Industrial Life Photograph Collection

During the expansion of industry between the end of World War I and the late 1930s, photography was widely used to promote industry. Throughout the 1930s, the Business Historical Society (BHS) made a great effort to collect photographs of all the major industries in the United States. Frank C. Ayres, executive secretary of the Business Historical Society, sent out numerous letters to businesses requesting “action photos of mechanical operations” for permanent deposit at Baker Library. Ayres explained that these photographs were very useful to the students of the Harvard Business School. The photographs helped the students to visualize the industrial operations that they would experience in the future. Potential donors were told that the photographs would be displayed in the corridors and lecture rooms of Baker Library. Ayers also stressed the importance of preserving such images for use by future generations.

A wide range of businesses, from automobile manufacturers to paper mills, contributed photographs. Typically, Ayres requested specific images that he found published either in a company’s promotional materials in Fortune magazine. Ayres also made an effort to contact companies that exhibited at the Century of Progress International Exposition, the world's fair held in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. Many of the companies that listed as exhibitors in the Official Guide Book of the Fair sent photographs to the Business Historical Society.

Professor Donald Hills Davenport, Associate Professor of Business Statistics at the Harvard Business School, also played a key role in the growth of the photograph collection. Professor Davenport collected photographs that illustrated the human factor in industry. Davenport’s guiding purpose was building a foundation for better understanding of industrial relations, as he believed most students had only a vague concept of manpower in industry. Like Frank Ayres, Davenport acquired photographs from specific companies and from Fortune magazine.

Donor companies typically sent groups of photographs that illustrated their activities during the 1920s and early 1930s. Most of the photographs arrived in 1933 and 1934. In the March 1932 (Vol. VI, No. 2) and May 1934 (Vol. VIII, No. 3) issues, the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society published articles describing the photographs and their use at Harvard Business School. By 1936, Frank Ayres stopped actively collecting photographs for the Business Historical Society. The number of incoming photographs declined, although donations were received until the early 1940s.