On December 28, 1948, the oldest of the three American watch manufacturers, the Waltham Watch Company, filed an application for reorganization in the Federal District Court of Boston, Massachusetts. For some time it had been common knowledge, both in the trade and among the more informed public, that the company was in serious financial straits. The action of December 28 made the difficulties and future of this old New England firm no longer a regional issue but a pressing national one. Officials of the firm, representatives of labor, of the press, of radio, and politicians, both State and Federal, offered explanations and suggested answers to the timely question: What caused the company's bankruptcy and how could Waltham be saved? In attempting to find answers to this question, the representatives of management, labor, and government indicated a new direction and a new development in American business.

We must begin with a survey of the types of business which have existed throughout the known ages. In no other way can we obtain a perspective for understanding the present and for anticipating the future. In no other way can we become accustomed to the idea and the fact of eternal change, which is the life of society as of nature.

That there ever was a pre-capitalistic stage may be doubted, though such a view has been maintained. If by capitalism we mean a system of getting a living through the use of capital goods, then only the ape man or the pithecanthropus erectus could have escaped it. Capital goods, such as tools and weapons, have been essential to known primitive tribes. The full-fledged man, using fire and possessing a sense of humor, probably lived tens of thousands of years in a primitive capitalism but without any business at all.

In this exposition of the problems associated with writing business history three conditioning factors have been kept in mind. The paper is specifically limited to problems in the collaborative writing of business history; by definition, problems peculiar to the writing of the history of a small firm by one person are excluded. Only by collaboration can a satisfactory history of the large integrated unit be written. In the second place, the analysis herein is confined to the more important problems encountered in producing the history of a large business unit. Obviously it would be impossible to discuss in a short paper the whole range of problems which have been met, though not forgotten or ignored. Thirdly, the kind of business history I am talking about is a comprehensive analysis of the policy and management of the firm, not merely a superficial sketch of its corporate history or a survey of either its accomplishments or shortcomings.

This article deals with a few aspects of the management of the Southern Pacific Company under E. H. Harriman from his assumption of control of the road in 1901 until his death in 1909. This was a short period in the railroad's history and yet it was long enough to supply ample illustration of the methods which Harriman, a former Wall Street broker, employed to attain great success in the administration of this huge railroad system. It exemplifies the truth that a big job must be done by the coöperative work of many men, albeit with a strong man at the top. It shows the successful operation of a big business unit under a strong top-level organization which allowed for individual freedom and initiative at lower levels. It was the Harriman system, even more than Harriman, alone, that did so much for the Southern Pacific. And, then, we must not forget that some of the ideas which Harriman put into effect were nurtured by the former president, C. P. Huntington, who never found the opportunity to carry them out. But if Harriman did not largely conceive the policies and techniques and train the men, he merged them into a great concept of policy, organization, and management which he supported with his financial strength and his capacity as an administrator. The story of his administration of the Southern Pacific illustrates an important stage in the history of American railroad administration and, indeed, of this country's large-scale business administration in general.

The development of commercial viniculture in California forms an important chapter in the State's agricultural and business history. The sixty years between 1830 and 1890 witnessed the transformation in California of agricultural policies and practices which culminated in the birth of a large-scale industrial and commercial enterprise. Grape-growing and wine-making were one of the first industries to experience this transition.

Jamsetji Tata was once a merchant, like his father, but unlike his father he became a great industrialist. Instead of specializing in one huge concern, he spread out to establish many companies of high quality and strategic importance—the foundation of modern Industrial India. It was in part owing to his work that India was able recently to wage a war on the side of the Allies without much help from Britain.

What may well be one of the earliest company histories in English was recently presented to Baker Library by Mrs. Lydia Burgess Brownson, great-granddaughter of George Fox, who compiled the history.

By the end of 1852, six months after the establishment in San Francisco of the principal office, Wells, Fargo & Company had spread its express and banking services well into California's gold-mining country. The most tangible evidence of the organization's growth was the rise in value of its gold shipments to New York. The first shipment, which left San Francisco on July 31 aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Oregon, crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and was taken up the eastern coast of the continent aboard the United States Mail Steamship Ohio, amounted to only $21,717. The year's last shipment, almost tripling the first, was $61,615. The largest was sent on December 1 and amounted to $68,735. Total shipments by Wells, Fargo & Company for the five-month period between July 31 and the end of the year were $312,492. San Francisco's largest banking firm, Page, Bacon & Company, shipped during the same period $6,313,986, and Adams & Company, competitor of Wells, Fargo & Company in the express and banking business, $5,542,000.

In the April, 1948, issue of the Bulletin, Dr. Charles J. Kennedy outlined a new course in the “Evolution of Business and Capitalism” at the University of Nebraska. This article provoked so much interest among various students of business history that we were prompted to solicit information from other colleges and universities in the country. The results have been gratifying, and we are pleased to report that there are at least fifteen schools in the United States where Business History, or a closely allied course, is being taught. There may be still others of which we are not aware, and in that event we should like very much to hear from them.

In September the members of the Society received copies of a new number in the Harvard Studies in Business History: The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763-1861, by Ralph W. Hidy. This work, the first history of any Anglo-American merchant banker to be written from the records of the firm itself, traces the progress of Baring Brothers & Company during the first hundred years of its existence.

Materials in Baker Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration for the study of labor relations have been recently increased by the gift of an unusually complete and well-organized collection from Thompson Products, Inc., of Cleveland. The equivalent of fifty thousand pages of documents, arranged chronologically and indexed, illustrating labor-management-government relations during the eventful years 1933 to 1948, are a welcome addition in themselves. But the fact that they illustrate the labor history of a company which has been in the forefront of the conflict over governmental interference in labor matters makes them of even greater interest to the student. In fact, had the company not been so labor-minded, the collection itself would probably not have existed.

In New England, as nowhere else in the country, petty capitalism is showing its great abiding strength. The region's large industrial establishments may close their doors and move to other parts of the country, but its small firms stand ready to take over where the larger ones have given way. Today, New England is dotted with manufacturing plants that were once the property of great industrial enterprises but that are now the honeycombed homes of countless small shops and foundries.