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Business Manuscripts: A Pressing Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Arthur H. Cole
Arthur H. Cole
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Perhaps there exists no better index of the increased sophistication of research in American economic and business history than the enhanced, still expanding utilization of manuscript materials, especially the records of individual businessmen and corporations. One has only to compare the scholarly productions of a generation ago—Copeland's Cotton Manufacturing Industry, Eliot Jones's Anthracite Coal Combinations, or Lippincott's Manufactures in the Ohio Valley—with nearly any first-class corresponding volume of recent years—for example, in the series edited by N. S. B. Gras—to be struck with the greatly increased reliance of recent and contemporary authors upon unpublished materials.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , May 1945 , pp. 43 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1945

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References

1 Writers upon European topics, at least those of medieval and early modern dating, had been accustomed to exploring the resources of the Public Record Office or the manuscript material in the Bibliothèque Nationale, but students of American economic and business development had earlier relied upon printed materials, although the latter, of course, included some sources which must be considered primary, such as Congressional hearings or the published correspondence of economic statesmen.

2 Hower, Ralph M., The Preservation of Business Records (Boston: Business. Historical Society, 1940)Google Scholar.

3 Occasionally the liquidator of a company or the administrator of an estate will demand some small, perhaps token, payment; and some early business records are now getting into the lists of secondhand book dealers.

4 Here again, I have the temerity to be personal and to point to an article in The Library Quarterly, VIII (1938), 93–114Google Scholar, in which, with the aid of some of my associates in the Baker Library, I attempted to present in considerable detail the methods of handling business manuscripts that have been devised at that institution.

5 This is a minimal figure of use. Not only is there the possibility that holders of stack permits used these books, but all noteworthy new items are displayed at the Faculty Club and circulate to the faculty on special cards. Furthermore, some of these 264 books might have been used on temporary reserve for student required reading.

6 The Business School Library does have sizable collections for which there has been no user at all over the past fourteen years, for example, the Witherle material on Maine lumbering (250 volumes plus II packing cases of unbound items), the Bigelow-Kennard collection on jewelry merchandising (59 packing cases), or the Wilder & Estabrook material on the tobacco business, including trade with Cuba (20 volumes plus 38 boxes). Only two persons have made use of the Burlington land-department records—several tons deposited with the Library—but of course one of them was Richard C. Overton!

7 Cochran, Thomas C. has outlined their scheme in the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XVIII (1944), 59–62Google Scholar.

8 Mention should also be made of somewhat similar steps being taken in Philadelphia under the inspiration of Miss Bezanson and of R. Norris Williams, II, acting director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

9 Mr. Cochran has temporarily been aided by a small grant from the Social Science Research Council; but most of this money has gone into organization expenses for his committee.

10 There is the potentiality that Mr. Cochran will train a few such persons in his new course in business history at New York University.

11 Thanks in large measure to the activities of Stanley Pargellis, Richard C. Overton, and Thomas C. Cochran, a good beginning has been made in the rapprochement between corporations and scholars. Recently the Association of American Railroads, through Colonel Henry, has announced its readiness to intercede between serious students and the individual railroad companies whose documents the former desire to examine.

12 I may be too pessimistic in the latter regard. Mr. Cochran reports a surprisingly favorable reception to his overtures. Quite a number of companies appear to have clear purpose for one reason or another—to preserve their records in all essential completeness and to make them available to all comers. And the same seems to be true in Philadelphia. The cases of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company in New York and of the Pusey and Jones Corporation in Philadelphia are cited among others. Possibly the good intentions regarding preservation are a function of the relatively easy financial condition of many concerns during these war years—if not of the federal tax structure—just as high profits in the 1920's gave a temporary boost to business history. Perhaps they are not; and it may take a financial depression to decide the question. I do remember the high mortality of corporation libraries in the 1930's.

13 Hamilton, J. G. de R., “On the Importance of Unimportant Documents,” The Library Quarterly, XII (1942), 518Google Scholar.

14 I doubt if library schools should be approached on this matter, since they would hardly be able to give the instruction in economic and business history and in modern business organization, which the archivist should have as essentials in his work. To be sure, there are a few universities where library and business schools both exist; and there joint programs might be worked out.

15 There is a possibility that this census will be attempted in the postwar period by the Committee on Research in Economic History.