Interest in the safeguarding of the records of business houses in Great Britain began to be manifested about a generation ago, when it was realized that an intelligent use of the books of textile mill-owners enabled the historian to give a more convincing account of the industrial revolution in the North than had hitherto been available.

Ours is not the only period in which business men have had annoying restrictions placed upon their activities by outside agencies. In the Middle Ages business was almost completely controlled by regulations imposed by the gilds, by political rulers, and by the Church. The gilds restricted the number of persons permitted to enter given occupations, sometimes established prices which would be fair primarily to the consumer and would allow only a small profit to the producer, and attempted to exercise control over the volume of production.

In this day, when insecure living and working conditions have come to be recognized as a great problem in social security, it is interesting to see how one industrial firm attacked that problem almost a century ago. The firm was the Waltham Watch Co., and the executive responsible for its labor management was Aaron Dennison. The watch company was one of three large manufacturing enterprises started by Dennison. The others were the Dennison Manufacturing Co., of Framingham, Massachusetts, and the Dennison Watch Case Co., of Birmingham, England.