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.

“The objects of the present work are: First to satisfy an imperious public curiosity, which has thus far been only partially gratified by the public journals.”

Thus begins the preface to The Income Record, A List giving the Taxable Income for the year 1863 of Every Resident of New York.

The Business Historical Society has recently acquired a most interesting and valuable little book, a typical page of which is reproduced in the accompanying cut illustrating the industrial life of the sixteenth century.

A small but valuable lot of bank reports makes a noteworthy addition to the library of the Business Historical Society.

Our collections are growing with amazing rapidity but there are still many things that should be contained in them.

(That our collections are proving serviceable in a wide variety of purposes is shown by the article which follows, a sketch interestingly recreating from the unlikely medium of a prosaic set of household account books, something of the domestic life of the old New Bedford whalers of a century ago. Ed.)

Announcement has recently been made in the public press of the projected fusion of business literature now contained in the Boston Public Library and the Harvard Business Library. These collections, together with that of The Business Historical Society and others, it is now planned to amalgamate into one unified collection of business material in the new Baker library building of the Harvard Business School.

Something of the determination with which Massachusetts, and particularly Boston, waged the struggle for connection with the West, that is to say, for existence, is mirrored in a rather scarce state document which the Society possesses. The “Report of the Commissioners of the State of Massachusetts on the Routes of Canals from Boston Harbor to the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers” (Boston, 1826) conceals, beneath a mass of engineering data, a vivid story of New England's past.

The Editor of the Bulletin feels that it is his privilege to acquaint our membership with those opportunities which appear from time to time to acquire small collections of primary business historical material. The funds at the disposal of the Society for the purchase of this rare old material are not yet sufficient to provide for all the collections that turn up, and rather than lose them, we feel sure that some of our members would, as in the past, appreciate being told of the opportunity to add to the collections of the Society.

In the days when New England lived on and through the sea, it was no unusual event for one of her tiny vessels to return home, after having spent three or four years knocking round the world, with its cost paid for and in its hold a cargo bought with a portion of its freight money. The modern imagination is struck with the tale of riches but is apt to relegate to the sphere of romance the chance stories of hardship and adventure that have come down.

The Library's constant growth in variety as well as in physical size is nicely illustrated by the recent acquirement of the three books which form the subject of this article. Not only is a very wide range of American material available, but also we are reaching out into other lands and other times.