The annual meeting of the Business Historical Society will be held at the Harvard Business School on Wednesday, April 22, 1936, at twelve noon. Final arrangements have not yet been completed, but the program will include a short business meeting, a subscription luncheon at the Faculty Club; and two addresses on topics related to business history. During the business meeting the officers for the ensuing year are to be elected, including the Treasurer, the Clerk, and the seven members of the Council. Members are reminded that both General and Affiliated Members are now entitled to vote, as a result of the changes in the Constitution and By-laws voted last May, and that they may attend the meeting by proxy. Individual notices will have been mailed to members before the appearance of this issue of the Bulletin.

In sending copies of Dr. Henrietta M. Larson's Jay Cooke—Private Banker to its members, the Business Historical Society has taken a definite step forward. For the first time in its eleven years' existence, the Society has, with this presentation, been instrumental in distributing a significant historical volume prepared by a trained business historian and dealing with the business career of an important business man.

Much has been written in the history of the Pacific Northwest of the missionaries and pioneer settlers of the Columbia and Willamette Valleys. The romantic episodes of the years 1830 to 1850 have been subject for fiction and drama, and much applause has justifiably been accorded those who ventured the journey in the covered wagon across “The Great American Desert,” or by ship and pack-horse via the Isthmus route, or by the long and dangerous sea voyage around the Horn, to establish missions among the Indians, and homes in the wilderness. But with the decade of the 'fifties came another type of pioneer: the business man from New England whose cautious nature was not attracted by the gold flurries of California's “forty-nine,” but rather by the inducements of sober trade in the rapidly growing communities of the Oregon country.

It is natural to wish to account for success of any kind hy ascribing it to some freak of fortune, to the chance discovery of some magic formula. This attitude of mind would place success potentially within the grasp of almost anyone, even without the possession of unusual mental or physical endowments, and without the necessity of exerting oneself to cultivate the endowments one actually may possess. Since economic success is one of the most widespread of human desiderata, it might be expected that legends ascribing it to various fortuitous happenings of a romantic or even magical character would be widespread. This is actually the case, as witness Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, Ali Baba and the key-phrase “Open, Sesame!”, Jack and the beanstalk, Dick Whittington and his cat. Nor is it necessary to resort to the fabulous Orient or to medieval Europe for specimens of such tales. About the head—or rather, the money-bags—of John Jacob Astor I have sprung up myths which probably exceed in number and influence those clustering about any other single business man. And, Astor is near enough to our own time so that we need not entirely despair of following the footprints of the myth-makers, one of whom, indeed, left an unmistakable trail.

The Society has prepared an exhibit of historical material in connection with the Tercentenary Celebration of Harvard University. Taking his cue from the year of Harvard's founding, the Executive Secretary has arranged documents and pictures to illustrate briefly the chief developments in American business during the past three hundred years. Business records collected by the Society (with some supplementary material from the Baker Library collections) have been placed in four groups, focusing upon the years 1636, 1736, 1836, and 1886. A brief description of the outstanding business features of the period accompanies each group of documents. These descriptive statements give a perspective upon business which is illuminating to many people, and they are reproduced here for the benefit of those who cannot see the exhibit itself.

If a man's ability is to be rated according to the amount of money he makes, Cyrus H. McCormick was one of America's ablest business leaders in the nineteenth century. A more discriminating view of his career would necessitate some important qualifications in such an estimate. McCormick's personal achievements—both as inventor and as a business man—were truly remarkable in the period before about 1860, and during the whole course of his life he demonstrated rare talents and performed prodigious deeds. But in his later years he made serious errors in judgment, failed to adopt well-rounded policies, and pursued business methods which were fundamentally poor. While his managerial successes and financial profits were very notable, his record as a whole does not reflect the sober and well-balanced judgment which is essential to the first-class business mind.

In connection with the above review of the life of Cyrus Hall McCormick it is appropriate to say something about the McCormick Historical Association. This organization has purposes which relate closely to the objects of the Business Historical Society, and the materials which it has gathered together constitute an important source of business history which should be known to all students of the subject. The McCormick Historical Association has been building up an intensive collection of printed manuscript and museum materials at the McCormick Library, 679 Rush Street, Chicago. The items relate to a rather wide range of topics but they center in the activities and interests of Cyrus Hall McCormick and the McCormick family.

There is a good deal of doubt as to which was the earliest business corporation in America. One view is that a whale-fishing company established in New York City in 1675 was the first, but, although a joint-stock company (a kind of partnership), there is no evidence that it was also a corporation. A second view is that the first was The New London Society United for Trade and Commerce, chartered, apparently, in Connecticut in 1732. The life of these and other colonial concerns was short. Claims might be made for the priority of other colonial companies but our main interest is in existing companies. And this interest does not lie in the age of the concern itself but in the priority of its incorporation.

The combination of some 200 small railroads in New England into the present few systems has involved so many interesting episodes that to describe them all would take a very long time. I shall limit myself therefore to describing a few typical series of events which led to consolidations in New England. The first two episodes deal with the incorporation of branch lines within the larger systems of from 60 to 80 years ago; the third episode deals with the attempted and in part successful building up of a through line from Boston to New York and to the Hudson River above New York.

The advertisement which is reproduced on the opposite page is an interesting recent acquisition for which the Society has to thank Mr. Lee M. Friedman of Boston. Written by a shoe merchant who was, to say the least, rather eccentric, the advertisement is amusing and almost incomprehensible. Yet it reflects the strong personal flavor which was characteristic of newspaper advertising until long after 1849, while in its use of a headline and illustration and in its general arrangement, the copy represents a distinct technical advance over the prevailing copy of the period.

Detroit is the oldest center of civilization in the vast area of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. Mission and trading posts there were at Chequamegon, Green Bay, Michilimackinac, Chicago, and possibly elsewhere, but all save Detroit were destroyed either temporarily or permanently. The missions at Chequamegon and Chicago were abandoned soon after their establishment, and except for the presence of a few independent traders, the modern settlement of these places dates from the nineteenth century. Michilimackinac, settled earlier than Detroit, still remains a center of civilization; but there have been several removals of the settlement as originally founded, and the present one on the Island dates only from 1780, while the place has steadily dwindled in relative importance from the commercial center of a wide region to a mere summer resort.

Very little, apparently, has been written on the China trade during the three decades from 1840 to 1870. But, in reality, these years constitute one of the most picturesque and glamorous eras in the annals of the Eastern trade. As a result of the growing demand for a more speedy delivery of tea, especially, from China, the “Clipper Ship” period began about 1843; and, gaining impetus through the discovery of gold in California in 1849 and in Australia in 1859, it ended, approximately, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. During those years, our merchants and sea captains vied with each other in building fast ships of which the Houqua, the Samuel Russell, the Oriental, and the Sea Witch were the pioneers of a numerous fleet. So much activity in shipbuilding would naturally imply an active and growing trade to make use of these fast carriers.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has in its files many collections of manuscripts, a great number of which pertain to the business records of Philadelphia merchants and institutions, both commercial and municipal. The collections are as varied in content as they are in size and in periods covered. Any student of Pennsylvania industrial, commercial, or financial history, from the earliest days of the colony to the more familiar recent years, will find many contemporaneous records to assist him.

A sheaf of old letters on deposit in the Baker Library of Harvard University gives a glimpse of an early type of locomotive which in a real sense epitomizes the pioneer stage of both American locomotive engineering and American business.

Among the recent accessions of the Society is an interesting letter written in 1883 by a member of one of the firms which later became Armour & Company, Inc.