For many years Americans engaged in business abroad at their own risk, unaided in any important way by the backing of their government. When confronted with the forces of national self-interest, they faced frustration. Then the policy of the United States, aware of its economic responsibilities and opportunities and dangers, swung to their support. The new diplomacy was not always adept, but it produced remarkable changes. These are exemplified in the thirty-year history of American efforts to gain an entry to the oilfields of the Netherlands East Indies. The files of the Department of State provide an intimate and unique view both of motivations and the mechanisms of change.

It was one of history's sardonic pranks that the forces deriding business efficiency and clamoring for regulation made Samuel Insull a favorite scapegoat. He had built his early electric system in Chicago with vision, administrative and political skill, and a conspicuously advanced concept of public relations. Insull espoused the “natural monopoly” principle, but he shocked contemporaries by insisting upon the corollary necessity for public control. He fought hard and effectively for state regulation, not as a radical theorist hut as a realist with a record of public service unsurpassed in the infant electric utility industry.

Durant has been described as “the most picturesque, spectacular, and aggressive figure in the chronicles of American automobiledom” but he was much more than this. His career is a chssic study in the dual abilities, promotional and administrative, that created and nourished big business in America. Ultimate personal disaster grew out of Durant's failure to strike a balance between the two, yet his genius left imperishable marks, and his luster as the symbol of an era is untarnished.

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.