A recent purchase of the George F. Baker Library, whose acquisitions are at the disposal of the Society, is entitled A PRESENT For an APPRENTICE: Or, A Sure GUIDE to gain both Esteem and Estate. With Rules for his Conduct to his MASTER, and in the WORLD. Ours is a tenth edition and was printed for James Fletcher, in St. Paul's Church-Yard, and Benjamin Collins, Bookseller, on the New Canal in Salisbury. The work bears no date and is ostensibly written “By a late Lord Mayor of London,” and dedicated by the editor to Sir John Barnard. However, Halkett & Laing, on the authority of the British Museum Catalogue, attribute the authorship to the said Sir John Barnard and place the date of the work as of about 1740.

In these turbulent times when economists and business men alike find it difficult to solve the business depression which has descended on our complex civilization, it is refreshing to turn to the early economic tracts which were published in this country, and to contemplate the relatively simple panaceas which were advanced by their authors for a correction of the evils of the time. Again, it a consolation to turn the pages of history and realize that we are not suffering from any unique “disease.” In fact in 1820 the outlook was quite as dark as it is today. The productive industry of from sixty to eighty thousand people was destroyed. The cotton planters had suffered a loss of approximately eight million dollars in profits, and the merchants, eleven and a half million dollars, by the fall in cotton prices. Flour was selling at such a low figure that the farmers had but a meagre return for their efforts. The fall in tobacco prices “spread distress and desolation in the state of Virginia,” and South Carolina had lost her chief export market, that for indigo, which product had constituted about a third of her exports.

The best piece of manuscript material the Society has ever received on the whaling industry surely deserves mention here. The book was presented to the Society about a year ago by one of its members. It is a descriptive catalog of New Bedford whaling ships for the years 1790-1906, prepared by Joseph Dias of New Bedford between 1880 and 1906. He has listed some 650 ships, giving a brief history of each, including dates of various voyages, waters explored, quantities of sperm oil, whale oil and whalebone brought back, as well as the names of the captains and agents for each voyage. One of the most valuable things about this book is that it adds information to every other piece of material that we have on New Bedford whaling.

The specimens of Portland Clearing House Association currency reproduced on the opposite page were issued during the panic year of 1907.

Business depressions bring in their wake such a train of privation and misery that we are usually blinded to the fact that they occasionally produce incidental benefits. Foremost among the few good results which have flowed from the present business depression is the stimulation of research into the history of the business cycle. Economists and business men alike are attempting to learn as much as possible about similar crises of the past. They are asking themselves whether the depression of 1930 is worse than that which occurred in 1894 or 1840, in what respects it differs from or resembles those catastrophes. They are even wondering how their predecessors felt after the first stock-market crash of 1792.

There is an old saying that “every cloud has a silver lining,” but no doubt it must have been difficult for German business men to see any ray of hope during the dark years succeeding the war when the mark plunged down on the exchange until it was practically worthless. In fact, never in the history of the world has a currency depreciated to such a degree.

The George F. Baker Library has recently purchased a rare eighteenth-century volume, entitled A Familiar Discourse or DIALOGUE Concerning the Mine-Adventure, which was printed by F. Collins in the Old-Bailey, London, 1700. Though no author's name appears in our volume, Halkett & Laing's Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, on the authority of the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, attributes the work to one William Shiers who was a shareholder in the venture.

Two eighteenth century technical treatises — Mechanick Exercises: or the Doctrine of Handy-Works, 1703, by Joseph Moxon, and The Practical House Carpenter, 1796, by William Pain — have been presented to the Society by William Butler, one of our members.

Those who have been in any way interested in the Essex Institute, or have used their already valuable collections of shipping papers, will welcome the addition of this important institution to the group of libraries and similar collecting agencies that are endeavoring to accumulate and preserve the materials for business history.