The Society has prepared an exhibit of historical material in connection with the Tercentenary Celebration of Harvard University. Taking his cue from the year of Harvard's founding, the Executive Secretary has arranged documents and pictures to illustrate briefly the chief developments in American business during the past three hundred years. Business records collected by the Society (with some supplementary material from the Baker Library collections) have been placed in four groups, focusing upon the years 1636, 1736, 1836, and 1886. A brief description of the outstanding business features of the period accompanies each group of documents. These descriptive statements give a perspective upon business which is illuminating to many people, and they are reproduced here for the benefit of those who cannot see the exhibit itself.

The combination of some 200 small railroads in New England into the present few systems has involved so many interesting episodes that to describe them all would take a very long time. I shall limit myself therefore to describing a few typical series of events which led to consolidations in New England. The first two episodes deal with the incorporation of branch lines within the larger systems of from 60 to 80 years ago; the third episode deals with the attempted and in part successful building up of a through line from Boston to New York and to the Hudson River above New York.