Search

Much of the research into the beliefs and attitudes of American businessmen in the 20th century suggests that heterodoxy and division have been the rule rather than the exception. Unlike their counterparts in a number of industrial countries, American businessmen failed to develop a common sense of their role as the dominant social class. Herman Krooss, in his survey of businessmen's views during the period 1920-60, concluded that in spite of some narrowing in the range of opinions so that the distance between extreme opinions has lessened over time the differences still seem more significant than the similarities. Robert Wiebe's work on an earlier period (c.1902-1916) revealed the often contradictory views which businessmen held on many leading issues of the day. The absence of a shared sense of identity and social purpose among businessmen, carries with it the implication that they were unable to translate their power directly into either public policy or consistent private practice. The recent discovery of a small collection of private papers affords an opportunity to reconsider the social role of American business. The papers contain summary reports of several confidential business conferences held before and during World War I. They also include correspondence between a group of the most influential employer spokesmen of that era.

The primary source materials used in the preparation of the study include: state and federal manuscript census returns, corporate record files, public registers and reports, city directories, and local newspapers. Before examining Irish Catholic responses to labor-market discrimination, three points must be made clear. First of all, in the absence of recorded evidence of religious affiliations in the Waltham population, it has been necessary to infer religion from nativity, from parental nativity, and from membership in organizations of known religious composition. Second, the Irish Catholic population had very high rates of physical mobility into and out of Waltham. To the extent that this was true, the labor-market experience portrayed below is not that of the same persons at different times but much more often that of different persons at different times. A third point worth noting is that while many, if not most, of Waltham's Irish were famine immigrants and their descendants, it was, in practice, impossible to identify them in this way. Nonetheless, it must always be borne in mind that some Irish preceded the famine immigrants while many came in the post-famine period.

The present research upon the Waltham system was originally directed toward tracing the movement of recent Irish immigrants into the work force of the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, in the period of 1850 to 1865. The conclusions suggested by the data were strikingly at odds with those of other investigators on a number of points. In particular, it was discerned that the supposedly "docile" Irish did not become willing partners in the deterioration of the Waltham system, except in a most extraordinary way.

This article presents abstracts of several papers about economic history published in the June 1965 issue of the Journal of Economic History. In the article External Equilibrium and Internal Convertibility: Financial Policy in Meiji, Japan, Hugh T. Patrick examined the role of financial policy and central banking in Meiji, Japan in terms of government expenditures and revenues, of the monetary system, and of the balance of payments. While, in the article The Economic History of Malaysia: A Bibliographic Essay, Wong Lin Ken provided a critical bibliography of English-language writings on the economic history of what is now Malaysia.

Presents several letters to the editor. Gladness to have "Labor History" review; Regret over not able to convey about second volume; Regret to find fresh evidence of plagiarism.