A Plea for More History
in
Business
THE Texas State Historical Association comes into this
pleasant celebration appropriately by way of a book. The
book is Martin Schwettmann's Santa
Rita,
which the Asso-
ciation recently published. It is a history of the completion of
the discovery well which opened the University's oil empire
in West Texas. Wholly incidentally, it is also a monument to
the courage and dogged determination which has characterized
individual enterprise in American industry. We need more such
books. We need them for an understanding of the complex
strands of American civilization. We need them also for a
fair appreciation of the services of big and little business.
This brings me to the text of my sermon, which is a plea
for more history in business. From the historians' point of
view, business men—and particularly business organizations--
are too reticent. We suspect that they are too reticent for their
own good. Explanations of their policy leap to mind: partly,
no doubt, it is a survival of the buccaneering era of "the public
be damned"; partly it is due to the competitive character of
business and the natural desire to withhold information from
rivals. Whatever the cause may be, the policy creates an at-
mosphere that is inhospitable to historical investigators, facil-
itates propaganda that is hostile to business, and stimulates
public suspicion.
There is a problem here. The blankest page in Texas history
today is that which ought to tell of the growth and contribution
of business and industry in the building of the state. The page
is blank, not because historians do not appreciate the im-
portance of the subject, but because they can rarely learn
enough of the record to enable them to put pen to paper and
write. The same is true of industry in the nation. To be sure,
there is no lack of reports that corporations and associations
are required to file with state and federal governments; but
these are the dry skin and bones of history. They become the
basis of some textbooks and of speculative discourses on trends,
but the average citizen cannot understand them, and they are
easily misconstrued. We need a knowledge of the human facts
behind the figures. Perhaps we shall never get them, but
business men and their legal advisers—some of whom are
excellent historians--might profitably devise a system for giv-
ing us more than we have. For example, what do we know, or
what could we learn, about the Texon Company, its successors
and assigns after Ricker and Pickrell and Krupp and Crom-
well played their respective roles in the history of Santa Rita?
There must be other dramatic and heroic chapters in the story.
I offer three suggestions for the consideration of business:
Follow the example of the Army and Navy and employ a
historical staff for each important unit, or open the records
to historians with as few reservations as possible, or deposit
the records--or selected blocks of records--in public depositories.
The University of Texas and the Texas State Historical As-
sociation would gladly receive such deposits and would ad-
minister them faithfully.
FOOTNOTES:
Rita Discovery Well, delivered at Austin, Texas, May 27, 1944, at a dinner
of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, honoring The Univer-
sity of Texas and the Texas State Historical Association.
How to cite:
Eugene C. Barker, "Plea for More History in Business", Volume 48, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v048/n1/contrib_DIVL1496.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 17:03:50 CST 2009]
