Recently one of my friends, Mrs. Christine Adams Jones, brought me a home-made account book, covered in rawhide and hand sewed with linen thread. The book was made and kept by one of her ancestors, Jacob Adams, a farmer-shoemaker of Newbury, Massachusetts. Its pages were yellowed and crackling with age. The first date in it to greet my eye was 1673, the last 1693!

The Baker Library is particularly happy to announce the gift by Mrs. Hugh Bancroft of Boston, of an exceptionally rich and complete collection on the South Sea Bubble. The collection contains books and pamphlets, with many manuscripts, broadsides, Acts of Parliament, and other fugitive items relating to this strange episode. Except, perhaps, for the material scattered on the shelves of the British Museum, no collection rivals this which was assembled by the late Hugh Bancroft, in its fullness for a history of the South Sea speculation.

In these days of world-wide economic distress and intense nationalism the leading efforts in revival and recovery have been directed towards the rejuvenation of domestic economy. The United States stands today as one of the best examples of this tendency. Only a relatively few voices crying in the wilderness plead for balanced recovery through commensurate attention to foreign trade.

Perhaps no two persons would agree who has the best claim to the honor of having been the first American (English colonial) business man. So far as the records go, a strong claim can be made for Thomas Studley, of Virginia.

Thanks to the efforts of several officers of the Business Historical Society and members of the Faculty of the Harvard Business School, Baker Library has been given ten cases of records relating to the Hamilton Woolen Company of Southbridge, Massachusetts.

Several officers of the Society recently interviewed members of the Faculty of the Harvard Business School in order to ascertain to what extent historical material would be of special value in the course work of the School. This inquiry had a two-fold purpose: (1) to discover wherein those working in the field of Business History might be of greatest immediate service to current teaching and research in business subjects; and (2) to obtain guidance in the collection and preservation of documentary material pertaining to Business History. It was, in short, an attempt to survey some of the current needs of Business History.

It is a curious fact that many American business men of the past are known more for their charities or philanthropies or for their cultural or political interests and activities than for the very significant work they may have done in business. The biographers of business men, with the exception of those who have deliberately set out to berate the man about whom they were writing, have generally had very little to say about their subject's business. It is as if business were something not worthy of record. It is well to remember that business is important not only because it makes profits for the individual or builds fortunes; it also has a wide social importance. As we have lately experienced, an active, successful business system very likely means greater social well-being; and a depressed business, widespread misery. In so far as the business man is responsible for one or the other, the responsibility should be recognized in studies of his life. Thus through the experience of others would be widened immeasurably our knowledge of how business functions.

The usual approach to business or any other subject tends to emphasize the many changes that have occurred over a period of years and to neglect the fundamental factors that have remained constant. Evidence for this assertion may be found in a thirteenth-century Norwegian work, “Speculum Regale,” or “King's Mirror,” translated into English by Laurence Marcellus Larson. The purpose of “Speculum Regale,” written in the form of a dialog between a learned father and his son, was to provide a young man, planning a career in the higher professions, with a background of necessary information. In Volume III of Professor Larson's translation, there is a dialog on the commercial profession, containing bits of advice which might easily have been given by a modern father who was sending his son into the business world.

Reaching back into history some two hundred and sixty-five years, the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company present an exceptionally fine review of the economic and business development of Canada. The Hudson Bay Company was organized in 1670, and since that date the Company has accumulated in London thousands of letter books, accounting records, and documents pertaining to its growth.

A recent paper by Everett E. Edwards, Associate Agricultural Economist for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, reemphasizes the need for historical materials on the farm industry of the United States. In the light of Mr. Edwards' discussion and the present agitation for more records on agricultural history, it seems timely to present a resumé of material in the Baker Library on the subject.

The exigencies of Government finance under the stress of presentday conditions call to mind the difficulties with which the new Federal Government and its youthful Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, were confronted at the beginning of the first Washington administration. Indeed the manner in which the first Secretary of the Treasury met these problems and the lessons which his solutions seem to have for the present emergency have occasioned the reprinting of Hamilton's great State papers on the national debt, the establishment of a national bank, and the protection of manufactures. Under the inspiration of the Honorable Elihu Root and President Butler of Columbia University, these documents have been reissued in a volume entitled “Papers on Public Credit, Commerce, and Finance.”