There was once a Journal of Economic and Business History published by the Business Historical Society and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Four bound volumes and an extra supplementary volume are on the shelf before us. They represent the combined efforts of many scholars in America and Europe. The depression caught the Journal only part way up the hill and sent it down again. Countless letters have come in to ask why we do not start up again or when the Journal will be reestablished. Just today such an inquiry came from a government bureau in Europe.

The addition to the Business School Library of the Kress collection on business and economics presents as great an opportunity and challenge to the business historian as it does to the student interested in economic or politico-economic history. Here, for the first time at Harvard, is available a large collection of writings extending back to the dawn of printing, which have never been extensively surveyed from the particular viewpoint of the business historian.

The collection, and the room in which it is housed, come to us through the generosity of Mr. Claude Washington Kress, of New York City. The books and pamphlets themselves, to the number in excess of thirty thousand, were assembled in his lifetime by Professor H. S. Foxwell, of Cambridge, England.

George Washington Whistler, the father of the artist, ended his civil engineering career as consultant to the Russian Czar after a life of distinguished service in the planning and construction of pioneer American railroads, including the Baltimore & Ohio and the present Boston & Albany.

The edifice occupied by the Hall of Records at Annapolis was completed only in 1935. Its erection was made possible as part of the Tercentenary Celebration of the State of Maryland. The Land Office was given quarters in the building and moved in during the early part of 1935. The Hall of Records, proper, was opened on October 1, 1935, at which time the present writer, the first archivist of Maryland, entered upon his duties.

As students continue to re-work the field of American history, they turn up a great variety of new material. Some of it is of limited significance—the sparse gleanings that one expects to find where many careful reapers have been at work. But some of it is rich and important, as unexplored aspects of the past attract attention; and this is especially true of the growing knowledge about business in America's development. It is a striking paradox that while private enterprise was overwhelmingly dominant in American life, historians gave it not the slightest heed; but now, in a period when that dominance has definitely waned, historians are devoting an increasing amount of attention to the role of business in the growth of the nation.