Book-keeping: A course of lectures on bookkeeping, with special reference to joint stock companies

              BOOKKEEPING. 249
BOOK-KEEPING.
A COURSE OF LECTURES ON BOOKKEEPING, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO JOINT STOCK
COMPANIES.
The first of a series of six lectures on "Bookkeeping" delivered at a meeting of the members of the Institute of
Secretaries, held Wednesday, Jan. 6, 1897, at Winchester House, London, by Mr. Lawrence R. Dicksee, F.CA.
In dealing with so extensive a subject
as bookkeeping in the limited time pre­scribed
by the present course of lectures,
it becomes necessary for me either to
leave unmentioned many points of con­siderable
importance which would be
particularly useful to you as company
secretaries, or else to assume a certain
amount of preliminary knowledge of
bookkeeping on your part. I take it for
granted that I am justified in assuming
some such knowledge, but it is a very
difficult matter for me to fix the precise
amount, so that upon the one hand I
may not be occupying time needlessly
upon elementary matters with which
you are already well acquainted, while
on the other I do not commence my
course so over the heads of some of my
audience that it is impossible for them
to derive that benefit from this course of
lectures which is hoped for. Under these
circumstances I have decided, at the
risk of appearing tedious to the better
informed of you, to commence absolute­ly
at the beginning, but to cover the
earlier part of the ground very quickly.
By this means I hope that even those of
you who know very little of bookkeep­ing
may not be deterred from continuing
your attendance on account of the course
being too advanced, while, should my
preliminary remarks not be exhaustive
enough to enable you to obtain that grasp
of the fundamental principles of book-keeping
which is so essential for the prop-er
comprehension of its later develop­ments,
I may be allowed to suggest that
between this lecture and the next you
might with advantage study the first
two parts of my "Bookkeeping for Ac­countants'
Students," which I think will
give you all the information you require
and perhaps a little more. On the other
hand I venture to think that even those
of my audience who are already capable
bookkeepers will not really be wasting
their time if they bear with me to-night
while I deal briefly with the fundament­al
principles underlying every system of
bookkeeping by double entry. Book­keeping
may be defined as the science
of correctly recording in books transac­tions
involving the transfer of money or
money's worth. In so recording these
transactions it is necessary (1) that the
record be so explicit that at any subse­quent
time the exact nature of the tran­sactions
may be readily perceived (2)
that the transactions should be so class­ified
that at any time the total result of
such transactions, or any particular
series thereof, during any given period
may be readily ascertained, (3) that the
amount of labor necessarily involved be
reduced to a minimum.
These various points are in reality all
vital and all equally important, and it is
therefore very necessary that the student
should bear them constantly in mind if
he wishes to follow the why and where­fore
of a good system of bookkeeping.
Having now ascertained to a certain ex­tent
the nature of the records it is nec­essary
for us to make, let us turn our
attention to the things in which we make
the records, viz , the books.
It goes without saying that the same