An examination of nineteenth-century Polish handbooks on factory accounting

Introduction

This article focuses on the content and role of Polish factory accounting textbooks published in the nineteenth century, that is, in a period in which Poland did not exist on the political map of Europe, while Polish society engaged in various forms of activity aimed at preserving its national identity as well as regaining independence. Organic work, a program of economic and cultural development of the Polish nation, was one of the major ways of pursuing this goal. The article contributes to the accounting history literature in less explored European settings by examining the role of Polish factory accounting handbooks in the advancement of accounting education and practice in the context of establishing a national identity in the nineteenth century. I attempt to provide new knowledge of a less explored stream of research dealing with resistance to the power of a foreign state through accounting, primarily through publications in this field. Previous research on resistance through accounting mainly focuses on colonial settings and dependence on the British or US empires (e.g. Bush and Maltby, 2004; Chua and Poullaos, 2002; Dyball et al., 2007). Furthermore, this article contributes to the history of accounting by providing information about the input of Polish nineteenth-century authors in the development of accounting literature. It also provides material for future comparative research on the origins and development of cost accounting literature in different countries, as proposed by Carnegie and Napier (2002).

Factory accounting in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century “consisted of determining how much was spent on the merchandise or product and how much had to be sold to make a profit” (Coenenberg and Schoenfeld, 1990: 96). Boyns et al. (1997) and Boyns and Edwards (2013) use the phrase “industrial accounting” to describe the practice of cost calculation within an accounting system based on double-entry bookkeeping (DEB), developed by industrial enterprises for managerial purposes. The term “factory accounting” used in this article is the counterpart of the German term Fabrickbuchhaltung and the Polish terms rachunkowość fabryczna or buchalterja fabryczna. ¹ The first of these terms was introduced in German settings in the late eighteenth century (Coenenberg and Schoenfeld, 1990: 96). The Polish terms for factory accounting were used in accounting manuals in the nineteenth century to distinguish the recording of events and cost product calculation in manufacturing enterprises from merchant accounting (rachunkowość kupiecka), which was typical of commercial firms.

The characteristic features of factory accounting are cost-recording and the calculation of product costs carried out in manufacturing enterprises whose number, sizes, and diversity of production type were increasing along with progressing industrialization as a result of the Great Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution started in Western Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and in Poland, in the 1820s, causing a second wave of socio-economic changes, that is, the industrial era, which lasted until the 1970s (e.g. Toffler, 1980). The industrial revolution led to the emergence of industrial capitalism. The development of this socio-economic system had a significant impact on bookkeeping, which was supplemented by cost accounting and thus expanded into accounting. This change was emphasized by the leading early accounting historian, A.C. Littleton (1933/1981: 360), who maintained that the British Industrial Revolution produced a discontinuity in cost calculation practice and that cost accounting became “an important element in marking the expansion of bookkeeping (a record) into accounting (a managerial instrument of precision)” (cited in Boyns and Edwards, 2013: 97).

The approach to understanding the nature and scope of accounting, consistent with Littleton’s view, developed gradually in nineteenth-century Polish textbooks on accounting. However, this approach was not explicitly expressed in publications by Polish authors until the twentieth century. Rachunkowość (“accounting”) was stated to be a term broader than księgowość (“bookkeeping”). The three areas distinguished within accounting were bookkeeping, cost calculation, and financial reporting (Wojciechowski, 1964: 15).

The development of accounting in commercial and industrial enterprises which were set up on Polish territories during the nineteenth century, a period in which Poland was partitioned and annexed by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and Habsburg Austria, involved the gradual appearance of schools which provided instruction in the field of commerce, as well as the publication of literature on this subject. Merchant accounting manuals in the Polish language began to appear around the 1820s, ² and about a dozen such handbooks published before 1900 were also concerned with factory accounting.

The objective of this article is to present methods of record-keeping and cost calculation in manufacturing enterprises as prescribed by the authors of 13 factory accounting textbooks published in the Polish language in the nineteenth century, that is, in the specific socio-political conditions of life in the Polish nation under the rule of three foreign states. The publishing of accounting textbooks in Polish in this period was one of the forms of implementing the concept of “organic work,” understood as a non-political fight to preserve the Polish identity through striving for the economic superiority of Polish enterprises, the development of science and education, and social work. Based on an examination of the contents of these Polish manuals on factory accounting, the following question are addressed:

The history of accounting in Poland in general, and the development of textbooks on accounting in particular, has not yet become a prevalent research area, in comparison with research based on such countries as the United Kingdom, the United States, or Italy. English language publications addressing the development of accounting in Poland up to the Second World War are scarce and fragmentary (Jaruga and Kabalski, 2010; Jaruga and Szychta, 1996; Mattessich, 2008; Szychta, 2005, 2013). As a consequence, the international accounting community has very limited knowledge of the achievements, evolution, and social role of accounting in Poland. The reason why the analysis and interpretation of Polish factory accounting handbooks published in the nineteenth century was undertaken is that there is very little research into recommended factory accounting practices in Poland at that time and insufficient knowledge of this subject in contemporary Polish- and English-language publications. Although it was a very difficult period for the Polish nation because Poland was partitioned and annexed by three neighboring powers, industry developed along with the gradual progress of factory accounting, which involved the development of accounting education as well as Polish-language literature on accounting theory and practice in an industrial environment. This article provides evidence of desirable practices of record-keeping and cost calculation in Polish factories in the nineteenth century and tries to fill the gap in accounting research conducted to date. It is an attempt to respond to the encouragement for European scholars whose first language is not English to join in the international accounting history debate, still dominated by Anglo-Saxon settings and institutions, which is conducted in specialist English-language international journals. ³

The article is structured as follows. The first section provides a literature review. The second section contains an outline of the context of accountancy development in Poland under the Partitions in the nineteenth century. The third section identifies the set of textbooks examined for this study. The next section contains, in subsections, the analysis and discussion of the issues related to the above questions. The final section of this article provides a summary and conclusions.

Literature review

Since the first work describing the DEB system, published by Luca Pacioli in Venice in 1494, ⁴ many textbooks on DEB appeared in different European countries before the end of the eighteenth century (e.g. Edwards, 1989: 67–69; Mattessich, 2003: 127–128; Wojciechowski, 1964: 58–73). They were mostly concerned with bookkeeping in trade entities. Chapters in books, as well as manuals (in different European languages) dealing with factory accounting, were written in the nineteenth century, although factory accounting issues were also addressed in manuals published in Great Britain and Italy before 1800. Accounting history research, published in English, confirm that textbooks covering industrial or cost accounting were published in the period till 1900 in Britain, the United States, Germany, France, and Italy. Some of these works might have been known to the Polish authors of accounting textbooks written in the nineteenth century.

Boyns and Edwards (2013: 129) state that the accounting literature published in Britain before the 1870s paid relatively little attention to industrial accounting. They identified 15 contributions to the industrial accounting literature prior to the beginning of the 1870 period. Six of these works were published in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries (J. Collins in 1697, J. Dodson in 1750, W. Thomson in 1777, R. Hamilton in 1777–1779 – vols. 1 and 2, W. Gordon in 1766, and W. Wood in c. 1777). Nine further books were printed in the period 1800–1870 (see Boyns and Edwards, 2013: 140). According to Boyns and Edwards (2013: 141), the most significant of these contributions was a two-volume work by R. Hamilton (published in 1777–1779). In the context of linen manufacture, the author dealt with flow production and process costs, transfer pricing, joint costs and decision making, rate of return calculations, residual income, and interest as an opportunity cost. Mepham (1988) states that “Hamilton introduces the use of profit centers and the techniques that he suggests include transfer pricing and the use of opportunity cost. In this respect, Hamilton was far in advance of any of his contemporaries” (p. 68). However, Boyns and Edwards (2013: 141–142) maintain that despite the insights contained in the above texts, not one was exclusively concerned with industrial accounting. Nonetheless, the concern with how to accommodate the needs of the manufacturer within the traditional DEB system increasingly featured in the literature of the period c. 1760–c. 1870. The last three decades of the nineteenth century in Britain (the Second Industrial Revolution began c. 1870) witnessed major development in the literature relating to cost calculation. The number of British texts containing the phrases “cost accounts,” “cost accounting,” or “costing” in their title published after 1870 and before 1914 was around 30. Moreover, there were other books which did not contain these words in their titles but which were concerned with cost accounting issues. For example, the best-known book, entitled Factory Accounts. Their Principles and Practice, was issued in 1887 by E. Garcke and J. M. Fells, an engineer-accountant team (Boyns and Edwards, 2013: 169). These authors traced the flow of costs through the enterprise and integrated cost accounting with double-entry financial accounting (Mattessich, 2008: 35). Garner (1954: 217) described the Garcke and Fells publication as “probably having more to do with the advancement of cost accounting practices than any single book ever published.” This book “is today widely acknowledged as the earliest standard text on cost accounting” (Boyns and Edwards, 2007: 980).

Investigations into the history of management accounting in the United States (e.g. Fleischman and Tyson, 2007; Garner, 1954; Johnson and Kaplan, 1987; Porter, 1980) are the basis for concluding that factory accounting practice in America in the nineteenth century was ahead of the development of textbooks/theory in this field. It was only in 1885 that H. Metcalfe published one of the first books (The Cost of Manufactures) on modern cost accounting, demanding proper cost assignments through shop order and labor cards. He introduced a job-order costing system and tied cost accounting to financial accounting (Chatfield, 1996; Mattessich, 2008: 34). Metcalfe was the first in the United States to distinguish indirect or overhead costs (Fleischman and Tyson, 2007: 1075). Among the many prominent American contributors to cost accounting at the turn of the nineteenth century was F. W. Taylor, the father of “scientific management,” who introduced the setting of systematic work standards: “This opened the way to standard costing” (Mattessich, 2003: 142). During the nineteenth century, accounting in the United States was primarily taught in business schools whose proprietors often authored the textbooks. The number and thematic diversity of textbooks on accounting significantly increased with the transfer of accounting education to colleges and universities in the early twentieth century (Fleming et al., 2004).

In Germany, the first comprehensive description of the cost accounting system is attributed to D. Ballewski, who also addressed (in 1877) the issue of cost behavior at different output levels. H. Tolkmitt, in his book issued in 1894, wrote about the central role of costing for all forward-looking management decisions. Most works published in Germany in the nineteenth century represent a preliminary stage of cost accounting. They contain substantial details and give technical advice on how to handle specific procedures, but none systematizes the material nor attempts to critically evaluate the procedures found in various businesses. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century (in 1905) that the first major systematic analysis of cost determination in manufacturing enterprises was carried out in Germany by F. Leitner, in Selbstkostenrechnung industrieller Betriebe (Coenenberg and Schoenfeld, 1990: 96–97). At the end of the nineteenth century (in 1899), E. Schmalenbach published work on bookkeeping and calculation in manufacturing. The latter was an outstanding contribution to cost accounting in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century (Mattessich, 2003: 138, 166).

Holzer and Rogers (1990: 57) state that modern French cost accounting probably began with Maurice Lucas’ book Le Prix de Revient (published in 1928) and a publication by a special government commission in 1928, which recommended detailed costing procedures. However, as long ago as 1820, cost accounting systems were introduced in some manufacturing enterprises (see Boyns et al., 1997). For instance, in the years 1820–1880, such a system was introduced and progressively improved upon at Saint-Gobain, a French company established in Paris in 1665 (Carmona, 2007; Nikitin, 1990). As regards to textbooks on industrial accounting in France, during the period 1800–1880, an increasing number of books started to consider the technical issue of costing within the double-entry system (Boyns et al., 1997: 400). In the first half of the nineteenth century, A. Payen (in 1817), L. F. G de Cazaux (in 1824), P-A. Godard-Desmarest (in 1827), and F. N. Simon (in 1830) “discussed important issues such as depreciation, overhead apportionment and transfer prices as a means of helping to determine the source of profit” (Boyns and Edwards, 2013: 145). In the following decades, other texts relating to production costs were issued in France, for example, A. Guilbault in 1865 or E. Léautey in 1881. Guilbault, for instance, “provided a detailed discussion of cost behavior (fixed versus variable) as a tool for evaluating results” (Holzer and Rogers, 1990: 61).

Antonelli et al. (2009) examined the development of the relevant literature/theory and cost accounting practice in Italy during the nineteenth century and the first four decades of the 20th century. According to their investigation, prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, only one work published in Italy dealt with accounting in industrial settings. It was published in 1610 by G. A. Moschetti, who considered, within a financial accounting system, the formation of certain accounts relating to manufacturing processes (sugar refinery) to which specific (direct) costs should be debited to determine the profit or loss from the process. Moschetti did not address the problem of overhead apportionment (Antonelli et al., 2009: 470). The findings of Antonelli et al. (2009) indicate that nine books concerning cost accounting were published in Italy in the nineteenth century, three of which were issued in the first half of the century. The first book, authored by S. Paple, was published in 1823. The second one, written in the form of an encyclopedia by Antonelli of Venice, was published in 1838–1843. The third book, by Villa, appeared in 1850. The next six Italian handbooks concerned with cost accounting were published between 1879 and 1900 (see Antonelli et al., 2009: 471–473). Overall, cost accounting issues were not a frequent topic within the Italian accounting literature up to 1900, but from the late nineteenth century, theoretical developments in accounting played an important role with respect to the development of cost accounting. This was thanks to the publications of F. Besta, who promoted the concept of embodying cost accounting within the double-entry financial reporting system, and the works of G. Zappa, who advocated the separation of cost and financial accounting (Antonelli et al., 2009: 482–487).

The historical research on industrial/factory accounting manuals mentioned above indicates considerable diversity in this respect in industrialized Western European countries and the United States. It also illustrates that the works published up to the 1880s focused on the technical aspects of cost-recording and calculation and on explaining the use of the DEB system in manufacturing entities. These publications paved the way for more systematized knowledge on cost accounting, which was contained in the works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (e.g. Antonelli et al., 2009; Boyns and Edwards, 2013; Mattessich, 2008).

As for Poland, of the approximately 68 works dealing with trade, factory and agricultural accounting published in the Polish language in the period 1801–1900, only a few have so far been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation (Biadacz, 2015; Chojnacka, 1969; Sojak and Kowalska, 2014; Szychta, 2014; Turzyński, 2011; Wojciechowski, 1965a, 1965b), with only two articles addressing the issue of accounting for processes and costs in manufacturing enterprises by Chojnacka (1969) and Szychta (2014). Cost accounting for industrial production in the second half of the nineteenth century was first described by Chojnacka (1969) in her MA thesis, ⁵ on the basis of 12 handbooks dealing with economic matters. According to Chojnacka, the methods of accounting for production costs as presented by the authors of Polish handbooks in the nineteenth century varied considerably, depending on the type of production in a given enterprise. The analysis of factory accounting manuals carried out by Szychta (2014) reveals the directions and recommendations concerning the principles of recording economic transactions and calculating product costs in manufacturing enterprises in the period of the rise and development of industry on Polish lands. My article presents analysis of these handbooks in the broader socio-economic context of a country without its own state and as a manifestation of organic work, which was a form of resistance during the period of the Partitions.

The historical literature on resistance through accounting (practice, profession, associations) primarily focuses on colonial settings and dependence on Western empires. For example, Álvarez-Dardet Espejo et al. (2002) analyzed how accounting was implicated in the control of a Spanish colonial project in the years 1767–1772. The authors explained disciplinary control over the settlers and their resistance based on Foucault’s notions of governmentality and disciplinary model. Chua and Poullaos (2002) examined center–periphery interactions between the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and accounting associations in the self-governing colonies of Australia, Canada, and South Africa in 1880–1907. In turn, Dyball et al. (2007) considered the initial professionalization in the Philippines in the 1920s as a form of native resistance against the American invasion. The authors asserted that the Philippine professionalization project is best understood as an expression of the political interests and strategy of a feisty cohort of native political elites engaged in a struggle with their American colonizers. The articles included in the special issue of Critical Perspectives on Accounting in 2004 (vol. 15, no. 1) examined the positioning of accounting within the processes and practices that permitted an imperial power to dominate distant territories and their inhabitants. For instance, Bush and Maltby (2004) explored taxation in British West Africa from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and considered what its imposition has to tell us about the relationship between colonialists and Africans and about its potential for making colonial subjects governable.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no publications devoted to accounting issues in Poland during the Partitions and their role in resistance to the partitioning empires. This study fills an existing gap in this area of accounting history.

The context of accountancy development in Poland in the partitions period

The nineteenth and early twentieth century (until 1918) was a very difficult period for the Polish nation, both in socio-political and cultural terms. Poland (the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth – a federal state between 1569 and 1795) was partitioned and annexed by three countries, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The division of Poland was carried out in three stages: in 1772, 1793, and 1795 (see map in Appendix 1). After the third partition, the Polish state was erased from the political map of Europe for 123 years. Nevertheless, the Polish nation itself did not cease to exist (Żurawski vel Grajewski, 2015: 95). The partitions resulted in the division of Poland into three parts (Partitions) with different legislations and different conditions of life of the population, who were subjected to various forms of repression. Each of the foreign powers had its own methods of exploiting and assimilating the Partition that it occupied, which in the course of time led to differences in the development of the three Partitions, especially in the economic sphere (Kieniewicz, 2002: 16; Kostrowicka et al., 1984: 43–46).

As a consequence of the war between France, led by Napoleon I, and the coalition of the three powers, as well as the Poles’ fight for independence, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was formed in 1807 out of the Polish territories occupied by Prussia as a result of the second and third partitioning. The Duchy was a constitutional monarchy, under Napoleon’s protectorate. In 1815, the majority of the area was transformed into the so-called Congress Kingdom of Poland, which had strong ties with Russia. The Kingdom had its own government, Parliament, and army. Polish was the official language although the Russian tsar was the king of Poland. After the unsuccessful November Uprising against the foreign powers in 1830–1831, the Kingdom lost its autonomy (Kieniewicz, 2002: 66–71; Żurawski vel Grajewski, 2015: 101–104). The defeat of the Poles in the next uprising in 1863 (called the January Uprising) brought increased Russification of education and administration in the Russian Partition and intensified the Germanization in the Prussian part of former Poland. The Kingdom of Poland was administered by Russian officials, and Russian became the official language of instruction in schools and in Warsaw University. In Silesia and Pomerania (the Prussian Partition), German was gradually introduced from the 1820s as the official language in elementary schools and during church services. After 1870, the Germanization pressure expanded to cover administration, education, and judicature. German became the official language of the government and the administration of justice, not only internally but also in external relations. In Galicia (the Austrian Partition), Poles lived in a more lenient regime, especially from the 1870s, which was due to the collapse of the absolute Habsburg monarchy. Poles became the subjects of a constitutional monarch, who granted them considerable administrative and cultural autonomy and even some important government posts (Kieniewicz, 2002: 65, 261, 298).

The conditions in which Polish society existed in the nineteenth century were thus unique. The Partitions of Poland were a political act – the loss of its own state did not mean the loss of the Polish national identity. For over 120 years, the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian authorities sought to assimilate Poles in their respective partitions, which were met with strong opposition. Apart from armed resistance in the form of national uprisings, it included the legal activity of Poles in the administrative bodies of the partitioning countries (Prussia and Austria) and, most importantly, “organic work” and the related concept of “work at the grassroots.” Organic work was a program of economic and cultural development of the Polish nation, and work at the grassroots was a program of spreading literacy and popularizing science among the masses. It was intended as a strategy to counteract repression while awaiting an opportunity to restore independence.

The popularization of these concepts was initiated after the failure of the November Uprising in 1831 by the supporters of the liberal party, which gave up political action against the occupying powers. The idea of organic work was first implemented in Greater Poland (the Prussian Partition) in the 1830s. Its program was limited at that time to opposing the plans of armed resistance, and it emphasized actively working toward the material and cultural strengthening of Polish society. It was developed by Karol Marcinkowski, a social activist and physician. The beginnings of organic work were also visible at that time in the Kingdom of Poland. It took the form of active participation in economic life, promoting the pioneering role of Poles in the field of economy and engaging in social, educational, and cultural activity (Benyskiewicz, 1987: 97–100).

After the January Uprising in 1863, Poles developed ideas of positivism and organic work on a larger scale. As such, the first duty of a Pole was to work for his or her country, develop its civilization, and improve Poland’s economic and educational level (Żurawski vel Grajewski, 2015: 116). The organic work program was promoted by both positivists and representatives of the traditionalist approach, who believed in reliance on faith rather than reason in the pursuit of the truth, equated Polish identity with Catholicism, and stressed the importance of tradition and continuity of social institutions (Markiewicz, 1980: 14, 18). Traditionalists were advocates of the legal activity of Poles, aimed at developing the economic potential of the nation, its internal organization, and education.

In contrast, positivists, especially those operating in the Kingdom of Poland, realized a different version of organic work, propagating the idea of democratization of society to strengthen the future Polish state. They also supported “economic action” to improve the material well-being of the nation and its educational level. Positivists supported social reforms to improve the situation of the poorest groups, advocated solidarity between social classes against the partitioning countries, and were against any form of underground activity. Polish positivists believed in progress and modernization, which they understood as approximating Europe in the spheres of culture, science, and economy, so that future Poland, enlightened and affluent, would be in a better position to improve its situation (Jaszczuk, 1986: 144, 151).

In line with these ideas, leading Warsaw capitalists founded vocational schools (e.g. Kronenberg’s School of Commerce) and subsidized professional journals, such as the “Economist,” issued from 1865. Agricultural and industrial societies were formed to defend the interests of their members and to pursue cultural and educational goals (Kieniewicz, 2002: 309). A number of inspiring and effective initiatives in the field of science and education were the result of activity of such Polish organizations as the Warsaw Society of Friends of Science (1800–1832); the Scientific Society of the University of Cracow, established in 1815 and transformed in 1872 into the Academy of Arts and Sciences; or the Poznań Friends of Science Association, active from 1857. For instance, the first of these associations organized research in the field of the history of Poland and the Polish language as well as sciences in connection with the needs of the country’s economy (Suchodolski, 1982: 406–407). Numerous research workshops, libraries, museums, and archives were set up on the initiative of wealthy people (sometimes in the form of foundations). In the second half of the nineteenth century, when economic and social development created new tasks and opportunities, the character of institutions establishing the research workshops and centers for the supervision of science underwent change. An example of a new type of such an institution was the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw (1875), supported by public donations. It established a library of professional literature and organized exhibitions, courses, and lectures as well as demonstrations, workshops, and laboratories. The aim of this activity was to advance Polish industry and agriculture (Suchodolski, 1982: 419). Publications, in particular journals, had a special role in promoting education in Polish society. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, many specialist journals were published (medical, legal, economic, and technical), as well as Polish language dictionaries, encyclopedias, and professional handbooks, including in the field of trade and accounting.

Despite the fact that positivists in the Congress Kingdom of Poland varied in terms of attitude to the methods of social and political activity, and could thus be divided into radical and moderate (Jaszczuk, 1986: 162), and the idea of organic work was realized in varying degrees in the three Partitions, the national program was oriented to transforming Polish society, with its decades-long Romantic tradition of uprisings, into a society that is rational, wealthy, and well educated (Benyskiewicz, 1987: 14). Gradual changes in the fields of economy, education, science, and culture were intended to eliminate backwardness and strengthen the nation (Jaszczuk, 1986: 8). The ultimate aim of the organic work program was to regain independence from the occupying powers and re-establish the Polish sovereign state. In addition, as indicated by Benyskiewicz (1987: 3), organic work was the main form of activity that transformed the feudal Polish society of the beginning of the nineteenth century into a modern capitalist nation at the end of that century.

Commercial matters were regulated onto the partitioned Polish territories by the legislation of the three foreign powers, that is, in the Prussian sector – first by the General National Law for the Prussian States of 1794, and from 1871, by the first German Commercial Code of 1861; in Galicia – by the Austrian Commercial Code of 1862 modeled upon the German Code; in the Russian sector – by the Russian Commercial Code. Moreover, in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815) and later in the Congress Kingdom of Poland (1815–1918), which was dependent on Russia, the French Code de Commerce of 1807 was in force from 1809 until 1934.

Commercial Codes prescribed the keeping of account books for the protection of the interests of creditors, that is, safeguarding them against dishonest practices of business owners. They were modeled upon the first French Ordonnance de Commerce, elaborated in 1673 by Jacques Savary (Scheffs, 1939: 209–211). Although the codes applicable to Polish territories were based on one common model, their provisions differed considerably. For instance, the French Code in the Congress Kingdom of Poland required all merchants to keep account books, the Russian Code provided for exemptions from this duty only for stall-keepers and traveling salesmen, and the German Code referred only to “larger entities.” Interestingly, the German Code allowed the books to be kept in any so-called living language, which excluded only such languages as Old Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and so on, but the Prussian authorities banned the use of Polish in the annexed Polish territory. German and Austrian Codes required tradesmen to draw up an inventory and balance sheet upon “starting” an enterprise, whereas neither the Napoleonic Code nor the Russian Code imposed such an obligation (Scheffs, 1936: 44–48). The four commercial codes operative on Polish territories in the nineteenth century did not lay down detailed rules for balance sheet items valuation – they only contained general provisions relating to this question (Scheffs, 1939: 231–232). Differences in the provisions of commercial law, also with regard to bookkeeping in enterprises operating in the three Partitions, resulted from the different economic policies of the partitioners. These policies were one factor which led to the loss of integrity in the Polish lands.

However, the impact of commercial codes on bookkeeping in nineteenth-century enterprises was not significant because apart from the general rules for keeping the journal and conducting the annual inventory, and some formal requirements, they did not contain rules for the keeping of accounting records or the preparation of financial statements. The obligation to keep the above-mentioned account books was intended to protect the interests of creditors and business partners, while entrepreneurs were free to choose particular accounting practices depending mainly on “the actual internal needs of the enterprises” (Gorgolewski, 1965: 47).

During the period of the Partitions, Poles had limited influence on economic and social processes, while the different economic regions of the former Polish Republic had their economic ties cut. Although the partitions delayed the scientific and technical progress in the Polish territories, there was a steady development of industry, particularly in the Russian sector, where the Kingdom of Poland held a technical advantage over Russian industry, especially until the second half of the nineteenth century. In the years 1879–1914, there was dynamic growth of industry in the Kingdom of Poland, largely caused by changes in its socio-economic structure after the granting of freeholds to peasants in 1864 (Klemantowicz, 2008: 19–20).

More precisely, the development of industry in partitioned Poland progressed from about 1820. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was based on small enterprises which did not need to maintain complex bookkeeping systems, and there was no legal obligation for business owners to do so. Such a necessity arose when bigger factories and large capitalist industrial enterprises in the form of joint stock companies started to appear in the last decades of the nineteenth century, mainly in the four major industrial districts of the Kingdom of Poland – Staropolski, Łódzki, Warszawski, and Sosnowiecko-Częstochowski (Puś, 1997) – and in the Prussian Partition – in Upper Silesia and Greater Poland.

The industrial revolution reached Poland, but the pace and scope of economic progress were different in each of the sectors. The development of the textile industry (in Łódź, a district dependent on Russia), the mechanical and chemical industries, metallurgy and mining (in the Prussian sector), and crafts plus commerce in Cracow (Kraków) and Lviv (Lwów) (the main cities in Galicia, the Austrian sector) contributed to the growing importance of accounting. At that time there was a need to develop specialist accounting knowledge and bookkeeping skills to perform their function. The independence and consolidation of the accounting profession also grew.

The demand for a greater number of highly qualified bookkeepers at that time was a driving force behind the development of commercial education and accounting textbooks and guidelines. To quote Łagiewski (1934: 14), in the nineteenth century,

business education was organized in response to the demand for qualified commercial workers and, above all, for bookkeepers. The demand for accounting specialists was stimulated by the employment requirements set out in the commercial codes in force at that time.

There was demand not only for specialists in merchant accounting but also in factory and bank accounting, so it became necessary to teach accountancy in an organized way, which spurred the development of education in commercial disciplines.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the development of commercial education, including the teaching of bookkeeping and balance sheet preparation, ⁶ gained pace. From 1826, Professor Stanisław Kunatt of the University of Warsaw lectured on commercial accounting. The Faculty of Trade was created at the Polytechnic Institute in Warsaw, which was organized in 1825–1831. In the Prussian sector, in Poznań, the Young Merchants Society set up an evening school of commerce in 1846, while the first courses in commerce in Cracow (the Austrian sector) were run in 1829 (Łagiewski, 1934: 13–14). Among various other forms of accountancy teaching, the most prominent were the courses offered by the Commercial Sunday School (from 1855) and Mrs. Siemiradzka’s Courses (from 1897) in Warsaw, the L. Kronenberg School of Commerce in Warsaw (1875–1900), ⁷ the School of Commerce in Cracow ⁸ (from 1882), and the Municipal School of Commerce in Poznań (from 1907; Scheffs, 1939: 235–248). The level of commercial education in Polish was the lowest in the Prussian sector due to intensive Germanization.

In summary, the development of industry and trade in Poland in the nineteenth century entailed the development of education in the fields of commerce and accounting. Meanwhile, the need to teach accounting in the Polish language in an organized manner led to the appearance of literature on this subject, mainly in the form of handbooks to be used on courses and in commercial schools.

The selection of textbooks for analysis

To establish a set of factory accounting textbooks for this study, I used three bibliographical lists of Polish accounting texts which had been compiled earlier by Łagiewski (1936), Iwanczenko and Górniak (1950), and Szychta (1989, 1995).

Professional bibliography by Łagiewski (1936) contains about 300 works, published from the end of the eighteenth century until 1935, in the fields of bookkeeping, balance sheet analysis, commercial arithmetic, and banking. These publications include 56 works on accounting which came out in the nineteenth century. Bookkeeping bibliography by Iwanczenko and Górniak (1950) lists about 600 books on bookkeeping, calculation, revision, and arithmetic, divided into two parts: (1) texts from the end of the eighteenth century to 1939 and (2) works published in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1945–1950). Like the list compiled by Łagiewski (1936), this list includes about 56 publications dealing with accounting, all issued in the nineteenth century. Bibliographical Calendarium by Szychta (1989, 1995) contains a chronological list of the oldest books concerned with accounting and business arithmetic, which were published in Polish towns between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. This Calendarium contains 68 works on merchant, factory, and agricultural accounting which were published in 1801–1900.

It is difficult to establish precisely how many Polish-language books on accounting were published in the nineteenth century. The above review shows no fewer than 68. This number is quite impressive given the contemporary political and socio-economic circumstances, that is, the annexation of Poland by the partitioning states with the consequent attempts to eradicate the Polish language and identity, and the foreign ownership of many factories, and so on.

A detailed review of the three bibliographical lists enabled the author to identify 14 works that deal, exclusively or in part, with factory accounting. Thirteen of these books are kept in the main libraries of the Warsaw School of Economics and the University of Łódź (UŁ), and in private collections. One work is not available in these libraries, that is, Nauka prowadzenia księgowości i korespondencji przemysłowej (Instruction in Keeping Accounts and Industrial Correspondence) by R. Starkel, published in 1865. This publication was mentioned only in the bibliographical list by Iwanczenko and Górniak (1950: 38) but without giving the name of the publisher or place of publication.

During several visits to these libraries, I carried out a preliminary examination of the contents of these 13 books; I took notes and photographed some of the works in full and fragments dealing with the topic in question in some others. The photocopies, with the use of a computer, were the basis for the detailed analysis and interpretation of the contents of the books. Furthermore, some of these textbooks were lent to me from private collections by two members of the Accounting Department of UŁ, which greatly facilitated the task. The names of the authors and the full titles of the 13 manuals are given in Appendix 2 (Table 3).

Research findings

In this section, the results of the examination of the factory accounting textbooks are presented in subsections, which contain an analysis of the issues related to the research questions provided in the introduction of this article.

Nineteenth-century Polish manuals on factory accounting – authors, places, and years of publication

The majority of the nineteenth-century Polish publications were handbooks and manuals explaining the technical side of accounting for various economic events and transactions and providing models of the journal, general ledger, and subsidiary books for various forms of DEB and simplified methods of keeping business records. The handbooks were mainly concerned with trade accounting. The books published at that time, especially in the first half of the century, were modeled upon manuals previously published in French, German, and English. Stanisław Budny (1826) was the first author of an accounting manual in Polish (published in Vilnius ⁹ ), and it was followed by a series of Polish textbooks on this subject. He presented the accounting method of a French author, Edmund Degrange (see Wojciechowski, 1965a). The first original Polish contribution was a three-volume textbook ¹⁰ by Barciński (1833, 1834, 1835) entitled O rachunkowości kupieckiej (On Merchant Accounting), which set out the rules of DEB for trade, banking, factories, and households.

Polish-language factory accounting textbooks published in the nineteenth century were likely to have been an important aid in teaching the principles of record-keeping and cost calculation in manufacturing enterprises. Table 1 presents a list of authors of 13 textbooks, the years of publication in chronological order, the places of publication, and the authors’ occupations. These handbooks were published in the period 1835–1900. One of them appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century, and 12 in the second half. The year of publication of the first work in Polish is half a century later than Hamilton’s book issued in Britain, and about 20 years later than early manuals on industry accounting published in Italy and France. The publishing activity of Polish authors increased from the 1880s, as was the case in Western European countries; however, the number of publications was much lower.

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Table 1.

Authors and places of publication of nineteenth-century Polish manuals on factory accounting.

Author	Year of publication	Place of publication	Author’s occupation
Antoni Barciński	1835	Warsaw	Accountant, teacher, state official
Adolf Szumlański	1865	Warsaw	Accountant
Antoni Barciński	1876	Warsaw	Accountant, teacher, state official
Erazm Nowicki	1876	Warsaw	Chief accountant and member of the Polish bank in Warsaw
Towarzystwo Pedagogiczne	1880	Lviv	Book issued by the committee managing Lviv School of Industry
Edward Pietrzycki	1886	Lviv	Chief accountant of the city of Lviv and professor of accounting
Jan Danilewicz	1886	Warsaw	Teacher, accountant
Jan Danilewicz	1887	Warsaw
Nikodem Krakowski	1887	Warsaw	Teacher and clerk in the commercial bank in Warsaw
Konstanty Sękowski	1888	Warsaw	Accountant
Karol Jacobson	1894	Warsaw	Accountant, teacher
Ludwik Erazm Veltze	1895 – vol. 1 1900 – vol. 2	Lviv	Accountant, teacher, owner, and manager of a private commercial school
Henryk Chankowski	1899/1900 – 2nd/3rd eds., and further issues in the twentieth century	Warsaw	Accountant, controller, teacher

The majority of Polish textbooks were written by teachers of accounting, often with a practical background in merchant or factory accounting. The contribution of Barciński ¹¹ (1835) was particularly significant; he was the author of the first original handbook on factory accounting in Polish published in the period of the Partitions. It was volume III of his three-volume work. About 40 years after the publication of this work, Barciński (1876) published yet another handbook, in which he wrote about cost-recording and calculation in factories. He also authored several books on business arithmetic and the functioning of the stock exchanges in London and Paris. In 1827, the Polytechnical Board of the Kingdom of Poland, which was in the process of forming the Technical Institute in Warsaw, delegated Barciński (1803–1878) to undertake studies in Paris as a candidate for the post of professor of accounting and business correspondence in the future Institute. In 1828, he completed a course of study at the School of Commerce in Paris and traveled across Europe. He returned to Warsaw after a 4-year stay abroad but did not take up work in the Technical Institute as it had been closed down by the Russian authorities after the unsuccessful November Uprising in 1831. Barciński first worked in the Bank of Poland and as a teacher of mathematics in a secondary school in Warsaw (1836–1837) before teaching mathematics and bookkeeping in the Institute of Agronomy in Marymont (1838–1840). He also worked as a bookkeeper and provided advice to various institutions that were implementing bookkeeping systems. He retired in 1872 (Sojak, 2012: 218–219).

Barciński wrote a three-volume handbook, making use of the knowledge he had acquired in France, England, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, that were useful both in teaching accountancy in schools of commerce and in practical applications in enterprises. In the Partitions period, at the time when handbooks in Polish began to appear, some foreign language publications were being used in Poland. Barciński appended to his handbook a glossary of accounting terms in Polish, English, French, and German to facilitate the teaching and learning of accounting on the basis of foreign manuals brought by foreigners who set up enterprises on Polish lands and by people from abroad who were employed by them in positions of responsibility (see Wojciechowski, 1965b). Barciński (1876) authored his second handbook on factory accounting as a retired accountant, making use of his vast professional and educational experience.

The other authors of factory accounting manuals also had extensive experience in teaching accountancy and in keeping accounts, as indicated in short notes on the title pages or in the introductions to their textbooks. Nowicki (1876) was the chief accountant of the Polish bank in Warsaw. Similarly, Krakowski (1887) was a clerk in the commercial bank in Warsaw and an accounting teacher in the commercial sunday school in Warsaw. Pietrzycki (1886) worked as the accountant in the city of Lviv and as a professor of merchant accounting in the Lviv School of Trade and Industry. Danilewicz (1886, 1887) was an accountant and a long-time teacher of accounting. Jacobson (1894) was a lecturer in commodity economics and correspondence at the L. Kronenberg School of Commerce in Warsaw in the years 1876–1883 (“Leopold Kronenberg,” 1922: 377–378). He became acquainted with the principles of tabular bookkeeping, called the American method, as a volunteer working in Germany. Veltze was an owner and headmaster of a private trade school in Lviv at the end of the nineteenth century. Veltze (1895/1900) writes in the introduction to his voluminous work that he uses his theoretical knowledge which he acquired studying the highly regarded works of German authors and the Swiss author, J. Fr. Schär, as well as experience gained in his over 20-year-long professional and educational practice. Chankowski (1849–1937) was also a teacher of accounting and commercial subjects, the author of several textbooks of accounting as well as commercial and financial arithmetic published in the late 1890s and in the first three decades of the twentieth century (see Iwanczenko and Górniak, 1950; Szychta, 1995). His books were based on his more than 20 years of commercial experience, which he acquired working as an accountant in leading commercial firms in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, and London, and next as the chief controller and head of a trading house in St. Petersburg and a teacher of accounting in Warsaw. In 1898, Chankowski set up the bookkeeping and commercial courses in Warsaw, for which he received a license from the Russian Ministry of Finance (Ś.P. Henryk Józef Chankowski, 1937: 196).

Of the 13 factory accounting manuals, 10 were published in the Kingdom of Poland (in Warsaw) and 3 in the Austrian Partition (in Lviv). There was no such Polish-language publication in the Prussian sector. This situation was a result of the development in the Kingdom of Poland (dependent on the Russian Empire) of Polish commercial and manufacturing enterprises despite a substantial inflow of foreign, mostly German, merchants and industrialists, while in the Prussian Partition, industry was dominated by German factory owners. Moreover, the Prussian part of Poland was covered by the full-scale-policy of Germanization. The use of Polish was forbidden within German administration and schools. In the Congress, Kingdom of Poland – despite restrictions of the Russian censors – Polish-language publications had the widest circulation. In the second half of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of periodicals and newspapers increased considerably (31 in 1870 and 169 in 1914). Publishing companies were set up in larger cities, with highly efficient printing houses. G. Gebethner and R. Wolf, a company established in Warsaw in 1857, specialized in massive editions of textbooks and fiction (Suchodolski, 1987: 31).

The reason for writing factory accounting textbooks in Polish at that time was the need to meet new demands arising from the development of industry in the partitioned Polish lands and to provide education to candidates for the accounting profession. This is confirmed by Szumlański (1865b: II), who, as he writes, “driven by the desire to support the development of domestic industry, and particularly the small commercial, manufacturing and agricultural enterprises,” designed and described two methods of simplified DEB in the context of presenting the Italian method. He saw the need to improve control at different levels (specific, general, and property control) in this type of business entity. In turn, Danilewicz (1887: I–II) wrote his book to help “young people who want to enter the commercial and industrial professions and who do not have the possibility of learning from works in foreign languages – a deficiency that is increasingly acute in view of growing industry in our country.” Similar reasons for issuing factory accounting manuals were given by the other authors. All this shows that the publication of factory accounting textbooks in Polish in the nineteenth century was part of the program of organic work developed in partitioned Poland. The authors of the textbooks wanted to provide students of commercial schools and practicing accountants with the knowledge necessary to keep the accounts in Polish manufacturing enterprises and to contribute to the development of domestic industry.

Product cost calculation

The authors of Polish manuals also differ in recommendations concerning product cost calculation. More detailed explanations of calculation methods were contained in the works by Barciński (in both his publications), Szumlański, Danilewicz, and Sękowski. The other manuals only provide general information about cost calculation and its important role in an enterprise.

According to Krakowski (1887: 5), to determine the production costs of different product lines, it was necessary to keep a subsidiary book, called a calculation book, which should show the costs of the materials and supplies used, the cost of labor, and the percentage of all costs connected with a given product, such as the depreciation of machines and tools, rent, and taxes, and so on. The purpose of maintaining this book was technical control, and the accuracy of the calculations depended on technical rather than accounting competence.

The Polish authors explain calculation methods by providing numerical examples relating to various production types. Although the methods described were not given any names, the examples illustrate the use of job costing, process costing, and stage calculation (see Table 2).

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Table 2.

Methods of calculation presented in Polish nineteenth-century manuals on factory accounting.

Author	Year of publication	Type of production included in the examples	Method of calculation
			Process costing	Job costing	Stage calculation
Antoni Barciński	1835	Distillery			X
Adolf Szumlański	1865	Production of machines	X	X
Antoni Barciński	1876	Production of machines		X
Jan Danilewicz	1886	Production of machines			X
Jan Danilewicz	1887	Sugar factory	X
Nikodem Krakowski	1887	Silver-/gold-plating factory, metal factory			X
Konstanty Sękowski	1888	Sugar factory	X

The numerical example given in the book by Barciński (1876) illustrates the method of calculation using simple job costing, explaining that machine-producing factories usually add a 30 per cent margin to total direct production costs to cover the overhead costs incurred by an enterprise. The profit margin added to total product costs had to be determined at a level that also covered the indirect administrative and selling expenses as these were not included in the production cost account but in the profit and loss account. The cost and price calculation according to the method described by Barciński (1876) comprised the following items:

Direct production costs:

(a) Direct materials and supplies.

(b) Labor, classified into turning, blacksmithing, metalworking, and so on.

(c) Technological fuel and lubricants (grease).

(d) Value of models.

Total direct production costs;

Overhead margin 30 per cent;

Total product cost;

Profit margin in pert cent;

Selling price of a product.

Therefore, Barciński treated overheads in product cost calculations in a similar way to Walker in Britain, in a book he issued in 1875. He proposed adding a percentage of the overheads to the prime cost to obtain the “real cost” (Boyns and Edwards, 2013: 174).

The example given by Krakowski (1887), illustrating the cost calculation for a product made of iron, provides a detailed calculation of the direct production cost. To determine the price of the iron product, a profit margin was added to the direct production cost. This method of price determination was used in enterprises in which indirect costs were included in the profit and loss account, not in the production account. The profit margin added to direct costs served to cover indirect costs and to make a profit.

An interesting example of a calculation can be found in a book by Sękowski (1888). He presents a very detailed statement of costs incurred in the process of sugar production and a method of calculating the cost of processing the raw material (sugar beets). Sękowski recommends that the calculated average cost of processing a bushel of sugar beets in a year should be used to control the costs incurred in subsequent years.

The books presented in this study did not prescribe a uniform basis for assigning indirect costs in enterprises to the types of activity, production stages, or product lines. In addition, none of the authors indicated a cost allocation basis which could be used in different manufacturing enterprises or different branches of industry. The authors of the works published in the nineteenth century in other European countries also did not give such prescriptions. For example, UK theorists Garcke and Fells (in 1887) opted for overhead allocation on the basis of the direct labor cost or hours. The question of using different overhead allocation bases was dealt with more thoroughly in the early twentieth century by, US authors, for example, A. H. Church and J. Whitmore (see Fleischman, 2016: 128).

The analysis of the nineteenth-century Polish accounting manuals shows that their authors recognized the importance of accurately calculating product costs, but they did not deal with this issue in a systematic manner – they offered instead descriptions of calculation techniques recommended for given production types.

Concluding remarks

The main purpose of this article was to present the scope and methods of record-keeping and cost calculation for manufacturing enterprises as prescribed by the authors of factory accounting manuals published in the Polish language in the nineteenth century, that is, when Poland was divided and annexed by three countries: the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and Habsburg Austria. The publication of these books and their authors’ work as teachers of accounting in Polish commercial schools and, in most cases, as practicing accountants was part of the national program of organic work propagated in the three Partitions, especially from the 1830s, that is, after the failure of the November Uprising in 1831.

Polish-language textbooks on accounting started to appear in the 1820s, but the majority of them were concerned with bookkeeping in trading enterprises. They were mostly published in Warsaw, the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, which was dependent on Russia, however, others were issued in Lviv, in the Austrian Partition. Among 68 accounting textbooks in Polish, I managed to locate and find 13 books published before 1900, whose authors addressed the topic of cost-recording and calculation in factories and manufacturing enterprises. These Polish authors mainly concentrated on techniques of keeping accounts and methods of recording and calculating product costs. With the exception of Nowicki, they did not engage in more in-depth theoretical discussions. They focused on explaining the different methods of accounting by double entry, indicating each method’s advantages and disadvantages and instructing the reader on how to choose the method most suitable for their production type, organizational size, cost control needs, and evaluating results. Their works were oriented to teaching in commercial schools and to assisting accountants in bookkeeping and calculations in manufacturing enterprises. It seems that the situation in this respect was comparable with that of industrial accounting books issued by French and German authors in the nineteenth century. As in France and Germany, the authors of the Polish factory accounting texts considered the technical issue of costing within the DEB system. Among the Polish factory accounting textbooks, there are no works as valuable in conceptual terms as those published at the end of the nineteenth century in Britain (by Garcke and Fells in 1887) or in the United States (by Metcalfe in 1885). Without a doubt, factory accounting manuals issued in Poland in the Partitions period were influenced by foreign publications on cost accounting. The works by Veltze, Pierzycki, and Chankowski show that their authors were acquainted with books written by some foreign authors.

The review of 13 Polish factory accounting textbooks in chronological order indicates that they reflect, to some degree, the changes that were taking place in the size and type of manufacturing enterprises in nineteenth-century partitioned Poland, development of the control and informative functions of accounting, and gradual progress in the quality of publications dealing with industrial accounting. The direct reason for writing these Polish textbooks was the need to meet new demands arising from the development of industry in Polish lands annexed by the three empires and to provide education to candidates for the accounting profession. On one hand, the Polish manuals, like the textbooks published in Great Britain, Germany, or France provided instruction in methods of record-keeping and cost calculation, necessary in industrial practice which was becoming increasingly complex as a result of the industrial revolution. On the other hand, the manuals in Polish, published in a specific period of the existence of the Polish nation, deprived of statehood and striving to regain its sovereignty, were a form of participation in organic work by their authors. They were mostly teachers in commercial schools, who communicated the knowledge they had gained during their studies abroad or in the course of their professional practice. The authors of the 13 textbooks in Polish did not contribute innovative solutions on an international scale, but they did disseminate currently used methods of industrial accounting. Some of them not only describe the different techniques of DEB and calculating production costs but also propose methods of record-keeping (Szumlański, Barciński) or budgeting and cost analysis (Sękowski), aimed at meeting the needs of contemporary Polish firms “to contribute to the development of domestic industry” (Szumlański, 1865b).

The authors of these books were thus implementing the idea of organic work promoted in the nineteenth century mainly by proponents of positivism. The publication of their works was motivated by the desire to serve Polish society and contribute to the development of domestic enterprises. The authors of these Polish handbooks present solutions in record-keeping and cost accounting and calculation in enterprises that could facilitate the control of their operations and inform their owners about the financial results. Thus, Polish firms could compete effectively with foreign-owned firms. This idea was expressed implicitly – because of censorship restrictions – in the introductions to the books or within chapters.

The authors of the handbooks used their accounting work experience, often acquired in foreign firms, and theoretical knowledge gained from publications issued in foreign countries to teach prospective Polish accountants as well as practicing accountants the most advanced methods currently employed; this was one of the objectives of the Polish positivists’ organic work program. The publication of accounting textbooks suitable for different levels of education was supported by Polish associations which encouraged and organized the activity of vocational schools in the field of trade and industry. The Pedagogical Society in Lviv was one example. Among the people most instrumental in promoting the idea of organic work were those authors of accounting manuals who were founders of commercial schools, for example, Veltze (the owner and director of a private school of commerce in Lviv) or of accounting courses in Warsaw, like Chankowski.

It should be added that the descriptions in Polish textbooks of factory accounting techniques indicate that they were the source of the emergence and development of cost accounting. It originated as the production account and calculation book, which was one of the subsidiary books. The production account was a record of production costs and a basis for determining the profit on goods sold. It should be underlined that the nineteenth-century factory accounting that was recommended in textbooks gave rise to cost accounting, which was established as an area of accounting in Poland in the first half of the twentieth century. The factory accounting manuals presented in this article, therefore, represent the origins of Polish cost accounting literature. Cost accounting became a separate subject of Polish-language publications around 1925, this should be the subject of analysis and discussion in a separate article.