The Editor of the Bulletin feels that it is his privilege to acquaint our membership with those opportunities which appear from time to time to acquire small collections of primary business historical material. The funds at the disposal of the Society for the purchase of this rare old material are not yet sufficient to provide for all the collections that turn up, and rather than lose them, we feel sure that some of our members would, as in the past, appreciate being told of the opportunity to add to the collections of the Society.

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.

A recent acquisition of The Business Historical Society includes, among other things, nearly a hundred old railroad documents and a few pamphlets relating to industrial companies, bridges, canals, and early roads. These comprise annual reports, mortgages, law cases, acts of incorporation, guide books, and other miscellaneous papers.

A collection of early railroad history has been added to The Business Historical Society Collection. It covers the early history of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company.

While it may be doubted whether a great general who was also a great author gave expression to the precise sentiments which Mr. Shaw chooses to place in his mouth, yet it is nevertheless true that men of action, intent on the things of the present, are as a rule negligent, if not scornful, of the things of the past. A case could perhaps be made out for the thesis that just as old men live on memories so it is only when the spring-time of the race is over that much interest is manifested in what has gone by. Be this as it may, our own age differs markedly from others, even from a period so near to us as the eighteenth century, in the zeal with which it seeks to collect and preserve its ancestral heirlooms. Our forbears were apt to regard times antecedent to their own as rude and contemptible; they had escaped from a wilderness and were not anxious to be reminded of it.

Some time ago, an agent of the Business Historical Society located for us a collection of early customs records, many of them manuscript. Unfortunately no funds were available and the papers went elsewhere. Recently they again came to light, and this time, some money being forthcoming, the Society bought them. The papers, from the district to which they mainly relate, have been provisionally termed the Marblehead Collection. The bulk of them consists of port records — entries and clearances, customs officials' correspondence, dating from about 1790 and running to about 1825, with some similar material for the period of the 'thirties and 'forties. There are also a large number of printed customs instructions, circulars to officers, and so on. These run from about 1840 to about 1868.

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 historian of business encounters difficulties which are in some respects more baffling than those of other historians, especially if he attempts to penetrate the “dark ages” of seventy-five or a hundred years ago. The chronicler of political events has his party platforms, his speeches and private letters, his electoral votes, and the like. The literary historian has his books, pamphlets, and a flood of other material.

Revival of interest in maritime affairs is marked not only by such things as Shipping Boards and Emergency Fleet Corporations but also by the many collections of ship models, ship pictures, and other things pertaining to the sea now being made by private persons.

In the Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association for January 30,1889, there appears the obituary notice and a biographical sketch of the late Samuel M. Felton, one of the founders of the iron and steel industry of this country, whose collection of industrial literature has just been presented by his family to our Society. As the Bulletin remarks, “it was a remarkable era in our industrial history which produced such men and they were themselves remarkable men. There were giants in the land in those days.” Mr. Felton at the time of his death was president of the Pennsylvania Steel Company and had been its head from its organization in 1865. This was the company which first made a commercial success of the manufacture of Bessemer steel rails.

The Library's constant growth in variety as well as in physical size is nicely illustrated by the recent acquirement of the three books which form the subject of this article. Not only is a very wide range of American material available, but also we are reaching out into other lands and other times.

“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.

Something of the determination with which Massachusetts, and particularly Boston, waged the struggle for connection with the West, that is to say, for existence, is mirrored in a rather scarce state document which the Society possesses. The “Report of the Commissioners of the State of Massachusetts on the Routes of Canals from Boston Harbor to the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers” (Boston, 1826) conceals, beneath a mass of engineering data, a vivid story of New England's past.