A good deal has been written about general commerce between Britain and China in the mid-nineteenth century. But little is available to illuminate the problems of trading as they confronted particular persons or commercial Houses. The surviving records of Rathbone, Worthington and Co. make possible a study of the question: what sort of calculation did rational men attempt in order to turn to profit these new and inchoate markets?

If one remembers Count Detlev von Einsiedel's character and achievements, as described in the first installment of this article, one will not be surprised that under his leadership a spirit of scientific enlightenment, of restless improvement, and of innovation came to permeate the Lauchhammer Works so that it became one of the leading German iron works. To be sure, genuine primary innovation was rare, as it is by necessity. Only in the case of casting figures and in that of enameling iron utensils was something brought into existence in the Lauchhammer plants that had never existed before. But on top of that, there were numerous derivative innovations, i.e., innovations as far as that particular part of Germany was concerned. Or to put it differently, the elder Count Einsiedel transferred to Saxony achievements made in the most advanced areas of eighteenth-century iron industry. It is from this point of view that the following presentation must be read, a presentation in which the Count's primary innovations, previously described, are not mentioned again.

Historians have properly considered the period of sectional strife to be a germinal source of major determinative forces in American history. Yet, preoccupation with the Civil War and Reconstruction, their causes and consequences, has so dominated the interests of historians of the South that they may well have neglected or misunderstood many of the basic economic developments of the region.

Let us be more skeptical of the plausible and widely held assumptions that the war was responsible for the economic institutions of the New South or that radical Reconstruction can be held accountable for many of the major economic problems of the post-Reconstruction era. The primary purpose of this article is to treat in summary fashion the broad developments in one southern industry, developments which in themselves suggest that the time has arrived to study southern economic development for its own sake.

The dedication of the Ford Motor Company Archives on May 7, 1953, marks a milestone in research in the history of business in the United States. As far as the Editor of the Bulletin knows, this is the first time a large American corporation has established a separate organization not only to preserve and handle its historical records but also to make them available to scholars for research. To one whose memory goes back to the days when it was nearly impossible to gain access even to old records of business concerns, this event has a very special significance.

Access by scholars to company records is, of course, not uncommon today Several companies have deposited their historical records in public depositories, a notable example being the records of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Others have admitted scholars to their offices for research in their records. The Ford Motor Company has gone still further in that it has established a central depository, with a trained archival staff, which is open to accredited scholars.

In many small New England towns during the nineteenth century, and even into the twentieth, all the business activities, centered usually about the general store, would be carried on by members of one family. Such a situation may be studied by means of a collection, comprising the records of the W. G. Sargent Co., of Sargentville, Maine, recently received by the Manuscript Division, Baker Library. The village of Sargentville, a part of the town of Sedgwick, is on the coast, east of Bucksport, and separated by a channel (now spanned by a bridge) from Deer Isle. Once there was a flourishing wharf (now demolished), where bait, fish, lime, ice, and granite were shipped up and down the coast, in return for products handled by the country stores in the vicinity. The Sargents, who seem to have given their name to the community about 1879, were at the center of this activity, building ships, arranging for their loads, and distributing the return goods, either as wholesalers or through stores they controlled.

Where did the owners of early Illinois industries get the capital and the funds to start their factories? What was the background of these early manufacturers? The evidence that will be presented here suggests that the typical Illinois manufacturer of the nineteenth century was a self-financed man who was born and raised in Europe or on the eastern seaboard.

Let us begin with the basic thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, Wisconsin and Harvard historian of the last generation, who reinterpreted the history of this country. Turner's thesis, enunciated at the Chicago meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893, was that society was reborn on every new frontier. Its character was influenced not only by heredity but even more by its new environment. Thus the American economy reflected not only European, especially Anglo-Saxon customs and institutions brought across the Atlantic, but it also reflected the pioneer's adaptation to primitive frontier conditions. By the second, third, and fourth generation, Americans had forgotten or abandoned certain European ways because these were not adapted to survival in the New World.

A recent survey by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce reported that so-called “fringe benefits” are now taking 16.4 per cent of the payrolls of American industry as a whole. Probably the best-known of these welfare programs is the United Mine Workers Welfare and Retirement Fund, which was started in May, 1946, by agreement between the union and the Department of the Interior, then operating the mines, and which was accepted by the operators when the industry returned to private hands. The Fund is financed by a royalty on every ton of coal produced. The royalty was originally 5 cents a ton, but it has risen every year until it is now 50 cents a ton. The revenues of the Fund up to June 30, 1952, were $476,000,000; its expenditures in the same period were $387,000,000. These disbursements went to finance several different types of benefits—pensions for retired miners, hospital and medical care, rehabilitation of the disabled, maintenance of men who were permanently and totally disabled, and death benefits and maintenance aid for miners' families. The Fund is administered by three trustees: one named by the United Mine Workers, one by the operators, and one designated jointly.

In connection with some research on the beginnings of German business history the author of this paper has drawn attention to what is probably the earliest firm history ever written. This history of an iron works, entitled Geschichte und Feyer des Ersten Jahrhunderts des Eisenwerks Lauchhammer, was compiled by the Works' general manager, Johann Friedrich Trautscholdt, and privately printed in Dresden in 1825. Of the literally thousands of firm histories which have been issued in Europe and America since that time, only a few can bear comparison with this very first one, a truly remarkable performance. It is typically what the Germans call a Festschrift, i.e., a publication to celebrate an anniversary. This article, based thereon, will show what a mine of information that early firm history is; but hard work was necessary to bring the gold to the surface.

Only once in a generation, because of fortuitous circumstances, the stress of the period or the brilliance of a personality, a man lives a life of unusual service to his profession and to the commonweal. To the distinguished company of accounting immortals, William Plender is rightfully admitted because he, more than any other English practitioner, achieved in his lifetime wide recognition as a skillful interpreter of financial data as well as a faithful servant of the Crown.

Plender's life has much to recommend it for study by the rising generation not only in Great Britain but in other parts of the world where accountancy has achieved the status of an honored profession. It is for this reason, alone, that the present memoir is written: to re-count the rise of one accountant in professional and public circles because of the quality of his mind and the force of his personality, to say, this was accomplished by one man; it can be done by others if they but dedicate themselves to the pursuit of the professional ideal wherever it may be found, in England, in America, everywhere.

Businessmen are accustomed to thinking of the capital they use as of two types: short-term and long-term. Short-term capital is the capital which is used typically to finance seasonal peaks in business activity, such as the rush at Christmastime; it is borrowed from commercial banks and must be repaid in a short time, usually less than a year. Long-term capital may be either equity capital, invested by the owners of the business, or borrowed capital, on loan to the owners for a number of years. Long-term capital is usually obtained by businessmen through investment bankers. There are many exceptions to these generalizations, and the exceptions have been increasing in number in recent years, but historically and in theory these general statements may be treated as working definitions.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the financial milieu of the United States was enlivened by the appearance of farm mortgage companies whose agents scoured the northeastern states, proclaiming the discovery of an investors' mother Iode, the western farm mortgage. To the experienced investor the farm mortgage was no innovation of course, but the mortgage companies were to bring the mortgage market to a new peak of organization and their investors ultimately to a state of frustration compounded. This paper deals with the history of one western mortgage company.

By far the most swashbuckling figure in the history of the Mexican mining industry was “Colonel” William C. Greene. While the Guggenheims built an empire founded on financial acumen and sound metallurgical practice, Greene built an empire founded on prospectuses and sheer bluff. Greene, in his time, controlled the largest copper ore body in all Mexico, yet he drove his company into bankruptcy. The story of his opening of the Cananea copper deposit is fantastic—stranger than fiction.

Hersey, Staples and Company was organized by eastern men in 1854 to carry on a business in Stillwater, leading lumber town in Minnesota Territory. Bringing to this business venture on the energy, experience lumbering acquired in Maine, knowledge of the mercantile trade, and capital from Maine and Massachusetts, the four partners of Hersey, Staples and Company initiated an enterprise that gained the attention of businessmen throughout the Territory. The firm became the largest owner of pinelands in the St. Croix Delta, a leading producer of logs and lumber in an area that ranked first in lumber exportation in Minnesota, operator of the finest mill in the Territory, wholesaler and retailer of logs and lumber, part owner in boom companies, dam companies, and a general store, and later, promoter of railroads and banks. Although only one partner became a resident of Minnesota, the others were favorably known in the community in which their business was located. Few of the records of the company are extant, but the history of operations that can be discovered illuminate the general problems of running a lumber business in the West in the 'fifties.