We want to increase public awareness of the many positive accomplishments of American Free Enterprise, using highlights of the histories of individual companies, and the industries of which they are a part.

We want to help American companies tell the stories behind the business traditions on which they are founded, and tell of traditions that have since developed or continue to develop. These stories ought to be told to company employees and their families, to prospective employees, to customers, and to the communities of which the companies are a part.

We want to increase public awareness of the excellent museums and historic sites that tell about American business history -- sites like Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan; Hagley (du Pont) Museum in Wilmington, Delaware; Museum of American Financial History in New York City; the John Deere Historic Site in Dixon, Illinois and many others.

We want to help universities and high schools develop educational materials and programs that focus on American business history.

We want to help American cities attract and build new industrial growth by telling about the role their city or region has played in the development of American Free Enterprise.

There are hundreds of good business histories already available on the Internet. Thousands more will be written in the years to come. No one source can possibly bring it all together, but we can help set a tone and help organize a better way of finding the information that is already there. We can try to fill important gaps in the record when we find them.

We intend to be honest as historians, but we frankly think that existing literature about business history puts far too much emphasis on mistakes in judgment, labor strife, slowness to adjusting to social trends, or broad brush concepts and colorful characters such as "robber barons" and the like. Mistakes are an inevitable part of the human condition, and people who take risks usually make more of them. To smugly criticize them, with perfect 20-20 hindsight, is not good history.

We would rather tell the story of how our business leaders, and the working men and women they have employed, have created the abundance of goods and services in America that is beyond the wildest dreams of our forebears and the original founders of their own companies.

We would rather tell the story of how American business growth, and most human progress for that matter, derives from a spirit of looking at the possibilities as well as at the problems.

Please join us if you like. There is much work to be done.

Organizing information about the history of a specific industry and/or companies in that industry

Helping to publicize our efforts among companies in a particular region or industry

Helping to organize a regional effort in their area, publicizing our efforts among local and state
governments who want to help tell the story of company histories in their area.

Helping assemble capsule histories for individual companies, possibly conducting interviews
with company officers and retirees.

We have a lot more ideas we want to explore and/or develop than we can possibly cover here, but your ideas may be just as good or better. We welcome new ideas, as long as our few basic "do's" and "dont's" are observed.

• We don't want to compete with existing professional researchers or writers of business history. We do want to support them and help give a wider voice to their efforts.
• We don't want to compete with advertising and public relations firms. We do want to help them develop ways of incorporating business history into their efforts.
• We don't want to compete with a company's web designers whether they are in-house company employees or outside consultants. We do want to encourage and help them to give greater prominence to the history and traditions of their companies.

Please feel free to e-mail either Gurrie Rhoads and/or Bryan Rhoads for more information, or if you would like to join our efforts. We look forward to hearing from you.