In order to utilize the new science of records management, historians need detailed, specific information on the various techniques which have been worked out. The Controlled Record Keeping program of the National Records Management Council, developed by historically oriented specialists, offers three basic tools which are equally useful to businessmen and scholars in helping to win the “Battle of the Bulk.”

Behind the formation, in 1890, of the National Association of Life Underwriters lay two decades of localized, often abortive attempts at self-regulation through association. Malpractice, while not universal, was sufficiently widespread to hinder the growth of a broad market for life insurance. Early regulatory efforts failed when the organizers of those efforts were unable to solve the administrative problems of dealing with apathy on the one hand and defiance on the other. But these failures paved the way for renewed efforts. When, at last, a number of widely scattered associations had succeeded in accomplishing reforms, thereby solidifying member support, the stage was set for organization on a national scale.

Business history and business inevitably share the problem of dealing with records in bulk. Here is a suggestion that historians borrow and adapt certain techniques that have proved effective in solving the problem for business.

The performance of industrial securities in the depression of 1893-97 went far toward ridding the financial community of the idea that such securities generally lacked investment quality. This ship in investing sentiment was a factor of major significance in accelerating the merger movement, the promoters of which, in turn, broadened the market for industrials still further. This they accomplished by offering wide participations in promising ventures, by sweetening those participations through extensive recourse to preferred stocks, and by employing promotional techniques new to the field of industrial security marketing. The creation of a broad market for industrial stocks, hitherto highly inflexible administrative tools, meant vastly increased fluidity of ownership. By the turn of the century the transition was well under way from closely held, “inside” ownership of American business to semipublic, “outside” hands.

Having solved the initial problems of raising capital for its steamship venture on the Yangtze (Business History Review, June, 1954), the Boston trading firm of Russell & Co. then faced operational difficulties of a formidable nature. Fluctuating local trade, recurrent scarcity of working capital, and the presence of an outnumbering fleet of competing vessels provided a severe test of the resident-partner system of administration. Russell & Co.'s Far Eastern affiliate rode out the lean years, profited handsomely in the fat years that followed, and then liquidated its investment. This account of the Yangtze steamship venture further illuminates the methods and policies of American commission houses in the nineteenth-century China trade and has implications of interest to modern managers of foreign investments.

When attention is shifted from individual entrepreneur to the socio-economic group of which he is a part, new historical perspectives are opened to view. This study of a group of bankers in frontier Cincinnati considerably sharpens the historical concept of the “Western Banker” and provides insight into the nature of the banking function in a developing economy. The data employed yield significant conclusions about the nature of the bankers' backgrounds and about the importance both of those backgrounds and of the frontier environment in shaping the bankers' function and role.