This month the members of the Business Historical Society are receiving The Whitesmiths of Taunton, a History of Reed & Barton, 1824-1943, by George S. Gibb. This is the eighth volume in the Harvard Studies in Business History published at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration under the direction of Professor N. S. B. Gras. It is the first volume in the series to be devoted wholly to the history of a manufacturing concern.

American novelists and writers have found the plantation-slave régime and the romantic aspects of planter life so intriguing that they perhaps unintentionally have led the reading public to accept these as the whole picture of southern life in the days of slavery. The business man seems foreign to such a traditional picture and his activities less picturesque than those of planter, slave, or poor white. Seemingly, only the heroic proportions of an Anthony Adverse or a Rhett Butler can lift the business theme to a plane where it can compete with the other actors in the drama of the traditional South.

The above was the subject of a joint session of the American Historical Association and the Business Historical Society which was to have been held at Columbus, Ohio, on the morning of December 30, 1942. Mr. John W. Higgins was to have presided at this meeting, an especially fitting arrangement because he is a business administrator as well as president of the Society. Several ten-minute addresses were planned to present different issues and varying points of view. Following these, the subject was to have been opened for discussion from the floor, to be continued at a luncheon session.

Among the close associates of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici and his illustrious son, Lorenzo de' Medici, no one was more trusted by both father and son than Francesco Sassetti, their business partner and general manager. Yet Sassetti is virtually unknown to English readers. Like the Medici, he belonged to a noble Florentine family whose wealth originated in trade and was later re-invested in landed property in the city of Florence and the surrounding country.

Eric Bollmann, a Hanoverian by birth who lived in this country from 1796 to 1814, is all but forgotten today. But about 150 years ago he was widely known on two continents. To be sure, this was not owing to his extensive business activities but to some daring coups during the years of the French Revolution. In 1792, when the Jacobins came into power in Paris, Bollmann spirited the Minister of War, Narbonne, out of France and shortly afterwards tried to liberate Lafayette, then held as a prisoner by the Austrians in the fortress of Olmutz. After this attempt had failed, Bollmann came to the United States and established himself as a business man in Philadelphia.

Too often the “why” of early chain store success has been glibly explained in terms of present-day conditions. The following abbreviated list is, I believe, typical of the factors advanced to explain the impressive position of the chain store in our distributive system:

1. Greater skill in management due to the greater opportunity for specialization.

2. Greater financial strength and power in buying.

3. The possibility of using certain advertising media which are not adapted to the needs of independent retailers.

4. The possibility, through large scale operation, of developing a prestige such as the average small merchant can rarely cultivate.

5. The ability through integration to eliminate selling and buying costs which are inevitable when manufacturers, jobbers, and retailers are separate entities.

The growth and development of modern private business enterprise has been accompanied with a slowly maturing realization of the value and importance of both current and historical records. The ever-increasing accumulation of records and, in most instances, the entirely inadequate methods of retention, preservation, and storage have drawn attention to the growing need for the establishment of a methodical retention procedure. Such a costly solution as a program for new construction offers a sad commentary on management; the question of available space resolves itself into a problem of management.

Let us not think that business men constitute the only class that evokes severe social questions. At different times the clergy, the warriors, the politicians, and the scholars have caused others to sit in judgment on their status and usefulness. Indeed, since these classes have come into existence as specialized contributors to civilization, there has been a swing to or away from one or another. The history of civilization is the history of their rise, mastery, and decline; their hard work and their sloth; their leadership and their loss of dynamic qualities. Indeed, one of the advantages of our evolutionary process is our chance to swing from one group to another for leadership or even control, according to whichever promises best results in action. Of course, this does not mean that the classes in question disappear or that they are not mutually dependent; it means simply that there is a constant shift in leadership, each class always contributing something whether in declining or increasing amount.

When I was asked to speak about the relation of the business man to public affairs, it occurred to me that the subject should be touched upon at some central part of American history. In the shaping of our institutions, no period is more important than the years 1775 to 1797. And few will discount the contributions which were then made by Washington. The stamp of his influence appears at every significant point.

Returning to Philadelphia after an unsuccessful trip to Louisiana in 1807 and 1808, Bollmann entered business again. When a character like Bollmann goes into business, he quite naturally turns promoter, and this Bollmann did in 1808. Foreign trade at the time being seriously interfered with by the struggle between England and France under Napoleon, Bollmann began with the promotion of domestic manufacture.

Business historians have been used in actual business and may have a future in large concerns where costly mistakes are repeated partly because the turnover of officials is great and constant. Experience in business is accumulated in large volume—and forgotten.

Who was Croesus? How rich was he? And how did he acquire the treasure that has made his name live to this day as a measure of great wealth?