The annual meeting of the Business Historical Society will be held at the Harvard Business School on Wednesday, April 22, 1936, at twelve noon. Final arrangements have not yet been completed, but the program will include a short business meeting, a subscription luncheon at the Faculty Club; and two addresses on topics related to business history. During the business meeting the officers for the ensuing year are to be elected, including the Treasurer, the Clerk, and the seven members of the Council. Members are reminded that both General and Affiliated Members are now entitled to vote, as a result of the changes in the Constitution and By-laws voted last May, and that they may attend the meeting by proxy. Individual notices will have been mailed to members before the appearance of this issue of the Bulletin.

There is a good deal of doubt as to which was the earliest business corporation in America. One view is that a whale-fishing company established in New York City in 1675 was the first, but, although a joint-stock company (a kind of partnership), there is no evidence that it was also a corporation. A second view is that the first was The New London Society United for Trade and Commerce, chartered, apparently, in Connecticut in 1732. The life of these and other colonial concerns was short. Claims might be made for the priority of other colonial companies but our main interest is in existing companies. And this interest does not lie in the age of the concern itself but in the priority of its incorporation.

Very little, apparently, has been written on the China trade during the three decades from 1840 to 1870. But, in reality, these years constitute one of the most picturesque and glamorous eras in the annals of the Eastern trade. As a result of the growing demand for a more speedy delivery of tea, especially, from China, the “Clipper Ship” period began about 1843; and, gaining impetus through the discovery of gold in California in 1849 and in Australia in 1859, it ended, approximately, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. During those years, our merchants and sea captains vied with each other in building fast ships of which the Houqua, the Samuel Russell, the Oriental, and the Sea Witch were the pioneers of a numerous fleet. So much activity in shipbuilding would naturally imply an active and growing trade to make use of these fast carriers.

Among the recent accessions of the Society is an interesting letter written in 1883 by a member of one of the firms which later became Armour & Company, Inc.