Kenneth O. Elvik, Editor
IOWA STATE UNlVERSlTY
Reviewed by J. R. Edwards University College of North Wales
The purpose of Hudson’s book is to provide the historical re-searcher with a comprehensive guide to surviving wool textile industry records deposited at various repositories in the West Riding area. The catalogue is of direct interest to social, economic, business, accounting, and even political historians. indeed the wealth of data covered will, no doubt, attract the attention of those working in many other fields. However, it is the particular significance of the book for accounting historians which will be considered here.
Many accountants believe that much of the research designed to achieve a more complete understanding of business development pays insufficient attention of financial developments at the company level. Accountants must accept much of the blame for this imbalance which is due to their failure to become immersed, in sufficient numbers, in the historical aspect of their discipline. A partial explanation for this is the absence of catalogues and registers which reveal the location of material on which to base research. For this reason alone Hudson’s guide to primary sources must be welcomed.
It is important to examine carefully the methodology adopted for the purpose of presenting the material which has been discovered. Here the author achieves a high degree of success. The bulk of the book (473 pages) is devoted to publicizing the surviving information relating to 122 textile companies. Miss Hudson has wisely adopted a flexible approach for presentation purposes; the length of the alphabetically arranged entries reflect the quantity of available material (the records of T&M Bairstow Ltd. require 40 pages) and the contents summary, for entries which justify this refinement, varies depending upon the particular range of information which has been preserved. The detailed summaries of surviving records, which in some cases amount almost to a financial history, should reduce the possibility of misconceptions to a minimum. Where a company has already been the subject of published research, references to work done are given.
Both the book and the records it covers possess considerable potential for research in areas which include:
1. methods of asset valuation;
2. the development of profit measurement procedures—capital changes versus the matching process;
3. methods of financing business development and capital formation;
4. developments in the accounting vernacular encompassing not only revised descriptions of particular accounting matters but also changed meanings attached to well established business terminology.
There is some evidence that the author did not fully appreciate the nature and significance of certain items which she encountered and recorded during the course of compiling this volume. The result is that in some cases obsolete descriptions are used without warning the reader that the document contains data quite different from what might be expected. Elsewhere information is repeated which although, no doubt, a fair summary of the original, is not entirely explicable without further amplification. These observations in no way detract from the value of the book as a guide to primary sources; they merely emphasize the need for accountants to make a weightier contribution to business history research.
