ABSTRACT
Charles Waldo Haskins, founding partner of Haskins & Sells and dean of New York University’s School of Commerce, cited the above verse in a 1901 editorial urging U.S. corporations to voluntarily publish annual audited financial statements.1 Although British corporations began publishing audited balance sheets in the 1840s, American investors were still living in the Dark Ages. Neither the U.S. government nor the American stock exchanges required industrial corporations to include audited financial statements in their annual reports. Few corporations voluntarily disclosed their financial condition.
