How many of those who listen to Shylock's famous lament, “My daughter!—O my ducats!” realize that the ducat was for centuries the world's best-known gold coin? For ducats had been in wide circulation as many years before Shakespeare's time as the great dramatist antedates our present era.

The Minnesota Historical Society has a widely varied collection of business history material, ranging from records of the lumber industry to the papers of Franklin Steele, who developed the St. Anthony Falls water site and was probably the first millionaire in Minnesota.

Our colonial merchants faced the risk of great loss in shipping by sea. But against these losses they had for a time little recourse except insurance in London—where marine insurance was developing rapidly—and that insurance was slow to arrange and uncertain at best because of the uncertainties of communication.