Flaring westward from the upper valley of the Wabash lies the prairie triangle, embracing most of central and northern Illinois and almost all of Iowa. Much of this region today lies in the heart of the corn belt. Its economic history is a story of practical experimentation, adaptation, and change as its restless settlers endeavored after 1820 to unlock its wealth. To do so, the prairie pioneers had to adapt techniques and crops to the novel environment of an almost treeless grassland at a time when both technology and markets were undergoing revolutionary change. In 1830 the farm-makers had hardly begun their task; by the 1890's the land was tamed, the corn belt a fact, its farmers on the threshold of a golden age.

This study is intended as a confirmation of the global presence of the economic institution to which, for want of a better word, we have given the name “port of trade.”

The Archives du Rhone at Lyon contain a unique collection of eighteenth-century business records—partnership agreements, merchandise inventories, financial statements, and depositions concerning a variety of commercial houses. Working in these papers, one begins to acquire a clear and detailed idea of the character of French business enterprise, of how business was organized and carried on and commercial capital mobilized at the end of the old regime.

Historians of medieval prices have relied very heavily on grain prices, which are abundant and easily available. In France, for example, there is an impressive run of biweekly figures from the grain market at Albi. A different category of data, that has not received much attention, concerns the cost of travel in fourteenth-century France.

An error appeared on p. 399 of the September 1962 issue of this Journal. Line 3 of the review of Lettres Marchandes d'Anvers, Vols. II, III, and IV, by Violet Barbour, read: “… between the years 1558 and 1559. …” It properly should read: “… between the years 1558 and 1589. …”