts of '49 — History and Adventures of the Emigrant Companies from Massachusetts 1849-1850 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1923), and also in the unpublished biography he has prepared of Captain Howe. The letters in question deal with Captain Howe's exploits in taking the brig Tigress and her cargo around the Horn to San Francisco, and his attempts to dispose of her cargo, in the early fifties.

In these turbulent times when economists and business men alike find it difficult to solve the business depression which has descended on our complex civilization, it is refreshing to turn to the early economic tracts which were published in this country, and to contemplate the relatively simple panaceas which were advanced by their authors for a correction of the evils of the time. Again, it a consolation to turn the pages of history and realize that we are not suffering from any unique “disease.” In fact in 1820 the outlook was quite as dark as it is today. The productive industry of from sixty to eighty thousand people was destroyed. The cotton planters had suffered a loss of approximately eight million dollars in profits, and the merchants, eleven and a half million dollars, by the fall in cotton prices. Flour was selling at such a low figure that the farmers had but a meagre return for their efforts. The fall in tobacco prices “spread distress and desolation in the state of Virginia,” and South Carolina had lost her chief export market, that for indigo, which product had constituted about a third of her exports.

The George F. Baker Library has recently purchased a rare eighteenth-century volume, entitled A Familiar Discourse or DIALOGUE Concerning the Mine-Adventure, which was printed by F. Collins in the Old-Bailey, London, 1700. Though no author's name appears in our volume, Halkett & Laing's Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, on the authority of the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, attributes the work to one William Shiers who was a shareholder in the venture.

Those who have been in any way interested in the Essex Institute, or have used their already valuable collections of shipping papers, will welcome the addition of this important institution to the group of libraries and similar collecting agencies that are endeavoring to accumulate and preserve the materials for business history.