The glamor of the American whale fishery has tended to obscure its economic outlines and significance. For certain areas one of the first successful efforts at natural resources exploitation, the fisheries developed centers of highly specialized technical and administrative skills. Capital amassed in whaling was a far from inconsequential economic force when it was shifted into other channels of investment. The shifting process itself highlights the circumstances surrounding a dying industry and provides an example of variant national investment patterns.

Conventional for the time in his basic economic thinking, Charles Elliott Perkins was nevertheless enough of an intellectual to discern flaws in the philosophies of natural law and free competition. Creative, literate, retiring, dedicated to enlightenment but realistic about the limitations of public education, Perkins was anything but the conventional business figure of his generation. The personal background here set forth brings into sharp focus the hitherto hazy image of one of America's great railroad leaders.

The practice of giving advice to employees is probably as old as the employer-employee relationship itself, but personnel counseling has become institutionalized over the past half-century and provides an example of the emergence of a specialized staff function.

The following article served to introduce the first issue of Tradition, a German journal of business history, in October, 1956. It constitutes a review of business history generally, with particular reference to progress and ideas in Germany, notes of efforts in other Continental countries, and comparative references to American progress. Guideposts are set up both for the journal and for scholars active in the field. These illustrate certain unique problems facing German historians, but at the same time emphasize the existence of broad agreement among business historians on basic goals and operating methods. Reprinted in translation through the courtesy of Tradition and of Professor Wilhelm Treue, Editor.