In the museum of the Wedgwood firm at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, is a collection of more than a million manuscripts, the business papers of Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the firm (b. 1730, d. 1795). Invoices, ledgers, oven books, letters to his customers and his bankers, memoranda on the organization of his business and of the industry as a whole — there is a mass of material, incomplete and only gradually being got into order by the devoted labours of the Curator, Mr. Cook. Unfortunately no effort had been made at the time to preserve these records, which were therefore destroyed or dispersed.

The moving pictures, however much critics and doctors of divinity may lament their prevalence, as corrupters of the public taste or morals, are come upon us as an established fact. The Harvard Business School recognized the state of affairs by arranging a course of lectures for the students, given by some of the most prominent men in the industry; and our Secretary has recently come upon some timely information about its origin, through Mr. A. C. Rulofson, of San Francisco, one of our members.

A fifteenth century quittance, the oldest business document so far acquired by the Society, has come recently from Professor David Eugene Smith of Columbia University. Professor Smith is himself an enthusiastic collector, particularly in the line of the history of mathematics, and early Arabian literature on astronomy and mathematics.

The historian of business encounters difficulties which are in some respects more baffling than those of other historians, especially if he attempts to penetrate the “dark ages” of seventy-five or a hundred years ago. The chronicler of political events has his party platforms, his speeches and private letters, his electoral votes, and the like. The literary historian has his books, pamphlets, and a flood of other material.

The budget in all its forms is attracting so much attention at the present time that we are inclined to think of it as exclusively a twentieth century institution. A small pamphlet belonging to the Business Library, however, is evidence that it had its origin at least as long ago as 1744. This very early example of a family budget, “An Estimate of the necessary Charge of a Family in the middling Station of Life, consisting of a Man, his Wife, Four Children, and One Maid-servant,” occurs in a pamphlet interesting in itself, being “An Apology for the Business of Pawn-Broking, By a Pawn-Broker.”

Four volumes of this comprehensive view of the Western Hemisphere, written in 1795 by an English dissenting minister, are among the many curious items which are continually being added to the collection of the Society.

A recent acquisition of The Business Historical Society includes, among other things, nearly a hundred old railroad documents and a few pamphlets relating to industrial companies, bridges, canals, and early roads. These comprise annual reports, mortgages, law cases, acts of incorporation, guide books, and other miscellaneous papers.

After something more than a year of existence, The Business Historical Society is practically established in its new quarters at the Baker Library, one of the fine group of buildings for the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, made possible by the gift of Mr. George F. Baker, whose name the library bears.

Revival of interest in maritime affairs is marked not only by such things as Shipping Boards and Emergency Fleet Corporations but also by the many collections of ship models, ship pictures, and other things pertaining to the sea now being made by private persons.

Sir Walter Raleigh's career as a statesman, his interest in American exploration and colonization, his part in defeating the invincible Armada, and his literary talents are familiar to students of the Elizabethan Age. A small book in the possession of the Business Library shows that he also dabbled in economics, of the practical sort with which most writers in the field of economics before Adam Smith occupied themselves.

Some interesting early American year books have come into the possession of the Library, one of them a gift of Professor A. H. Cole, a founder member. The first in point of time is The Picture of New York or The Traveller's Guide, dated 1807. This gives a full description of the situation and harbor, history, geography and geology, government, and the institutions and amusements of New York, and of the various pleasant excursions in that vicinity.

Our railroad collection is among the best, and is still growing, but in bringing together pamphlet material, in particular, there are always blanks to be filled in.

A Northern Pacific item of great rarity and value will be added to the Library files when the business collection of the Boston Public Library comes into the keeping of the Business Library. This pamphlet, a “Partial report… of a reconnoissance made in the summer of 1869, between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean, by Thos. Hawley Canfield, general agent of the company, accompanied with notes on Puget Sound by Samuel Wilkeson, Esq., the historian of the expedition,” recently changed hands for $150 at an auction.

Among the recent acquisitions of the Society is a bulky Latin volume which throws an interesting light on the difficulties which beset the business men of earlier days. It was printed in 1591 at Colonia Agrippinae (Cologne) and its crowded title page may be freely translated as follows: “Two Books on Money and Monetary Problems, the first dealing with the Art of Coinage and the second with Monetary Problems, to which are added Various Useful Tracts together with Opinions and Annotations, by authors both ancient and modern who have discussed Money, its Value, Alloy, Weight, Power, Alteration, Variation, Counterfeiting, and the like.” The author and editor, Renerus Budelius, was “prefect of moneys” under the Elector Ernest of Cologne.

The iron industry in New England was nearly contemporaneous with the settlement of eastern Massachusetts, but for upwards of a hundred years it was confined to the bog ore found in marshes near Lynn and a few other places. By the time of the Revolutionary War, iron foundries were firmly established in the New England States.

Extensive use of the Business Library's collections of early Boston and New York stock exchange prices has been made by the National Bureau of Economic Research for its forthcoming study of “Bond Yields and Interest Rates” for the last seventy years. It was found that the Library's set of official stock exchange records dated back as far as 1857, whereas the material in the New York Public Library and the New York Stock Exchange is not earlier than January, 1859.

The mediaeval craft guild owing its origin to religion, and protected by the church, was a remarkable institution in its way, caring as it did, at least in its best days, for the well-being of its members while exacting from them a certain standard of workmanship. It is an arguable point that the worker of the Middle Ages, often engaged on creative tasks and deriving from his labor the satisfaction of his artistic instincts, was a happier man than the modern factory employee, whose work frequently consists in the continuous repetition of one monotonous operation.

“The Golden Fleece; or the Trade, Interest, and Well Being of Great Britain,” a recent acquisition of The Business Historical Society, is a rare pamphlet dated 1736, which gives a contemporary summary of the wool situation in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. From the time of Edward III, the petted woollen industry, for so long the pride of Britain, enjoyed the protection of the government.