In this article Professor Perkins reexamines President Andrew Jackson's objections to the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States, as expressed in his famous veto message of 1832. He observes that, in addition to its exaggerated rhetoric, the veto message discusses at length a number of alleged deficiencies in the existing charter provisions. Professor Perkins's systematic analysis of the probable ramifications of a series of judicious alterations reveals that a compromise bill reformulated to meet most of the president's stated objections would not have seriously undermined the institution's position in American financial markets. Although several opportunities for sensible compromise arose, Nicholas Biddle and other members of the probank faction disregarded them. Perkins argues that the failure of bank supporters to consider comparatively modest modifications in the terms of recharter was a major blunder that ultimately doomed the Second Bank.

In this wide-ranging article, Professor Yonekawa identifies and examines in detail the burst of cotton spinning company formation that occurred in the late nineteenth century among the major cotton-producing nations of the world. His comparative approach allows him to focus on key local factors responsible for the company flotation booms in the areas discussed. He is also able to compare the effects of more general circumstances in the industry, such as trends in the price of raw cotton and the disruption during the American Civil War, on the various locations. Finally, his multinational approach brings to light many intriguing questions and illuminates areas for productive future research.

Although Woodrow Wilson's administration was slow to develop a coherent, comprehensive labor policy during the First World War, it did experiment with a scheme designed to test the effectiveness of centralized government control over the labor market. This experiment, confined to shipyard labor in the Seattle district, involved a cooperative agreement among shipyard management, organized labor, the U.S. Employment Service of the Department of Labor, and the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the U.S. Shipping Board. It quickly became obvious that the four parties to the agreement had different objectives, and a bitter but unpublicized administrative struggle developed, with each group trying to manipulate the experiment in ways that would promote its own interests. The deadlocked bureaucratic struggle in Seattle undermined support for the Department of Labor and served to retard rather than to accelerate centralization of the wartime labor market.