An Historical Look at Business Archives

Abstract

AS HISTORICAL AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS go, business archives are a relatively recent phenomenon. One hundred years ago, when business and industry in the United States had left the havoc of the Civil War behind them and were growing at a tremendous pace, there were no business archives. Three decades later, the call to the United States to help friendly nations put a stop to the ambitions of Kaiser Wilhelm in Europe led to a major growth in industries preparing war materiel, but still no business archives were established. Two more decades passed before an industrialist had the foresight to begin saving his company's historical files in systematic fashion. This lack of archival development was not confined solely to business archives. Many of us forget that the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. was constructed in 1934 that is still recent history! Groups of historians had taken part in a long and arduous struggle to have legislation passed that would establish the National Archives. When they finally succeeded, it marked the beginning of formal archival history in America. One must remember that in those early days when archives were first coming into their own, there were not only few archives, there were no archivists. The first archives established were staffed by historians and others who were trained in the methods of historical research. It was during this gestation period that the Society of American Archivists was organized, and early steps were taken to establish a set of standards for uniform archival practices to cope with the astonishing quantity of records that was growing by leaps and bounds. It was not until 1950, with passage of the Federal Records Act, that the National Archives finally began to deal seriously with records management. The archivists had finally come to realize that many of the records they were storing were not of permanent value. But this realization was not unique to the National Archives. While these birth and growing pains