The names of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton are as familiar to the lovers of old furniture as those of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson are to students of English literature. The names of all these men have stood the test of years because of the real worth of their productions and of their influence on the future of their art. The former three, however, might have become a mere tradition if, like many of their contemporary fellow-craftsmen, they had failed to leave any written record of their work.

A source of information concerning the early economic conditions in this country, and a source which has heretofore been little employed, is the tax records of local communities. I have run across some of them in an historical study of taxation in Massachusetts in which I have tried to press back the story to as early a period as possible. Undoubtedly, somewhat similar records are available in other states, and altogether they would supply many data upon the economic life in this country during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for which other sources of realistic material are all too scanty.

The value of old tax data, as Professor Burbank has stated, lies in the wealth of detail in the tax lists, and more especially in the valuation lists. For each tax-payer these latter lists frequently give the amount and value of real estate, annual crops, live stock, stock in trade, shipping, mills of various sorts, warehouses, and occasionally even the silver plate owned by the family. Many of these headings, too, are in detailed form. For instance, real estate is divided into plow land, pasturage, orcharding, meadows, and wood land.