Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1909 — Experts Expect a Big Business. [ARTICLE]

Experts Expect a Big Business.

It is expected that the public accounting companies who furnish experts to go through the books of public offices will do a big business in Indaina for a few years after the public accounting board gets to examining offices. When the state’s examiners go through an office and find anything wrong with it the, first thing the officer whose office is examined will do will be to hire an accountant of his own to go oyer the books and find out for himself whether the state’s report is true. No matter whether a state, county, township, city or town officer is crooked or not, this is the course he will follow. It will be the business of the examiners of the public accounting board to go into an office and check up every account and every book and paper and see that everything is straight and square. Undoubtedly in many of the offices they will find something wrong. In some cases they may find embezzlements and other crooked conditions. In other cases they Will probably find that the officer has merely made errors in his figures, or that he has got his accounts hopelessly tangled up through ignorance of how to keep things straight. But no matter what the reason may be, the examiner will be obliged to make a report to the public accounting board of just what he finds, and it then be up to the officer or his bondsmen to make good the shortage. • Of course, before any officer will agree to pay back a lot of money he will want to know positively that he owes it, and he will not be likejy to accept the report made by the state examiner as absolutely correct. He will want an accountant of his own to go over his books and tell him whether he owes the money or not. This is where the expert accountants wiy reap their harvest. And they do not yrork for nothing. They get big pay. This condition will continue fqy two or three years, at least, or until the accounting board has had an opportunity to make a first examination of all the offices in the state. After that time there will not be so much danger of shortages or mixed accounts, and the work of the expert accountant will not be in such great demand.