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.

Jonathan Ware, an ironmaster from Lynn, Massachusetts, settled in central Alabama in 1825 and was for some years active in the iron business. In the 1840's his son, Horace Ware, established the Shelby Iron Company and with the financial help of a friendly planter erected a blast furnace at the village of Shelby, in Shelby County. The furnace was put in blast late in the decade and operated for a number of years without benefit of rail transportation.

Although the Beverly Cotton Manufactory and its records disappeared without a trace more than a century ago, it has received an honored place in almost all the subsequent histories of manufacturing. The reason for this interest is suggested by the title of the most complete account of the Manufactory, Robert S. Rantoul's “The First Cotton Mill in America.” The present writer is more interested in how the mill came into being and how it functioned, than in the controversy as to whether Beverly, or Worcester, or Philadelphia, or South Carolina is entitled to claim the earliest cotton mill; however, as a native of Beverly he will have something to say on this subject at the end of the article. Recent discoveries at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Massachusetts State Archives, and the Beverly City Hall help to fill out the basic documents used by Rantoul and all subsequent writers. The most significant of these basic documents relates to the incorporation of the Manufactory in 1789 and the succeeding petitions to the State Legislature for aid.

By the time a business society is labeled “materialist,” the battle slogan has already rallied what must once have been mere squads of private frustrations. To begin with, somebody's conscience must have been upset by the great business mastery of circumstance, or there would be no need to complain about “materialism” or anything else. Since a case of upset conscience can cover a variety of aches and pains, it might be worth investigating some of the particular frustrations before we draw conclusions about business in general. Fortunately, we have data that isolate some aspects of the problem where we can observe and enjoy it—in the roots of an occurrence, with real people living the issues.

It would be impossible within the brief compass of this paper to give even a fraction of the chronological developments in the complicated story of the close inter-relationships of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad with the mining and manufacturing interests of northern Alabama in the formative years of the 1870's and 1880's. Instead, this paper is intended to show in somewhat broader outline how that railroad entered the Birmingham region after the Civil War and something of the scope of information relative to that region's development that can be obtained from the business records of this railroad. It is also the intention of this paper to give some insight into the importance of the role of the railroad outside of its usual part as a carrier only. In the encouragement of traffic peculiar to its own region it was expedient for a railroad to favor some industries over others, some areas over others, some businessmen over others. It was important for the flow of traffic that certain communities be encouraged at the expense of others. Although the physical presence of the railroad itself may account for some alteration in the established patterns of regional economy, the conscious, active, and deliberate attempts of the railroad management to influence the direction of regional growth may well be considered as determining factors.

In contrast to the practice followed in most corporate business enterprises, the position of president in a textile company is generally of secondary importance. The treasurer is usually the chief executive officer. It is he who makes the managerial decisions, and it is he who is responsible only to the board of directors. In the nineteenth century, all the mills established by the Boston capitalists adopted this nomenclature for their leading officers; curiously enough, the mills at Lowell continue this practice today. The treasurer of each company directs its operation from his office in Boston while the agent supervises production from his counting room at Lowell; very much in the background is the president. It is the purpose of the present study to investigate the origin of this usage and to discover what were some of the functions and characteristics of the presidents of these textile companies in the nineteenth century.

Many American historians have stressed the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 as a turning point in the expansion of commerce across the Appalachian barrier from the seaports of the Atlantic coast. Less attention has been paid to the Erie's competitors, perhaps because they were uniformly less successful than their prototype. Yet they have a certain interest. In this article we shall be dealing with only one of these competing projects—the Welland Canal in Upper Canada, the by-pass for Niagara—and with only one aspect, namely the financial. Nevertheless, we shall perhaps be able to draw some general conclusions as to the reasons why the Erie Canal succeeded so brilliantly, while other projects, at least in a relative sense, failed.