Firm history, growth, and professional standing;

              FIRM HISTORY, GROWTH, AND PROFESSIONAL STANDING
The following brief comments, largely based on or taken from material in "The First Fifty Years", are intended merely as a reminder, in convenient form, of some of the more important aspects of the Firm's history, growth, and professional standing.
More than 56 years ago, on March 4, 1895, the Firm began the practice of public accounting in a small office at No. 2 Nassau Street, New York City. Its two founding partners, Charles Waldo Haskins and Elijah Watt Sells, had first met two years previously upon being designated as experts to a Congressional Commission created to investigate the operating methods of the Executive de­partments
at Washington and to recommend such improvements and economies as could be made "without injury to the public service."
The two years of the investigation ended in March 1895. It had been successful from every standpoint. Both the Congres­sional
Commission (the Dockery Commission) and the public press testified to the ability and high standing of the two experts. The Chicago Daily Record referred to them as "the ablest experts to be found in the accounting profession***."
The Commission's two full-time investigators had pre­viously
had extensive experience in financial pursuits. It was this experience, coupled with their obvious ability and high character, that led to their selection by the Commission.
Charles Waldo Haskins began the public practice of accounting in New York City on his own account in 1886, following a period of private employment. During the next seven years, he held, incident to his professional work, the offices of Secretary of the Manhattan Trust Company and Secretary of the Old Dominion Construction Company, as well as appointments as Comptroller of the Central of Georgia Railway, Comptroller of the Ocean Steamship Company, Comptroller of the Chesapeake & Western Railroad, and Re­ceiver
of the Augusta Mining and Investment Company. He was 43 years of age when he entered into partnership with Mr. Sells. He died 8 years later.