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As everybody knows, or soon finds out,
there is a youthful vigor about the Pacific
Northwest. Though ancient Mount
Rainier dominates the landscape and
members of honorable old Indian tribes
still linger close by, they are reminders
of newness and fast growth.
Seattle is the youngest of the big
cities on the West Coast. As recently as
1906, when the first public accounting
office was opened in the city, Seattle
was still the brash capital of a vast frontier
stretching all the way to Alaska.
The Klondike gold rush in 1897 had
established it as the center of an expanding
empire within a republic. Today,
with the population of its metropolitan
area well over one million, it is
the industrial and cultural center as well.
Much of the character of the Seattle
Office has been set by its environment.
Haskins & Sells was the second national
public accounting firm to open an office
in Seattle. In 47 years of service to the
community, it has grown up with the
city and with the people who are today
its leaders. This may help to explain the
fact that among our clients are the
prestigious clubs of the city: Inglewood
Country Club, The Rainier Club, Seattle
Golf Club, Seattle Tennis Club,
and the Washington Athletic Club. It
may also explain in part the size and
strength of our tax practice. In relation
to total office practice, it is one of the
largest in Haskins & Sells. Eight of our
42 professional accountants are assigned
full time to our Tax Department,
which with its wealth of experience
takes an active part in the job of training
tax specialists for the Firm as a
whole.
Events sometimes take shape rapidly
in Seattle, and a swelling civic spirit
suddenly made the city host to the 1962
World's Fair. Probably none of the
thousands of opening-day visitors suspected
that some of our men were on
hand as "peelers," pressed into service
for our client, the World's Fair Corporation,
to help gather excess cash from
the ticket booths and place it in depositories
controlled by another client,
Loomis Armored Car Service, Inc. Nor
could many spectators enjoying the
view from the top of the Space Needle,
still another client, have guessed at the
complexities we encountered in studying
the depreciation problems of the
600-foot shaft and its revolving restaurant,
the Eye of the Needle. Our experience
as auditors for the Fair has
enabled us to appreciate its evolution
into a permanent scientific, cultural,
and entertainment complex, where the
city now enjoys year-around facilities
for sports events, opera, symphony, and
repertory theater.
The staff of the Seattle Office has
many first-hand opportunities to study
the elements of the Pacific Northwest
economy at close quarters and to understand
what makes its wheels turn. We
are well represented in the great industries
of the region—in timber and forest
products, water power, orchards, and
aluminum, to cite a few that provide
some fascinating experience for the
staff accountant. For instance, it may
tax his professional aplomb when, after
stepping from a seaplane to a raft of
logs, he teeters on the verge of falling
into the chilly salt water. We have other
good vantage points from which to
view the whole economy as auditors of
the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and
of a number of the region's newspapers
and radio-TV stations, among them the
OFFICE PROFILE:
Seattle
by Dale R. Schmid,
Senior Accountant, Seattle
13
