I regularly run across items that I want to throw out into the universe in the hope that they find the right person. This is the case with something that I recently found relating to women working during war time. It comes from the Bulletin, a publication produced by the Women’s Bureau, an agency in the Department of Labor. The Bulletin covered many topics in its time, but my attention was caught by “Series of Studies on Employment of Women in Various Defense Industries,” Bulletin number 192, from 1943, a set of reports which include the following:

• Women’s Employment in Aircraft Assembly Plants in 1942 (No. 192-1)
• Women’s Employment in Artillery Ammunition Plants, 1942 (No. 192-2)
• Employment of Women in the Manufacture of Cannon and Small Arms in 1942 (No. 192-3)
• Employing Women in Shipyards (No. 192-6)
• Women’s Employment in Foundries, 1943 (No. 192-70)
• Employment of Women in Army Supply Depots in 1943 (No. 192-80)
• Women’s Wartime Jobs in Cane-Sugar Refineries (No. 192-90)

In part, the series provides a perspective on the real women embodied by Rosie the Riveter, an icon of World War II. As it turns out, the topic of women who worked in government or defense-related industries seems to have been topic of interest from the very first issue of the Bulletin, which discussed the “Proposed Employment of Women During the War in the Industries of Niagara Falls, N.Y.” in 1919. Subsequent issues of the Bulletin, which cover women in government and defense production, include:

• Women in the Government Service (No. 8)
• Employment of Women in the Federal Government, 1923 to 1939 (No. 182)
• Women’s Employment in War Industries (No. 189)
• Women’s Factory Employment in an Expanding Aircraft Production Program (No. 189-1)
• Employment of Women in the Manufacture of Small-Arms Ammunition (No. 189-2)
• Employment of Women in the Manufacture of Artillery Ammunition (No. 189-3)
• The Employment of and Demand for Women Workers in the Manufacture of Instruments – Aircraft, Optical and Fire-Control, and Surgical and Dental (No. 189-4)
• Recreation and Housing for Women War Workers: A Handbook on Standards (No. 190)
• Women’s Work in the War (No. 193)
• “Equal Pay” for Women in War Industries (No. 196)
• Women Workers in Some Expanding Wartime Industries: New Jersey, 1942 (No. 197)
• Negro Women War Workers (No. 205)
• Women Workers After VJ-Day in One Community: Bridgeport, Connecticut (No. 216)

Beyond the issues on women in government and the defense industry, the Bulletin published so much on women filling other jobs. There were articles on women in individual industries and occupations like candy making, day care, retail, manufacturing industries, telephone industries, etc., as well as pieces on women in the sciences (No. 223) and medicine (No. 203). It also published pieces on state laws and comprehensive statistical compilations, such as “Women’s Occupations Through Seven Decades” (No. 218) and, “Changes in Women’s Occupations, 1940-1950” (No. 253).

If you are interested in looking at the history of women in the workforce, we have a guide, Women in Business and the Workforce, and of course, the Bulletin is an excellent resource.

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This post was written by Taylor Brooks, a librarian in the Library’s Researcher Experience Section.

Join us virtually on Wednesday, October 30, at 1p.m. (Eastern Time), for a discussion with author Dr. Naa Oyo A. Kwate and librarians from the Science & Business Reading Room about her book, “White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation” (University of Minnesota Press, 2023). Dr. Kwate will share how she utilized various Library resources to provide a well-researched account of the racial dynamics that have shaped the fast-food industry.

 

In the early 20th century, “Hot Shoppes”, automats, and fast-food restaurants were new additions to the nation’s restaurant industry. These quickly became spaces of exclusion, presenting a clear image of who could partake in this quintessentially American cuisine.

Just three years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, prominent African American reporter Sara Slack, writing for the New York Amsterdam News, was denied service at a Baltimore White Tower fast-food restaurant. The subsequent lawsuit filed by Sara Slack was one of many cases concerning segregation and discrimination in public spaces. When the U.S. District Court and U.S Court of Appeals ruled in Sara Slack v. Atlantic White Tower System, Inc., (284 F.2d 746, 4th Cir. (1960)), that a restaurant owner had the right to deny service to African American customers, the ruling and media narrative were consistent with the realities faced by other African American restaurant clientele, including Charles E. Williams, who filed a similar lawsuit against an Alexandria, VA Hot Shoppe.

And so, due to persistent discrimination, the popularity of fast-food in African American communities was minimal. In fact, marketing campaigns of previous decades, such as the 1929 anti-chain grocery store ads from Mobile, Alabama, urged Black consumers to “Buy Where You Can Work” or “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”  and shop exclusively at businesses that employed Black workers. This practice was later applied to other businesses that provided public accommodations, including fast food restaurants, and continued into the 1950s and 1960s.

Starting in the 1980s and continuing through the present day, African American publications and media have heavily marketed the nation’s largest fast-food chains in their advertising. Fast food establishments, which once barred African American customers from entering, are now predominately located in Black neighborhoods and some are even owned by Black franchisees.

The shift in fast food industry and business tactics in the Black community is traced in the James Beard Award-winning book “White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation” by Dr. Naa Oyo A. Kwate, showing that the “story of fast food’s relationship to Black folks is a story about America itself.”

Made at the Library is an event series that highlights works inspired by and emerging from research at the Library of Congress. Featuring authors, artists, and other creators in conversation with library experts, this series delves deeply into the process of engaging with the library’s collections.

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This post was written by Claire D’Mura, a research and reference specialist in the Library’s Science Section.

There has hardly been another plant collector as intrepid as Ynes Mexia, a Mexican American former rancher and social worker, who collected more than 145,000 specimens despite starting her pioneering botanical career only in her mid-50s. Mexia collected plants primarily in Central and South America, as well as in the Western United States and was the first person to collect specimens from Denali, Alaska. She was known for going deeper into unexplored places than other plant collectors of the time, and having more meaningful interactions with the locals, making full use of her fluency in Spanish and hiring guides from remote villages to take her well off the beaten path.

Mexia was born in 1870 in Washington, D.C. to General Enrique A. Mexia, a Mexican diplomat, and Sarah Wilmer Mexia. Her grandfather was José Antonio Mexia, a Mexican military officer, for whom the Texas town of Mexia is named.  While the details of her childhood are a bit uncertain, it is generally accepted that her early years were unstable, marked by frequent relocations, her parents’ eventual separation and litigation over inheritances. She moved to Mexico with her father, where she worked on the family ranch, and later took over the management of it after her father’s death. She married twice, with the first marriage ending with the death of her husband, and the second ending in divorce after the husband bankrupted the ranch.

After these many turbulent years, Mexia moved to San Francisco to seek mental health care from Dr. Philip King Brown, the founder of a treatment center for working-class women with tuberculosis. Brown’s philosophy on treatment, both for tuberculosis and mental health, required patients to engage in a hobby or occupation to facilitate a sense of efficacy and confidence in their abilities, and to pull patients’ focus away from their condition. To Mexia, he prescribed physical activities such as walking, and encouraged her to take classes that might interest her. As her condition improved and she gained confidence, she joined the Sierra Club, which was the beginning of her road into conservation and botany.

Mexia began taking hikes with the Sierra Club and became active in California’s nascent conservation movement. She joined the Save the Redwoods League and advocated for the protection of California’s redwood forests. It was this interest that led her, in 1921, to pursue a degree in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley. At this point, she was 51 years old and felt she had truly found her calling.

In her short botany career, Mexia undertook at least eight lengthy excursions. Her first significant collecting trip was to Mexico, in 1925. She travelled with a group of students from Stanford University but split from the group and began collecting on her own. Mexia gathered more than 1,500 specimens on this first expedition, including the first plant that would carry the Mexia name, Mimosa Mexiae.

One can get a sense of Mexia’s relentless nature in her writings on her travels. Of a 1926 trip to Mexico, she wrote, “I found the luxuriance of the vegetation actually embarrassing. It was hard to know where to begin to collect and still harder to know when to stop” (Mexia, 1929).   In her 1937 article for the Sierra Club Bulletin, “Camping on the Equator,” she described a time when one of her guides insisted the group cease traveling for the day and rest in a village, as there would be no shelter on the path ahead. “To this I vehemently objected, for surely a three hours’ ride was not a day’s journey,” she wrote. “Finally, I rode on, driving the pack horses so that Jose and his son followed perforce. After all it was a bluff on my part, for I did not know the way; but it worked!”

Mexia’s most adventurous and lengthy trip was her 3,000-mile trek across South America, following the Amazon and Marañón Rivers. “I decided that if I wanted to become better acquainted with the South American Continent the best way would be to make my way right across it,” she wrote in a Sierra Club Bulletin article titled “Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon.” When she decided to make this trip across the widest part of South America, she was already on the East coast of the continent, having been collecting in Brazil. Starting out from here, she would be moving against the flow of the river, i.e. not the usual way.  Undeterred, she wrote, “Well—Why not?”

The trip began with a journey up the Amazon on a steam ship. During the vessel’s daily stops to replenish supplies of wood, Mexia would collect plants in the vicinity. Upon her arrival in Iquitos, Peru, just below where the Ucayali and Marañón rivers meet to form the Amazon proper, she stayed for a month to prepare to press further, up the Marañón River and into the Upper Amazon region. For this portion of the journey Mexia and her guides (and all her equipment) traveled in canoes. When the rainy season began, “with unprecedented violence,” the group had to set up camp for three months, before they could make their way back down river by raft (Mexia, 1933/1995, p. 149). Despite the wet conditions and treacherous terrain, she managed to bring back 65,000 specimens.

Mexia kept meticulous field notes, but did not do any formal processing of her collected specimens herself. Instead, her friend, Nina Floy Bracelin, or Bracie as she was commonly known, did most of the processing of Mexia’s collections back in California. For Mexia, her collecting was just one part in her wider interest in the natural world, and she sold her specimens to finance her expeditions. She once wrote to Dr. Brown, “I am not a dyed-in-the-wool scientist, I am a nature lover and a bit of an adventuress and my collecting is secondary, even though very real and very important” (qtd. in Bonta, 1995, p. 136).

Among the 145,000 specimens Mexia collected on her excursions are 500 previously undocumented species and two new genera. Her specimens can still be found at herbaria around the world. More than 50 plants are named after her.

Mexia died in 1938, just 13 years after the start of her botany career. Upon her death, she left her estate to the Sierra Club and Save the Redwood League. A redwood grove was named in her honor.

Many articles about Mexia call her a “late bloomer,” but I see her more as a defiant bloomer; as someone who is astoundingly successful and good at what they do despite an environment that has been less than hospitable. Where many would have withered, she found a way to thrive, like the small cliff ferns clinging to vertical rock faces where other plants could not. Supplied with little fertile soil for most of her life, Mexia, like the ferns she loved, managed to find her anchor in the most untamed lands. Traveling with purpose and a strong sense of adventure, Mexia was able to make contributions to the study of botany and of biodiversity that still have meaning today.

Works Consulted:

• Anema, Durlynn. The Perfect Specimen: the 20th Century Renown Botanical Collector – Ynés Mexía. 2019.
• Bracelin, N. F. “Ynes Mexia.” Madroño. Vol. 4, no. 8, Oct. 1938. p 273-275.
• Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Mexía, Y. (1929). “Botanical Trails in Old Mexico – The Lure of the Unknown. Madroño. Vol. 1, no. 16. 1929. p. 227-38.
• Mexia, Ynes. “Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon.” Sierra Club Bulletin. February 1933. p. 88-96. Rpt. in Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Mexia, Ynes. “Camping on the Equator.” Sierra Club Bulletin. February 1937. p. 85-91. Rpt. in Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Bracelin, Nina Floy. The Ynés Mexía Botanical Collections: Oral History Transcript. Recorded Interview Conducted by Annetta Carter, 1983 June 13. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA,. Interview by Annetta Carter, 1983.
• Late Bloomer: The Short, Prolific Career of Ynes Mexia. Science Talk Archive, New York Botanical Garden.
• Ynes Mexia. National Park Service.
• Untold Stories: Ynes Mexia. California Academy of Sciences.
• Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon – A narrative map of Ynes Mexia’s Amazon expedition. New York Botanical Garden Steere Herbarium.

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In my post on the International Time Recording Company, I mentioned two people – Frederick Winslow Taylor and Charles R. Flint – and I wanted to know more about these gentleman. I have already written a post about Frederick Winslow Taylor. Now, it is Charles R. Flint’s turn.

Charles Ranlett Flint was born in Maine in 1850. His mother died when he was young and his father, Benjamin Flint, who owned and managed ships through the firm Chapman & Flint, moved the firm and family to New York City. Charles graduated from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and eventually worked for a shipping company, which would become W. R. Grace and Company.

Flint became a highly successful businessman in a diverse array of industries and earned the moniker “father of trusts”. In his autobiography, Memories of an Active Life; Men, and Ships, and Sealing Wax, he recounted how he earned the moniker after newspapers reported on his speech to members of the Illinois Manufacturers Association. I am not sure if this is the exact article he has in mind, but I found an October 10, 1900 Chicago Tribune article with a headline that reads “‘Trusts Father’ Defends Them.”

Given Flint’s profile as a successful businessman, this speech garnered attention. Articles covering it, such as the New York Tribune’s “America Economic Master of World: Charles R. Flint Addresses Illinois Manufacturers,” ran in influential papers of the day. In the speech, Flint talked about the benefits of consolidation, including the potential development of specialized machinery and processes enabled by centralized manufacturing; the reduction of overhead and other wasteful costs; direct sales as a means to reduce distribution costs; a reduction of inventory costs; and savings on insurance and interest. If you are interested in what Flint had to say about consolidations, he wrote a piece on the topic in the June 1921 issue of North American Review (Vol. 213).

Over the course of his career, Flint served as president of United States Electric Company and was involved in consolidating companies in several other industries. He provided a bit of detail on a few of them in his autobiography, but these are just a few:

United States Rubber. In 1892, several companies in the rubber shoe and boot industry consolidated. Preferred stock entry #1333, in the Listing Statements of the New York Stock Exchange, lists nine of the companies that were part of the combination, including Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Co., American Rubber Co., L. Candee & Co., Boston Rubber Shoe Co., Meyer Rubber Co., National India Rubber Co., Lycoming Rubber Co., New Brunswick Rubber Co., and New Jersey Rubber Shoe Co. This is the company that became Uniroyal in 1961.

American Woolen Company. This company was formed in 1899 through the merger of several individual mills and was the company at the heart of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

American Chicle Company. The company was formed in 1899 out of the merger of half a dozen companies and in 1910 it acquired Sen-Sen Chiclet Company the company Flint was affiliated with. The company’s best-known product was Chiclets.

United States Bobbin and Shuttle Company. This company was founded in 1899 from the consolidation of the James Baldwin Company, Fall River Bobbin & Shuttle Company, William H. Parker & Sons, Sprague Company, and Woonsocket Bobbin Company.

Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). This was a combination of several companies, including the Bundy Manufacturing Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Tabulating Machine Company, and the Computing Scale Company of America. We know it now as IBM.

Beyond those companies, Flint had wide-ranging interests and activities. He, along with others, backed the Wright Brothers and his wide network of international connections led to some diplomatic work, a topic he detailed in his autobiography. Flint retired in 1931 and died just a few years later, in 1934.

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Join our Business Reference Specialists in exploring the lives of several Hispanic American business icons, using some of the biographical, business, and other resources available through the Library of Congress, on October 15, 2024, at 12pm.  

Using the Library’s Hispanic Americans in Business and Entrepreneurship: A Resource Guide as a starting point for print and electronic resources, we’ll discuss how to find information on the lives of Desi Arnaz, the multifaceted Cuban-born entertainer; Federico José Ronstadt, the illustrious Tucson tycoon; Don Prudencio and Carolina Unanue, the creators of Goya foods; and Vicente Martinez Ybor, the cigar industrialist and founder of Ybor City. This session is aimed at those new to research or unfamiliar with business collections at the Library of Congress and will include time for questions at the end.  

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov. The event recording will be available afterwards to those who registered.

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This post is by Colleen Gardina, Engineering Specialist in the Science & Business Reading Room.

You probably knew you could truss a turkey, but did you know about the truss bridge? In the 13^th century, French architect, Villard de Honnecourt, sketched one of the first depictions of a truss bridge. Later, an Italian architect, Andrea Palladio, described four designs of truss bridges in his “Treatise On Architecture,” published in 1570. The use of truss bridges spread across Europe during the mid-1700s. By the mid-1800s, in replacing structures destroyed during the Revolutionary war and expanding the transportation infrastructure of the growing nation, the United States led the world in truss bridge construction.

How exactly does a truss bridge work? Truss bridges have a framework made up of trusses – beams made up of three main types of components: vertical, horizontal, and diagonal members, which form triangles. Simply put, these triangles cannot be distorted by stress and can withstand considerable loads. Truss bridges require less material relative to the weight they support.

Originally, truss bridges were constructed of wood and built according to “rule of thumb” methods.  This meant that architects designed bridges based on look and feel, rather than using quantifiable data to analyze stresses on the materials. By 1847, though, Squire Whipple, of Utica, NY published, “A Work On Bridge-Building,” where he correctly analyzed stresses on a truss bridge. His works established the science of bridge design.

On January 28, 1820, Ithiel Town of New Haven, CT received a patent for his design of a lattice wooden truss bridge. His patented design minimized building and labor costs. Town’s truss could be, “built by the mile and cut by the yard,” according to Town. One of the most famous examples of the lattice wooden truss was an incarnation of the Tucker Toll Bridge in Bellows Falls, VT, which was constructed in 1840 with a total length of 262 feet.

Town’s design is not the only kind of truss bridge. For example, the Howe Truss, named after designer William Howe, is the first patented truss bridge design to incorporate iron, and the Whipple Truss, named after Squire Whipple, is the first all-iron truss bridge design. During World War II, Sir Donald Coleman Bailey designed the Bailey Bridge to aid the Allies. Invaluable to the war efforts in Italy, and other theaters of war, the Bailey Bridge is a portable, prefabricated truss bridge, light enough to be carried in trucks and built by hand, without the need for special tools.

If you’d like to learn more about the different types of truss bridges, check out this engineering drawing, Trusses: a Study By the Historic American Engineering Record. The next time you cross a bridge, keep an eye out for triangles. It just might be a truss!

If you want to learn more about the history of truss bridges and their design, check out the following books:

Barratt, Claire, and Ian Whitelaw. The Spotter’s Guide to Urban Engineering: Infrastructure and Technology in the Modern Landscape. Richmond Hill, Ont: Firefly Books, 2011.

Bennett, David. The Creation of Bridges: From Vision to Reality, the Ultimate Challenge of Architecture, Design and Distance. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1999.

Denison, Edward, and Ian Stewart. How to Read Bridges: A Crash Course in Engineering and Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 2012.

Steinman, David B., and Sara Ruth Watson. Bridges and their Builders. New York, New York: Dover Publications, 1957.

Zettwoch, Dan. Bridges:  Engineering Masterpieces. New York, New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2022. (Science Comics series)

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Previous deep dives into periodicals that might be used for historical business research targeted specific industries. This time, however, I want to highlight a publication that is less obviously business focused – The Review of Reviews. In its day, this publication covered a wide range of topics, such as business, politics, world events, culture and science and provided readers a window into the people and events of the day.

Publication of The Review of Reviews began in January 1890 in the United Kingdom, but eventually grew to include two sister editions, in Australia and the United States. The U.S. publication is usually referred to as The Review of Reviews, though it had several names including: American Monthly Review of Reviews (1897-1907), The American Review of Reviews (1907-1928), Review of Reviews (1928-1932), Review of Reviews and World’s Work (1932-1934), and lastly, Review of Reviews (1935-1937). The very first issue of the publication in January 1890 laid out the magazine’s goal:

“Of the making of magazine there is no end. Here are already more periodicals than any one can find time to read. That is why I have to-day added another to the list. For the new comer is not a rival, but rather an index and a guide to all those already in existence. In the mighty maze of modern periodical literature, the busy man wanders confused, not knowing exactly where to find the precise articles that he requires, and often, after losing all his scanty time in the search, he departs unsatisfied. It is the object of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS to supply a clue to that maze in the shape of a readable compendium of all the best articles in the magazine and reviews.” (p. 14)

The editor for the U.S. edition was Albert Shaw, a journalist and academic. His first issue was published in September 1890 and he remained the editor until the end of the publication, in July 1937. While there was no specific topical focus of the articles highlighted in the publication, articles on the railroads were common and articles on that and other business topics appeared regularly. Looking at issues from July 1906 – June 1907, for example, I picked out a few that were more “business” adjacent:

• July 1906. A railway rate bill was a subject of one article.
• September 1906. Articles discussed raising tea in South Carolina, the publishing industry, a possible update of the Sherman antitrust law, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, and a factory school in New York.
• October 1906. While one article looked at American railroads, another looked at Philippine Savings Banks.
• November 1906. An article looked at the history and state of the American copper industry as of 1906.
• December 1906. This issue included an article on railroad electrification and another titled, “The most prosperous Period in our History. A review of the recent marvelous growth of our business and resources – forecast of the future.”
• January 1907. This issue featured an article on President Theodore Roosevelt’s visit to the Panama Canal and others on the craze for mining Stocks; Edward H. Harriman, the “Colossus of Roads,” and real estate.
• March 1907. The Department of Interior and its Secretary, Ethan A. Hitchcock, were the subjects of one article, but there was also a piece on savings-bank insurance written by future Supreme Court Justice, Louis D. Brandeis.
• April 1907. An article on government oversight of commerce looked at the new Department of Commerce and Labor, while another discussed American railroad management being “on trial.”
• June 1907. There were articles about wireless telephony and on President Roosevelt’s thoughts on railroad investments, as related in his Memorial Day address in Indianapolis.

The Review also featured many photographs of people and places, but the included editorial cartoons, gathered from publications around the United States, are a real highlight. Like the article coverage, the cartoons touched on a wide range of topics and are a good barometer for today’s readers of what was trending. Given the period, railroads featured heavily here as well, but politics, pending legislation, and President Roosevelt’s activities also featured heavily. The cartoons were sprinkled throughout the publication, but editors did create a collection of them near the fronts of issues. Here are a few examples:

• July 1906 had several cartoons related to the meat packing scandal and meat trust then unfolding, likely prompted by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the Neill-Reynolds Report, and the signing of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 that June.
• October 1906 featured a cartoon depicting Edward Harriman carrying two railroad trains under each arm, which originally ran in the Evening Herald, of Duluth, MN. This reflected the importance of the railroads, particularly in light of the Hepburn Act, which became law in July 1906 and expanded the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
• December 1906 included a cartoon showing President Roosevelt inspecting the Panama Canal, which originally ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• February 1907 included one cartoon, which said “Railroad Colossus”, a nick-name often associated with Edward Harriman. It originally ran in the Evening World and is used below.
• April 1907 included several cartoons related to Wall Street, the stock market, and panics.

This is a nifty publication for anyone wanting to understand the events of the day and you never know what type of article you might find.

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The Library’s Health Services Division and Science Section are co-sponsoring a free webinar on Thursday, September 19, 2024, from 10 a.m. to 12 pm., EDT, in which expert scientists will discuss forecasting which respiratory diseases are likely to strike this coming winter. Last winter, the United States suffered from outbreaks of three respiratory diseases: COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. The three combined outbreaks caused complex respiratory diseases not just in the United States, but around the world, especially in people over 60. A large portion of those infected by these diseases are still suffering the aftereffects, including from the ever-evolving long COVID-19. The lessons learned from the experiences of the last winter are a stark reminder of the need to establish a complete defense against the respiratory diseases likely to strike in the upcoming winter season.

The Library has invited two distinguished leaders in the field to provide a forecast of the diseases likely to strike this coming winter and how to prepare for and defend from them:

• Dr. Dylan George, Director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Professor Benjamin Cowling, Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Hong Kong University’s School of Public Health (HKU SPH) and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control at HKU SPH

Register for the online program “Forecasting Respiratory Diseases for This Winter” on September 19, 2024 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., EDT, at the following link: https://loc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_EeJ5vOKKRTKjl2KIJ9cZrw#/registration

Don’t miss this opportunity to stay informed and prepare for the winter. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information or to submit questions to the panel please use our Science Ask-a-Librarian Service and include a reference to the “Forecasting Respiratory Diseases” event. Individuals requiring accommodations for this event are requested to submit a request at least five business days in advance by contacting (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

For those unable to attend this program, a recording will be posted on the Library of Congress Event Videos collection page and on the Library’s YouTube channel “Topics in Science” playlist in the coming months.

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Join the Business Section for a short, 30-minute webinar at 1pm (EDT) on Wednesday, September 11. We’ll provide an overview of select print and online business collections, and share how you can access these resources for your own research needs.

The Library of Congress has over 1.2 million titles that are classified as business or economics, including primary sources, directories, special collections, digital collections and library databases. These resources are useful for both historical and current company, industry, and economics research.

This session is aimed at those new to business research or unfamiliar with business collections at the Library of Congress. Since we can’t show you everything in 30 minutes, we’ll be using items related to the fashion industry as examples of what you might uncover in these collections!

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov. The event recording will be available afterwards to those who registered.

If you are interested in more Business and Science topics, then subscribe to Inside Adams — it’s free!

This post is by Georgette Green, Business Reference and Research Specialist in the Science & Business Reading Room.  

August is the month for back-to-school preparations and consumers are swiping their credit cards to purchase school clothes, supplies, and groceries for school lunches! Did you know that the Library of Congress has resources on the credit card industry? These resources include trade publications, industry reports and more.

The Nilson Report is a semimonthly publication that analyzes the credit card industry. The Library has issues of the Nilson Report dating from 1990 to present. The reports focus on payment transactions made using credit and debit cards and mobile payments. Each issue contains a “fast facts” section at the front, providing quick information about critical industry topics such as credit card companies, technology, banking institutions, financial networks, management changes, career opportunities, conferences, and seminars.

In addition to the fast facts section, the Nilson Report has in-depth articles on specific topics. If you are interested in, say, historical credit card usage, the Nilson Report has analyses. An article from the August 1990 issue, titled “Credit-Card Debt,” for example, reported that consumers owed a total of $225.4 billion in credit card debt to credit card companies, which was expected to double in the following years. The article included tables showing United States economic indicators, from 1980 to 2000, and the credit card rolling debt.

If you find industry publications like the Nilson Report useful, I encourage you to explore our collection of books and journals, available in our online catalog, which provide an overview and understanding of the credit card industry, to inform your research needs.

Select Books on the Credit Card Industry

Acquiring Card Payments by Ilya Dubinsky (2019). This book provides an overview of the card payments industry, and explores the systems and technologies involved in credit card transactions.

Preventing Credit Card Fraud: A Complete Guide For Everyone From Merchants To Consumers  by Jen Grondahl Lee and Gini Graham Scott (2017). This book provides strategies against credit card fraud.

The Paytech Book: The Payment Technology Handbook For Investors, Entrepreneurs And Fintech Visionaries (2020). This book compiles chapters from 74 different authors with varying backgrounds and expertise in payment technology. Topics include the advancements in digital payment processing technology, from credit cards and mobile applications to blockchain, and issues with regulations and compliance.

Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, And The End of Financial Control by Sean Vanatta (2024). This book examines the increasing use of credit cards by consumers in postwar America, congressional bills aimed at protecting consumers, and the U.S. Supreme Court Case of Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp.

A Global Guide To Fintech And Future Payment Trends by Peter Goldfinch (2019). The book explores trends in payment systems and introduces the evolution of alternative forms of payment.

If you are interested in learning more about business and business topics, check out our business research guides!

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This guest post was authored by 2024 Junior Fellow Kelsey Moore, a University of North Carolina at Greensboro graduate, with a B.A. in Spanish and B.S. in Information Science. Kelsey is continuing her studies at UNCG in the MLIS program.

This summer, I worked as a junior fellow with the Business Section to organize and take inventory of the American Bankers Association pamphlet collection. The American Bankers Association (ABA) was founded in 1875 as a trade association to advocate for banking industry perspectives in the shaping of policy decisions. With the closure of its library, the ABA donated a 14-box collection of nearly 400 banking pamphlets and a scrapbook from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The materials primarily focus on central banking, all the way from the First Bank of the United States to the Federal Reserve, and the currency question, which is the debate over the gold and silver standard. Throughout the duration of my internship, I worked with my project mentor, Lynn Weinstein, to create a library guide that provides historical background information for the topics covered by the collection.

In our new Banking History: Central Banking and the Currency Question in the United States research guide, we have compiled sets of digital and print resources that add to the pamphlet collection by diving deeper into central banking and the currency question as well as providing more general sources on U.S. banking history. Featured digital resources from the Library, listed in the guide, include blog posts and research guides, such as pages from “This Month in Business History” which highlight sources of information on more specific subjects, like the development of the Treasury Department or the U.S. Mint.

The research guide also incorporates a finding aid with tables that list the individual pamphlets in order according to their physical locations within the ABA pamphlet collection. This finding aid will help readers know which boxes to request if they wish to access one or more pamphlets from the collection, since the boxes will be housed in offsite storage. Many of the pamphlets are also available electronically or have copies in locations at the Library, where they can be retrieved at a quicker rate. Any existing catalog records and electronic copies for individual items have been linked within the finding aid.

At the end of my internship, I had the opportunity to share the research guide at the Junior Fellows Display Day, along with pamphlets from the collection that stood out the most to me. This included From Slavery to Bankers, which tells the history of the first African American owned bank, the Grand Fountain Savings Bank, in Richmond, Virginia. Another item on display was The Pleasant Art of Money Catching, a pamphlet that discusses how to manage savings and personal finances in the nineteenth century.

Our goal for this research guide has been to provide researchers with a starting point for navigating key components of banking history and monetary policy in the United States. Additionally, my work with organizing the collection and putting together a finding aid for the guide will increase the accessibility of the ABA pamphlet collection.

Learn More about the History of Money:

• Read about another unique find of the pamphlet collection in the blog post Shell Money as the Original Currency in the American Colonies.
• If you are interested in learning more about the history of money, check out the research guide Money: Researching the History of U.S. and International Currencies.

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This post was written by Kelly Bennett, Business Reference and Research Specialist in the Science & Business Reading Room. 

The Business Section recently acquired a rare first printing of Richard Cantillon’s Essai Sur la Nature du Commerce en Général published in 1755. The title translates to the English, “Essay on the Nature of Trade in General,” and it is Cantillon’s only surviving piece of writing.

Richard Cantillon was an Irish-born banker who made his fortune, and several enemies, across early 18^th century Europe. When a fire consumed his London home in 1734, including a body found within, the initial reports pointed to a tragic accident. However, Cantillon’s friend and neighbor began to question how it was that the badly burned corpse had no head. Soon, the suspicion was that Cantillon had been murdered. Several of his servants were tried but ultimately acquitted. In his 1986 biography of Cantillon, Antoin E. Murphy suggested that Cantillon faked his own death to escape several high-profile lawsuits. A man, calling himself the “Chevalier de Louvigny,” appeared in the Dutch colony of Suriname shortly after the fire. He was known to be carrying a large amount of gold, along with rifles and a barrel of powder, which set off the suspicions of local officials. The man escaped the authorities, but not before abandoning documents related to Cantillon. The mysterious man was never apprehended.

Unfortunately, all of Cantillon’s writings were destroyed in the fire, with the exception of the Essai, which survived and circulated in an unpublished manuscript form for many years. It was finally published in 1755, more than 20 years after Cantillon’s death, likely in Paris. The book’s title page shows a London imprint. However, false imprints were not uncommon in 18^th century France, often being used by French printers to skirt pre-publication royal censorship and printing limits. According to author James Mitchell, the use of the French name, “Londres,” rather than the English, “London,” in a false imprint was common among Parisian printers at this time.

Primarily a work of theory, Cantillon’s Essai Sur la Nature du Commerce en Général covers various macroeconomic topics such as production, allocation of resources, monetary institutions, and foreign trade. Economic historian Anthony Brewer described the work as simple, clear and genius. Cantillon’s theories were highly influential to 18^th century economists and was foundational to the field of classical economics.

Cantillon’s Essai was purchased by the Library with funds from the Victor S. Clark Endowment, which supports the acquisition of rare books related to economic history. It is available for viewing in the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room, and you can find more Library resources about Richard Cantillon by searching the subject heading Cantillon, Richard, -1734 in the online catalog.

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The growth of business in the United States has seen the adoption of new equipment and jobs related to all that new equipment. It has also been a story of new ways of thinking and advancing business processes. When writing the post about time recording clocks, I ran across the name of Frederick Winslow Taylor, a businessman who was considered one of the first management consultants. In 1917, journalist Ida Tarbell, in an address, “The Fear of Efficiency,” had this to say:

“These principles have been worked out with mathematical, exactness and their soundness is capable of proof. Many men have been interested in their development, but to one man above all others is due the credit of their present scientific form. That man is Frederick Winslow Taylor.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born in 1856 in Philadelphia, PA and, after schooling, went to work for Midvale Steel. While he was there, he took an interest in the idea of efficiency in work activities and specific tasks and developed what he called “scientific management.” He later worked for Bethlehem Steel, but eventually opened his own consulting practice where he further developed his management system, sometimes referred to as Taylorism. He was elected president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, elected to the American Philosophical Society, and earned a professorship at the Tuck School of Business.

His paper “A Piece-Rate System, Being a Step Toward Partial Solution of the Labor Problem,” which was read before a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1895, was the first of several well-known works Taylor wrote, and led him to write his book, The Principles of Scientific Management. This book became a classic of management literature and one of the most influential management books of the 20^th century. The introduction laid out the book’s three goals:

1. To illustrate how the country loses through inefficiency.
2. To show that the solution to inefficiency is systematic management.
3. To show that the best management rests on defined laws, rules, and principles that can be applied to all kinds of human activity.

Horace B. Drury in his 1915 book, Scientific Management; A History and Criticism, published just a few years after Taylor‘s book, devoted one full chapter to Taylor and others to Midvale and Bethlehem Steel. Other chapters include an early history of scientific management that mentions Taylor, and attention to the 1910 Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission that looked at scientific efficiency and helped kick off the efficiency craze. The arguments in the Eastern Rate Case were made by Louis D. Brandeis (later Supreme Court Justice) and significantly raised Taylor’s profile.

Taylor died in 1915, but his ideas are still impactful. Terms like “best practices” and benchmarking have entered the management lexicon. The management consultant industry with businesses like McKinsey and organizations like the APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center) are an outgrowth of his work. Without Taylor and all those that came after him, would there be management systems like Total Quality Management (TQM) or Six Sigma, or awards like the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award?

The Library is a good resource for anyone looking into the history of business improvement or scientific management. We have a number of issues of the Taylor Society’s Bulletin and have digitized a few older items related to scientific management, which you can find on our website. There are many titles with subject headings related to Business consultants, Industrial management, etc. Our collection has over two thousand books with the subject heading, “Industrial efficiency” alone. If you are interested in Taylor himself, there are also a few biographies:

• Frederick W. Taylor, father of scientific management, by Frank Barkley Copley. (1923)
• Frederick W. Taylor and the rise of scientific management, by Daniel Nelson. (1980)
• Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management: myth and reality, by Charles D. Wrege, Ronald G. Greenwood. (1991)
• The one best way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the enigma of efficiency, by Robert Kanigel. (1997)

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What is your background?

After completing my undergraduate degrees in Information Science and Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, I am continuing my studies there to earn a Master’s in Library and Information Science. Though I have been living in Greensboro throughout my higher education, I often spend my breaks traveling back to my hometown of Marshfield, Wisconsin. During these visits to see my family, I am also able to return to one of my favorite creative outlets—weaving. When I was 12 years old, my grandma taught me how to weave rugs on a loom that has been in our family for seven generations. While staying in Washington, D.C. this summer, I found reminders of home by exploring museum exhibits on textiles and discovering the weaving section in the stacks below the Science & Business Reading Room.

How did you learn about the intern program and why did you want to work at the Library of Congress?

Though I have known that I wanted to be a librarian since I was a young girl, I had not imagined working at the Library of Congress as a possibility. Two years ago, I learned about the Junior Fellows Program when an upperclassman in my undergraduate program worked as a summer intern at the Library. Seeing one of my classmates obtain such an amazing opportunity encouraged me to visualize myself in a similar position and gave me the confidence to apply. The Junior Fellow project that captured my attention most during the application process was Banking History Uncovered: Crafting a Guide for the American Bankers Association Papers. Since I am focusing my studies on business librarianship, this project stood out to me as an introduction to business research topics and a way to connect with and learn from business librarians.

How would you describe your internship?

Every day working at the Library entailed a new adventure. Though I spent many hours in the office working on my project, the Junior Fellows Program offered me and my fellow interns professional development sessions, guided tours of various divisions, and opportunities to build connections with each other. Throughout this internship, I appreciated the support provided by my mentor, Lynn Weinstein. To reach our goals of organizing and increasing the accessibility of the American Bankers Association pamphlet collection, Lynn directed me in research, helped me put together a library guide, and gave me feedback on my preparations for display day. In just ten short weeks, I gained a well-rounded experience of librarianship at the Library of Congress by shadowing at the reference desk, attending reference forums, and visiting other departments in addition to fulfilling my project responsibilities.

What amazed you most about the Library?

I could not help but be amazed by how expansive the Library is in both its spaces and collections. While it is no mystery that it is the largest library in the world, it wasn’t until I began walking through the tunnels every day and getting lost in the hallways that it dawned on me how vast the Library is beyond the Great Hall. During my time with the Business Section, I also had the chance to take multiple trips to the stacks of the Adams building, which has 180 miles of shelving. Though the collections range far and wide between the three buildings and additional facilities, the Library of Congress continues to add 10,000 items a day. Regardless of how many reading rooms, departments, and collections I have visited throughout this internship, I have merely scratched the surface of everything the Library has to offer.

What have you learned about the Library that you didn’t know before you started your internship?

One of the things that I didn’t know or expect before my time here was how many different paths could lead to working here. Pursuing a library degree is not the only way to acquire a position at the Library as there are workers in the Business Section with MBAs, people in preservation with backgrounds in chemistry, and so many others with different skillsets that help them carry out the mission of the Library. Since the Library is so expansive, there are also many opportunities to switch divisions and develop new skills for obtaining higher positions, making the possibilities for personal growth and career development here seem endless.

This post is by Georgette Green, Business Reference and Research Specialist in the Science & Business Reading Room.  

Today is National Ice Cream Day, a special day to celebrate a delicious and refreshing dessert, which is loved by many and available in thousands of flavors. Ice cream can be enjoyed in a variety of forms, including gelato, custard, soft serve, and frozen yogurt. Two individuals who played a significant role in the development of ice cream in the United States were Nancy M. Johnson and Augustus Jackson.

Nancy M. Johnson was a housewife who became a successful inventor. She created the first hand-cranked ice cream maker in the United States, which earned her a patent for an “Artificial Freezer” on September 9, 1843. Johnson’s invention allowed ice cream to last 30 minutes, which was particularly useful when there was no electricity or refrigerator.

Augustus Jackson, also known as “Father Ice Cream,” was an African American ice cream maker and confectioner from Philadelphia, PA. In the 1820s, he worked in the White House as a chef while James Monroe was president. After leaving the White House, he started his own catering business. Jackson invented a method for controlling the freezing of custard and developed various ice cream flavors, which he sold in tin cans. He later became a distributor for ice cream parlors.

If you would like to learn about the history of ice cream, I’ve selected books from our online catalog that might be of particular interest. These books contain recipes and historical information about Nancy M. Johnson and Augustus Jackson and their contributions to the development of ice cream:

• Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women. This book features women inventors and includes Nancy M. Johnson in a timeline of inventors from the 1800-1860s.
• Encyclopedia of Kitchen History. The section Popularity In The New World provides some detail on how the mechanism of Nancy M. Johnson’s “artificial freezer” works.
• 1001 Inventions that Changed the World. The entry “Ice-cream Maker (1843)” covers Nancy Johnson’s invention.
• Ice Cream Man: How Augustus Jackson Made a Sweet Treat Better. This is a children’s book about Father Ice Cream, Augustus Jackson
• The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, From the Washingtons to the Obamas. Chapter Four, “Semisweet,” includes information about Augustus Jackson’s time as a chef in the White House.
• The Book of Ice-Cream. This book describes the machinery used to produce ice cream in the 1900s.
• All-American Desserts: 400 Star-Spangled, Razzle-Dazzle Recipes for America’s Best Loved Desserts. This book contains 400 dessert recipes using ice cream.

Ice cream is a dessert that will always remain a favorite. If you want to learn more about ice cream, check out our guide, We Scream for Ice Cream. If you’re interested in the food preferences of U.S. presidents, you can check out Presidential Food: A Resource Guide.  And if you’d like to find information on other business innovators, see our series, This Month in Business History.

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This guest post was authored by 2024 Junior Fellow Kelsey Moore, a University of North Carolina at Greensboro graduate, with a B.A. in Spanish and B.S. in Information Science. Kelsey is continuing her studies at UNCG in the MLIS program.

While currency has faced many developments and changes over time, in even the earliest known civilizations people attributed value to materials they could use to exchange for other goods. Items of value that acted as currency varied from salt and gold to animal furs and stamped leather. In the case of many Native Americans, trade was facilitated with the use of shell money. They turned the shells of their regions into strings of beads, which the Algonquin called wampumpeag. Broken down, the word wampumpeag is the plural form (ag) of describing something white (wamp) that has been strung on a cord (umpe). As trade between the Native Americans and European colonists grew, this currency became referred to as wampum.

When going through the pamphlet collection that the Library received from the American Bankers Association for my project as a Junior Fellow, I found that the collection holds many treasures on banking history. These included two pamphlets on North American shell money, which circulated before the rise of silver and gold in the colonies. Ethno-Conchology – A Study of Primitive Money is one that highlights the types of shells found along the coasts of North America while sharing how tribes crafted them into wampum and the purposes for trading shells across regions.

“Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization,” a paper presented to the Historical and Political Science Association of Johns Hopkins University, is also found in the collection and gives insight into the perceptions and responses of the colonists to Native American shell money as it became incorporated into trade within the colonies, eventually creating a legal form of currency to back the beginnings of paper money. This paper states that from 1627 to 1661, New England regarded wampum as legal tender for payments of up to ten pounds.

Along with the pamphlet collection, newspaper articles from Chronicling America played a key role in my research on shell money. One article explains that wampum in North America was made from shells such as the quahaug or the common periwinkle. Though the shells used to make wampum were not incredibly rare, their value came from the laborious process of drilling holes in the shells with stone awls to string them as beads. In addition, the colors of the shells determined their value, making some more highly sought after. When shells were cut into pieces to create beads, they were divided into white and black money. Black wampum, which came from the purple outer rim of quahaug shells, was considered twice as valuable as white wampum. For example, when white wampum shells were legally six to a penny in 1641, the purple pieces would have been three to a penny. Additionally, a “fathom” of wampum beads was worth 5 shillings, which could be measured by comparing the length of a string to the length of one’s arms

While colonists benefitted from having wampum as legal tender for trading and paying taxes and fines, wampum was recognized as more than mere currency by the Native Americans. It marked a crucial part of their lives by its presence in ceremonial traditions for the establishment of treaties and for marriage. In addition to strings of beads, Native Americans crafted wampum into belts to tell the stories of significant moments, such as wars or the creation of treaties between tribes. Similar to how wampum was used to pay fines in the colonies, Native Americans gifted wampum belts to the victimized parties of crimes to display the gravity of their apologies. Just as Native Americans adorned themselves with wampum in life, they also wore wampum in burials to ensure their spirits could tip the deities on their journey into the afterlife.

Unfortunately, like money today, the valuation of wampum fluctuated throughout the years. When the beaver market plummeted in Europe, the value of wampum followed. Once a prized form of currency, wampum faced many factors that led to its downfall. When colonists began to mint wampum, they introduced new tools and machinery that cheapened the production of wampum by creating standardized, polished shells. Counterfeit wampum also flooded the market as colonists attempted to pass wood, glass, horn, and bone as currency. Soon, with the increase in the availability of precious metals, the colonies lost their interest in collecting the depreciated wampum as currency. The use of wampum may have carried on beyond the end of its role as legal tender in the colonies, but by the start of the twentieth century, wampum was no longer acknowledged for its precedent to the formation of U.S. currency.

 

Learn More about Early Currency in America:

Visit the Library of Congress research guides on the History of Money or Banking in Colonial America to find out more about currency in its earliest stages.

Find the linked newspaper articles at Chronicling America, the free Library of Congress online resource of digitized newspapers from 1789-1963. Using the search terms “Wampum” and “Shell Money” will provide additional articles covering this topic! (The Chronicling America historic newspapers online collection is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.)

 

For Additional Reading

Shell Game: A True Account of Beads and Money in North America by Jerry Martien, San Francisco: Mercury House, c1996.

Wampum, War, and Trade Goods, West of the Hudson by Gilbert W. Hagerty, Interlaken, N.Y.: Heart of the Lakes Pub., 1985, c1984.

The Functions of Wampum Among the Eastern Algonkian by Frank G. Speck, Lancaster, Pa., American Anthropological Association, 1919.

Wampum Belts of the Iroquois by Tehanetorens, Summertown, Tennessee: Book Pub., 1999.

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Are you wondering what to do with your rhubarb harvest? Do you want to be adventurous and try something a bit different from a traditional strawberry rhubarb pie or jam?

I spent some time exploring the Library’s digital collection of early U.S. community cookbooks, seeking out forgotten recipes that feature rhubarb. In searching for these recipes one of the terms I looked for was “pie plant,” since this is a common name for the vegetable. Vegetable? — You read that right, rhubarb is botanically a vegetable, however, it is legally considered a fruit by U.S. Customs since it is commonly used commercially in sweet dishes such as pies, jams, and jellies.

I found no shortage of recipes including rhubarb in our historical community cookbooks, especially in titles from the Midwest. I focused on looking for rhubarb jam and jelly recipes, partly inspired by my grandfather’s strawberry rhubarb jam, but also for practical reasons — with jellies and jams, you can share jars of your creations with friends and family or preserve your harvest to consume later.

What I discovered were creative recipes that use rhubarb in marmalades. Generally speaking, marmalades refer to jellies that have suspended fruit or vegetables. However, some definitions of marmalades are rather strict and are solely used to describe jellies or preserves made of citrus fruit.

The 1906 Columbian Cook Book of Tested Recipes (Boise, Idaho) contains a recipe for Rhubarb Marmalade (pg. 148) that uses Jamaica ginger (extract) and almonds:

Recipe for Rhubarb Marmalade by Mrs. Leonard Logan

Eight pounds of rhubarb, cut fine; 6 pounds of granulated sugar; cook 20 mins with a little water, then add the following: Five lemons, juice and rind, (rind chopped fine); one-half pound blanched almonds, chopped fine; one-half wine glass of Jamaica ginger; 1 orange, juice and rind; cook all together 30 mins, or until quick thick.

The  1911 Queen Esther Cook Book (Evanston, IL) includes a more traditional marmalade recipe (pg. 119) that uses orange with rhubarb:

Recipe for Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade by Jennie Woodworth Barrett

Three large oranges, 18 medium stalks rhubarb. Slice oranges very fine and rhubarb in 1/2 in. pieces without removing skins. Mix, measure, and add equal amount of sugar. Mix thoroughly and let stand 3 or 4 hours or over night. Then boil rapidly until a little on ice will thicken like jelly.

Moving to the West Coast, the Mobilized Women’s Organizations of Berkeley incorporates raisins and walnuts (pg. 175) in a rhubarb marmalade recipe in their 1918 Conservation Recipes, a First World War-era cookbook:

Rhubarb Marmalade

Ingredients: 2 qts. rhubarb, 1 orange, 1/2 raisins, 1 qt. sugar, and 1/2 cup of walnuts.

Directions: Wash, pare, and cut rhubarb into one-half inch pieces. Add sugar, cover and let stand over night. In the morning add the grated rind and juice of the orange, seeded raisins, and walnuts, cut in small pieces. Cook slowly until thick. Store in a stone jar or pour into sterilized glasses.

I also discovered a rhubarb spread that incorporates figs to make a butter (pg. 259) in the 1907 Monmouth Baptist Ladies Cook Book (Monmouth, IL). This recipe is not for a dairy butter, rather it is for a substance that resembles the look and feel of butter.

Recipe for Pieplant and Fig Butter by Miss Mary Pillsbury from Macomb, Illinois

Eight pounds of pie plant already for cooking, six pounds of white sugar, two pounds of figs; cut them in two parts and soak over night in cold water. In the morning cook them in the same water until soft, then skim them out and chop fine. Strain the water and put it with the pie plant, sugar and figs and cook it down to butter. Can.

For a finale, a showstopper from the 1909 Mendelssohn Club Cook Book (Rockford, IL) that uses rhubarb jelly (i.e. gelatin or jello) in a “fancy ring mold” with whipped cream:

Recipe for Rhubarb Jelly with Whipped Cream

Wash and cut in 3/4 inch pieces 1 pound of fresh rhubarb. Put into a baking dish with 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 cup water, 1 1/2 inch piece of Canton ginger, 3 shavings lemon peel 3/4 inch long. Cover, bake in oven until tender. Remove from oven; cool, and pick out lemon peel and ginger. To this add 2 level teaspoons granulated gelatine and the package of coloring found in each box, previously soaked in 1/2 cup cold water and dissolved over hot water. Lastly, add 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Turn the mixture into a fancy ring mold which has been chilled, and wet with cold water. Place on ice. When thoroughly chilled, turn on fancy platter, heap whipped cream in center and drop large spoonfuls around mold of jelly. Garnish each with a Maraschino cherry.

Please note, the directions in these historical cookbooks might not contain details that modern home cooks expect, such as baking/cooking temperatures and times, food prep instructions,  food safety guidelines, etc – Cooks wishing to create these treats may need to do some searching online to figure those things out.

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This post was written by 2024 Business Section Intern Olivia DiAcetis, an economics student at the University of Texas at Dallas.

This past spring, I worked on a project analyzing questions submitted to the Business Section in 2023. These were questions sent through the Ask-A-Librarian service as well as questions answered by librarians in person and over the telephone. The goal of this project was to better understand the types of questions patrons are asking and what resources are being used to answer them, using the year-long data set as a representative sample. By considering variables like subject area, time period of interest, collections used in librarian responses, and research guide referrals, the project was able to answer several of our questions. Those questions included: What areas are of high interest and would be valuable to create more resources around? What resources are patrons being connected with? Are librarians recommending relevant research guides?

The data set contained over 2,300 questions. After completing a literature review, I dove into the process of adding subject metadata tags which identified subsections of the collection, ranging from banking and finance to small businesses and business ethics. I also used tags to track references to preexisting research guides and the relevant timeframe of the question (historical in nature or current, within the last 10 years). After adding those metadata tags to highlight several variables, I separated the questions by type of interaction. While the results are confidential, the thing I have noticed in reviewing this data is the variety of projects people come to the library with. The business librarians are using the trends I identified as a part of this project to help improve the reference process both for users and library staff.

Throughout the experience of working on this project I was continuously shown how the Library is able fulfill its promise to engage, inspire, and inform members of the public. The continued curiosity and innovation represented in these questions is inspiring both as an aspiring information professional and an individual. Moving through all stages of the project from planning to compiling results has allowed me to practice the intentionality and flexibility which are valuable skills for starting my career in libraries and archives.  I am grateful for the opportunity and support provided by the business reference team.

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This post is by Georgette Green, Business Reference and Research Specialist in the Science & Business Reading Room.  

The Business Section’s new guide, Gig Economy: A Research Guide, is now available for researchers and presents an overview for researchers interested in this industry.

The gig economy refers to a sector where people engage in short-term, task, or project jobs, usually arranged with the help of a digital platform. The gig economy is not a new concept but has existed for years. The industry’s rise is due to innovations and technological advancements, which allow people to find jobs and employers to recruit employees through digital platforms. The gig economy has both advantages and disadvantages. Some benefits include flexible schedules, quick income, diverse opportunities, the ability to work globally or pursue entrepreneurship. On the other hand, some disadvantages include a lack of benefits, unstable pay, job insecurity, social isolation, and limited worker rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many business closures and a surge in individuals seeking new jobs to earn money or supplement their income. During the pandemic, gig work was one of the more popular options for workers. For example, people began using digital service platforms more frequently and working for companies like Uber or Grubhub in increasing numbers, to deliver food from chain restaurants and fine dining establishments. Other gig jobs included performing delivery services, transportation services, street performances, administrative tasks, personal training, domestic work, and many other tasks.

This guide provides researchers with information about the gig economy. It covers types of gigs, strategies for finding gig jobs on digital platforms and company websites, resources for finding statistical data, and identifying relevant global laws and regulations. Within each section of the guide, you’ll find selections of books, websites, and subscription databases with a variety of information on the industry.

If you are interested in learning about the gig economy industry, the following are books I’ve selected from our online catalog, which provide overviews and context on the industry:

• The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction. This book introduces the gig economy and explains how it came to be, as well as what it’s like to work in this industry.
• Left to Our Own Devices: Coping With Insecure Work in a Digital Age. This book provides an overview of the digital platforms that gig workers use daily.
• Plunkett’s Sharing & Gig Economy, Freelance Workers & On-Demand Delivery Industry Almanac. This almanac provides an analysis of the industry and provides research reports on market trends.
• Side Hustle Safety Net: How Vulnerable Workers Survive Precarious Times. The book provides an overview of individuals who have turned to side hustles in the digital age.

If you are interested in learning more about business and business topics, check out our business research guides!

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