A recent and most interesting gift to the Society comprises two beautifully illustrated volumes of historical material from what is possibly the oldest business enterprise in existence, the famous Swedish copper mine, Stora Kopparberg. The books are a gift from the company. It was established in the decade of the 1280's. A study of the history of this old company, by Dr. Henrietta Larson, will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Economic and Business History.

The history of markets, prices, speculations, of mercantile ventures to new territory as it is conquered, during any great war, would make fascinating reading, and fill volumes. A chapter of business history during the Civil War could be written from a folder of old letters discovered among the private business papers of Charles W. Wilder, a partner of the firm of Wilder and Estabrook, which later became Estabrook and Eaton.

The first use of fire for heating or cooking purposes by primitive man marked a long step toward civilization. In historical times, the discovery that coal could be used instead of wood was less revolutionary in its effects, but it meant a great advance in efficiency. The unpublished manuscript of a history of the coal stove has been presented to the Society by Miss Helen E. Keep, the daughter of its author. It reveals unexpected elements of the picturesque in the evolution of this highly practical invention.

“Here and there in Ohio, Indiana and the Eastern States,” says Alvin F. Harlow in his book, Old Towpaths, “the pedestrian… may sometimes notice the faint indication of an embankment or a shallow depression, weed-grown but stretching away with such regularity of line as to rouse his belief that it may be an artificial work.… If he will inquire in the neighborhood he may find some white-bearded ancient who remembers that these poor ruins are all that is left of what was once a great internal improvement, the pride of the locality and the State — a canal.”

William Dean Howells writes that canals in 1837 were a greater achievement than railroads were in 1897. Before the railroad came, there was an elaborate system of them, built with characteristic American enthusiasm and enterprise, by men who were not professional engineers, many of whom had never seen a canal. The Erie gave New York her start toward becoming the American metropolis, and Pennsylvania had a system of state canals, supplemented by short railroads, which connected Philadelphia with Pittsburgh.

The time when Hudson River steamboating was an experiment and an adventure is brought to mind by an old advertisement of the “splendid safety barges ‘Lady Clinton’ and ‘Lady Van Rensselaer,’ towed by steamboats of great power,” operating between New York and Albany in 1826. After the Supreme Court decision in 1824 that the New York laws prohibiting vessels licensed according to the laws of the United States from navigating the waters of the State of New York by means of fire and steam, are repugnant to the… constitution, [of the United States,] and void,” steam vessels had increased and multiplied on the Hudson, and opposition lines sprung up to share the business of Livingston and Fulton's old North River line.

The thought of how short a time we have been modern is brought to mind by remembering that less than a century ago mail stages were running in Massachusetts. The Indian Tavern, Bromfield Street, was the starting point for lines to Newport, New Bedford and Bristol, and until 1840 they furnished the regular mode of conveying mail to those towns and intermediate points. The mail was still carried by private contractors, and the elements of chance and whim on the part of drivers still entered into its delivery, on time and in good order.

The full development of an art has always required two types of invention. No new thing under the sun ever came full fledged into being, and the pioneers in every art have necessarily left their inventions in sketchy form, the detailed arrangements which made them really practical being filled in by later comers.

This summer when I was in Rome, I went to the Vatican, at Mr. Ayres' suggestion, to see what I could discover as to the history of the Barberini-Sciarra di Colonna family whose account books have just been presented to The Business Historical Society. I met all sorts of obstacles.

The name “Russell and Company,” heading a package of business papers and correspondence, which lay for years a prey to white ants before they found their way to the Society, recalls perhaps the most romantic and one of the most remunerative of the trades carried on by American sailing vessels. Russell and Company was the best-known American house at Canton in the pre-treaty period, when a few foreign merchants carried on a business there which ran up into the millions, in teas, silks, furs, sandalwood, opium, and western manufactured goods. A consolidation of several of the principal American firms, the company was for years the principal representative of the American business in Canton. The papers were a gift from Mr. Robert Shewan, of Shewan Tomes and Company, of Hong Kong.

An item of timely interest has been discovered among a pile of old records given to the Baker Library by the United States Court of Appeals, in the facsimile of a notebook kept by Thomas A. Edison during his experiments on the carbon telephone transmitter.

When this subject was presented to me it appeared quite clearly as a challenge. When I first became interested in the history of business, it was as a study somewhat divorced from the ordinary routine of affairs. I was a student of economic history who had become convinced that the fundamental approach to this subject was along the line of private enterprise. Now I am asked to point out what value there may be in business history to the business man. At the very beginning of this discussion I ought to make a distinction between two types of business history; one, the history of individual business firms; the other, business history in general.

The man who regards the “elder times” as the good old days is a feature of all ages. In the sixteenth century the coach was denounced as a dangerous innovation, and in the seventeenth, conservatives lamented the crowding of the roads with the new vehicles, and found in them a menace to the public integrity. In a book written in 1837, by William Bridges Adams on English Pleasure Carriages the history of the invention and progress of wheeled carriages and the stir caused by their introduction into the various countries is amusingly given, as a preface to a lengthy description of the construction of the various types of pleasure carriages then in use.