During the present year has occurred an anniversary of special interest in the history of American business and to the student of business history.

Sometime in the eighteenth century, Marie, sister of Jacobus Perier of Batavia, East Indies, married Pierre Dutilh, son of Abel. In the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library are 12,000 to 15,000 items of Dutilh business correspondence, written in French, Spanish, Hollandish, German, and English during the years 1755-1874, the bulk being from 1755-1803. These are arranged chronologically, but have not been indexed.

Many readers of the Bulletin may be interested in Paul H. Giddens' The Birth of the Oil Industry. The story is concerned chiefly with the events which led to the establishment of the petroleum industry and with its first years as a successful industry, and it traces the rise, prosperity, and decline of one of the most extreme speculative booms the country has ever seen. Large fortunes were made — and lost — in a short time. But the important fact about the book is that it shows how a new industry was built and records the factors which went into its making.

A recent phenomenon in business is the large corporation. The capitalization of the Northern Pacific at $100,000,000 was considered unwise and even fantastic in the 1860's.