In these modern days, when commercial education has become a universal institution, when the public, private and religious schools in the United States alone, which teach shorthand and typewriting, number thousands, when similar schools have made themselves indispensable the world over, it is hard to realize that fifty years ago there were none. The whole modern system of commercial education is a creation of the writing machine. It is true that in America there were some pioneers in this field, men like Eastman, Packard, Spencer, Bryant and Stratton, whose schools antedated the typewriter. But the so-called "business colleges" of fifty years ago were few in number and, in the days before the typewriter, their scheme of instruction was necessarily limited to bookkeeping and business practice, with frequently an undue emphasis on fancy penmanship. Nevertheless these schools did form the nucleus around which was ultimately built our modern commercial school system, and it is this fact, as we shall presently see, which has made the history of commercial education in America so different from the same history in other countries. The relationship between the typewriter and the business school was slow in its early development, and equally slow was the growth of the general relationship between typewriting and shorthand. A single sentence in the first typewriter catalogue is interesting on this point. "Stenographers," it says, "can come to our office and dictate to operators from their shorthand notes, and thus save the labor of transcription." A very graceful invitation, but why not suggest to shorthand writers or their employers that they buy their own machines? We see in this sentence that the builders of the first typewriter sensed the partnership that was coming between shorthand and typewriting, but in those days the great union of the "twin arts" was still in the future.