The sources which have been used for information on the careers of the steel manufacturers include: obituaries and biographical dictionaries, shareholder lists, marriage certificates, membership lists of engineering societies. For the hosiery industry few obituaries were found. Local directories and school records have supplied information as well as company files and marriage certificates.

To get a complete picture of the early careers of recent businessmen, it would be necessary to supplement the documentary sources used in this study by a direct approach to industry or industrialists. Since an obituary, however brief, usually supplies the clues which enable us to use other documentary sources, the careers of many of the men in our last samples, who are still alive, cannot be covered in detail. The gaps are greater in the 1953 steel sample than in the 1952 hosiery sample because for the latter industry area directories and company files yielded more information, particularly on early careers.