There has recently come into the possession of the Society a valuable collection of books and pamphlets — some 200 items in all — that has been gathered together, and presented to the Society by Mr. Joseph P. Day, the well-known New York real-estate man.

The value of old tax data, as Professor Burbank has stated, lies in the wealth of detail in the tax lists, and more especially in the valuation lists. For each tax-payer these latter lists frequently give the amount and value of real estate, annual crops, live stock, stock in trade, shipping, mills of various sorts, warehouses, and occasionally even the silver plate owned by the family. Many of these headings, too, are in detailed form. For instance, real estate is divided into plow land, pasturage, orcharding, meadows, and wood land.

The names of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton are as familiar to the lovers of old furniture as those of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson are to students of English literature. The names of all these men have stood the test of years because of the real worth of their productions and of their influence on the future of their art. The former three, however, might have become a mere tradition if, like many of their contemporary fellow-craftsmen, they had failed to leave any written record of their work.

A source of information concerning the early economic conditions in this country, and a source which has heretofore been little employed, is the tax records of local communities. I have run across some of them in an historical study of taxation in Massachusetts in which I have tried to press back the story to as early a period as possible. Undoubtedly, somewhat similar records are available in other states, and altogether they would supply many data upon the economic life in this country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for which other sources of realistic material are all too scanty.

The Baker Library has recently come into possession of a bit of history which should be intensely interesting to a country in which iron and steel play so large a part. Fifty-five documents have been unearthed, dated between 1650 and 1685, and relating to the Iron Works at Lynn, Massachusetts, the first in the country. Some are originals, and others are certified as true copies.

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.