The 'economic ethics' or 'business creeds' as evinced in Hunt's “Merchants' Magazine, and Commercial Review”, 51 vols. are so to speak the 'secularized Puritan ethics' themselves, considering from the fact that the editor and proprietor Freeman Hunt was called the 'worthy successor to B. Franklin' by I. G. Wyllie. The motives and causes of secularization of American Puritan ethics are these: the democratic influence derived from the French and American Revolutions, the humanizing influence from the Enlightenment, and the religious influences from the Greating Awakening and especially from the spirit of “Unitarianism”.
For instance, many of the writers of the magazine are the Unitarians, such as Edward Everett, Nathan Appleton, Amos Adams Lawrence, T.W. Higginson, G. W. Burnap, Orville Dewey, R.W. Emerson, Theodore Parker, W. E. Channing, James Martineau and B. Bussey. The businessmen whose biographies were inserted, such as Joseph Peabody, Amos and Abbott Lawrences, and the statesmen who were referred to, such as Daniel Webster, are also all Unitarians. Though Transcendentalists like Emerson and Parker took the strong Anti-Mammonistic attitude.
In the magazine we also find the detailed explanation of the ideal images of American Businessmen and the 'advantages, benefits and blessings' which accompany their callings. Moreover, this national characteristics were emphasized from the geographical and social standpoints. For instance in vol. 24, Rev. H.W. Beecher, in his article 'the Benefits and Evils of Commerce', argued “the States of North America are to be the Commercial Center of the Globe”, because “both sides of the Globe are ours by our position, and ours is the land of two oceans”. This advantageous position of the U.S. may have given stimulus to the thinking of “Manifest Destiny” in the 'Gilded Age', though T.W. Higginson and G.S. Boutwell, both famous writers, are Anti-Imperialists. As regards to the social characteristics of America, in vol.1, the once Secretary of State, E. Everett, in his article, 'Accumulation, Property, Capital and Credit', asserted that there were “no antagonism between Capital and Labor”, and also the famous Boston cotton manufacturer, Nathan Appleton in his article 'Labor, its Relations, in Europe and the United states, compared' (vol.11) said that “Property or Capital is the accumulated labor of the past”. From these special viewpoints and national traits the American entrepreneurs had the secularized Puritan value systems and the spirit of enterprise and their expansive way of business management, and also their special attitude about labor relations.

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The main business of the Mitsubishis in their formative years was shipping business. By 1876 their shipping division had already established as one of the biggest organizations, with the number of employees exceeding 1700 and many branch offices covering the whole country. Thus the company keenly felt the necessity of keeping constant communication among them and issued documents to clarify the structure of authority and communication so as to establish a systematic organization within itself.
This is why the Mitsubishis laid down “Mitsubishi Kisen Kaisha Kisoku” (Regulations of the Mitsubishi Steamship Co.), which was intended to systematize the inside operations of the company. But, in addition, there was another reason. At that time the Meiji Government intended to protect the shipping companies in which a systematic and open-system management including the modern accounting and reporting practices was realized. The Mitsubishis needed to work out such an organization in order to put themselves under the Government's protection.
After all, the Mitsubishis succeeded in building up an explicitly definited centralized departmental organization. This article is intended to trace the creation and development of this type of administrative structure which was significant not only in the development of the company but also in the more general growth of the modern enterprise in Japan.

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