New Garden State: A study of the Newark office and its practice;

              The future is now in New Jersey.
The Newark office of Haskins & Sells,
together with its suboffices in Bergen
County and Morris County is situated
in one of the most dynamic growth areas
in the United States. Yet, paradoxical as
it may seem to those who associate dy-namism
with newness, much of the
"Garden State" was settled very early and
the state is dotted with fine old houses,
towns rich in history and tradition, and
business establishments founded in
Colonial times. This is not new country
by any means, but much within it is the
newest and most progressive that
America offers. Any way one looks at it,
New Jersey spells challenge and oppor-tunity.
One of New Jersey's great blessings is
its location, which the first enterprising
Dutch settlers saw from the start. In the
three centuries since their time, this ad-vantage
remains. Today the stare, and
more precisely the city of Newark, is at
the midpoint of the eastern megalopolis
—the heavily populated belt of cities
stretching five hundred miles from Wash-ington,
D,C. to Boston. Most of New
Jersey lies between two great navigable
rivers, the Hudson and the Delaware,
with their two major port cities, New
York and Philadelphia. From the begin-ning,
this region has attracted the enter-prising—
builders, inventors, entre-preneurs
of all kinds—and the combina-tion
of proximity to markets, an extensive
transportation network and talented,
skilled people remains a great asset today.
This is not a new story to Ralph Bartlett,
partner in charge in Newark, who was
bom and raised in New Jersey, and who
entered the Newark office after graduat-ing
from Lehigh University in 1947. He is
enthusiastic about the practice of the
office, which has become known through
move than fifty years as one of the best
training offices in the Firm. Newark has
been a nurturing ground for an unusually
large number of Haskins & Sells partners,
many of whom have gone on to assume
positions of high responsibility in the
Firm. Among them, to name just a few,
have been:
Former H&LS managing partner John
Queenan; Weldon Powell, the first chair-man
of the Accounting Principles Board
of the AICPA; and Oscar Gellein, now a
member of the Financial Accounting
Standards Board—all three of whom have
been awarded the gold medal of the
AICPA for distinguished service to the
profession; Casper B. Apple, who headed
the Newark office for more than twenty
years before transferring to Executive
Office; Ralph S. Johns, who later was
partner in charge in Chicago; Philip J.
Sandmaier, Jr., EO partner who now co-ordinates
the domestic practice of the
Firm, and Russell D. Tipton, former
Newark PIC and now head of the New
York office.
Mien the Newark office was opened
in 1922, that city was the main popula-tion
center as well as the financial and
historic focal point of the northern half
of the state. But the growth of popula-tion
all around the city since that time,
and the many forms of business activity
that spread out from railways and high-ways
have created a regional practice
area which encompasses the entire
northern and central part of the state.
Cities and towns have grown so as to
cover most of the open space that used to
separate them, and the entire built-up
region keeps developing outward into
exurbia along a network of excellent high-ways
and rail lines.
The practice area of the nine New
Jersey counties clustered around Newark
and its suboffices is home to some 5.2
million people—all within an hour's drive
of each other. And those five million-plus
people are involved in almost every eco-nomic
activity imaginable in this part of
the country. A representative list of our
Newark office clients illustrates the
diversity of its practice.
Schering-Plough Corporation, a
major pharmaceuticals manufacturer, has
its corporate headquarters in Kenilworth,
its research plant in BIoomfield, and a
manufacturing plant in Union.
Beneficial Corporation, a leading
consumer finance company, is in Morris-town,
the seat of Morris County where
we opened a suboffice in 1974-
Union Camp Corporation, with
headquarters in Wayne, has plants
throughout the Eastern Seaboard and the
Midwest and vast timberlands in the
South.
BASF, a subsidiary of a German
industrial chemicals corporation, is in
Parsippany; Federal Paper Board Com-pany
and Benjamin Moore & O r are in
Mont vale; Breeze Corporations, Inc., is
in Union; Ragen Precision Industries is
in North Arlington; Automatic Switch
Company is in Florham Park; Imasco
Foods Corporation is in Jersey City; Lea
& Perrins, Inc. is in Fairlawn; and Reit-man
Industries is in West Caldwell.
The Newark office also has a con-centration
of public utility clients, includ-ing
Public Service Electric & Gas Co.,
the largest utility in New Jersey, providing
View from the top (Opposite .page) From
the roof of 550 Broad Street, which
houses the Newark office, modern
downtown office buildings loom over
the white spire of Trinity Church, land-mark
dating back to the eighteenth
century, In May J 775, General George
Washington passed through Military Park
on his way to take command of the
Continental Army besieging Boston
Insert photo: In Jersey City, Mayor Paxil T.
Jordan (r) and Director of Finance Jerome
Lazarus (l) talk things over with H&S
manager John Collins (second I.) and
staff accountant Bob Rooney, Jersey City
recently became an audit client of the Firm