The problems of banking which upset the business world of 1834 were inextricably bound up with politics. The second Bank of the United States had been incorporated in 1816 in order to aid the government in its financial operations and to check the overissue of notes by state banks. While the Bank was able to force state banks to resume specie payment as early as February, 1817, in doing so it made many lasting enemies. In following years the Bank, in turn, resented efforts on the part of various states to tax its branches, for one of the valued privileges of the Bank, as chartered, was exemption from taxation.

Two letters from an interesting old letter book of Henry Lloyd, a Boston merchant, bring to mind the importance played by the Boston Light in the early history of lighthouse service in America. The Boston Light, built in 1716, was the first lighthouse built on this continent. The responsibility for its erection and maintenance was assumed by the General Court of the Province; The following letter written by Henry Lloyd to Mr. Hugh Hall Wentworth, who possibly lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gives the original cost of the structure, and, further, points out that it served as a model for other lighthouses along the coast:

A new volume published by the American Geographical Society and edited by John K. Wright will be of special interest to New England.

In these days of complex industrial organization it is hard to realize that the time ever existed when a complete manufacturing process, together with specifications for equipment, might be described in two pages. The following account of the process for making potash is taken from the letter book of Henry Lloyd for the years 1765–1767:

When an English merchant set out to collect a debt from a recalcitrant colonial across the water, he was evidently put to it for a type of statement sufficiently imposing in appearance to bring the desired results. One document, bearing the date 1729, among the Society's acquisitions, illustrates the point. The reproduction of the first page which appears opposite gives evidence of the formality followed.

From Smith College word comes, to the Business Historical Society, of a new series of studies to be made in the field of business and economic history. Concerning this project the director, Dr. Esther Lowenthal, professor of economics at Smith College, notes in The Smith Alumnae for November, 1932: