According to Hoyle

1

The following note was taken from the preface to "Key to Book­keeping,"
by Ira Mayhew Eclectic Educational Series, published by Van
Antwerp, Bragg & Co., 1884.
ECLECTIC EDUCATION - 1884
The schools of a country should teach
what its children and youth will need to
know and practice on leaving them. Less
than fifty years ago the principal branches
taught in our public schools were reading,
writing, and arithmetic. But times have
changed. The courses of study in the
improved schools of the present time have
been much extended, but not always
wisely. Branches that were formerly of
minor importance have now become
essential. Among them is Bookkeeping,
which, thirty-five years ago, was not
authorized as a public school study, even in
the city of New York. With railroads now
traversing our widely extended country in
all directions, and with the telegraph, the
telephone, and cheap postage, the buying,
selling, and exchange of products have
been greatly multiplied, thus making
neighbors of persons hundreds and
thousands of miles apart. As a consequence,
Some four decades before the American
Revolution, there existed in London a
number of coffee houses in which the
gentry and merchant classes gathered to sip
chocolate and coffee, to talk, and to play
Whist, the increasingly popular card game
destined to be the forerunner of Auction
and Contract Bridge and other trump
in every portion of the country the
comforts and luxuries of other parts of it
are common. This easy interchange renders
the knowledge and practice of
Bookkeeping a necessity of the times.
Besides, Bookkeeping gives a mental
discipline equal to that gained from the
study of any other branch, and superior to
that realized from the study of most
branches. Double-entry Bookkeeping,
while a science, deserves to rank among the
fine arts. It challenges the admiration of
lovers of the beautiful and the true. It
cultivates the judicial powers of the mind.
It quickens and strengthens the love of
justice and equity. It promotes fair dealing
among men. It contributes to private and
public virtue. It leads to economy and
thrift in private and public affairs. Its
general study and practice will reduce
pauperism and crime, and promote
frugality and virtue.
games of the partnership family. One of the
habitues of the Crown Coffee House on
Bedford Row was Edmond Hoyle, a
middle-aged lawyer.
Hoyle became so proficient at Whist
that he decided to teach it and forego the
practice of law. History repeated itself two
hundred years later when Charles Goren
• • *
As one might expect, "there is a lot of history in annual reports." Al
Roberts, co-director of the Accounting History Research Center at Georgia
State University, provides the following commentary as an example. It is
taken from the 1957 Annual Report of The United States Playing Card
Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.
ACCORDING TO HOYLE
26 The Accounting Historians Notebook, Fall, 1993