Like all others in the historical profession, the student of economic and business history is obligated to ascertain the truth about the social order of the past, remote and immediate. To those who rely heavily upon historical data to understand the present that obligation is a categorical imperative. In the search for truth, whether in Western Europe or in the United States, the historian is faced with the necessity of correctly evaluating the evolution, functions, and operation in society of the large business unit. In some areas in space and time the large unit may be a simple partnership, in others a large corporation, in still others it may be a cartel. In any case, the historian must collect and evaluate data about this phenomenon which is almost exclusively a product of modern Western Civilization, particularly during the past one hundred years.

In discussing this topic I have chosen to consider only the original records of American business concerns. To be sure, there is a wealth of printed materials, primary and secondary, which are invaluable to research in the history of business, such materials as legal records, reports of government investigations, and trade publications; the indispensable research material for the study of business administration and operation, however, is the inside record of the individual company. It is, therefore, the availability of that record which I shall deal with here.

The distinctive and by far the most difficult of all the “Problems in Writing the History of Large Business Units” centers around the word “large,” because the mere size of the project complicates each step of the historian's program. Let me be specific.