ADAMS'S BOOK-KEEPING. BOOK-KEEPING, CONTAINING A LUCID EXPLANATION OF THE COMMON METHOD OF BOOK-KEEPING BY SINGLE ENTRY; A NEW, CONCISE, AND COMMON-SENSE METHOD OF METHODS OF KEEPING BOOKS BY FIGURES; SHORT METHODS Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by J. HOMER FRENCH, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of New Hampshire. PREFACE. NONE but a few privileged persons in our cities and large towns have hitherto enjoyed the benefit of any, or at most of but little, intelligible instruction in the department of accounts. The commercial world is well supplied with text-books upon this important department of education, adapted to extensive wholesale and commercial business; but the masses, the farmers, mechanics, retailers, and professional men in the country, and in our inland towns and villages, have hitherto neglected this branch of education-second in practical utility to none save arithmetic-impressed with the belief that a knowledge of book-keeping can be obtained only in the counting-room, and is of but little importance to any but those who are to engage in mercantile business. Teachers themselves are generally unacquainted with the terms and usages of foreign commerce, and the extensive wholesale and commercial transactions presented by the various authors who have written upon this subject, and whose works are intended for those who are to engage in mercantile or commercial pursuits. Indeed, common observation bears testimony to the fact, that the department of accounts is commonly, nay, almost universally, neglected in our schemes of popular education. This neglect, doubtless arises from the unadaptation of most of the text-books used to the wants of the many. The work here presented to the public is believed to be an Analytical System of Book-keeping, divested of all superfluities and abstruse technicalities, and adapted to the system of instruction in classes, the method of teaching now adopted in every department of education in well arranged and well conducted schools. It is confidently believed that the pupil who thoroughly masters this work, will be well qualified, in this department of education, to enter upon the active duties of life, in the capacity of a farmer, mechanic, merchant, professional man, or of the wife of a man engaged in any of these pursuits. Hoping that the want of a text-book in this department of education, so long and so seriously felt by the teachers of our public schools and academies throughout the country, is here supplied, the work is submitted to the candid examination of the public. 881075 |