The uncertainties of predicting and mitigating social reactions to business innovation are amusingly demonstrated in this study of an early public-relations crisis.

As a personnel policy that would assure the country's rapidly expanding railroad system the best grade of employees, centralization of discharge data within a company and interchange of such data between companies struck some executives as a useful practice. Others disagreed and, as Professor Black shows, their wisdom prevailed. The problem centered upon reliability of such key operating employees as brakemen and conductors, and responded better to institution of controls that would minimize the two most important misfeasances: drinking on the job and petty embezzlement.

What happens when a major modern enterprise is abruptly superimposed on a country where business patterns have been fixed for centuries? One of the most interesting reactions is that by entrepreneurs in the national population. Adaptation, imitation, and eagerness are characteristic responses, and these go remarkably far in solving the problems of carrying on a twentieth-century business in a fifteenth-century economy.

The accompanying picture of a pawnbroker's shop and sign was taken in Boston in 1946. The sign of the three balls is a common sight in the poorer sections of many American cities, and its meaning is always the same: the balls signify that within the shop loans may be obtained on the pledge of personal property. This type of loan is centuries old: it existed in ancient Greece at the time of Pericles and in ancient Rome at the time of Augustus. Professional money-lenders, either Jews or Lombards, reappeared in the Middle Ages, and their activities elicited the opposition of the Church and the hatred of the populace. Attempts to get rid of the Jewish or Lombard pawnbrokers were repeatedly made, but the result was always the same: the need of consumers for credit accommodation was so great that the money-lenders were usually recalled after a short while.

During the Second World War leading belligerents such as Britain, the United States, and Germany, favored the use of fixed-price contracts for purchasing military aircraft. These contracts were believed to encourage economical and efficient production. Yet only Britain succeeded in developing contractual procedures based primarily upon the fixed price. This article examines the evolution of British contractual policy in the later 1930s, drawing upon both corporate and official records to explain why Britain succeeded where both America and Germany failed. Efforts to develop the fixed-price system in Britain were initially frustrated by the technological revolution which transformed aviation during the 1930s. Moreover, divided opinions within both the government and the aircraft industry helped prevent the emergence of a coherent contractual policy. By 1939, however, British aircraft manufacturers were unanimous in their support for fixed-price contracts.

This article uses the R. G. Dun and Company credit ratings to analyze North Carolina black businessmen and their firms in the fifteen years following the Civil War. When combined with data in local histories and in the federal census, the credit ratings reveal how the postbellum black business community, especially the mulatto population, was significantly shaped by antebellum emancipation. Blacks who shared the advantage of prewar freedom employed their superior financial resources and business experience to dominate their local economies after the war. Further, both as individuals and collectively, blacks used their newly acquired political power to foster economic opportunities in ways hitherto unrecognized by both political and business history scholars.

What does it take to be successful in business? In the letter printed below, a doctor advised a brother who contemplated entering trade in a certain small Massachusetts town in the year 1807. In spite of its quaint tone, the letter raises interesting questions. Is the doctor's analysis of the situation essentially sound? What do you think of the qualifications he lists for success in trade in this instance? Does this simple consideration of the question have meaning for other times and business situations?