Introduction: NEW AMERICAN BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA.

This work is intended as a safe and authoritative guide to the proper transaction of all kinds of business. It supplies the necessary legal and business information, together with the appropriate forms. No one man can possibly know everything about business; for that matter, no one man can know everything there is to know about any single business. Next to possessing all the knowledge in the world, the most valuable thing is to know where to find it ; to be able to turn readily, with the expenditure of little time and small effort, to the subject sought. In order to transact business successfully, a man must carry in his head a great mass of details to be drawn upon when needed, or he must know exactly where to find information on any matter when he requires it. The person who knows where to find what he wants, does not have to burden his memory with things used perhaps only once in a lifetime, and then be in doubt as to whether or not he is right.

This volume tells you what you want to know when you want to know it. The opinions and the mass of material which form it, come from the best authorities of the land — practical specialists, experienced in the particular kinds of business of which they respectively treat. It is a book which every man, no matter what his business, should have where he can lay his hand on it at any time.

It is compiled upon sound, constructive business lines. A novice may take it as a safe instructor in Founding, Building and Conducting a business. Its collection of commercial and legal forms is so complete as to enable any person to readily draw up almost any kind of business document — Contracts, Deeds, Leases, Mortgages, Bonds, Bills of Sale, Bills of Lading, Building Agreements, Articles of Partnership, Promissory Notes, Orders, Due Bills, Guarantees, Wills, etc.

Every imaginable question that may arise in a business transaction is answered. It gives a history of and explains every phase of the Banking Business. It gives complete information on Stocks, Stockholders, etc., covering Treasury Stock, Common and Preferred Stock, Watered and Deferred Stock; what is Fully Paid and Non-assessable Stock ; the Stockholder and his Rights; Dividends, etc. It covers Corporation Bonds, Mortgages and Legal Investments; the
Promotion and Financing of Enterprises; How to Incorporate a Company: form of By-Laws; Minutes of Meetings; how to transfer property to the company and how to issue stock. The Stock Exchange is dealt with very thoroughly ; Duties and Liabilities of Brokers; Market Manipulation; Trading in Grain, Cotton, Stocks, etc.

There is sound advice and helpful instruction on such subjects as, Ordering Goods, Collections, Lawsuits, Claims and Taxes; Income Tax; How to Buy and Sell Anything; Hiring and Discharging Help; Hiring a Minor; Building, Interests, Shipments, Agents, Affidavits, Bail Bonds, Insurance, Landlords and Tenants,; Leases, Liens, Patents, Advertising, Coal and Land; Sending Money by Mail; How to Become Naturalized; Starting a Business; Discounts, Commissions; Window Dressing; Business Letter Writing and almost everything else.

Besides its legal and practical business information, the work contains:

1. Easy Lessons in Penmanship and Bookkeeping, with helpful forms and illustrative examples in Social and Official Correspondence.

2. Exhaustive explanations of the various Swindling Schemes of the Day, thoroughly exposing the dangerous confidence games and other frauds by which honest farmers, bankers, merchants and business men generally, are so frequently victimized.

3. The Latest Census Tables; Interest, Limitation and Exemption Laws of all the states, and a large amount of statistical information that cannot be found in any other publication.

4. Tables for Rapid Computation and Ready Reference, constructed so simply that they can be easily understood and practically used by anyone having the slightest knowledge of figures.

5. A miscellaneous collection of useful and instructive facts pertaining to all the Business and Social Relations of life. The innumerable points of law and valuable business Helps and Hints are not scattered haphazardly through the work, but are all arranged systematically under appropriate headings, with index commencement words printed in bold-faced type.

Welcome to the New American Business Cyclopedia!

This blog will feature a page a day (or so, time permitting) from the New American Business Cyclopedia, a book I found a few weeks ago.

While some of its usefullness may have been distilled by time into mere quaint and amusing facts, anecdotes and insights about a country that has radically changed, some might say almost wholly replaced over the past 80 years, I also decided to publish pages from this book to share the enduring passages which to this day still contain sound, practical financial and business advice.

If you run a similar blog and would like to exchange links, please leave a comment. All other feedback and reactions are welcome too.

Thank you,

Lionel Houde