The W. L. Douglas Shoe Company, founded in Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1876, achieved an outstanding success as the first shoemanufacturing company to establish its own chain of retail stores. After World War I, however, the company entered a long and dreary decline which resulted finally in its removal to another state and its eventual sale to another company. This recent merger, with Arthur Million, Inc., a subsidiary of the General Shoe Corporation, marks the end of W. L. Douglas as an independent company.

Throughout American history the frontier was plagued by a shortage of capital and credit. The small pioneer farmer who migrated westward to take up cheap or free land needed capital or credit to build his homestead, secure tools and supplies, and provide for the immediate needs of himself and his family until the farm became self-sustaining. Likewise, men who wished to engage in commercial and industrial enterprises on the frontier had to have adequate capital or credit facilities to establish their businesses and to continue operations until the regular marketing of their products made the project self-supporting. The characteristic frontiersman was optimistic about the future and desired to enlarge his capital investment by expanding his landholding or his business in the expectation that future prosperity would create a greater demand for his produce—he believed that the larger the scale of his operations the greater the profits he would reap. His investments and operations, therefore, tended to outrun his own capital, and he characteristically turned to others for help. Since all elements in a frontier society were handicapped by the insufficiency of capital, and its handmaiden, credit, only limited aid could be expected from the frontier community. Assistance from the more stabilized eastern regions was necessary if the pioneer effort was to expand and prosper.

Business history reveals that business has been a major factor in the development of our present civilization. Business is the “core” of modern society. Consequently, business philosophy (an explanation of the phenomena of business) should logically be considered of extremecimportance in the realm of ideas and thoughts which shape and guide our civilization.

It is not often—perhaps fortunately—that Baker Library receives a collection totaling four tons. That was the approximate weight of material brought by moving van from Augusta, Maine, this past May. The four tons comprised the paper remains—apparently untouched since the early nineteen-hundreds—of the E. C. Allen mail-order and publishing house, which flourished in Augusta during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Of the four tons, approximately one and a half are represented by bound and unbound files of Home and Fireside, Sunshine, Golden Moments, and the dozen other farm and home magazines published by Allen and his associates. Another ton consists of the oleographs, or colored reproductions of oil paintings, distributed as premiums or as mail-order offerings. The remaining ton and a half is the measure of the business records, bound and unbound, with which we are here chiefly concerned. It is expected that the full story of the enterprise will be told later, possibly by someone working for a Ph.D. degree. But before describing the collection itself, and some of the incidents met in its arrangement, a brief account of E. C. Allen's activities will be helpful.

The history of the Sante Fe Trail has been written and rewritten, replete with colorful episodes of wars and skirmishes, of Indian massacres and Spanish resistance, and of privations of hunger, thirst, and exposure. Regarded from the long-time point of view, these efforts have been far from satisfying. The more basic story of the rooting of capital and the building of towns, for which all these hazards appeared inviting and worth bearing, has received little attention.