A SERIES OF GENERAL REVIEWS
FOR BUSINESS MEN AND STUDENTS

EDITED BY

W. J. ASHLEY. M.A.

PROFESSOR OF COMMERCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
LATE PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
SOMETIME FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD

THE ten lectures here printed were delivered during the winter of 1902–3 under the auspices of the University of Birmingham, and were designed for two classes of auditors. They were intended to supplement the instruction given by the permanent teachers to the students in the Faculty of Commerce; and it was hoped that they would also prove interesting and suggestive to men already in business. Similar motives have now led to their publication. Men of affairs will find information in

them not easily accessible elsewhere ; and those who are

concerned in the administration of one particular trade
may perhaps learn something from the arrangements
and experiments of other branches of business. But
the main object of the volume is to serve the purposes
of students in the new Faculties and Departments of
Commerce that are being created in our universities.
It is very clear that a training for commercial life
is both desirable and possible, and that that training—
for the men who are likely to occupy positions of
control and large responsibility—should be of the highest
intellectual type; that, in short, it should be, in the
best sense of the phrase, “of a university type.” But
I feel very strongly that the problem how best to
constitute such a course of training has not yet been
adequately considered. It will not be enough, in my