Recently several very interesting papers concerning the Perkins and Cabots of a century ago have come to the Manuscript Department of Baker Library as a gift of the estate of the late Professor Philip Cabot. Among these papers are three which pertain not only to one of Boston's most successful merchants, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, but also to one of America's foremost statesmen and business lawyers, Daniel Webster. One of the three papers is presented below.

Although the system of capitalism may be very old, the concept of such a system belongs almost wholly to the last hundred years. I shall deal with only five views, thereby leaving to others such additions as they think fit.

I should like to emphasize three points dealing with the general subject of the significance of the administrator concept in the study of capitalism.

Professor Gras' paper is so full of new concepts and ideas that it is very difficult to make any useful comments in a few minutes. I shall, however, try to discuss a few points which appear to me worthy of special emphasis because they may require a revision of accepted interpretations.

The object of this paper is to present for discussion the thesis that the managerial policy of individual entrepreneurs has been one of the principal factors determining the structure of American business.

Commission agents are of minor significance in the distribution of semi-manufactured goods today. Data from the Census of Manufactures reveal that in 1929 only a small portion of manufacturers' sales of buttons, and of non-ferrous metal alloys and their products, was made through commission houses and agents. Approximately two thirds of such sales were made directly to industrial or other large consumers and one quarter to wholesale merchants. This condition differs markedly from that which prevailed a century ago.

The Business Historical Society has recently received from the First National Bank of Boston, through the courtesy of Mr. R. W. Stanley, eleven volumes of the original records of the Shoe and Leather Dealers' Bank, of Boston, which became the Shoe and Leather National Bank.

In the year 1878 the American businessman first became hitched to the telephone. Not that the telephone was new that year. The businessman had come to know it as an instrument for talking at some distance by means of a pair of telephones connected with telegraph wires or wires put up for that purpose. He could, for instance, lease such a pair of phones for $12 a year from the Bell Telephone Company of Boston. But such use of the new instrument was limited.

What does it take to be successful in business? In the letter printed below, a doctor advised a brother who contemplated entering trade in a certain small Massachusetts town in the year 1807. In spite of its quaint tone, the letter raises interesting questions. Is the doctor's analysis of the situation essentially sound? What do you think of the qualifications he lists for success in trade in this instance? Does this simple consideration of the question have meaning for other times and business situations?

A small book, recently come to the editor's desk, merits attention. It is entitled Inventory of Business Records: The D. Connelly Boiler Company, The J. B. Savage Company.

In a sketch of the activities of a Genoese public notary of the late twelfth century, which appeared in this Bulletin some time ago, it was pointed out that his records included a considerable number of partnership contracts. Such contracts were almost always concluded for the purpose of trading overseas. As we know, the Genoese merchants of the twelfth century were chiefly engaged in the trade with North Africa, Romania (the Byzantine Empire), the Levant, and also Spain, southern France, Sicily, and Sardinia.

In May, 1914, a small group of friends of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and admirers of James J. Hill took the initiative in founding a Professorship of Transportation in his honor and to bear his name. The group consisted of Robert Bacon. George F. Baker, Howard Elliott, Arthur Curtis James, Thomas W. Lamont, Robert T. Lincoln, and J. P. Morgan. Seventy-four persons contributed an aggregate of $125,000, and the endowment of the professorship was announced by President Lowell at the 1915 Commencement exercises with the statement that “the Chair marks an epoch in the life of the School, and by its recognition of transportation as a permanent object of systematic instruction, in the life of the nation also.”

The oldest business man genetically, and still the most important in numbers, is the petty capitalist. He is that man who owns and manages his relatively small business and often does some or all of the work himself—today we see him as the small contractor, garage-owner, storekeeper, banker, the commercial farmer, individual realtor, and so on. He is the only business man who is owner, administrator—that is, policy-maker and manager—and worker all in one. He is not always the worker, however, and at times he delegates part of the management, but he at least combines ownership and the top administration of his business.