During the early Industrial Revolution, the discovery and widespread commercial adoption of crucial technological advances permitted enormous productivity increases in the finishing of textiles and also marked the beginnings of the modern chemical industry in Europe.

Professor Madison examines the formative decades of an important new industry in the nineteenth-century American economy. Overcoming a wide range of problems and challenges, firms such as the Bradstreet and the Dun agencies became established enterprises by the end of the century primarily because they effectively met new needs in a changing business environment.

In the years following World War I, British and American diplomats and businessmen fashioned a cooperative approach to the problems of international oil rivalries, building an informal entente which was institutionalized at the private level, surrounded with the mystique of enlightened capitalism, and masked behind tortured concessions to competitive symbols.

Professor Petrowski examines the question of promoters' profits from the building of the Kansas Pacific and the Denver Pacific railroads.