Why are some men notably successful in business? In the case of one of the most outstanding American business families we have the story of the beginnings of the family's success as told in the autobiography of its founder. That story is a significant one.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the business man in folklore is that he is far from an important figure in it. From this we may deduce that among those people who have created what we call folklore the business man has either not played an important rôle or his function and contribution have not been understood. He is not, however, altogether missing; we might not recognize him, since he is a remote and shadowy figure compared with the business man as we think of him today. But he is there, and the very form and circumstances in which he appears have meaning.

Before the next number of the Bulletin is issued, members of the Society will receive a copy of the latest volume in the Harvard Studies in Business History. The book is entitled the Development of Two Bank Groups in the Central Northwest: a Study in Bank Policy and Organization.

Over a century ago Henry Shaw climbed the business ladder in St. Louis, and in his later years he did much for the culture of his adopted city. Shaw left behind many records of his career. Those pertaining to his business have been deposited in the Baker Library at Harvard University. The records are voluminous and as yet unused, except in so far as they have been examined for the purpose of the following tentative statement. The collection includes personal accounts, real estate records, family correspondence, and business records, such as waste books, journals, ledgers, invoice books, and bank balances. The collection of letters is particularly significant and valuable, for it deals with many subjects, including importing and exporting, and covers the whole period of Shaw's activity in America.

In the days of the gilds, when a master craftsman hired half a dozen journeymen to work for him and became the capitalist of his time, one of his chief assets was skill at his trade. The industrial revolution left this petty capitalist as helpless as a museum piece so far as ownership of the tools of production was concerned, but it could not relegate to the showcase his outstanding characteristic, innate manual skill. The later age translated skill into mechanical ingenuity. Machines might turn out the finished product with an unskilled machine operator at their side, but back of the machines were mechanics with machine-wise fingers, and finally mechanical engineers with a creative sense. By means of the same ability which turned the old-time craftsmen into proprietors of production, the skilled mechanics of yesterday have evolved into industrial capitalists.

The above was the subject of a session at the annual meeting of the American Economic History Association held in Princeton, New Jersey, late in September of the present year. The main paper was presented by Dr. Stanley Pargellis of the Newberry Library in Chicago. The discussion was led by Mr. Ralph Budd, president of the Burlington Lines, by Professor Colston Warne of Amherst College, and Professor Kent Healy of Yale University. Lively discussion followed from the floor.

It is with regret that the Bulletin notes the recent closing of the Industrial Museum of the American Steel and Wire Company at Worcester, Massachusetts.

A subject in the history of business that is waiting to be studied is the development of ideas on how business should be conducted and, secondary to that, how business men should be trained. Training in tool subjects—writing, bookkeeping, etc.—is almost as old as business, and commercial geography and law have long been considered proper subjects for the aspiring young merchant's clerk to study. As for the science of business, that field has been left almost entirely to the economic theorist, with the result that it has not in reality been a “science of business” at all.

In July, 1936, the Burlington inaugurated a policy of making its historical records available to qualified scholars by depositing, in the Baker Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, all the records that could be found (some six tons in bulk) pertaining to the sale and colonization of its land grants in Iowa and Nebraska; a few years later similar material for the Hannibal & St. Joseph was added to this collection, thereby making it the most complete of its kind in the United States.

Some time ago an interesting manuscript volume was brought to the office of the Society for examination, by Frank G. Neal, Jr., of Wells, Maine. It was the account book of a Joseph Gatchell of that place, chiefly for the years 1797 to 1808 with occasional entries through 1816.

Business men have been notable collectors. Perhaps more than any other group, they have been able to exercise the universal acquisitive propensity of mankind. They have had both the financial means to buy the objects they wanted and the contacts that made it practicable to collect.

The National Archives has in its custody an unexploited group of records that constitutes one of the best collections in existence bearing upon the brilliant period of our nation's maritime history from 1792 to 1801. This material is found in the papers of the United States Court of Claims and relates to those cases commonly known as French Spoliation Claims.

The current importance of labor administration in business highlights the need for a better understanding of the historical background of the relations of business and labor. No part of American history has been more inadequately handled. Three aspects of the history of labor have been emphasized above everything else: labor organization, the conflict of labor and employer, and “exploitation” of labor by business. This approach has tended to engender conflict rather than to promote understanding.

A book has recently appeared which is evidently the first volume of The Growth of Business Series to be published by the Columbia University Press.

Various religions have been critical of the business man or even hostile to him. Christian writers have crudely called him the “rich man.” The Old Testament set the fashion, but not with a single voice. The New Testament is more emphatic, even if not uniformly opposed to enterprise, efficiency, and success.

John Coggan, the first merchant of Boston of whom there is any record, began business in 1634. He thus was presumably well established as a retailer by the time Robert Keayne entered the same type of business a year or two later. Unlike his fellow merchant, who was in 1639 fined heavily by the general court for charging too high a mark-up on certain imported goods, Coggan seems to have abided by Boston's principles of just price, which allowed the retailer to sell at 4 pence on the shilling above the cash cost in England.