Herewith are reproduced a picture and a quotation—two sources of information on the ships of the first great commercial sea-empire known to history. The home of the empire was Phoenicia on the east coast of the Aegean. Its people were Semites. Just off the Great Road of the caravan traffic between Egypt and the fertile lands of the Euphrates, the Phoenicians took to boats instead of camels. At first cautiously paddling in their crude dugouts from headland to headland, they in time built larger and more adequate boats, which enabled them to make the Aegean their market. In time, also, they planted colonies farther west, which became rich and strong long before Rome had risen to strength. The Periplus of Hanno, which tells of exploring down the west coast of Africa with a view to planting a colony, is a great story of adventure. By the sixth century B. C., the commerce of the Phoenicians embraced the far reaches of the known world.

The autobiography of David Augustus Neal, of Salem, in a real sense epitomizes New England's business experience from the 1790's to the Civil War. Not that it is concerned with business only. It is rich in family history, in its picture of education and life in Salem, in travel observations, and in adventure, but it is singularly informative on business.

Very little is known about Collard de Marke, whose account books I examined in the Municipal Archives of Bruges in the summer of 1937, except that he was one of the sixteen money-changers licensed to practice in Bruges during the 1360's. That much is clear from the municipal records in which he is listed among the money-changers who were fined because they had exchanged nobles (a Flemish coin) at an illegal rate. His account books are of great value to the business historian because they show very definitely that the medieval money-changers did not confine themselves to mere exchange transactions and to trade in gold and silver, but that, as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, they had extended their field of activity by going into the banking business. They received money on deposit and made loans to reliable customers.

Mr. John A. Sessions, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, has brought to the office of the Society a very interesting collection of manuscript material which concerns the business of Charles Porter Phelps, who early in the nineteenth century was a lawyer and a merchant in Boston.

The present year marks the hundredth anniversary of regular transatlantic steamship service. On April 23, 1838, two commercial steamships arrived in New York from England, one, the Great Western, initiating a regular service. In 1938 the anniversary received only scant notice in the newspapers of New York, but in 1838 the arrival, stay, and departure of the ships, with the attendant festivities and observations, were fully recorded in the press of the day.

One of the most interesting and significant sources, which in the search for material on the history of business is generally tapped in vain, is the diary or autobiography of the American business man. All too often he leaves behind him copious accounts of his travels, his philanthropies, his religious, political and cultural interests, but fails to bequeath to posterity other than fragmentary records of that which is most important of all from the social point of view, his business activities. The successful business man works not only in order to secure a competency which will enable him later to devote himself to his real interests in life, such as art and politics; whether he knows it or not, business is in most cases his real interest and his real talent. How worthwhile it would be, therefore, to read his own accounts of that activity, of his true vocation, which he understands and can interpret for those of later generations as no one else can do.

The student of business history, who is always interested in origins, looks to that land known as the Cradle of Civilization for the beginnings of business. For two generations scholars have been at work seeking archaeological remains of civilization in the Tigris- Euphrates country and deciphering the engravings they have found on stone and on clay tablets. They have uncovered much that is significant, especially concerning religion and government. In recent years they have worked with great interest and success on the economic life of that ancient world. They have found illuminating information about business.

Business in each decade has its own particular troubles, and it is interesting, often amusing, to read of bygone days. Modern communication, banking facilities, transportation, and business methods stand in vivid contrast to those of the early nineteenth century. To men in the East, able to obtain current news, the difficulties caused by the Embargo and Non-Importation acts were a sad worry; but to the merchants in the hinterland, often little more than agents for eastern firms, these regulations were a matter of utmost confusion and concern.

The Business Historical Society has recently received from the First National Bank of Boston several volumes of records of the Brighton Market Bank, later the National Market Bank of Brighton. The gift includes several books recording names of stockholders and transfers of stock, a book giving the minutes of stockholders' meetings, and a volume of directors' minutes. The directors' minute book begins with 1854 and ends in 1891.

The collection of George Peabody papers in the Essex Institute of Salem, Massachusetts, illustrates the value of private business correspondence in the study of economic history. Writers on the history of American commerce have complained of the lack of available business records, and students of capital movements have looked for more detailed information. The papers of George Peabody, merchant and financier, include material both on the importation of goods to the United States and on long-term investments during the period from 1830 to 1857.

The publication of an 800-page volume on the business man from ancient times to the New Deal is an event of considerable importance to those interested in the history of business. A comprehensive survey of the historical experience and development of business has long been needed. Such a volume would have a double meaning: it could both point out what is known of business in the past and, by the character of what it contains and does not contain, indicate where further study should be made.

The Harvard University Press has just published a history of The Massachusetts-First National Bank, 1784–1934, by N. S. B. Gras, Professor of Business History at the Harvard School of Business. This, the fourth work to appear in the series entitled Harvard Studies in Business History, has been made available to members of the Society through the generosity of the First National Bank of Boston.

Through the courtesy of Mr. W. M. Angle, of Rochester, New York, the Business Historical Society has acquired the papers of the recently liquidated Moseley & Motley Milling Co., of Rochester, which had ground wheat on the Genesee for almost a hundred years. The federal processing tax hastened the demise of this concern, but its end would no doubt soon have come for other reasons, for both capital and management could find more profitable employment in other industries in Rochester.

In the history of business one finds a universal inclination to oppose new techniques which threaten to undermine established enterprise. Today this tendency is seen in the United States in the fight against chain stores and mail-order houses; a hundred years ago the new auction system of wholesaling was under fire.