The iron industry in New England was nearly contemporaneous with the settlement of eastern Massachusetts, but for upwards of a hundred years it was confined to the bog ore found in marshes near Lynn and a few other places. By the time of the Revolutionary War, iron foundries were firmly established in the New England States.

Sir Walter Raleigh's career as a statesman, his interest in American exploration and colonization, his part in defeating the invincible Armada, and his literary talents are familiar to students of the Elizabethan Age. A small book in the possession of the Business Library shows that he also dabbled in economics, of the practical sort with which most writers in the field of economics before Adam Smith occupied themselves.

Among the recent acquisitions of the Society is a bulky Latin volume which throws an interesting light on the difficulties which beset the business men of earlier days. It was printed in 1591 at Colonia Agrippinae (Cologne) and its crowded title page may be freely translated as follows: “Two Books on Money and Monetary Problems, the first dealing with the Art of Coinage and the second with Monetary Problems, to which are added Various Useful Tracts together with Opinions and Annotations, by authors both ancient and modern who have discussed Money, its Value, Alloy, Weight, Power, Alteration, Variation, Counterfeiting, and the like.” The author and editor, Renerus Budelius, was “prefect of moneys” under the Elector Ernest of Cologne.

A Northern Pacific item of great rarity and value will be added to the Library files when the business collection of the Boston Public Library comes into the keeping of the Business Library. This pamphlet, a “Partial report… of a reconnoissance made in the summer of 1869, between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean, by Thos. Hawley Canfield, general agent of the company, accompanied with notes on Puget Sound by Samuel Wilkeson, Esq., the historian of the expedition,” recently changed hands for $150 at an auction.

The mediaeval craft guild owing its origin to religion, and protected by the church, was a remarkable institution in its way, caring as it did, at least in its best days, for the well-being of its members while exacting from them a certain standard of workmanship. It is an arguable point that the worker of the Middle Ages, often engaged on creative tasks and deriving from his labor the satisfaction of his artistic instincts, was a happier man than the modern factory employee, whose work frequently consists in the continuous repetition of one monotonous operation.

Some interesting early American year books have come into the possession of the Library, one of them a gift of Professor A. H. Cole, a founder member. The first in point of time is The Picture of New York or The Traveller's Guide, dated 1807. This gives a full description of the situation and harbor, history, geography and geology, government, and the institutions and amusements of New York, and of the various pleasant excursions in that vicinity.

“The Golden Fleece; or the Trade, Interest, and Well Being of Great Britain,” a recent acquisition of The Business Historical Society, is a rare pamphlet dated 1736, which gives a contemporary summary of the wool situation in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. From the time of Edward III, the petted woollen industry, for so long the pride of Britain, enjoyed the protection of the government.

Extensive use of the Business Library's collections of early Boston and New York stock exchange prices has been made by the National Bureau of Economic Research for its forthcoming study of “Bond Yields and Interest Rates” for the last seventy years. It was found that the Library's set of official stock exchange records dated back as far as 1857, whereas the material in the New York Public Library and the New York Stock Exchange is not earlier than January, 1859.

Our railroad collection is among the best, and is still growing, but in bringing together pamphlet material, in particular, there are always blanks to be filled in.