This article deals with a few aspects of the management of the Southern Pacific Company under E. H. Harriman from his assumption of control of the road in 1901 until his death in 1909. This was a short period in the railroad's history and yet it was long enough to supply ample illustration of the methods which Harriman, a former Wall Street broker, employed to attain great success in the administration of this huge railroad system. It exemplifies the truth that a big job must be done by the coöperative work of many men, albeit with a strong man at the top. It shows the successful operation of a big business unit under a strong top-level organization which allowed for individual freedom and initiative at lower levels. It was the Harriman system, even more than Harriman, alone, that did so much for the Southern Pacific. And, then, we must not forget that some of the ideas which Harriman put into effect were nurtured by the former president, C. P. Huntington, who never found the opportunity to carry them out. But if Harriman did not largely conceive the policies and techniques and train the men, he merged them into a great concept of policy, organization, and management which he supported with his financial strength and his capacity as an administrator. The story of his administration of the Southern Pacific illustrates an important stage in the history of American railroad administration and, indeed, of this country's large-scale business administration in general.

What may well be one of the earliest company histories in English was recently presented to Baker Library by Mrs. Lydia Burgess Brownson, great-granddaughter of George Fox, who compiled the history.

The development of commercial viniculture in California forms an important chapter in the State's agricultural and business history. The sixty years between 1830 and 1890 witnessed the transformation in California of agricultural policies and practices which culminated in the birth of a large-scale industrial and commercial enterprise. Grape-growing and wine-making were one of the first industries to experience this transition.

In this exposition of the problems associated with writing business history three conditioning factors have been kept in mind. The paper is specifically limited to problems in the collaborative writing of business history; by definition, problems peculiar to the writing of the history of a small firm by one person are excluded. Only by collaboration can a satisfactory history of the large integrated unit be written. In the second place, the analysis herein is confined to the more important problems encountered in producing the history of a large business unit. Obviously it would be impossible to discuss in a short paper the whole range of problems which have been met, though not forgotten or ignored. Thirdly, the kind of business history I am talking about is a comprehensive analysis of the policy and management of the firm, not merely a superficial sketch of its corporate history or a survey of either its accomplishments or shortcomings.

In the April, 1948, issue of the Bulletin, Dr. Charles J. Kennedy outlined a new course in the “Evolution of Business and Capitalism” at the University of Nebraska. This article provoked so much interest among various students of business history that we were prompted to solicit information from other colleges and universities in the country. The results have been gratifying, and we are pleased to report that there are at least fifteen schools in the United States where Business History, or a closely allied course, is being taught. There may be still others of which we are not aware, and in that event we should like very much to hear from them.

In the first volume of this Bulletin there appeared an article describing a collection, just presented to the Society, of documents relating to the Lynn Iron Works. After showing the importance of these documents for the history of what was the first successful iron works in this country, the account concludes: “At present, all that remains of the original Iron Works is a series of grass-grown hillocks marking the mounds of scoria from the plant, and these old documents, with their archaic expression and penmanship and worn paper, are now in the possession of The Business Historical Society.” Since these words were written, the “grass-grown hillocks” have been disturbed and much of interest uncovered; many persons, singly and in groups, have contributed time, effort, and money to the ambitious project. It is the purpose of this note to bring the reader up to date on this development.

By the end of 1852, six months after the establishment in San Francisco of the principal office, Wells, Fargo & Company had spread its express and banking services well into California's gold-mining country. The most tangible evidence of the organization's growth was the rise in value of its gold shipments to New York. The first shipment, which left San Francisco on July 31 aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Oregon, crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and was taken up the eastern coast of the continent aboard the United States Mail Steamship Ohio, amounted to only $21,717. The year's last shipment, almost tripling the first, was $61,615. The largest was sent on December 1 and amounted to $68,735. Total shipments by Wells, Fargo & Company for the five-month period between July 31 and the end of the year were $312,492. San Francisco's largest banking firm, Page, Bacon & Company, shipped during the same period $6,313,986, and Adams & Company, competitor of Wells, Fargo & Company in the express and banking business, $5,542,000.

There is an old but erroneous tradition in the Anglo-Saxon countries that banking began in the seventeenth century with the London goldsmiths. In fact, however, banking is much older, having been practised in mediaeval times extensively in Italy, the Low Countries and Spain. To be sure, mediaeval banking was different from early English and American, let alone modern, banking. Negotiable instruments did not then exist; and book transfers were used where in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bank notes served in England and America and checks serve today.

Among the scholars who have thrown light on mediaeval banking and who have helped to explode the myth of banking as an Anglo-Saxon invention, Raymond de Roover, professor at Wells College, holds first rank. His book entitled Money, Banking and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges is the subject of this review.

We must begin with a survey of the types of business which have existed throughout the known ages. In no other way can we obtain a perspective for understanding the present and for anticipating the future. In no other way can we become accustomed to the idea and the fact of eternal change, which is the life of society as of nature.

That there ever was a pre-capitalistic stage may be doubted, though such a view has been maintained. If by capitalism we mean a system of getting a living through the use of capital goods, then only the ape man or the pithecanthropus erectus could have escaped it. Capital goods, such as tools and weapons, have been essential to known primitive tribes. The full-fledged man, using fire and possessing a sense of humor, probably lived tens of thousands of years in a primitive capitalism but without any business at all.

At the close of the Napoleonic era, the banking business of France except in one respect had not advanced much over what it had been in 1789. At that time it had been dominated by Protestant Swiss, the best known of whom was Necker. Some of them like the Mallets, Delesserts, and Thélussons, descended from French Huguenots who had fled to Geneva and other places and in a later generation returned to France as Swiss. The business of these bankers consisted in lending their own funds and those entrusted to their care to worthy applicants for loans, probably merchants as well as noblemen. They administered fortunes for their owners, which is especially true of the court bankers who were charged with the financial affairs of the king and his family. In addition, like all eighteenth-century bankers they had a flourishing business in bills of exchange, including the accepting of drafts of bankers and merchants in other cities and countries. Necker is said to have organized these bankers and their foreign correspondents so as to provide by a system of short-term drafts the funds for French participation in our Revolutionary War.