The Business Historical Society has received another splendid addition to its ever growing collection of foreign business manuscripts. This is an eighteenth-century Spanish account book which was found in the city of Havana during the Spanish-American War and brought to this country by an American soldier. This old book, beautiful to look upon with its handsome writing in iron-gall ink on heavy vellum paper, and valuable for the information it contains, is the gift of Colonel John R. Fordyce, a member of the Business Historical Society.

The biographical information in the following article has been taken from a sketch of his father's life written by Mr. Harrison Dibblee at the request of the Business Historical Society.

Albert Dibblee, commission merchant of San Francisco from 1849 to 1895, came of a family that had been among the earliest settlers in America. He was directly descended from Robert Dibblee who settled in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1630.

The following interview with Professor Matthew B. Hammond of the Department of Economics of Ohio State University may indicate how collections of old business manuscripts are used and what may be their value. Professor Hammond has made the history of the cotton textile industry his particular study for much of a lifetime, with the result that he has become an authority on the subject. Throughout all of his study he has found manuscript material one of his best sources of information.

A recent purchase of the George F. Baker Library, whose acquisitions are at the disposal of the Society, is entitled A PRESENT For an APPRENTICE: Or, A Sure GUIDE to gain both Esteem and Estate. With Rules for his Conduct to his MASTER, and in the WORLD. Ours is a tenth edition and was printed for James Fletcher, in St. Paul's Church-Yard, and Benjamin Collins, Bookseller, on the New Canal in Salisbury. The work bears no date and is ostensibly written “By a late Lord Mayor of London,” and dedicated by the editor to Sir John Barnard. However, Halkett & Laing, on the authority of the British Museum Catalogue, attribute the authorship to the said Sir John Barnard and place the date of the work as of about 1740.