Reviewed by James W. Jones Certified Public Accountant
These two volumes on the development of accounting techniques contain a preface and an introduction, and dissertations on Ac-counting as a Process of Classification and Classification Concepts in Accounting Practice and in Treatises published prior to 1840 in Volume I. Volume II consists of a section on Classification Theories proposed between 1840 and 1936 and a section on National and other Uniform Systems of Classification since 1937 and their Antecedents, with a Conclusion. This volume also contains an Appendix consisting of fifteen Schedules showing various financial statements.
The Bibliography embraces 280 books and pamphlets plus thirty periodical articles. Although Bentley in his Bibliography (1934) listed forty authors whose works had been copyrighted between 1796 and 1840 and an additional sixteen whose books had been deposited, but could not be physically located at that time, Hain has not referred to these in his book.
In view of the method of reproduction, which appears to be offset printing from typewritten sheets, the text should have been more carefully edited. Words were incomplete, misspelled, typed over, pen or pencil corrected. These shortcomings as well as faulty reproduction of some pages make for difficult reading.
The book contains many quotations from Augsburg to Zerbi, embracing the years (of publication) 1435 (p. 149) to 1970 (p. 269), many in foreign languages. A reader would need to be multi-lingual to understand it and Hain’s translators may have erred; witness the difference between Crivelli’s “Treatise” and that of Geijsbeck (to which Hain does not refer). A specific example appears on page 93, where Hain quoted Crivelli in F. N. 1 — “even to a bootlace tip” which Geijsbeek did not translate.
In spite of numerous footnotes, the text introduced on page 107 (par. 2, line 10) Volume I the unfamiliar words “logismography” and “statmography” which had not at that point been identified. These words are not included in the Third Edition of Kohler’s Dictionary nor in the Oxford Universal Dictionary. By persistent search, the reviewer found these theories discussed on page 300, Vol. II under Cerboni, 1872, and on page 336, Vol. II under Pisari, 1880.
Hain listed Pacioli as the author of “Treatise on Double-Entry Book-keeping” (.62, F. N. 3) but not in the Bibliography. He does not state that he extracted specific portions of Pacioli’s “Summa” for reference purposes.
It appears that he relied on the translation by Crivelli. Geijsbeek’s translation shows that Pacioli used Arabic numerals for the chapters (capitolo). It is to be hoped that this inconsistency is not common throughout. This applies also to F. N. 5, p. 62, Ch. XX (ch. 20).
Quotations are not always accurate, and at p. 106, F. N. 3, there are numerous differences between Crivelli and Geijsbeek. More-over, on at least three occasions, Hain used the English (British) symbol £ (livre) for Italian lira (lire), p. 145, F. N. 3; p. 151, 1. 6; p. 152, 1. 4. The sum of £ 25,000 at the 1896* rate of U. S. $4.8667 would amount to $121,667.5 which converted to lire at $.174 (17.4 cents) on the same date would have amounted to nearly seven hundred thousand, an extremely large sum for those times, due allowance for five and a half centuries.
Hain displayed a deficiency in his knowledge of book-keeping and accounting. On page 95 at line 21 he referred to “Pacioli’s Treatise on double-entry accounting in 1494”, which is incongruous, and on line 3 of page 96 can be seen a statement of Pacioli’s treatise on European accounting. Page 207, line 3, referred to a “general theory of accountancy”, but there was no such profession before 1854, when the Scottish accountants formed a professional society.
One of Hain’s most significant comments is found on page 132: “Unfortunately, it has not always been possible to assess the relative significance of extant account-books, a fact, which must be recognized as a potential source of error because the material available from the earliest period of accounting is so meager that opinions have to be formed on the strength of only a few historical documents.”
The work also contains numerous errors in syntax and tense. There are abundant instances where the author used the present tense when quoting authors long since deceased, and reverted to the past tense in the same paragraph. Such practices may be
1 Quoted in Monetary Systems of the World. Around 1839 a lira was worth 15.92 cents, U. S. Currency. (Shea, Book-keeping by Single and Double Entry).
“literary license” but they make for difficult reading and interpretation.
