Wells, Fargo & Company, established in 1852, had its roots in Harnden & Company, the first of all express carriers. In the year 1841, Vermont-born Henry Wells, whose name was to rank in prominence with that of William F. Harnden and Alvin Adams in the history of the express business, was serving as Harnden's agent in Albany, New York. Many years later he explained how he came to leave Harnden's employ and to become the moving force in the first of several new express enterprises:

“I was in his [William F. Harnden's] employ and recommended him to extend his express line from Albany to Buffalo, and as transportation was offered, to Chicago, [but] Mr. Harnden did not believe that the People were there and he declined. His words of declination were ‘If Mr. Wells chose to run an Express to the Rocky Mountains he might — He [Mr. Harnden] would not do it.’ ”

American business, for the most part, is cognizant of the existence of a foreman's problem. In 1943–45 the rather infectious spirit of foreman organization was manifest in several severe walkouts in key defense plants. Newspaper and magazine readers and radio listeners were deluged with commentaries on the reasons for this abrupt outcropping of dissatisfaction and dissension. Tenuous security, denial of recognition, lack of communication, small pay packets, no provision for overtime pay — these were some of the principal causes for disorder as interpreted by these experts. Hearings were held by a panel appointed by the National War Labor Board, and the panel was deeply impressed by what seemed to be a “conspicuous disproportion between the number and seriousness of the individual complaints of foremen … on the one hand and by the evident interest of foremen in organization on the other.” It was obvious from these voluminous hearings that there was an awareness of the serious nature of the immediate threat of foremen's organization.

Changes in the role of the commercial drummer during the thirty years prior to the Civil War are suggested by comparison of reports received from a salesman in the 1850's with similar reports received from a salesman for the same firm in the 1830's. The trips and reports of the earlier salesman, who traveled for J. M. L. & W. H. Scovill, a Connecticut brass rolling and fabricating partnership, were described in the last issue of this Bulletin. The chief complaint of the salesman in the 1830's was that the merchants of any importance made regular trips to Philadelphia or New York. Such merchants preferred to make all their purchases at one time in order to save trouble and expense in transportation and they also bought most of their goods from established jobbers to whom they were known and who would extend credit.

The experience of the Newberry Library in handling a mass of business records may be of value to other libraries, as well as to scholars, in an important field which, notwithstanding a number of recent excellent books, is still one of the least worked in American history. The primary question which disturbs librarians is, of course, whether the provision of shelf space and the cost of cataloguing, or otherwise arranging for scholarly use, are justifiable for records as voluminous as these.

Dr. Paul H. Giddens, professor of history and political science at Allegheny College, has undertaken to write a history of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. He has been granted a leave of absence from his teaching duties and is already at work in the records of the company at its home office in Chicago.