This paper presents the contextual social discourse in which US accounting practices
emerged within an unregulated commercial environment in the last two decades of the
nineteenth century. This is shown to be in stark contrast to the emerging British
accounting profession, which was influenced significantly by developments of
governmental regulation of commerce, through bankruptcy laws and specific
requirements for annual audits. In the US, appeals for professional expertise relied
mainly on the promotion of the accountant's skill in designing and
monitoring efficient accounting systems for the economic and moral well-being of
society. The profession developed these practices without the aid of specific legal
sanctions. The profession appealed through the marketplace for their skills to be
used, because they would provide economic and moral benefits. It is shown that
reform elements in US society used these widely accepted practices of the efficient
accounting system to reform government, most explicitly and publicly in the reforms
of he US Treasury Department by the Dockery Commission in 1895.
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