Introducing the Department for Professional Training

              HASKINS & SELLS
NEW YORK
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS
SAN FRANCISCO
CHICAGO
DETROIT
ST. LOUIS
CLEVELAND
BALTIMORE
PITTSBURGH BULLETIN LOS ANGELES
SEATTLE
DENVER
ATLANTA
WATERTOWN
LONDON
NEW YORK, MARCH 15, 1918
Introducing the Department for Professional Training
IT seems fitting, in introducing a new de-partment,
that the causes leading up to its
inception should be reviewed.
Mr. Charles Waldo Haskins and Mr.
Elijah Watt Sells were first brought in
touch with each other during a professional
engagement with the Federal Government
in Washington. In 1893 Mr. Haskins and
Mr. Sells were appointed expert accountants
under the joint commission of the Fifty-third
Congress to revise the accounting sys­tems
of the National Government. This
appointment served to introduce the two
men, each of whom found that the methods
and professional ideals of the other were in
harmony with his own.
The result of this association in Govern­ment
work was a professional alliance which
began March 4, 1895, at 2 Nassau Street,
New York City, under the name of Haskins
& Sells. On May 1, 1896, the firm removed
to the Johnston Building at 30 Broad Street,
where offices have since been maintained.
In the earlier years of this professional
service each new accountant came into close
working contact with the members of the
firm, and was fitted into complementary re­lation
as he showed himself capable of ad­justment
to its professional standards. A
working force was thus brought together by
a process of selection based on personal
knowledge and recognition of fitness. At
the time of Mr. Haskins' death in January,
1903, the co-partnership group, which had
begun in 1895 with Mr. Haskins and Mr.
Sells, had expanded to include forty ac­countants,
sixty assistant accountants, and
forty clerks.
To-day there are two hundred and sixty-eight
employes. There are fourteen offices;
thirteen in the United States and one in
London, England. There are ten members
of the firm.
Growth and progress are evident. They,
however, have brought with them corre­sponding
drawbacks. With the expansion of
the work in scope and volume, it has become
increasingly difficult to keep in close touch
with the members of the staff. The needs of
the men in the performance of their work,
their comfort and welfare, have become
further removed from the knowledge of the
firm than in the earlier days of a more per­sonal
contact.
Formerly a man on the staff went out
with some member of the firm. He learned
the firm's ways, grew into harmony with its
traditions and ideals, and unconsciously ab­sorbed
its technique. Many times he com­pleted
the engagement himself, bringing in
the papers while the principal wrote the
report. At other times the accountant wrote