“Second generation” historical efforts are shedding new light on the beginnings of the textile industry. Even fragmentary records, minutely examined, yield vignettes that may one day be merged to form important new chapters of industry history. The Darley Abbey story reveals rare operational detail and an interesting variant in the British pattern of development.

The advertising industry generated remarkably prompt responses, at both the institutional and individual level, to the opportunities and problems of growth. Once associationist activities had achieved a measure of industry self-regulation and self-analysis, individual entrepreneurs stepped in to offer specialized services that grew in value as the professional status of the parties concerned became established and differentiated.

Two recent acquisitions of the Kress Library, a part of Baker Library of the Harvard Business School, will be of particular interest to business historians. The Kress Library, rich in the history of economic institutions and business life, as well as in material on the progress of economic thought, has a strong and varied collection on bookkeeping, to which it has recently added two rare volumes.

Over a famous Congressional investigation lies the shadow of evidence suppressed for political reasons and long ignored by scholars, who by too glib acceptance of the printed testimony have perpetuated bias as historical fact.

Many manuscript collections contain business materials of one sort or another, but Baker Library, of the Harvard Business School, has the largest single accumulation of such records, acquired by a private institution for purposes of research. These qualifications are necessary, since the records of many large companies, such as U. S. Steel, would greatly outnumber our holdings; and such a public institution as the National Archives contains extensive business materials.

Difficult statistical problems notwithstanding, it is possible to trace the course in time and place of a gradual transition from agrarian to industrial pursuits. On occasion, this transition was slowed or reversed by cyclical influences, but the long-term trend of manufacturing concentration was away from the East. As the manufacturing frontier shifted, the service industries moved in and currently employ much of the capital and labor of the old industrial centers.