George Washington Whistler, the father of the artist, ended his civil engineering career as consultant to the Russian Czar after a life of distinguished service in the planning and construction of pioneer American railroads, including the Baltimore & Ohio and the present Boston & Albany.

There was once a Journal of Economic and Business History published by the Business Historical Society and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Four bound volumes and an extra supplementary volume are on the shelf before us. They represent the combined efforts of many scholars in America and Europe. The depression caught the Journal only part way up the hill and sent it down again. Countless letters have come in to ask why we do not start up again or when the Journal will be reestablished. Just today such an inquiry came from a government bureau in Europe.

The addition to the Business School Library of the Kress collection on business and economics presents as great an opportunity and challenge to the business historian as it does to the student interested in economic or politico-economic history. Here, for the first time at Harvard, is available a large collection of writings extending back to the dawn of printing, which have never been extensively surveyed from the particular viewpoint of the business historian.

The collection, and the room in which it is housed, come to us through the generosity of Mr. Claude Washington Kress, of New York City. The books and pamphlets themselves, to the number in excess of thirty thousand, were assembled in his lifetime by Professor H. S. Foxwell, of Cambridge, England.

As students continue to re-work the field of American history, they turn up a great variety of new material. Some of it is of limited significance—the sparse gleanings that one expects to find where many careful reapers have been at work. But some of it is rich and important, as unexplored aspects of the past attract attention; and this is especially true of the growing knowledge about business in America's development. It is a striking paradox that while private enterprise was overwhelmingly dominant in American life, historians gave it not the slightest heed; but now, in a period when that dominance has definitely waned, historians are devoting an increasing amount of attention to the role of business in the growth of the nation.

The edifice occupied by the Hall of Records at Annapolis was completed only in 1935. Its erection was made possible as part of the Tercentenary Celebration of the State of Maryland. The Land Office was given quarters in the building and moved in during the early part of 1935. The Hall of Records, proper, was opened on October 1, 1935, at which time the present writer, the first archivist of Maryland, entered upon his duties.

An address delivered by Dr. Ralph M. Hower at the Annual Meeting of the Business Historical Society.

I propose to interpret my subject rather liberally and to concentrate upon what seem to me to be some fundamental changes in retailing—ranging the whole of the 19th century, but focussing attention especially upon the years from 1850 to 1875, a period of great innovation. And please note that all my remarks have to do with American experience.

To start, then, let me sketch briefly the retailing picture in the larger American cities about 1850. In general the principle of specialization dominated the scene: both retail and wholesale trades were split up, by types of merchandise, into single-line or specialty stores. If you examine the advertisements and business directories of the period, you will find a really astonishing array of stores, each of which confined itself to a narrow range of goods.

An address delivered by Mr. Joseph H. Appel at the Annual Meeting of the Business Historical Society.

It was two o'clock of a morning in late October, 1899. As night editor I had just put to press Colonel McClure's Philadelphia Times and was examining a first copy. My eye caught John Wanamaker's advertisement—with a banner head across the top—in color. A thought flashed in my mind—why not make it read: “Wanamaker's Daily News”? Make up the page like a newspaper—a newspaper of the store? Why not? Isn't a store a little world? Why not tell its news? I slept on the thought. Next day I wrote a letter—closing with “kindly reply at your earliest convenience.” The reply was prompt. “Come and see me,” signed John Wanamaker. Two days later I said goodbye to the Times and became an advertising writer in a great store.

Through the kindness of Professor Herbert Heaton of the University of Minnesota the editor has learned of a valuable set of business papers recently found in Leeds, England. The Yorkshire Post of March 25, 1938, tells of the discovery of the papers of John Wilson & Sons, of Leeds, which date from the middle of the eighteenth century. This collection, according to the Post, consists of “nearly 200 volumes, comprising day books, cash books, company ledgers, district ledgers, inventories, stock books, warehouse and delivery books, and others of a miscellaneous character.” The papers have been placed in the municipal Reference Library of Leeds.

Through the kindness of Professor Herbert Heaton of the University of Minnesota the editor has learned of a valuable set of business papers recently found in Leeds, England. The Yorkshire Post of March 25, 1938, tells of the discovery of the papers of John Wilson & Sons, of Leeds, which date from the middle of the eighteenth century. This collection, according to the Post, consists of “nearly 200 volumes, comprising day books, cash books, company ledgers, district ledgers, inventories, stock books, warehouse and delivery books, and others of a miscellaneous character.” The papers have been placed in the municipal Reference Library of Leeds.

Colonial America gave little thought to life insurance selling. The colonists secured protection against marine risks from private underwriters, first in London, eventually at home. It has been asserted that Philadelphia had no fire insurance until 1752; Boston none before 1795. The first corporations formed in this country for insuring lives were those of the Presbyterian Ministers Fund (1759) and a similar company organized for the benefit of Episcopal ministers (1769). Neither of these corporations offered insurance to the general public. In the last decade of the eighteenth century many insurance companies were formed in the United States. At least five were chartered to underwrite life risks, but only one, The Insurance Company of North America, appears to have accepted any. There is no basis for saying that any of these early companies tried to sell life insurance.

Have you ever thought of a very peculiar situation in the theorizing by scholars? That little or no provision has been made for action, doing, accomplishing, administration? The one vital flow of effort necessary to progress, even to existence, has not been brought into any of the philosophic systems in the two or three thousand years of effort.

It was at Harvard in the period 1878–1907 that a start was made along a new line. This was the conception and elaboration of a philosophy that provided a place for action, even for business administration.

Few aspects of business show greater change within the past hundred years than does advertising. The reader accustomed to the advertisements of the modern day is immediately struck, when he starts turning the pages of a pre-Civil War paper, by the deadly uniformity and limited appeal of the earlier advertising technique.

An occasional iconoclast among the earlier merchants only serves to accentuate the impression that a departure from the accepted forms of the period made a business man suspect in the eyes of his associates.

The business man has to adapt his business constantly to changing conditions. It must have seemed to the American importer of British goods in the first half of the nineteenth century that there were nothing but changing conditions. Nathan Trotter, of the Philadelphia firm of Nathan Trotter & Co., began doing business as a freight-renting importer of British leathers, woolens, and metal goods in the period before the War of 1812. Those were the days when an importer earned an importer's profit. Supply could not keep pace with demand; shipments came in the spring and in the fall, and payments were correspondingly concentrated. The risk involved, particularly in price changes over so long a time between order and receipt of goods, and the interest on capital invested entitled him to an importer's profit.