China's Imperial Canal excited the imagination of a succession of travelers. While American and British canal promoters were interested in the technological details, the true importance of the Chinese precedent lay in the breadth of concept — a gigantic, state-supported geophysical manipulation in the interests of interregional trade.

Professor Muchmore analyzes and edits an interesting Elizabethan document typical of a large body of economic literature in Tudor-Stuart England.

In the years from 1880 to 1910 the Pacfiic Northwest went through a development that appears to have been broadly typical. This boom stage, a nonrecurrent frontier phenomenon, is actually the process of integrating the developing area with the national economy. The patterns set in the pliant boom era by forceful “ground floor operators” are likely to harden into long-term permanence.

In this article Dong-Woon Kim continues his investigation of the multinational activities of the British thread-making company, J. & P. Coats. Dr. Kim previously published “J. & P. Coats in Tsarist Russia, 1889-1917” in the winter 1995 edition of this journal (pp. 465-493). Here he explores the experiences of J. & P. Coats in the United States. Coats began selling its thread in the U.S. soon after the company's founding in 1830. From a modest start, it established a system of agencies to sell its own “Coats” brand and, in 1869, began local manufacture of thread in Rhode Island. Through a careful series of direct investments and the development of a flexible managerial structure, Coats eventually came to dominate the American cotton thread market.

The student of the various working-class movements which originated in the period of the Industrial Revolution in England has always to take account of the influence of Robert Owen on these movements. To each of them, this strange and interesting man brought a set of ideas and a range of experience which, when viewed in the light of his personal history, are of significance to the business historian.

Many real estate developers in the United States consciously attempted to shape residential neighborhoods, but their success in determining the spatial and social structure of communities was mixed. This article describes the methods available to land developers and realtors and examines the application of these tools to a section of Columbus, Ohio. It demonstrates that the intentions of deed restrictions and other private means of land use control were often undermined by construction delays, general economic conditions, and outmoded requirements, as well as by the timing of annexation and the subsequent application of public zoning ordinances.