The sun arose on the morning of Tuesday, August 31, 1858 upon a strange scene on Boston Common. A scaffold reared its ugly head close by the flag staff and a huge tank was placed conveniently near. By nine o'clock throngs were gathering in the streets, pressing for a view of the Common. However, the crowds were not such as one would expect at an affair heralded by the erection of a scaffold. Rather were they a jubilant and excited gathering: now and then could be heard exclamations of surprise and no few were wagering and betting as though a horse race were the attraction of the day. A race it was indeed, but a race of fire engines and not of horses. The City of Boston was holding a trial of engines before procuring two or three for the use of the City.

A beginning has been made to preserve business manuscripts in the South. The following are some of the facts discovered by Howard Corning, Head of the Manuscript Division of the Baker Library, as a result of a three weeks' motor trip through the southern states in November.

The groundwork for a study of American investment trusts is contained in a mass of documents presented to the Business Historical Society by Edgar Higgins, investment trust consultant of New York City.

Two collections of the Lord shipping records preserved in Maine since the colonial era have been presented to Harvard University and the Business Historical Society by Miss Mary Patterson Lord and Charles H. Taylor. Although considerable material on shipping is now contained in Baker Library, many invaluable manuscripts are still in private possession scattered along the Atlantic Coast. It is hoped that the extent and location of these documents will be made known for research in early American water transportation.

New England, early settled within its small slice of territory, has seen its influence spread to the Pacific as a nation's frontier gradually receded westward. Blocked by its barren soil from agricultural expansion and encouraged by proximity to the sea, the section quickly turned to commerce and manufacturing. New England goods handled by New England merchants flowed south and west, and its surplus capital aided in the development of the new areas.

European attempts to collect and preserve records of business history have been described in an article by Dr. Charles Schmidt, archivist of the National Archives of France. It was originally published in the May 15, 1926 issue of La Revue de Paris, and has now been translated into English.

Among the heterogeneous mass of Baldwin engineering papers which have just arrived in Baker Library — and will be discussed in the next issue of the Bulletin — there is a copy of a Canadian bill which was introduced in 1859. It describes itself as “An Act for the Reform and Regulation of Female Apparel, and to amend and reform the Customs relating to Crinoline and other Artificial Superfluities and the Profusion thereof,” with powers, fines, forfeitures and penalties to be exercised for enforcement.

History — and this includes economic history — has thrived on controversy. Is it a science? Is it a scientific method? Is it a mere jumble of uncoördinated facts deadly in a textbook and amusing to a trained antiquarian? Or perhaps its utility is in substantiating our religions like “progress” and the Hegelian “march of reason”?

In striking contrast to Sam Johnson's erratic dictionary commented on in the last issue of the Bulletin is the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences whose second volume appeared during October (Macmillan). The book covers parts of the alphabet letters “A” and “B” — beginning with an article on alliances by Professor Sidney B. Fay of Harvard University and ending with brigandage, by Carleton Beals.

Twenty small memorandum books, one kept in 1859, nine kept in the 60's, and ten kept in the 70's, contain the shrewd observations of a Yankee peddler on events which seemed important to him or merely interested him during his lifetime. On the flyleaf of the 1859 book appears the name of Morillo Noyes of Burlington, Vermont, and the notation “No. 9” on the book suggests that it was one of a series begun earlier. The books kept in the 60's are numbered, but he later abandoned the practice of numbering them, so that it only remains clear that the collection is fragmentary.

The history of one of America's oldest importing houses contained in records for the period from 1798 to 1916 has been presented by Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Trotter of Philadelphia. William Trotter, Quaker, who organized the company in 1789, was an importer of metals, leather goods, textiles and miscellaneous commodities.

Who today can be compared with Robert Owen, the “great manufacturer with a bent for benevolence” who rebelled against the crudities of a vigorously expanding industrial organization? The difference between Owen and our great modern benefactors is perhaps that they are always manufacturers with a bent more or less accentuated for benevolence, while Owen's bent became a fanatical passion to redeem a hostilely suspicious world which ultimately repudiated him.

That the tariff conflict of agricultural and manufacturing interests in the United States was not much different a hundred years ago than it is today is exemplified in an acquisition of the Business Historical Society, “A view of the ruinous consequences of a dependence on foreign markets for the sale of the great staples of this nation, Flour, Cotton, and Tobacco.” The author is Matthew Carey, one of the most vociferous protectionists writing after the crash of 1819.

Two books on the history of Birmingham are catalogued in our library whose only resemblance is that both have as subject that famous industrial region in the heart of England. One called the “History of Birmingham to the end of the year 1780” by a W. Hutton was presented by H. B. Vanderblue, Vice-President of the Tri-Continental Corporation of New York. The second book, published in 1929, by G. C. Allen, Lecturer in Industrial Organization of the University of Birmingham is “The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country, 1860-1927.”

Five German monetary treatises written in the seventeenth century have reached the Business Historical Society through the generosity of Walter T. Rosen, Partner in Ladenburg, Thalman & Co. of New York. These books together with a late seventeenth century statement of English mercantilist theory were formerly in the Seligman collection.