Business records have a wide usefulness. First and foremost they tell the story of business itself, but they also record much that is of value to other fields of historical study.

One of the best single sources for American social and economic history is the records of small-town or rural businesses. These institutions have had a vital place in the growth and expansion of the nation. Until recent years little systematic attention has been given to this aspect of American history. Historians have generalized about this subject, and time after time they have been content to quote as their sources material which long ago became trite.

There is in the city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea a medieval painting which is of unusual interest in the history of business. It is an altarpiece, the “Last Judgment” by Hans Memling, the inimitable fifteenth-century artist of the Low Countries. Besides being a great work of art, this picture is in a sense an important business record. It is, moreover, in a real way a product of business; its origin was intimately tied in with international mercantile activity in the fifteenth century. War prevented the “Last Judgment” from occupying the place for which it was intended, and wars have continued to give it an insecure existence. The present conflict in Europe may result in another removal, possibly back to Bruges, the place of the activity of those medieval business men whom it is said to commemorate.

Because of his antiquity the peddler occupies a distinguished position in the history of merchandising. Some historians have credited him with being the earliest business man or petty capitalist in western European economy, while others have seriously questioned his primacy in this respect; all agree, however, that he made his appearance very early in the history of merchandising. From his beginning he seems to have exercised most of the economic functions which have characterized him throughout his history. The transportation and retailing of goods to a scattered and rural market unable as yet to support the settled petty capitalist have generally been the function of the peddler. From the earliest times, too, he has traded his wares for the products of his customers, thus promoting commerce where money has been scarce and where people have lacked local agents to transport their surplus to outside markets. Always he has found the arrival of settled petty capitalists and the conditions which have given rise to them a competitive menace, and he has been able to survive only when he has modified his plan of operations so drastically as to destroy much of his original pattern of conduct.

The village shoemaker has become merely a tradition. His little shop, if it remains standing, has been put to other uses, and his cobbler's bench, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, has found its way into present-day living-rooms in the guise of a coffee table or smoking stand. Of the product of his skill, little remains because, unlike the cabinet maker and metal worker, he worked in goods that served their purpose and were gone, but he was as true a craftsman as they, and perhaps a more important figure in the life of a town. From, him young and old obtained their footwear, and to him they brought it back to be mended. Farm horses and saddle horses wore the harnesses he made; ploughs and carriages alike depended on the strength and stitching of his traces. And, in return, he got from his fellow townsmen sometimes cash but more frequently the necessities of his family's existence. In his ledger, debits and credits reflected the whole business of give-and-take in the life of the community.

§1. What are public relations? We have social relations, industrial relations, private and even poor relations, but what are public relations? We have them like hives and chilblains, but should we admit the fact? Should we try to get rid of them? Indeed, we have had them for a long time, though the phrase is relatively new and has got into few dictionaries or encyclopedias. But, if these public relations are not really upstart conditions, then perhaps they are respectable and may be spoken of.

Thirty miles west of Denver, in narrow, boulder-strewn Clear Creek Canyon, high on the eastern frontal range of the Colorado Rockies, the ghostlike remains of Central City stand amid the monuments of a golden past — mute, decaying mine shafts, bleak, windowless stamp mills, and abandoned gold lodes littered with the broken and rusty debris of many lost hopes and a few fulfilled dreams. Here in the “Golden Mile” between the silent works of Black Hawk and the rebuilt brick buildings of Central City a granite shaft marks the site where prospector John Gregory discovered gold dust in his pan one April day in 1859 and gave sustenance to the first fruitless “Pike's Peak Gold Rush” of the previous autumn.

At the end of the selections from Mellon's autobiography published in the December issue of the Bulletin, the author, having put his new banking house in order, was off on a trip to New Orleans. The present Bulletin carries his narrative forward from the time of his return until 1884, when his autobiography ends.

The general thread of interest which runs through the story of business experience from 1872 to 1884 is that of panic, liquidation, and recovery. The author gives an unusually good account of what happened during the panic, and he also tries to explain the coming of the panic of 1873 and the severe liquidation which followed.

Sir Andrew Freeport belonged to the same club as the better-known Sir Roger de Coverley. Sir Andrew was of the moneyed interest and a great sedentary merchant, while Sir Roger was the typical landed gentleman. Probably a hundred persons have heard of the gentleman to one person who knows about the merchant. But the two were alike in being the creation of Joseph Addison's imagination and in coming to light in the show-case window of The Spectator. Moreover, each was intended to be representative of his type and therefore worthy of unusual attention.

Next month will appear The House of Hancock by William T. Baxter, professor of accounting at the University of Cape Town. This publication is one of the Harvard Studies in Business History, edited by Professor N. S. B. Gras; prior to public sale, copies are being sent to members of the Business Historical Society.

In 1855 the German journalist, novelist, and historian, Gustav Freytag, gave to the world his popular novel Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit). The scene of the story is Eastern Germany, where Germans, Poles, and Jews lived in conflict about the year 1848.

The Bulletin has received a short volume on the history of a bank in one of the large American metropolitan communities which has recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary. The book is unusually attractive in make-up and contains some charming drawings of the bank's home and of streets in its city. The emphasis of the text is on the development of the home city of the bank and its industrial hinterland and on events of national importance which affected banking. The officers and directors of the bank through the century are named, and a little is said of larger policies and of the success of the bank.

A short volume has recently been published by the Texas State Historical Association on the history of a country store which is unique in style and content and unusual in its subject. The book is Charles Schreiner, General Merchandise, by J. Evetts Haley. Written largely from the records of the Charles Schreiner Company, of Kerrville, Texas, and the memories of old-timers of the community, the volume tells a story of business which began in the hill country of Texas on December 24, 1869, a story of success which is still continuing.

The Waltham history, edited by Professor N. S. B. Gras, is eleventh in the Harvard Studies in Business History series. It is a story which has required a deft and delicate touch in the recording, and the reader will early come to appreciate Dr. Moore's handling of complicated factual material, as well as to respect the conclusions he has pointed up. Dr. Moore's history of the Waltham Watch Company is a study of business policy—a detailed analysis of the business methods of the top men at Waltham. Were there such a thing as a “normal” American business, the chapters of its history would fall neatly and evenly into order—management, labor, plant and technological processes, finance, distribution, and external influences. Happy the historian to whose lot such a tidy assignment falls! It seems reasonably certain, however, that no recorder will ever face a perfect balance of the forces involved in producing and selling merchandise.

How many readers of the BULLETIN have seen or known about the Adam Smith Collection at the Baker Library of Harvard University? The Collection was presented to the Library by Dean Homer Vanderblue of the School of Commerce, Northwestern University, who was at one time a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School.

From its beginning, accounting has been shaped by the needs of the business man and has in turn affected the handling of business problems. A clear illustration of this is the contrast between the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Florentine cloth manufacturers and the system of accounts found in the ledgers of Venetian merchants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cloth manufacturers such as the younger branch of the Medici arranged their entries under a Wage account, a Wool account, a Cloth Sales account, and so on, because their main concern was to keep track of these materials or obligations. The Venetians, being mainly exporters and importers, were concerned chiefly with keeping track of wares shipped, wares received, and amounts owed by or to agents. Accordingly, the distinctive, key accounts in Venetian books are (a) the accounts opened for each kind or lot of merchandise received, and (b) the accounts debited when wares were shipped. The latter are best called shipment, or venture, accounts. For example, when a Venetian merchant bought Florentine cloth to ship it to Constantinople, he opened a Florentine Cloth account in which he entered as debits all the costs of the cloth including the cost of packing it for shipment.

There has recently come to the editor's desk a copy of a booklet entitled Historical Societies in the United States and Canada: a Handbook. This booklet lists 1,467 historical organizations in the two countries, most of which are small local societies. For each of some 900 of these, the booklet gives the officers, the number of members, the annual income, a brief statement of the contents of the society's library or museum, and its publications.

Among the numerous explanations offered for the origin of the American dollar sign, no one seems to have raised the question of whether the dollar sign may have the same ancestry as the word “dollar.” There is no doubt about the etymology of “dollar.” It is derived from the German word Thaler, through the Dutch daalder. Furthermore, it is certain that Thaler is an abbreviation of Joachimsthaler.

What kind of a people were the Americans who so energetically drove forward American business expansion in the nineteenth century? We find something of an answer in little vignettes scattered through a book of observations on travel in the United States in the early 1830's, which has become a classic description of American life and people. Its author, Alexis de Tocqueville, was not particularly concerned with business; he was interested chiefly in the American experiment in democracy. Yet his observations are extremely suggestive. He gives a glimpse of the general esprit of the American, of his motives or objectives, of his restlessness and his energy, of the generally fluid state of American society, and of the vastness of American opportunity. De Tocqueville's observations are not objective descriptions; they are the impressions and interpretations of a philosophical observer and student of society who was familiar with England as well as Western Europe. From the perspective of today, they appear remarkably keen; indeed they were in large measure prophetic of what came to pass. In speaking of the American people he says that “boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and it greatness.”