Arthur H. Cole

An Approach to the Study of Entrepreneurship: A Tribute to Edwin F. Gay

The first formal meeting of the Economic History Association after This death should not close without appropriate tribute to our initial president and the first real American economic historian, Edwin F. Gay. More than most members of the Association, I feel his loss, since in one capacity or another I had the good fortune to be associated with him for almost thirty-five years. And I am the more appropriate agent to render our common tribute, since, more than others, I am indebted to him. I realize that, without his instruction, encouragement, and stimulation, I should not be standing here as a successor to him in office.

The International Scientific Committee on Price History

In September 1928, two eminent economists with an interest in price history met and conversed at Hanover, New Hampshire: Sir William Beveridge and Edwin F. Gay. The former was Director of the London School of Economics and the latter, Professor of Economic History at Harvard University. For some time Sir William had been conducting research in medieval English manorial records and had already amassed data on price movements of English commodities. Moreover, he seems to have shared Gays long-held views that broader research was needed to provide carefully selected and critically handled long homogeneous series of commodity prices and wages for a number of countries.

Entrepreneurship as an Area of Research

In his recently published volume on American economic history, Chester W. Wright says, in substance, that whereas he can give some account of the vicissitudes experienced by the several distributive factors of land, labor, and capital, he will have to deal in a very cursory fashion with the entrepreneur and with entrepreneurial gains since so little is known about them. I, for one, welcomed this statement of so eminent a student of American economic history since it gave such forthright support to ideas which I was at the time presenting to the recently organized Committee on Research in Economic History (ideas by no means wholly or even chiefly my own) relative to the desirability of research in the history of American entrepreneurship.

Economic History in the United States: Formative Years of a Discipline

The American people have usually been regarded as forward-looking and progressive, willing frequently to move their activities from one place to another to attain their hopes and inclined to be impatient with the heritage of the past. But there seems to have been, almost from the beginning, a minority of people in this country who found pleasure in looking back over the road that they and their forebears had traveled and in encouraging a scholarly chronicling of such progress. Perhaps the fact that so many early immigrants came from western Europe, with its much longer high-ways of economic and cultural advance, had something to do with this. But there was also the circumstance that the early settlers in America, as well as many later migrants to our West, were a Bible-reading people. The Bible is, after all, a record of movements among peoples through the centuries, and the duty placed on members of Protestant churches to become thoroughly familiar with their source of divine guidance could well have implanted a bias toward, or a fondness for, historical ideas and writings. And the citizens of a new country, it may be suggested, could hardly fail to be conscious of change through time as a true fact of life.

A Report on Research in Economic History

By reason of the war, a report to the Social Science Research Council more extensive than any I have hitherto submitted seems appropriate. The war has affected us in several ways. Our “terms of reference†reflected the international situation, since they directed our attention to the economic history of countries embraced in the Western Hemisphere; it has steadily diminished the speed with which our research work has gone forward, until that work is now largely at a standstill; and it lately has begun to make us think and plan in terms of a more effective postwar period. Inasmuch as the Committee has definitely selected the areas of special research interest that will probably engage its full attention in the years immediately ahead and inasmuch as the period of its present appointment may extend hardly beyond the war period itself, there appears to be particular reason why I should lay before you the general scheme of its research plans, the specific projects that it has thus far sponsored within its chosen fields, and a series of outlines of what might be attempted in these general areas by research people released sooner or later from war services. In a sense, this report of mine is an effort at postwar planning.

The Committee on Research in Economic History: An Historical Sketch

The Committee on Research in Economic History was established in 1940, more than a generation ago. Most of those who were active in its creation and administration have died or retired from active academic life; and surely a fresh direction of internal evolution has altered, at least in important ways, the objectives of the discipline. Accordingly, it appears appropriate to set down here an account of what were the hopes and intentions of those especially active in its initiation and early planning, and to record its more obvious achievements. Members of ensuing generations will have time in their later lives to pass judgment on the intellectual value of this particular effort at academic improvement and intellectual growth. Indeed, I propose to close my survey with the transmogrification of the Committee into the Council—an event of the mid-1950s, at a point in time already far enough removed to offer a considerable perspective.

The Mystery of Fuel Wood Marketing In the United States

Although fuel wood still supplied 70 per cent of the total energy requirements of the United States in 1900, a marketing mechanism for the millions of cords consumed each year is not evident. Professor Cole concludes that no other commodity of such importance had such little effect on distributive institutions.

Aggregative Business History

One of the pioneers in the historical study of business and entrepreneurship recalls the origins of the two fields and suggests a synthesis as a basis for further research and analysis. The Editors and Dr. Cole welcome comments and discussion of these ideas.

The Tempo of Mercantile Life in Colonial America

This study of the working habits of early American businessmen focuses on long-forgotten details that help clarify methods of the day and suggest that business in colonial times had not yet become an end in itself nor a dominant means for self-expression.

Business Manuscripts: A Pressing Problem

Relations between large corporations and economic historians form a problem that has already been aired in the JOURNAL and no doubt will reappear. Believing that the preservation and accessibility of business records is a pressing and practical aspect of the problem, I have asked Arthur H. Cole to outline in broad terms developments during recent decades in the handling of business manuscripts and have asked Thomas C. Cochran to summarize the methods used and the results attained in the newest organized effort.