The drummer's rôle in American merchandising prior to the Civil War has already been pointed up in a number of articles in this BULLETIN. To the picture already presented may be added detail taken from reports on trips, to the area west of the Alleghenies, made by two sales representatives of a Connecticut manufacturer in the 1830's and the 1850's. The present article is devoted to the circumstances of the sales trips made in the 1830's. The traveler's letters cast light on the prevalence of eastern buying trips by merchants, the similar prevalence of long-established ties between western merchants and jobbers or other merchants in the eastern cities, also the further difficulties which a salesman encountered when freight and postal services were highly uncertain and banking facilities permitted eastward remittances to be made only with difficulty.

The University of Nebraska is introducing a freshman course in “The Evolution of Business and Capitalism” to replace a survey course in the economic history of England and the United States. The change in title will become effective in September, 1948, although the new content has been in use on an experimental basis for nearly a year. The stages in the development of the course may be of interest to other teachers in economic and business history.