Since 1951 the population, social structure, and economy of Norristown, Pennsylvania, have been the focus of study of an interdisciplinary research seminar at the University of Pennsylvania. Under the over-all theme of technological change and social adjustment, a variety of investigations have been conducted to discover the ways in which the processes of industrialization and urbanization in the twentieth century have operated dynamically to bring about changes in the social and economic structure of the Norristown community.

The purpose of this paper is to describe briefly the administrative organization and planning system of the typical large Soviet steel plant, and then show how the plant director carries out one of his essential functions both with the help of and in spite of the institutional framework within which he has to operate. Our attention will be focused primarily at the level of the individual firm, but in order to appreciate the problems of firm management we must first see how the individual enterprise fits into the all-pervading Soviet industrial bureaucracy.

This article deals with the interrelations between the economyand the government of the expanding Spanish empire in the era of overseas expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, it attempts to show how the government reacted to the phenomenon of the growing empire. In a full treatment it would be necessary to show how the various Spanish territories of the Peninsula were unified by the process of the “reconquista” and by the marriage policy of the Catholic Icings; how during the sixteenth century Navarre and Portugal were joined; how the overseas expansion of Spanish power, beginning in the late Middle Ages, continued during the sixteenth century; and how Spain, as a consequence of Hapsburg marriage policy, built an important bridge of possessions from the Netherlands to Italy. Obviously, these questions cannot be dealt with in detail in one article, but they form the background for the following discussion.

When in 1872 the English Reverend Alexander King, Secretary of the Freedmen's Mission Aid Society, returned to Blackheath (London) from his travels in the American West, he wrote a letter to the editor of the London Observer. Said he: “I believe our great national problem … must be solved by … the British occupation of America. Emigration, on a grand scale, to the trans-Mississippi regions will prove the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon people, and our cheapest and most effectual remedy for some of our most formidable national evils.”

This article addresses the issue of what made early mutual savings bank trustees tick. It explores two hypotheses: (1) trustees were trying to maximize their depositors’ “well-being” by maximizing the real rate of return on their banks’ portfolios given legal constraints; (2) trustees were trying to profit from their positions. These two hypotheses are tested using investment data drawn from the archives of several of New York's oldest mutuals. Besides offering insights into the objectives of early trustees, the analysis of mutual portfolios will also shed light on several broader issues dealing with capital market efficiency and the effect of legal constraints on resource allocation.