Were frontier land investments during the nineteenth century as unprofitable as most scholars have surmised? The history of one of the most significant land-investment firms serves as a useful case study in suggesting an answer.

While the fact of Dutch capitalist involvement in building and operating the American railroad network in the nineteenth century is relatively well known, the ways in which the Amsterdam capital market was tapped by American railroad companies or their representatives have remained relatively obscure. In this article, Dr. Veenendaal, using hitherto unknown archival material, explains how the promoter of the Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf Railroad (now the Kansas City Southern), Arthur E. Stilwell, set out to procure the millions he needed to realize his dream, a direct railroad from the Midwest to the Gulf.

In the late eighteenth century, the competitive position of French industry was seriously undermined by the sudden influx of inexpensive English goods—the products of the First Industrial Revolution. Responding to this challenge, French government officials established trade fairs—such as the Paris Industrial Exposition of 1806—to promote the introduction of commercially viable technologies. In this article, Professor Hafter takes a close look at this 1806 exposition. She discovers that, in addition to praising English-style machinery, the exposition's judges also praised traditional French production methods—a choice, she suggests, that reflected the uneven pattern of French industrialization.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the business man in folklore is that he is far from an important figure in it. From this we may deduce that among those people who have created what we call folklore the business man has either not played an important rôle or his function and contribution have not been understood. He is not, however, altogether missing; we might not recognize him, since he is a remote and shadowy figure compared with the business man as we think of him today. But he is there, and the very form and circumstances in which he appears have meaning.

Professor Mercer examines the subsidies to seven major land-grant railroads in the United States and Canada and finds that such subsidies made very substantial contributions toward paying for the investment in those railroads.