Through an analysis of the formation of the International Harvester Company in 1902, Professor Kramer presents a suggestive case-study in businessmen's motivations toward merger.

Professor Simonson casts the recent history of the American airframe industry against the Schumpeterian concept of “creative destruction” in this study of business response to technological change.

As a challenge for further research and analysis, Professor Kirchner suggests some of the cultural differences encountered by Western businessmen in Russia which significantly shaped their conduct of trade.

Rejecting the traditional explanation that the introduction of features and an increase in scandalmongering account for the growth of American newspapers following the Civil War, Professor Smith advances an interesting correlation between the introduction of wood-pulp paper and the lowered prices and increased circulation of the press.

It has been widely held that the traveling salesman was a product of the railroad era. In the following paper, Professor Taylor shows that, at least in France, the commis voyageur played a role as early as the second half of the eighteenth century. These findings, important as they are for the history of marketing, pose new questions: Was France ahead of other countries in developing this form of sales organization? If France really led, did the other countries follow suit under French influence? Is it perhaps telling, for instance, that in Germany until late in the nineteenth century the Reisende was still called by its French name?

The impact of the telegraph upon the nineteenth-century business world was revolutionary in its magnitude. By economically and swiftly separating communications from transportation, telegraphy increased the flow of reliable information and the pace of business decision-making to a degree unapproached by any previous innovation.