Much of the capital to finance economic growth flowed from East to West in numerous trickling streams, having as their source the middle-income professional class and as their destination the small farmer. Uniting such borrowers and lenders were middlemen like Charles M. Hawkes, whose operations — here described in detail — were characterized by direct cognizance, financial mobility, deliberate restriction, and great prudence in the face of a shifting, hazardous market.

No definitive comparison of factors contributing to success and failure in business is possible. Yet a look at some of those factors, operative in a number of similar circumstances, helps sharpen the customary vague generalizations. An examination of the elements of prudence, diligence, housekeeping habits, intelligence, foresight, use of agents, degree of control, and teamwork suggests that in commerce of the period luck was probably of less influence than commonly supposed. A by-product of this broad inquiry is a specific and highly illuminating comparative picture of mercantile business practice.

The unique features of ownership patterns in the early New England textile industry have long been recognized. Hitherto it has been the interlocking or horizontal relationships that have been studied. This article deals, instead, with the vertical pattern — describing ownership in terms of occupational groupings of all the investors rather than the kinship of the dominant owners. Conclusions are drawn in respect to such important points as the principal sources of textile capital, the rate of mercantile capital reinvestment in manufacturing, the relationship between investment and industry integration, and the increasing importance of nonbusiness and institutional vested interests.

The Age of Electricity was foreshadowed by the “battle of the currents.” This almost forgotten controversy had important technological implications, but it is also a macabre chapter in the history of marketing tactics. Westinghouse's superior alternating current system was ingeniously attacked by proponents of direct current. Exploiting contemporary evidence from the penitentiary, the direct-current adherents declaimed against use by the public of a system employed by the state to rid itself of its most dangerous criminals.

The stock market boom and bust of the late 1920's has been closely associated by scholars and public alike with the great changes in American life that followed closely thereafter. Actually, the interrelationship is far from clear, and a better understanding of the capital market is needed. Historical evidence points to the absence of effective market regulation and to the violation of accepted norms of monetary policy, but the only clear-cut causal connection between levels of economic activity and the stock boom lies in the effect of security inflation on the psychological climate of the business community.

The first fire insurance program of the Hohenzollern was an important phase in the growth of the concept of risk coverage, incorporating many features regarded as standard in modern insurance practice. The Brandenburg-Berlin scheme also reflected the strengths and weaknesses of a benevolent despotism in its attempts to force the citizenry to protect itself against an admitted menace of major proportions.

This study is an attempt to reconstruct the history of a medieval company on the basis of the extant fragments of its account books, the only surviving records. Despite the incompleteness of the data, it was possible to reach important conclusions and to show that the continued existence of a medieval firm depended on the same factors as today: coordination, efficient management, and effective control. The records also shed interesting light on personnel relations, adjustment to new trends, and the attitude of the merchants toward the Church.