Ohio History Journal

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Commerce and Culture,

Commerce and Culture,

The Pattern in Ohio:

An Address

By HARLAN HATCHER *

 

 

I extend my most cordial personal greetings to my fellow

members of the Ohio Historical Society, with which I had the

pleasure of working for so many years and which has done me

honor in the past and which has especially honored me today by

inviting me to come once more and share in this annual meeting

of our Society. I am pleased indeed to do so. In fact any reasonable

excuse that brings me back to a place where I have spent so many

happy years of my life and where I have so many warm friendships,

I find I tend to seize with some alacrity; and I always, as I approach

this campus, cast my eye on the little grove of trees, or what is

left of it, where the new Ohio Union and now the new law school

are located, because that has come to be a focal spot for me. The

trees that you see there were planted in the autumn of 1919 during

my freshman year. I used to watch them being planted there and

I have watched their growth through the years--as well as their

removal as time passes on.

I am pleased also to observe that this year the annual meeting

has centered its attention on the industrial background and history

of our great state, and the topic upon which I am now about to

make some observations was suggested by your committee and

especially by the director, Mr. Zepp--"Commerce and Culture, the

Pattern in Ohio."

There exists a very close relationship in any nation between its

* Harlan Hatcher is president of the University of Michigan. A former vice president

of the Ohio Historical Society, as well as a former vice president of Ohio State

University, he is the author of half a dozen books, some factual and some imaginative,

dealing with Ohio and its history.

His address was delivered at the seventy-second annual meeting of the Ohio

Historical Society, held at the Ohio State Museum, Columbus, April 27, 1957.