The village shoemaker has become merely a tradition. His little shop, if it remains standing, has been put to other uses, and his cobbler's bench, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, has found its way into present-day living-rooms in the guise of a coffee table or smoking stand. Of the product of his skill, little remains because, unlike the cabinet maker and metal worker, he worked in goods that served their purpose and were gone, but he was as true a craftsman as they, and perhaps a more important figure in the life of a town. From, him young and old obtained their footwear, and to him they brought it back to be mended. Farm horses and saddle horses wore the harnesses he made; ploughs and carriages alike depended on the strength and stitching of his traces. And, in return, he got from his fellow townsmen sometimes cash but more frequently the necessities of his family's existence. In his ledger, debits and credits reflected the whole business of give-and-take in the life of the community.

In 1855 the German journalist, novelist, and historian, Gustav Freytag, gave to the world his popular novel Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit). The scene of the story is Eastern Germany, where Germans, Poles, and Jews lived in conflict about the year 1848.

The Waltham history, edited by Professor N. S. B. Gras, is eleventh in the Harvard Studies in Business History series. It is a story which has required a deft and delicate touch in the recording, and the reader will early come to appreciate Dr. Moore's handling of complicated factual material, as well as to respect the conclusions he has pointed up. Dr. Moore's history of the Waltham Watch Company is a study of business policy—a detailed analysis of the business methods of the top men at Waltham. Were there such a thing as a “normal” American business, the chapters of its history would fall neatly and evenly into order—management, labor, plant and technological processes, finance, distribution, and external influences. Happy the historian to whose lot such a tidy assignment falls! It seems reasonably certain, however, that no recorder will ever face a perfect balance of the forces involved in producing and selling merchandise.

What kind of a people were the Americans who so energetically drove forward American business expansion in the nineteenth century? We find something of an answer in little vignettes scattered through a book of observations on travel in the United States in the early 1830's, which has become a classic description of American life and people. Its author, Alexis de Tocqueville, was not particularly concerned with business; he was interested chiefly in the American experiment in democracy. Yet his observations are extremely suggestive. He gives a glimpse of the general esprit of the American, of his motives or objectives, of his restlessness and his energy, of the generally fluid state of American society, and of the vastness of American opportunity. De Tocqueville's observations are not objective descriptions; they are the impressions and interpretations of a philosophical observer and student of society who was familiar with England as well as Western Europe. From the perspective of today, they appear remarkably keen; indeed they were in large measure prophetic of what came to pass. In speaking of the American people he says that “boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and it greatness.”