In 1914 the United States had tess than 5 per cent of the merchant shipping tonnage of the world; in 1952 it had 32 per cent of a vastly larger world tonnage, although its basic competitive disadvantages had probably increased in the intervening years. This enormous growth of the American fleet resulted from the changes in public policy which accompanied a new view of the American role in world affairs. This article analyzes the major developments in the American merchant marine, both deep-sea and coastwise, since World War I.

Only once in a generation, because of fortuitous circumstances, the stress of the period or the brilliance of a personality, a man lives a life of unusual service to his profession and to the commonweal. To the distinguished company of accounting immortals, William Plender is rightfully admitted because he, more than any other English practitioner, achieved in his lifetime wide recognition as a skillful interpreter of financial data as well as a faithful servant of the Crown.

Plender's life has much to recommend it for study by the rising generation not only in Great Britain but in other parts of the world where accountancy has achieved the status of an honored profession. It is for this reason, alone, that the present memoir is written: to re-count the rise of one accountant in professional and public circles because of the quality of his mind and the force of his personality, to say, this was accomplished by one man; it can be done by others if they but dedicate themselves to the pursuit of the professional ideal wherever it may be found, in England, in America, everywhere.

The early development of Rochester as a flour-milling center demonstrates several themes. Here, as in countless other places, the resiliency of the petty capitalist in the face of natural disasters and violent commodity price swings stands clear. But the early millers, flexible and energetic in entrepreneurial activity, were also, like their product, perishable. The broader and more important pattern is that of the persistence of an industry favored by basic geographic and market circumstances. Individual milk succumbed in rapid sequence, but rapidly they were replaced. Surviving the handicap of limited capital, the milling industry burst its heal bonds and exploited the regional potentialities of water access to Canada. Transition to what then amounted to a national market came in 1823, when the Erie Canal linked Rochester with the Hudson. Thus a new epoch was forecast, when a broadened market would not only stimulate local growth but shape it through complex economic influences hitherto little felt by the millers on the Genesee.

To facilitate fruitful conceptualization and research in business history among scholars throughout the world, the Review presents the second in a series of reports by our International Correspondents. These reports will supplement the American activities regularly recorded in our pages. It is our hope that comparative studies of common problems and the exchange of data and ideas will thus be encouraged.