Two major universities in the United States have recently added to their curriculum work in business history.

For a little over three-fourths of a century thousands of men in the United States have toiled to establish and develop the petroleum industry. Starting along Oil Creek in 1859, they moved up and down the Allegheny River, into West Virginia, and thence across the continent, opening up new sources of supply in Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, California, and other States. Through their initiative, persistence, courage, resourcefulness, and vision, they created a new and magnificent industry — one typically American.

In 1855 the German journalist, novelist, and historian, Gustav Freytag, gave to the world his popular novel Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit). The scene of the story is Eastern Germany, where Germans, Poles, and Jews lived in conflict about the year 1848.

What kind of a people were the Americans who so energetically drove forward American business expansion in the nineteenth century? We find something of an answer in little vignettes scattered through a book of observations on travel in the United States in the early 1830's, which has become a classic description of American life and people. Its author, Alexis de Tocqueville, was not particularly concerned with business; he was interested chiefly in the American experiment in democracy. Yet his observations are extremely suggestive. He gives a glimpse of the general esprit of the American, of his motives or objectives, of his restlessness and his energy, of the generally fluid state of American society, and of the vastness of American opportunity. De Tocqueville's observations are not objective descriptions; they are the impressions and interpretations of a philosophical observer and student of society who was familiar with England as well as Western Europe. From the perspective of today, they appear remarkably keen; indeed they were in large measure prophetic of what came to pass. In speaking of the American people he says that “boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and it greatness.”

The village shoemaker has become merely a tradition. His little shop, if it remains standing, has been put to other uses, and his cobbler's bench, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, has found its way into present-day living-rooms in the guise of a coffee table or smoking stand. Of the product of his skill, little remains because, unlike the cabinet maker and metal worker, he worked in goods that served their purpose and were gone, but he was as true a craftsman as they, and perhaps a more important figure in the life of a town. From, him young and old obtained their footwear, and to him they brought it back to be mended. Farm horses and saddle horses wore the harnesses he made; ploughs and carriages alike depended on the strength and stitching of his traces. And, in return, he got from his fellow townsmen sometimes cash but more frequently the necessities of his family's existence. In his ledger, debits and credits reflected the whole business of give-and-take in the life of the community.

The Waltham history, edited by Professor N. S. B. Gras, is eleventh in the Harvard Studies in Business History series. It is a story which has required a deft and delicate touch in the recording, and the reader will early come to appreciate Dr. Moore's handling of complicated factual material, as well as to respect the conclusions he has pointed up. Dr. Moore's history of the Waltham Watch Company is a study of business policy—a detailed analysis of the business methods of the top men at Waltham. Were there such a thing as a “normal” American business, the chapters of its history would fall neatly and evenly into order—management, labor, plant and technological processes, finance, distribution, and external influences. Happy the historian to whose lot such a tidy assignment falls! It seems reasonably certain, however, that no recorder will ever face a perfect balance of the forces involved in producing and selling merchandise.

From its beginning, accounting has been shaped by the needs of the business man and has in turn affected the handling of business problems. A clear illustration of this is the contrast between the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Florentine cloth manufacturers and the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Venetian merchants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cloth manufacturers such as the younger branch of the Medici arranged their entries under a Wage account, a Wool account, a Cloth Sales account, and so on, because their main concern was to keep track of these materials or obligations. The Venetians, being mainly exporters and importers, were concerned chiefly with keeping track of wares shipped, wares received, and amounts owed by or to agents. Accordingly, the distinctive, key accounts in Venetian books are (a) the accounts opened for each kind or lot of merchandise received, and (b) the accounts debited when wares were shipped. The latter are best called shipment, or venture, accounts. For example, when a Venetian merchant bought Florentine cloth to ship it to Constantinople, he opened a Florentine Cloth account in which he entered as debits all the costs of the cloth including the cost of packing it for shipment.

Business records have a wide usefulness. First and foremost they tell the story of business itself, but they also record much that is of value to other fields of historical study.

One of the best single sources for American social and economic history is the records of small-town or rural businesses. These institutions have had a vital place in the growth and expansion of the nation. Until recent years little systematic attention has been given to this aspect of American history. Historians have generalized about this subject, and time after time they have been content to quote as their sources material which long ago became trite.

Sir Andrew Freeport belonged to the same club as the better-known Sir Roger de Coverley. Sir Andrew was of the moneyed interest and a great sedentary merchant, while Sir Roger was the typical landed gentleman. Probably a hundred persons have heard of the gentleman to one person who knows about the merchant. But the two were alike in being the creation of Joseph Addison's imagination and in coming to light in the show-case window of The Spectator. Moreover, each was intended to be representative of his type and therefore worthy of unusual attention.

In June, 1943, the Illinois Central began an investigation of the possibility of depositing the company's old records in the Newberry Library in Chicago. We sought all records available covering the period 1851 to 1906, which latter year was the end of President Fish's regime. Much interesting material has been located and most of it has already been sent to the Library, the first deposit having been made in November, 1944, following an exchange of letters between the late President Beven and Dr. Stanley Pargellis.

The Bulletin has received a short volume on the history of a bank in one of the large American metropolitan communities which has recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary. The book is unusually attractive in make-up and contains some charming drawings of the bank's home and of streets in its city. The emphasis of the text is on the development of the home city of the bank and its industrial hinterland and on events of national importance which affected banking. The officers and directors of the bank through the century are named, and a little is said of larger policies and of the success of the bank.

§1. What are public relations? We have social relations, industrial relations, private and even poor relations, but what are public relations? We have them like hives and chilblains, but should we admit the fact? Should we try to get rid of them? Indeed, we have had them for a long time, though the phrase is relatively new and has got into few dictionaries or encyclopedias. But, if these public relations are not really upstart conditions, then perhaps they are respectable and may be spoken of.