Although historians have described the role of Stephen Girard in the founding of the second Bank of the United States simply as that of a heavy investor in its stock, careful examination of the Girard papers and other recently discovered documents shows the usual account to be entirely inadequate. Actually Girard was one of the moving spirits of the Bank from the time of its inception in the minds of a small group of American financiers until the period of its mismanagement in 1818. Then, as chairman of the stockholders, he was largely influential in effecting the replacement of the reckless and incompetent Jones leadership with the sounder administrations of Langdon Cheves and Nicholas Biddle. Girard was a most important influence in the Bank's early history. He purchased a large amount of stock, contributed to the working out of the mechanics of operation, aided in obtaining specie from Baring Brothers & Company, London, helped determine the form and content of the charter, did yeoman service in the political battle preceding its founding, and struggled mightily, although in vain, to prevent the Bank's becoming a political football in an orgy of speculation.

On August 26, 1857, just two days after the New York branchthe Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company suspended payment, of, the New York Herald predicted that the financial difficulties then beginning were certain to acquire the proportions of a great crisis. It boasted, moreover, that it had foreseen and warned of this impending calamity for the preceding twelve months, but its warnings had been spurned. The Herald's vaunted prescience perhaps stemmed chiefly from the long-standing prejudice of its publisher, James Gordon Bennett, against the operations of speculators in Wall Street. As early as 1854, when the speculative boom in railroad stocks was halted by a sharp decline of prices, the Herald had predicted the imminent approach of a crisis, one that would mark the end of the current “Fitful Spasmodic System” of American business. During the winter of 1854–1855 business stagnated, unemployment increased greatly, and there was considerable distress and popular unrest, especially in New York City. Here was an advance view, as it were, of the pattern of depression which was to develop in 1857.

The bibliography of this subject is the subject, and the enormous filescourse of over three centuries are formidability itself. To reduce the element of formidability it is necessary to turn to studies of the newspaper in terms of countries, regions, owners, editors and journalists. But again the bibliography reflects the character of the press. Newspapermen have contributed notably, but unfortunately the training in newspaper work is not ideal for an economic interpretation of the subject. The increasing participation of university graduates in journalism provides a basis for more objective studies, but even here the training.exercises a subtle influence and weakens the possibility of a sustained and effective interpretation. Throughout the history of the newspaper industry, studies reflect the dominant influence of the moment, or perhaps it is safer to say, represent the dominant influence of the tradition of the industry; hence they show a perceptible lag between the newspaper as it is and the newspaper as it was. In the main they are obsessed with the role of the press in relation to political opinion, the importance of freedom of the press, the fourth estate and so on; they are suffused with innumerable cliches1 constantly bubbling up from the effervescence of writing.

From the earliest period the communities of the Latin tribes of central Italy and of the remaining Italiots made use of a few slaves as herdsmen, field hands, and probably as domestic servants to meet the simple demands of their small-farm life. No doubt these slaves were employed also in the household weaving of wearing apparel, in the fabrication of those offensive and defensive weapons needed in the wars with their neighbors, and in the production of the tools required for the still simple operations characteristic of Italian farming of that time. Enslavement appears in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, which can safely be dated about 450 B.C. There is no mention of slaves in the two early treaties between Rome and Carthage, as given by Polybius. Livy tells us very briefly of the imposition of a five per cent tax upon manumissions, which was passed in 357 B.C. if we may trust the statement and accept his dating of it. The picture of early Roman slavery as gained from these few primary data, and from literary sources even less trustworthy, is that of a simple agricultural use of a slave population whose numbers were relatively small. This would hold true down to about 352 B.C.

In New Mexico Spanish civilization left a deep imprint. There the economic and social institutions which established themselves firmly in the Spanish colonial period profoundly influenced the course of subsequent economic development, and are a vital force today. Human problems in contemporary New Mexico cannot be understood, nor can plans for the use of her human and physical resources be made, without understanding the colonial institutions, their strong resistance to change, and the mutual adjustments between them and Anglo-American institutions.

In the last decades of the Tsarist regime the eight provinces where, according to the census of 1897, Ukrainians predominated—Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, Chernigov, Kharkov, Kherson, and Ekaterinoslav—were largely rural. Less than one seventh of the population in these provinces inhabited urban centers. The rural population, moreover, coincided closely with the Ukrainian nationality: more than nine of every ten Ukrainians lived in the country districts, and most of these were classified as peasants. Since two out of every three of the urban residents were Russians or Jews, the limited number of Ukrainians dwelling among them tended to become absorbed into industries which provided a natural milieu for “Russification.” In the cultural conflict, “Ukrainian” became synonymous with 9peasant”; and the nickname for the Ukrainian—khokhol—has the same derogatory connotation as the Russian term muzhik, which evokes a picture of a shaggily bearded, unwashed, unkempt, illiterate country bumpkin.

The elaborate Chinese standard histories, which, if all translated, would fill several hundred thick volumes, provide illuminating information about many aspects of economic history. In this paper, I shall present a passage that enables us to estimate the gold stock of the Chinese at the beginning of the Christian era, a type of information rarely available.

In his History of the Former Han Dynasty, Ban Gu (writing about A.D. 80) has occasion to illustrate the stinginess of a usurping emperor, Wang Mang, and enumerates his wealth as follows:

At this time [A.D. 23], in the inner apartments of the Wei-yang Palace, ten thousand catties of actual gold were put into one chest and there still remained sixty chests. In each office for storage of the Yellow Gate and of the Intendant of Palace Parks and in the workshops of the Master of Recipes, there were also several chests. The Imperial Treasury at the Ch'ang-lo Palace and the Bureau of Equalization and Standards in the capital in addition stored very much cash, silk, pearls, jade, and valuables.

In any economic system, whether medieval or modern, “money, banking, and credit,” are so closely connected and interwoven that they cannot be separated. Banking involves the extension of credit, and credit leads to the creation of additional purchasing power or, to use a different phrase, of money substitutes. The importance of credit and banking in medieval times should not be underrated, as is sometimes done by placing undue emphasis on later developments in England. Professor Usher is preparing a treatise on the early history of banking in Italy and Spain. This paper, which summarizes the results of a similar investigation into the origins of banking in Bruges, will therefore supplement Professor Usher's work, as far as the development of banking in the Low Countries is concerned.

Present-day economic historians display an uneasy feeling that medieval gilds have enjoyed much more attention than they deserve. Professor Heckscher compares them unfavorably with later gilds, Professor Gras grudges them credit for anything save the keeping of records to mislead historians, and the authors of a recent textbook almost apologize for pausing to describe them. In general, this reaction from former attitudes reflects a shift of interest from the interpretation of economic policy to other problems that now appear more fundamental. We have a quantity of information about gild policies, but it leaves us uncertain whether or not the gilds were of any real importance in the history of economic development.

Pierre Prévost lived from 1751 to 1839. In 1780 he was invited by Frederick the Great to go to Berlin as a professor of young boys at the Academy of Nobles. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and his entry dissertation dealt with political economy. In 1784 Prévost returned to Geneva, where he became professor of literature at the university of that city. In 1793 he was a member of the National Assembly at Geneva, but retired after four months. In 1794 he was imprisoned for twenty days by a revolutionary tribunal. Immediately upon his release he became professor of physics and philosophy at the University of Geneva, a chair which he exchanged in 1810 for that of general physics. With Marc-Auguste Pictet, Prévost was the codiscoverer of the moving equilibrium of temperature.

The most interesting and distinctive feature of the first Bank of the United States was its nation-wide operation through a system of branches. It is difficult to present an even reasonably definitive analysis of that system. The records available, although more adequate than formerly, are still sadly incomplete. Enough is known, however, to reveal many complexities, political, entrepreneurial and administrative. This paper is designed to offer only a rather sketchy treatment of the following phases or aspects of the subject: prototypes and predecessors of the Bank with special reference to branch-banking; the establishment of the eight branches of the Bank; the actual operation of the branches; and the relative measure of their liquidity when the Bank was subjected to the acid test of winding up its affairs.

Among the commodities which could profitably be shipped to the English plantations in America, a parcel of human beings was not the least remunerative. The colonists demanded labor, and were willing to pay for it. For a hundred years after the founding of Virginia this demand was met by the transportation and sale of white indentured servants recruited in Great Britain and Ireland, and so great was the volume of this business that the servants made up about three quarters of all immigrants coming to the colonies south of New York. During the eighteenth century their exclusive sway was gradually disputed by German redemptioners and Negro slaves, yet indentured servants continued to play a vital part in colonial life and to form an important element in colonial trade. The progenitor of many a proud American family found himself landed upon these shores not so much on account of his desire to seek freedom as because his person could be advantageously exchanged for a quantity of tobacco, lumber, or sassafras root.

The body of thought on location is composed of several contributory JL streams. The best known of these, that associated with the name of Alfred Weber, has concerned itself with the explanation of the choice of production sites by manufacturing industries, and is consequently the stream most closely related to my inquiry.1 However, the Weber school typically pays very little attention to the historical aspects of its subjects; this neglect is apparent both in the nature of the data employed and in the selection of scope, and the placing of emphasis. In the first part of this paper I shall offer an example of a Weber-like analysis or evaluation of the location factors involved in the cotton industry of this country during the past sixty years, as adapted to the purposes of historical inquiry and to the use of historical data; in the second part, I shall apply to some specific historical situations the results of the analysis presented in the first part.

Much labor has been spent upon the history of the cultivated and occupied lands of the medieval English village and the social life of its inhabitants, and as a result a fairly clear framework has been constructed into which alterations and additions may be fitted where necessary. This statement is not true of the great background of all early village life, of the activities concerned with the waste or unoccupied land lying outside fields and even village bounds, and either lying idle, or else used for pasture, estovers, and hunting. Modern students have been negligent of this side of the medieval countryside, being more engaged with the human interests of the village; and little allowance has been made for changes and developments occurring within decades or even centuries. The great history of common rights, an extremely important subject, has yet to be written. This paper has a few suggestions to make which might sometime be useful in a study of a very large field.

The early commercial relations between the United States and South America in the years preceding the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine have until quite recently received but scant attention. This neglect may in part be attributed to the historian's concern with the political implications of the revolutionary movements in Spanish. America and their bearing upon our foreign policies. In part, also, it may be ascribed to the paucity of materials (either published or in manuscript); information on commercial affairs transmitted by American special agents and consuls in the ports of Latin America was generally fragmentary and incomplete. Yet even a tardy examination of our trade relations with Chile in the years 1817-1820 may be of value, especially since the materials available for this study present a picture of the volume, the variety, and the difficulties of our trade that is unique in the annals of our early relations with South America.

Since the beginning of the world-wide depression of the 1930's thewritings of J. M. Keynes have furnished the chief stimulus for serious discussion of economic policy and economic theory. There is implicit in the Keynesian position an interpretation of capitalism strikingly similar to that of P. J. Proudhon, the French socialist of the nineteenth century. Yet whatever similarities there are between the economic ideas of Keynes and Proudhon must be explained by time-separated reaction to more or less comparable problems. The only formal linkage between the two theorists would be their relations to Silvio Gesell, the stamped-money reformer. Keynes expresses admiration for the fundamentals of Gesell's work, and Gesell in turn avows himself a disciple of Proudhon. Keynes's agreement with Gesell is not confined to matters of technical theory, but extends also to the social premises of the work of that “strange, unduly neglected prophet…whose work contains flashes of deep insight and who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter.”He characterizes Gesell's work as “anti-Marxian socialism,” asserting that “the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx.” Since Marx made a bitter attack on Proudhon, and since Gesell declares himself a disciple of Proudhon, Keynes's references to the superiority of Gesell over Marx suggest important relations between Proudhon and Keynes.

In his recently published volume on American economic history, Chester W. Wright says, in substance, that whereas he can give some account of the vicissitudes experienced by the several distributive factors of land, labor, and capital, he will have to deal in a very cursory fashion with the entrepreneur and with entrepreneurial gains since so little is known about them. I, for one, welcomed this statement of so eminent a student of American economic history since it gave such forthright support to ideas which I was at the time presenting to the recently organized Committee on Research in Economic History (ideas by no means wholly or even chiefly my own) relative to the desirability of research in the history of American entrepreneurship.

In so far as the term “profit” has any fairly concrete and generally understood meaning, it designates the income accruing to the owner of a business or productive “enterprise,” through the operations of that business or enterprise. The owner may be an individual or a group, organized in some way as a legal entity; most typically, it is a “corporation,” particularly under American conditions. In either case, this owner, who normally hires productive services from others for a fixed compensation, uses them to make a product and sells the product for what he can get, is what is meant by an entrepreneur. He (or it) is the responsible controller or manager of the business in relation to market conditions, regardless of whomever he may consult or whatever functions he may delegate to others or on whatever terms. In business usage, profit is the entrepreneur's net income, what remains out of the gross proceeds of the business after paying the hired labor and capital at the agreed rates, determined by market competition (and after deducting costs of materials and “products” bought from others). It is thus a “residual” income, what is left after other distributive shares are removed, and may be positive or negative. But profit, so defined—when there is a positive profit, and not a loss—evidently consists to a greater or less extent of the remuneration for services furnished to the business by the entrepreneur himself—labor or capital services, or both. For analytical purposes, the economic theorist must define profit more narrowly, as what is or would be left (“residual”) after deducting wages and/or interest at the “going rates” for the entrepreneur's own services.