American business, for the most part, is cognizant of the existence of a foreman's problem. In 1943–45 the rather infectious spirit of foreman organization was manifest in several severe walkouts in key defense plants. Newspaper and magazine readers and radio listeners were deluged with commentaries on the reasons for this abrupt outcropping of dissatisfaction and dissension. Tenuous security, denial of recognition, lack of communication, small pay packets, no provision for overtime pay — these were some of the principal causes for disorder as interpreted by these experts. Hearings were held by a panel appointed by the National War Labor Board, and the panel was deeply impressed by what seemed to be a “conspicuous disproportion between the number and seriousness of the individual complaints of foremen … on the one hand and by the evident interest of foremen in organization on the other.” It was obvious from these voluminous hearings that there was an awareness of the serious nature of the immediate threat of foremen's organization.

The drummer's rôle in American merchandising prior to the Civil War has already been pointed up in a number of articles in this BULLETIN. To the picture already presented may be added detail taken from reports on trips, to the area west of the Alleghenies, made by two sales representatives of a Connecticut manufacturer in the 1830's and the 1850's. The present article is devoted to the circumstances of the sales trips made in the 1830's. The traveler's letters cast light on the prevalence of eastern buying trips by merchants, the similar prevalence of long-established ties between western merchants and jobbers or other merchants in the eastern cities, also the further difficulties which a salesman encountered when freight and postal services were highly uncertain and banking facilities permitted eastward remittances to be made only with difficulty.

The University of Nebraska is introducing a freshman course in “The Evolution of Business and Capitalism” to replace a survey course in the economic history of England and the United States. The change in title will become effective in September, 1948, although the new content has been in use on an experimental basis for nearly a year. The stages in the development of the course may be of interest to other teachers in economic and business history.

Like all others in the historical profession, the student of economic and business history is obligated to ascertain the truth about the social order of the past, remote and immediate. To those who rely heavily upon historical data to understand the present that obligation is a categorical imperative. In the search for truth, whether in Western Europe or in the United States, the historian is faced with the necessity of correctly evaluating the evolution, functions, and operation in society of the large business unit. In some areas in space and time the large unit may be a simple partnership, in others a large corporation, in still others it may be a cartel. In any case, the historian must collect and evaluate data about this phenomenon which is almost exclusively a product of modern Western Civilization, particularly during the past one hundred years.

In discussing this topic I have chosen to consider only the original records of American business concerns. To be sure, there is a wealth of printed materials, primary and secondary, which are invaluable to research in the history of business, such materials as legal records, reports of government investigations, and trade publications; the indispensable research material for the study of business administration and operation, however, is the inside record of the individual company. It is, therefore, the availability of that record which I shall deal with here.

The distinctive and by far the most difficult of all the “Problems in Writing the History of Large Business Units” centers around the word “large,” because the mere size of the project complicates each step of the historian's program. Let me be specific.

Editor's Note: For the student of business history China has had a peculiar interest. It has illustrated forms and stages of business policy, organization, and technique which have nearly disappeared in the western world but which flourished there in medieval and early modern times. China, in a sense, has been somewhat in the nature of a contemporary ancestor of modern business as we know it. China's town economy, still generally prevailing in the great interior, is reminiscent of the town of medieval and early modern Europe with its small artisans and tradesmen and its market places which characterize the town and petty capitalist system of business; while China's commercial cities have marked the survival of the sedentary merchant and mercantile capitalism, long the great and coordinating business of the East as indeed it was of the West until about a century ago.

Business history as a separate field of academic study and research came into being twenty years ago this autumn. At its beginning it was little more than a name, but in those twenty years notable progress has been made in the development of research and teaching in the history of business. Basic research in business records has created a considerable fund of information. Wide preliminary explorations of the field have been made and a systematic concept of business genesis and evolution has been formulated. Courses of instruction in business history, whether nominal or real, have been established in several American universities. And increasingly over the years business men have been taking an interest in the subject.

Pope & Talbot, Inc., pioneer San Francisco lumber and shipping firm, has made a $17,500 grant to the Stanford Graduate School of Business for the writing of the hundred-year history of the firm.

The research and writing will be done by Edwin T. Coman, director of the Graduate School of Business Library and assistant professor of business history. Miss Helen Gibbs, as research associate, will assist in the research and writing.

The chamber of commerce, which today varies widely in the range of its activities and functions, has had a long and important history. As an association of business men, its history goes back at least to Roman times; the first such association to bear the name “chamber of commerce” was that of Marseilles, established in 1599. The organization we know as the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York was not only the first association of business men for the purpose of furthering their interests to be launched in America; it also ranks among the world's oldest of such institutions, established and conducted independently of government, which exist today.