HARRY CLARK BENTLEY
(1877 – 1967)
By Edward James Gurry Bentley College
Background
Harry Clark Bentley was born in Harwinton, Connecticut, on February 28, 1877, to George Daniel and Sarach Louise (Blakeslee) Bentley. He passed away on Sunday, November 5, 1967, in Lenoir Hospital, Kinston, North Carolina. Although he never formally graduated from high school he continued his preparatory education at Robbins Preparatory School, Norfolk, Connecticut, and at Eastman Business College, Poughkeepsie, New York. At the age of nineteen, Mr. Bentley founded Winsted Business College where he served as teacher and proprietor from 1898 to 1901. This college became the third largest in that state.
Aware of his lack of academic prowess in accountancy he sold this school and returned to New York University and became a member of its initial graduating class. Married to J. Belle Crasper of East Park, New York, and father to Ina Mai Robinson (late Mrs. Chester Robinson) and Belle Louise Bradley (Mrs. J. Earl Bradley) he set out to remedy his limitations in accounting by working days and studying nights as a member of the first class of New York University’s School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance. At the 1903 graduation exercises Mr. Bentley did not receive his degree owing to his lack of a formal high school education. Mr. Bentley’s later accomplishments caused the University to mail him his Bachelor’s of Commercial Science. Acknowledgment of this degree was infrequently mentioned on his business or personal stationary.
Public Experience
Mr. Bentley began work as a public accountant for Smith, Reckitt, Clarke, & Co., Certified Public Accountants, in 1901. He later helped establish the firm of Bentley, Moyer & Laird which enjoyed a brief two-year existence. He worked for the Audit Co., of New York from 1907 through 1908; he served as chief accountant for a group of various corporations from 1908 to 1911. In 1911, he was appointed assistant professor of secretarial studies at Simmons College. From 1912 to 1916, he served as founding dean of the School of Commerce and Finance of the Boston YMCA which became the School of Commerce and Finance of Northeastern University where he planned courses, and organized the faculty. He resigned in 1916 to accept appointment as professor and later chairman of accounting at Boston University’s School of Business Administration. He resigned this position in 1917 causing such a commotion that it was a featured article on the front page of the then Boston Post.
Bentley College
On February 28, 1917, the seminal seeds of Bentley School of Accounting and Finance germinated in response to the requests of Mr. Bentley’s former Boston University students that he continue to instruct them in accountancy. This school grew to today’s Bentley College, where Mr. Bentley served from 1917 through 1953 as Professor and President, and from 1953 until his passing in 1967 as President Emeritus. The onslaught of two world wars and the Great Depression did not diminish his enthusiasm. He taught, prepared instructional materials, and corrected papers.
Professional Certification
Mr. Bentley was a certified public accountant in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California and New Jersey. He was a charter member of the American Institute of Accountants, the forerunner to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He was also a fellow of the earlier American Association of Public Accountants. He was a member of the National Association of Cost Accountants.
Personal Interests
Mr. Bentley’s earlier recreational interests comprised baseball, wrestling, running, and horseback riding. In later years, he took to gardening, the arts, and water colors. He sponsored several American artists during his lifetime. The Museums of Boston and Denver hold works of American painters whom Mr. Bentley befriended. Mr. Bentley’s political disposition was Republican and his religious persuasion was Protestant. Mr. Bentley was a member of the City Club, Boston.
Major Works
Mr. Bentley was recognized to be one of the foremost authorities in accounting during the early infancy period of the profession as a result of Corporate Finance (1908) and Science of Accounts (1911). These were acknowledged as significant contributions to the literature of American accounting. Corporate Finance was coauthored with Mr. Thomas Conyngton, a founding owner of Ronald Press. This book assisted Ronald Press in capturing a foothold in the financial market place. Mr. Bentley was requested by Mr. Conyngton to join with him and collaborate on this work.
Mr. Bentley wrote only 150 of the 525 pages of this work and in agreeing to forego royalties had his name attached as author. The more significant work, which experienced several successful printings was his Science of Accounts. This work established for Mr. Bentley a reputation as an early American accounting textbook writer. He cogently expressed the idea of subsidiary accounts and the logic of lifo as the preferred basis for valuation of inventory. His early work on Cost Accounting Problems (1 91 7) and lntermediate Accounting Problems (1934) document the state of the art as being experienced in the early part of the nineteen hundreds. Another significant contribution of Mr.
Bentley was his seven-part article somewhat misleadingly entitled “Standardization of Accounting Forms and Methods,” which appeared in The Journal of Accountancy from February 1912 through September 1912. In addition to expressing the viewpoint that accounting principles evolve in accordance with the needs of business he singularly expounded upon the entity theory as opposed to the proprietorship perspective. This startling view was appropriately recognized by The Accountant in its September 14, 1912, editorial.
We abserve that Mr. Bentley declines to regard the re-lationship of a business undertaking towards its proprietors as one of liability and we further note that he confuses the issue somewhat by referring to the property owned by a business undertaking as its “capital”— . . . no one ever suggested that they were the capital of the undertaking itself.
This series of articles is extensively quoted by Henry Rand Hatfield in later works and clearly had some influence on the refinements of the entity theory as expounded upon by William Andrew Paton. Mr. Bentley’s reputation as a cost accountant is supported in the two articles entitled “A Problem in the Distribution of Expense Burden,” which appeared in the July and September 1913 issues of The Journal of Accountancy. Dean Emeritus S. Paul Garner has also eloquently acknowledged Mr. Bentley’s cost accounting contributions in his work Evolution of Cost Accounting to 1925.
Accounting History
Of especial interest to Academy members would be Mr. Bentley’s efforts in the area of accounting history. The prodigious bibliography, a pamphlet, A Brief Treatise on the History and Development of Accounting (1929), Vignette on Pacioli (1937) with Ruth Shaw Leonard, and a brief pamphlet written for the NACA meeting in Boston in the early 1930s demonstrate his commitment in this area. The brief treatise documents the early American teachers and writers of accounting. Mr. Bentley goes to detailed length to demonstrate the Benjamin Franklin Foster’s school of accounting was not the first of its day. The Vignette on Pacioli contains detailed data on Pacioli which has not been heretofore published. Mr. Bentley’s efforts in his writings evidence a deep appreciation for accounting history.
The majority of his remaining works deal with pedagogy and various aspects of teaching methodology. Mr. Bentley claims to have originated the concept of system building in American accounting education. There also exist various series of notes in Mr. Bentley’s hand which offer his view of accounting for goodwill where he expresses prior to 1937 the use of the firm’s business cycle as the basis for calculation of the future stream of earnings applicable to the quantification of an amount labeled goodwill.
Summary
Mr. Bentley’s contribution to the environment of academe and the practice of accountancy are exemplified in his texts, periodical articles, pamphlets, catalogs and his personal service and attributes as well as dedication to the profession of accountancy. Mr. Bentley donated The Bentley Collection of early American accounting texts to the Boston Public Library to encourage the appreciation of accounting history and to offer scholars a source to study the beginnings of the profession in America. His two-volume seminal work Bibliography of Works on Accounting by American Authors (I 937) with Ms. Ruth Shaw Leonard was reissued in 1969 by Augustus M. Kelley Publisher of New York City. The work Corporate Accounting and Finance is currently being considered for reprint by Arno Press, a New York Times company.
(Vol 2, No. 1, pp. 12, 7, 1975)
