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The ensuing remarks are addressed to two topics which seem to me important: (a) what conflicts, if any, are there between business history and economic history; and (b) how can research in the two areas be mutually helpful.

For Marxism history is the process by which man transforms himself by transforming the economic conditions of his existence through work. The expression of this process on the social level is the class struggle through which the rising class, corresponding to the economic infrastructure of the future, tends to substitute itself for the exploiting class which is the expression of the outworn infrastructure. To exist is to engage in this conflict and thus participate in the movement of history. Now very often Christians, in order to oppose Marxism, remain on the Marxist plane. They are satisfied to set up one social doctrine against the other. We propose to show in this article that while it is true that there is a Christian social doctrine, and one superior to that of Marxism, the true superiority of Christianity does not lie in this. Its superiority consists, on the contrary, in the fact that it has not only a social doctrine but very different dimensions as well and is thereby capable of giving an integral interpretation of human existence while Marxism only touches the surface of it.

During the last twenty years Business History has become one of Economic History's most important subdivisions. This has been partly, but certainly not altogether, the result of prosperity. With highlevel employment and income the general attitude toward the businessman has changed. He is no longer popularly regarded as the personification of viliainy. In the "new Business History" he has fared very well indeed. He has not been restored to a place among the saints, but he certainly is back among the choir boys. There are two points of view on this whole development. One is to condemn the new Business History as a sinister plot on the part of Big Business to bamboozle the American public. The other is to regard the new Business History as the most promising of the three major developments that have taken place in Economic History during the last thirty years.

The Economic History Association is an interdisciplinary organization of widely varying interests. The Association has several times considered the relationships between Economic Theory and Economic History, but it has paid little attention to that between the applied field of Business Administration and Economic History. It is appropriate to do so now because significant special interests have arisen within and around Economic History in recent years which have been of particular interest to students of Business Administration. I refer to the studies in Business History, Entrepreneurial History, Economic Development, and Innovation. Like Economic History, Business Administration is interdisciplinary, at least in part, and relies considerably, though at the applied level, on the same fundamental social sciences that interest economic historians. Also we have seen an outpouring of histories of individual enterprises, as American business, once more proud of its accomplishments and increasingly conscious of the value of public relations, has sat for its portrait. At the same time, in the field of Business Administration there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the long-range view in appraising administration, and of the use of the social sciences to improve its quality. It therefore is time to attempt some integration of these strands of thought.