On the eve of the merger mania at the turn of the century, the reversal of the first two words in the name of the Shawmut National Bank made it the successor in a consolidation of ten national banks in Boston. Many of the characteristics of this consolidation are exceptions to common generalizations about corporations and control; mergers and motivations.

The role of the historian dealing with transportation is a curious one in that it has rarely, if ever, been defined. Part of the difficulty, perhaps, is inherent in the subject itself and in mankind's (not too broad a term) conception of it.

Professor Whitten estimates capitalization, production and returns, and profits for a Louisiana sugar plantation owned and operated by Andrew Durnford, a black planter.

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.

It has been the misfortune of the Business Historical Society to lose within the first year of its existence three of its founders: John Wingate Weeks, died July 12; Charles Chauncey Stillman, died August 17; and Frank W. Remick, died October 16. They were, all three, men of great business administrative ability and eminent for their public spirit.

The early development of Rochester as a flour-milling center demonstrates several themes. Here, as in countless other places, the resiliency of the petty capitalist in the face of natural disasters and violent commodity price swings stands clear. But the early millers, flexible and energetic in entrepreneurial activity, were also, like their product, perishable. The broader and more important pattern is that of the persistence of an industry favored by basic geographic and market circumstances. Individual milk succumbed in rapid sequence, but rapidly they were replaced. Surviving the handicap of limited capital, the milling industry burst its heal bonds and exploited the regional potentialities of water access to Canada. Transition to what then amounted to a national market came in 1823, when the Erie Canal linked Rochester with the Hudson. Thus a new epoch was forecast, when a broadened market would not only stimulate local growth but shape it through complex economic influences hitherto little felt by the millers on the Genesee.