such presentation when made by them and can frame appropriate schemes of his own. In the requirement of the law, he must be 'skilled in theory and practice of accounts, commercial law, and auditing.'

A word or two may be added as to the significance of the word public in the phrase "public accountant." The public accountant is, of course, one whose services are open to any one in the line of his business. The use of the word in this sense is rather unfortunate. We do not speak of a public lawyer or a public doctor, as distinguished from the lawyer or doctor employed permanently by a private firm or corporation; still there is sanction for this use of the term and it probably has come to stay.

The Profession of a Certified Public Accountant.*

By W. A. CHASE, LL.B., C. P. A.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:-When your committee did me the honor to ask me to address you on the subject, “The Profession of a Certified Public Accountant," I consented the more readily, as I am rather under the impression that a good many people have a somewhat hazy idea as to exactly what a certified public accountant is; and I was glad to have the opportunity of explaining the matter to the students of one of the great American institutions of learning, of which I have the honor of being a graduate, the State University of the grand old State of Illinois.

I believe some people think a certified public accountant is a sort of superior bookkeeper. Now the bookkeeper bears somewhat the same relation to the accountant that the bricklayer does to the architect. The accountant must, of course, know all about bookkeeping, a great deal more in fact than the ordinary bookkeeper. So, I imagine, the architect knows all about bricks and their manufacture, but he does not lay them. The work of the accountant begins where that of the bookkeeper leaves off.

Another class of people think the profession of a certified public accountant is a new profession. I shall hope to convince you before I sit down that it is really a very old profession, one of the oldest in the world. A work on this subject was published in Edinburgh last year and is a compilation of a vast amount of learned research. We find, that in the Chaldean-Babylonian Empire, said to have been the first regularly organized government in the world, certified public accountants existed. At different periods they have been known by different names, but I will keep as far as possible to the American designation.

There is a record which has been discovered of a code of laws in this Chaldean-Babylonian Empire regulating commercial transactions promulgated by the reigning king who lived in the time of Abraham. He is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, in chapter xiv, verse 1, as the King of Shinar.

In these ancient times the way the scribe or certified public accountant prepared the business records was to write them with *Read before the Students' Commercial Club of the University of Illinois, at Urbana, Feb. 13, 1906.

a stylus on moist clay, which was afterwards baked or dried in. the sun. Among these tablets are the records of two banking firms, one of Babylon, the other of Nippur, a city of Chaldea. An expedition sent by the University of Pennsylvania some few years ago discovered, in excavating, 730 of these tablets in a room at Nippur.

In ancient Egypt the scribe or certified public accountant wrote his accounts on papyrus with a calamus or reed. The system of auditing in ancient Egypt was very complete. Peculation on the part of the workmen was guarded against by one official checking his accounts against those of another. Among the Persians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians with their extensive commerce, it is safe to assume that accountants were constantly retained. In Greece the certified public accountants seem to have been very lax in their duties. One Greek writer says "if the state entrusted to anyone only a talent, and if it had ten checking clerks, and as many seals and twice as many witnesses, it could not insure his honesty." In view of the disgraceful exposures that have been taking place of late throughout the United States, we see the truth of the old proverb that history is very apt to repeat itself.

In Rome, under the kings, the republic, and the earlier and later empires, a great deal of attention was bestowed on public accounting. It probably took its rise from the household expense book kept by the father of a family, the paterfamilias with whom we all are familiar, who entered in sort of waste book, "adversaria," all the receipts and payments of his household, which he posted monthly to a register of receipts and payments called "codex accepti et depensi."

After the fall of the Roman Empire we find that Charlemagne, Emperor of the Franks, employed accountants called "judices" to audit and keep the accounts of his estates. The Pope had enormous revenues, looked after by a large staff of accountants, the head of whom was called a Proto-Scriniarius. Among the Italian republics of the middle ages, the certified public accountants were thought very highly of, and as these were great trading communities, their employment was a necessity. In the enumeration of the professions, we find them classed with the mathematicians.

Coming now to England and Scotland we find the accounts and audit of public revenue were the main cause and origin of the profession of certified public accountant. The Sheriffs' accounts were settled yearly on the famous Exchequer table. "This table was covered with a russet cloth, which was marked in squares by intersecting lines, probably with chalk, the columns of which represented money columns, the column farthest to the right of the calculator being for pence, the next for shillings, the next for pounds, then scores, hundreds and thousands of pounds.

The Sheriff having duly appeared, the various sums for which he had to account were read out from the great roll. As each item was announced the calculator arranged specie or counters representing the amount thereof in the appropriate columns on the side of the table farthest from him. Below these he then similarly arranged the Sheriffs' various credits, subtracted the one set from the other and brought out the balance, if any. The tallies produced by the Sheriff were carefully compared with the foils in the Exchequer the discovery of any flaw being immediately followed by the consignment to prison of the fraudulent Sheriff."

In an old manuscript work of the 13th century entitled Sir Walter of Henley's "Tretyce off Housebandry," there is an account of the duties of an auditor, the principles laid down being very similar to those governing a modern audit: "The auditors ought to be faithful and prudent, knowing their business and all the points and articles of the account in rent, outlays and returns of stock. And the accounts ought to be heard at each manor, to know the profit and loss. It is not necessary to speak to the auditors about making audits, for they ought to be so prudent and so faithful and so knowing in their business that they have no need of others' teaching about things connected with the accounts."

The profession of certified public accountant was held in so much honor among the countries of Italy in the middle ages that we are not surprised to find that the most important improvement in the science of keeping accounts should have originated in Italy. In Genoa, in the year 1340, we first meet with double entry in the accounts of the Steward to the local authority. In Venice, in the year 1494, the first work on the art of bookkeeping was given to

the world by a very eminent accountant named Luca Paciolo. This was a very remarkable work and contains much which is at the foundation of modern accounting.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the profession of public accountant seems to have flourished more vigorously in Scotland than elsewhere, it is, therefore, not surprising that in Scotland in the middle of the 19th century should have been inaugurated that legislation which is the origin of the professional or certified public accountants as we know them to-day. In Scotland and in England and the other parts of the British Empire, the persons called certified public accountants in the United States are known as chartered accountants.

There are three Scottish societies of chartered accountants incorporated by royal charter as follows: Edinburgh, 1854; Glasgow, 1855, and Aberdeen, 1867. The English Institute was incorporated in 1880. Owing to the admirable work done by the members of these various societies in all parts of the world, some of the leading accountants and business men of America considered it would be desirable that similar legislation should be adopted in this country. As a result of the steps taken, the New York certified public accountants' act was passed in 1896, that of Illinois in 1903, and similar legislation has been enacted in other states of the Union, among them being Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Washington, New Jersey, Michigan and Ohio.

In Great Britain, the charters give the exclusive right to the members of the different institutes to place the letters C. A., A. C. A., or F. C. A. after their names or to style themselves chartered accountants, and in America the right alone to use the letters C. P. A. after one's name or to describe one's self as a Certified Public Accountant is given by the various acts to those who have complied with the requirements of the law; and it is made a misdemeanor punishable by heavy fines for any person illegally to assume this designation.

Without going too much into details, it may be said generally that the requirements for admission to the profession of a certified public accountant are very similar in Great Britain and the United States.

A high school education or its equivalent is a preliminary sine qua non. In Great Britain intermediate and final technical