Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Accounting Dept.

Accounting activities on the PRR were originaly handled by the Second Dept. The reorganization of December 1, 1852, created separate Treasurer's and Auditor's Departments, with the latter performing all accounting, purchases of real estate, and title searches. The Auditor's Dept. was renamed the Accounting Dept. on January 1, 1858. Real estate activities were moved to a separate Real Estate Dept. on July 1, 1874.

The Accounting Dept. was one of the basic staff departments of the PRR and functioned with relatively few changes for a full century after 1858. After 1874, the department was headed by the Comptroller, assisted by an ever-expanding staff of functionally-specialized auditors. The department's primary job was to perform the functions of an in-house auditor, auditing all of the records of receipts and disbursements and the books of the Treasury Dept. It also kept a separate set of account books, parallel to those of the Treasurer, until 1925, when the Comptroller's books became the sole general account books for the company. The Accounting Dept. also collected, computed, and distributed all general and operating statistics and prepared the returns required by state regulatory agencies and the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Between March 1, 1920, and April 1, 1927, the Accounting Dept. was decentralized, with separate accounting officers on the staff of each Regional Vice President and of the Manager of the Altoona Works, with subordinates at the General Division and Division levels. Between 1925 and 1955, Supervisors of Expenditures, who were Operating Dept. employees, took the place of the accountants assigned to the Regions, General Divisions, Divisions, and other units of the Operating Dept. This had the effect of diluting the authority of the Comptroller. With the ICC rigidly prescribing accounting practices, the caliber of departmental personnel also declined during the 1920s and 1930s.

Like many of the other staff departments, the Accounting Dept. was overhauled and upgraded beginning in the early 1950s. A separate section was created for electronic data processing in April 1955. After a campaign of several years, Vice President in Charge of Finance David C. Bevan finally secured control of the department, and it was merged into the Financial Dept. as a division on March 1, 1958.

From the description of Publications and ephemera, 1907-1940. (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 123466632