In, the second floor of the Baker Library in the Business School a room has just been completed to contain the 6000 volumes dealing with economic and monetary questions, presented from the private library of the late Senator N.W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, by the Senator family, which has built and will furnish the Aldrich Memorial Room to house the collection, with the atmosphere of a private library.

Senator Aldrich represented Rhode Island in the Senate from 1881 to 1911, and was the first chairman of the National Monetary Commission, appointed by Congest in 1908 to study the banking situation throughout the world with a view to revising American banking methods. The Federal Reserve system was a direct outgrowth of the commission's findings, although the proposal of reserve banks met with hostility when first proposed, and was not immediately adopted.

Gathered Large Library

In his researches for the solution of the American banking situations, Senator Aldrich gathered a wide variety of publications dealing with monetary affairs in most modern nations, and many books on economic conditions in nations of all periods. This collections will soon be available to students of the Business School.

Among the outstanding volumes of the library are several early editions of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", and Thomas Tooke's "History of Prices", taken as the authority on monetary conditions from 1793 to 1837. "Niles Weekly Register", and printed in Baltimore, giving a careful contemporary review of economic conditions from 1811 to 1834, has been bound in 45 volumes, and made available for study.

Seventy-eight volumes of the "Journal of the Royal Statistical Society", giving English financial statistics from 1839 to 1870 is another feature of the collection, together with Anderson's "Origin of Commerce", printed at London in 1789, and one of the first English histories showing the effect of commerce upon the British Empire. A complete collection of the writings of American economists, and pamphlets dealing with early monetary measures in the Colonies, is another important division of the collection.