Past, Present, and Future of the Business Historical Society

When I agreed to recount the story of the Business Historical Society, I naturally thought it was my own swan song that was expected. The occasion was presented to me as the probable closing of a period in the history of the Society and the opening of another day. On thinking over the events of the last twenty-five years, however, I have discovered a number of facts of larger issue and have had a chance to peer beneath the curtain of changing circumstances of world-wide import. The Business Historical Society is not just one more of those numerous American organizations that display our national weakness. It was set up under circumstances of high import by men who were feeling their way toward something significant which they but vaguely understood. In this story, therefore, are revealed some of the social processes which are the fabric of our history. There is, indeed, very little of the merely antiquarian in the theme with which we have to deal—the first survey of the Business Historical Society's experiences.