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Like the financial mart from which it derives its name, OVER THE COUNTER is designed for the types of exchanges not handled elsewhere. This feature has its origin in a demand among readers of business history for a place to compare ideas, voice comments on published articles and reviews, and publish research essays. Contributions are invited. The Editor and Advisory Board reserve the right to decide whether, on the basis of general interest, pertinence, and merit, such contributions will be published. OVER THE COUNTER will appear as often as the volume of contributions may dictate.
As the oil industry grew, comfortable family firms, hitherto untouched by the ferocities of competition, found their position under attack and their independence menaced. The painful, inexorable process of substituting a new economic order for an old is here detailed from the viewpoint and records of one of the dispossessed.
If an “index of continuity” for business enterprise could be constructed, it would show a distinct rise over the years. Reasons for and significance of this trend are examined, and distinctive mortality rates in various kinds of enterprises are identified. Appropriate data, however, have only recently begun to be recorded. With a sound statistical base, some form of enterprise life insurance may be possible; indeed, certain starts have already been made in this direction.
In the intellectual career of one precocious scholar may be traced the course of jurisprudence and philosophy that joined law with economics, dealt with the fundamental problem of democratic restraints upon corporate power, and influenced in basic ways the direction of the New Deal program.