Orren Chalmer Hormell
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 28
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Excerpt from Municipal Accounting and Reporting, an Address Before the Maine State Board of Trade, at Lewiston, Maine, March 11, 1915: And a Form for the Classification of Revenues and Expenditures in a Town Report The practical goal of present-day municipal progress is the adoption by our cities and towns of the efficient methods employed by successful private business. One of the first and most essential steps toward that goal is the establishment of an adequate system of accounting and reporting. The government of our municipalities until recently has been considered the one outstanding failure in the American system. Inefficient, archaic business methods have been so common that the citizens in general have complacently acquiesced in them as in the inevitable, to be expected and endured along with measles and taxes. But we are now entering upon a new era. These early years of the twentieth century are witnessing a municipal renaissance. In its earlier development this municipal awakening had for its more prominent aspect reform in the organization of government. The movement for government by commission swept the country from New England to California. According to its optimistic proponents, the commission form was to be a panacea for our municipal ills. Recent experience, however, has clearly indicated that reform in organization alone cannot be depended upon to produce efficient government. It was soon discovered that many commission-governed cities, together with cities of the older type, tolerated business methods discarded a generation ago by successful private corporations. The realization of this fact gave rise to the second great force, which is now energizing American municipal progress, - the efficiency movement. This remedy has the practical advantage of being limited in its application to no one form of government. The vital practical aim of the efficiency movement is to apply modern business methods to municipal administration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
