Small groups of papers relative to lotteries have been found in many of the collections of business records which have come to the Society and to Baker Library. The items include account sheets, letters, lottery tickets, and broadsides advertising lotteries. When brought together they offer some interesting information on the subject.

A nation acquiring new territory is not in every sense of the word in an advantageous position. There are always administrative problems which require information outside the experience of that nation. This was surely the case at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana. The territory had been handed back and forth between the French and Spanish since 1719—the French holding the territory up to 1766 when the Spanish came into power. They governed the territory until 1801 when Napoleon succeeded in gaining control for France once more. But Napoleon found it impossible, because of war on all sides at home, to realize the dream of power in the New World. In 1803 Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France.

Summaries of the various annual reports prepared for the meeting scheduled for December 8, 1932, which was unavoidably postponed, are as follows:

The problems of banking which upset the business world of 1834 were inextricably bound up with politics. The second Bank of the United States had been incorporated in 1816 in order to aid the government in its financial operations and to check the overissue of notes by state banks. While the Bank was able to force state banks to resume specie payment as early as February, 1817, in doing so it made many lasting enemies. In following years the Bank, in turn, resented efforts on the part of various states to tax its branches, for one of the valued privileges of the Bank, as chartered, was exemption from taxation.

Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, Worcester's first printer and the first historian of American printing, the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester has grown steadily until it is today one of the greatest of all American history libraries. When the present beautiful and modern library building was erected, the museum feature of the Society's collections was discontinued and all efforts were concentrated on the building of a great library for the free use of scholars. Today historians, professors, graduate students, biographers, and bibliographers come from all parts of the country, many of them spending happy weeks or months in our quiet reading room. Hundreds of others write to us each year and are supplied through correspondence with the information they cannot come to Worcester to search out for themselves.

Two letters from an interesting old letter book of Henry Lloyd, a Boston merchant, bring to mind the importance played by the Boston Light in the early history of lighthouse service in America. The Boston Light, built in 1716, was the first lighthouse built on this continent. The responsibility for its erection and maintenance was assumed by the General Court of the Province; The following letter written by Henry Lloyd to Mr. Hugh Hall Wentworth, who possibly lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gives the original cost of the structure, and, further, points out that it served as a model for other lighthouses along the coast:

The following paper was prepared by Mr. Tinsley, Vice-President and General Manager of the Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, to be delivered at the annual meeting scheduled for December 8, 1932. With his consent it is printed here.

There is occasionally preserved, in a mere handful of papers, a story surprisingly complete. This is true of one small group of manuscripts found in the Baldwin collection — a collection frequently mentioned in previous numbers of the Bulletin. The papers here referred to concern the organization of a business enterprise undertaken by Cyrus Baldwin and that astounding old adventurer, Nathaniel Appleton.

In the last number of the Bulletin some space was devoted to the banking problems of 1834. Now, turning to the panic of 1837, we find the course of action in the earlier period had at least some effect on the later crisis. To be sure, the panic of 1837 was world-wide in scope, but America contributed her share to the general disturbance.

Many and varied are the evidences of co-operative anterprise in the early history of our country ranging from husking “bees” to sheriffs' posses; but none is more unique than the community purchase of a hearse by the community of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1812, as recounted in an account book owned by the Business Historical Society.

As a depository of source material relating to a wide variety of subjects, the Essex Institute holds a unique position. For many years it has been natural to turn to Salem for material on ocean shipping. In decades past, Salem wharves were lined with vessels which Salem merchants had built and manned, and which brought rich products from every civilized and barbaric land. There were Eastern ports where the names of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were scarcely known, but where Salem was supposed to be the great emporium of the West. Letters addressed “Salem, U. S. A.” reached their destinations without delay. In 1825, there were one hundred ninety-eight vessels flying Salem signals, and Salem ships were the first to display the American flag in many foreign ports, as well as to open trade with St. Petersburg, Zanzibar, Sumatra, Calcutta, Bombay, Batavia, Arabia, Madagascar and Australia.

A new volume published by the American Geographical Society and edited by John K. Wright will be of special interest to New England.

Any attempt to describe the beginnings of the Machine Age in the United States leads the investigator back to the early records of the New England textile mills, for machine building in this country — using the term machinery in its modern meaning — had its origin in the workshops of the first cotton factories. Among the heroes of the period of beginnings are David Wilkinson, — the Pawtucket blacksmith, who, in 1790, assisted Samuel Slater to build the first Arkwright machinery to be successfully operated in the United States, and who, twenty years later, set up one of the earliest independent machine shops in New England, — and Francis Cabot Lowell, who, in 1814, introduced power weaving at the factory in Waltham, thus setting in motion the chain of events that led to the establishment of the great machine shops at Lowell.

There have come to Baker Library, from two different sources, six account books of modest proportion which have, packed within their pages, the complete record of the investments of one of Boston's outstanding citizens—outstanding both for his ability and his public spirit. His well-ordered accounts should constitute a mine of information for research students. Even the most hasty review of the records brings to light information of great interest.

Interest in the internal improvement of the country, sectional enthusiasm, desire for personal profit — such were the motives characterizing the early railroad conventions which were a vital factor in the rapid development of our railroads a century ago. Detailed reports of these conventions are available in the almost complete file of the American Railroad Journal, possessed by the Baker Library.

A contemporary account of the Boston Riot of August, 1765, was found in the letter book of Henry Lloyd, a Boston merchant of the time. Though opposed to any trade restrictions that would hamper his business activities Lloyd had no sympathy for rioters. It is surprising, however, that in a letter book filled with correspondence of the period, there should be only one letter which refers at any length to the riot. This description, though brief, makes those prerevolutionary activities seem, once more, strangely alive:

The Business Historical Society calls to the attention of its members a recent publication which should be of greatest value and interest. This is the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, which has been published jointly by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the American Geographical Society of New York.

In these exciting days when nationalism is shaking the world to its depths, it is interesting to see how an Englishman voiced himself in 1807. The following remarkable letter is among the manuscript possessions of Baker Library. One of the best parts of it is the brief history of nearly thirty years of Russian exchange.

In these days of complex industrial organization it is hard to realize that the time ever existed when a complete manufacturing process, together with specifications for equipment, might be described in two pages. The following account of the process for making potash is taken from the letter book of Henry Lloyd for the years 1765–1767: