[Manuscript Diary Kept by Scottish Businessman George D. Ballingall During a Visit to Missouri in the Early 1890s]

[Various locations in Missouri]: May to June, 1891. Very good.. [54]pp., rectos only. Small quarto. Contemporary limp dark brown leather, thin gilt borders and gilt lining on spine. Minor wear, spine head a bit tender. Clean internally. An interesting collection of observations on American business, politics, and more from the standpoint of a Scottish lawyer and businessman working in the American Midwest in 1891. According to an 1891 Scottish directory, George D. Ballingall was one of three partners in Fraser, Stodart, and Ballingall of 16 Castle Street in Edinburgh, which matches the address he records on the front free endpaper of the present diary. Ballingall and his partners were managing secretaries for a few companies, including the Missouri Land and Live Stock Company, Limited, which provides easy justification for why he was visiting Missouri here. Ballingall himself is listed in the same directory as a member of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet, a private society of notable Scottish solicitors.

The present diary covers Ballingall's time in various locations in Missouri in May and June 1891. He discusses politics, real estate, farming, mining prospects, and most intensely, the law. He records his experiences in St. Louis, Joplin, Pierce City, and other locations, visiting mines, taking meetings and providing consultations, gathering his own legal advice, and more. Ballingall devotes the last several pages of the diary to various legal acts in the Missouri legislature, and ponders how they will affect his business interests in the state, the affairs of corporations, foreign reporting requirements, and so forth. He also discusses the evergreen topic involving the struggle between federal and state powers. He concludes by discussing how Missouri farmers organized, as did the farmers in Kansas, and how this new faction of the "people's party" controls the legislature now.