Charles M. Van Cleve Principles of Double-Entry Bookkeeping

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. What I claim for the book is that it solves the problem of placing double-entry bookkeeping upon a rational basis; and to the best of my knowledge and belief it presents the first and only solution of that problem. It is one of the strangest things in the history of the arts and sciences that this great system of accounting, which, by reason of its compactness and convenience, has come into almost universal use, should have attained so high a degree of development on the practical side, while on the theoretical side it is and always has been in a state of utter confusion. As a rule, the study of a useful art has a certain value as mental discipline; the art of accounting is the one exception to the rule. Aside from the so-called occult sciences, there is nothing which so tends to bewilder the mind and to dull the faculty of reason as the study of double-entry bookkeeping in the form in which it is customary to present it.