II
Agricultural associations in Groningen and Friesland relied on co-operation to provide farmers with cheap and effective accounting services. In 1886, the agricultural crisis convinced the Dutch parliament and government to establish the State Enquiry on the Condition of Agriculture, as happened elsewhere in Europe in the same period.
1 For an overview of European state-sponsored agricultural enquiries, see the papers collected in N. Vivier (ed.), The Golden Age of State Enquiries: Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century. From Fact Gathering to Political Instrument (2014). The State Enquiry dedicated a great deal of attention to the issue of accounting.
2 A. Schuurman, ‘The Agricultural Enquiry of 1890 in the Netherlands: Bringing the State Back In’, in Vivier (ed.), Golden Age of State Enquiries, pp. 239–54. In the vast majority of the 95 municipalities (
gemeenten) that it surveyed, the enquiring commission reported that either ‘books were not kept’ or that ‘no regular books’ were kept. The commissioners concluded:
It has been found that almost nowhere is proper accounting done by farmers. With few exceptions, even the great advantages of book-keeping are not recognized. Some reporters point out these disadvantages emphatically. The peasants do not know the net yield of their fields.
3 Staatscommissie tot onderzoek naar de toestand van de Landbouw, Uitkomsten van het onderzoek naar den toestand van den landbouw in Nederland 4 (1890), p. 69.The focus on improved accounting and book-keeping systems was in general part of the renewed attention on the cognitive elements of agriculture, which encompassed schools, research institutions, and the circulation of information. Farmers’ organizations played a major role in this three-fold system. J. M. G. van der Poel has described the creation in the nineteenth century of provincial agricultural societies in the Netherlands, first as
commissiën van landbouw and eventually as
maatschappijen van landbouw (agricultural societies) with their national umbrella organization the
Landbouw-Comité.
4 J. M. G. van der Poel, Heren en boeren (1949). These organizations, composed of farmers but also other agricultural stakeholders (who, nevertheless, were often farmers themselves) such as government officials, members of parliament and experts, strived for a directive role over local agriculture and represented its interests. Provincial agricultural societies were bulwarks of the local liberal elite, ‘notables and gentlemen farmers’ (
herenboeren), but by the later part of the nineteenth century, they were in competition with newly founded associations of farmers based on religious orientation. Across the country, many smaller farmers were members of local, independent agricultural societies rather than of the provincial ones.
5 Geurts, Herman Derk Louwes, p. 56. Overall, farmers’ organizations had thousands of members: in 1905, the members of the various farmers’ organizations of the Netherlands numbered 100,328 (of whom 32 per cent were members of the provincial agricultural societies) and by 1920, membership had grown to 195,503 (of whom 36 per cent were members of the provincial agricultural societies).
6 Ibid., p. 297.Although this membership was far from encompassing all farmers or even a majority of them, it was large enough to give organizations a critical mass to undertake action. Farmers’ organizations ran accounting courses to respond to what they perceived as the needs of their members. In contrast with the courses that were taught in schools, these courses addressed adult farmers, who actually managed their farms. In some cases, the teacher also taught in agricultural schools of the regions, but in other cases, it seems that accountants were hired who worked independently.
7 Hendrikx and Gelderblom, ‘Accounting for Agricultural Development?’, p. 31. At the same time, societies fostered the creation of standardized and simplified book-keeping aids. With a view to the dissemination of best practices, some societies employed a system of prizes similar to that already used by improvement societies of the eighteenth century: they launched a competition with anonymous submissions, collected contributions, and contracted the winning author.
8 Hist. Centrum Overijssel te Zwolle, Overijssel Maatschappji van Landbouw, 0330.1 984. In other cases, they directly contacted professional accountants and commissioned from the model forms.
In 1881, the
Genootschap van Nijverheid in de Provincie Groningen, an organization that had just emerged from the merger of the
Groningen Maatschappij van Landbouw in de Provincie Groningen and the
Genootschap ter bevordering der Nijverheid te Onderdendam and which, for simplicity, we will call the Groningen Society of Agriculture, ordered an enquiry among its almost 1,500 members on their desiderata concerning accounting. The answers revealed a widespread interest in accounting courses and pre-printed account books especially adapted to the needs of Groningen farmers.
9 Addens and Louwes, Gedenkboek, 1837–1937, pp. 365–6.The situation was similar in Friesland, a province in the north-west of the Netherlands that specialized in dairy farming and particularly in the production of butter. In 1886, like similar organizations, the Friesland Agricultural Society began organizing accounting courses, as part of its effort to relaunch butter production and improve the competitiveness of farmers.
10 Established in 1852, the Society brought together farmers, landowners, various notables and officials, see Molema, ‘Collective Organisation of Knowledge’, p. 101. It also promoted the creation of a Dairy School and employed dairy consultants to spread Danish methods. B. van der Burg, ‘Een en ander over zuivelbereiding in Nederland: Openbare voordracht gehouden ter opening van de lessen in de zuivelbereiding aan de Rijks Hoogere Land-, tuin- en Boschbouwschool te Wageningen den 28 September 1914’, Mededeelingen van de Rijks Hoogere Land-, Tuin- en Boschbouwschool en van de daaraan verbonden instituten 7 (1914), pp. 101–21. For the courses organised by the Friesland Society in 1909, Tresoar, Leeuwarden, 144.952 and for previous ones 144.824. Moreover, towards the turn of the century, the society decided to create a simplified system of book-keeping and commissioned two accountants, Keestra and Zijlstra, to prepare one. Book-keeping systems, though, were not simply accepted. They appeared in a competitive environment and had to persuade. Some members of the society, for instance, recommended an alternative system developed by the director of the winter school in Groningen, J. Heidema, and promoted by the Groningen Society of Agriculture.
11 On Heidema’s system, J. A. Kuperus, ‘Boekhoudingen op nederlandse Landbouwbedrijven voor 1900: Ceres en Clio: zeven variaties op het thema landbouwgeschiedenis: geschreven ter gelegenheid van het vijfentwintigjarig bestaan van de Studiekring voor de Geschiedenis van de Landbouw’, in Agronomisch-historische bijdragen 6 (1964), pp. 89–90. The Friesland Society printed, therefore, some experimental account books for the different parts of the farm in 1900 based on Keestra and Zijlstra’s system. They consisted of the following books and lists: (a), a Profit and Loss Account; (b), Cash Book for receipts and expenses; (c), Hay and cattle list; and (d), Milk and fat content list of the cattle. Keestra and Zijlstra had clearly adapted their book-keeping system to the specific needs of the local business, dairy farming. Their lists, therefore, absorbed most of the sector-specific elements, such as the hay and cattle list and the milk and dairy fat list. Their stated purpose was really to offer each farmer an easily understandable track record of their own farm in a world of increasingly commercialized agriculture. As they put it in the presentation of their model books: ‘The purpose of these accounts is to enable the practical herder to keep a record of the most important things in his business in a simple manner, and at the same time to give him an overview of the financial progress or decline of his business.’
12 Tresoar 144.824, ‘Toelichting van Landbouwboekhouding op veerzoek van het Dagelijks Bestuur der Friesche Maatschappij van Landbouw samengesteld door P. Keestra en A. Zijlstra’ (my translation).These books were tried out by 25 pastoral and 14 mixed farms, for the year 12 May 1900 to 12 May 1901 and the generally positive (but not uncritically so) experience of the participating farmers was recorded by the Secretary of the Society. The surviving documents show the Friesland Society continued printing account books for an unknown number of farmers and held courses to teach them book-keeping. The plan for a course in book-keeping (probably held in 1900) announced that accounting should provide the farmer with a ‘photograph of his whole farm’. The course, free for members of the Society, was open to ‘actual farmers and those men and women who were expected to take over a farm soon’.
13 Tresoar 144.824, ‘Leerplan voor ‘n curssus in ‘t landbouwboekhouden’ (n.d.) (my translation). In 1915, the Friesland Society published a new system and new forms adapted to the calculations required by the income tax introduced that year. The social reformer Anne Melles Rauwerda created the new forms (the ‘methode-Rauwerda’) which were eventually printed in a run of 1,000 copies to be distributed among the Society’s members who attended book-keeping courses.
14 Tresoar 144.824 various documents; on Rauwerda, see J. J. Kalma, ‘Rauwerda, Anne Melles’, https://socialhistory.org/bwsa/biografie/rauwerda.In this context, Dutch agricultural societies tried very hard to establish the figure of the ‘book-keeping farmer’ to promote a tidy and effective agriculture, and, while the number of farmers involved remained small compared to the large rural population, the archives of the Frisian and other agricultural societies witness the existence of a demand for an accountancy service (and a corresponding offer to meet this demand by the societies and professionals), in the early twentieth century.
Nevertheless, simplified book-keeping did not solve the problem of accounting analysis. In 1900, when the Groningen Society of Agriculture (actually named at this point
Groningen Maatschappij van Landbouw en Nijverheid) launched a new enquiry on book-keeping among its membership, along the lines of the enquiry of 1881, the enquiring committee did not stress so much the necessity of book-keeping courses. This time, it expressed, instead, the wish that the needs of its members for accounting ‘be met by what is called in Germany
Buchführungsgenossenschaften [accounting co-operatives, German in the original], whereby the members send their notes to the
Genossenschafts [co-operative, German in the original] accountant for elaboration’.
15 Addens and Louwes, Gedenkboek, 1837–1937, p. 366. It was a sign of the growing awareness of the advantages of separating accounting from book-keeping among advocates of the new managerial techniques. To some of the members of the Groningen Agricultural Society, formal accounting, especially double-entry accounting, clearly seemed too complex for the necessities and capabilities of the farmers.
16 When, in 1913, they discussed again the topic of farm accounting, the members of the Society stressed that ‘rekenen met de puut’ or ‘counting with the purse’ had its advantages in term of simplicity.Keeping the books according to simplified rules was one thing, but the analysis of such books and inventories, that is, accounting proper, required more technical skills than most farmers possessed. Side by side with the ‘book-keeping farmers’, therefore, accounting offices appeared that collected farmers’ books in order to produce financial reports, thus allowing farmers to delegate the analytical task to a professional consultant.
In the same year, the leadership of the Friesland Society of Agriculture discussed the examples coming from Germany, where different forms of accounting offices had been created either by private individuals or by agricultural associations.
17 For instance, they discussed the special offices of the DLG, whose modernizing and moderately anti-protectionist attitude appealed to Frisian farmers and which opened an accountancy office under the direction of Friederich Aereboe in 1896. Friedrich Aereboe, Buchführung: Anleitung für den praktischen Landwirt (1896). However, it was in the wake of the introduction of income tax for farmers in 1914 that the problem of accounting became really pressing for Dutch farmers’ organizations. In order to calculate the correct tax payment, farmers needed professional accountants to calculate their real income and draw up detailed inventories.
18 It must be noted, though, that not all, or even not many farmers were required to fill in the tax form, since this was required only from individuals who had a minimum income of 2,000 fl. or who owned assets worth at least 16,000 fl. V. S. Ohmstede, Wet op de inkomstenbelasting 1914, benevens wet op de vermogensbelasting, wet op de dividend- en tantièmebelasting, wet op de Raden van beroep voor de directe belastingen (2nd edn, 1918), p. 118. The Frisians and the Groningers tried two different approaches to the problem.
In 1915 the Groningen Society of Agriculture (at this point called the Groninger Landbouwbond after merging with other organizations) discussed the creation of a Central Bureau for the Accounting of Farm Businesses. Such a Central Bureau, as observers reported to the Friesland Society of Agriculture, was intended to provide farmers with
simple and practical registers for recording the daily receipts and expenditures. On the basis of these registers and of inventories to be drawn up [by the accountants], the Central Bureau will then compile a complete Balance Sheet and Loss and Profit Statement for each farmer once a year.
This was explicitly connected to income tax. ‘Now that farmers will soon be assessed in income tax, it is considered all the more important that they know their operating profit.’
19 Tresoar, FMvL 824, Van Cor. Visser (?) to the Bestuur of the FML, 15 Apr. 1915. In fact, the Central Bureau was actually an accounting firm hired to assist members of the Groningen Agricultural Society (actually named
Groninger Maatschappij van Landbouw, GMvL, after 1925) with their accounts for a reduced fee agreed in advance.
20 Groninger Archieven 405, Groninger Maatschappij van Landbouw (1), 1837–1991, 3.02. To the members who asked for information, the Groningen Agricultural Society responded by sending a ‘rapport’ and suggesting that they keep track of their revenue and expenses and should also come to see the accountant (‘on Tuesdays’) for the farm inventory. In June 1918, the Groningen Agricultural Society was listing subscribers (‘abonne’s’) with the indication of the size of their farms. For farms up to 50 hectares the cost in 1918 was 30 florins, but was raised to 40 in 1919–20.
21 Groninger Archieven 405, 5.200, circular letter from the Secretary of the GMvL to abonne’s, 17 Apr. 1919. Subscribers were not small farmers, since they exceeded the minimum threshold for a tax form. In that year, the new subscribers managed farms with an average size as large as 46.7 hectares, significantly larger than the average in the province.
22 Groninger Archieven 405 5.200, 1921: Abonne’s landbouwboekhouding 1919–1920, Nieuwe Abonne’s; average size of farms larger than 5 ha. according to landbouwtelling of 1921, reported in E. W. Hofstee, ‘De ontwikkeling van de groote der landbouwbedrijven in de provincie Groningen’, Tijdschrift voor economische geographie 38, pp. 6–7 (1947), p. 136. They thus represented better-than-average agricultural entrepreneurs, but not the largest landowners of the province, who probably did not need the collective arrangement.
The Friesland Society followed a different path. Leeuwarden and its countryside had a pioneering tradition of co-operation. Instead of hiring an accountant, the Friesland society, therefore, sponsored in 1917 the creation of a co-operative accounting bureau for its members, the
Cooperative Centrale Landbouwboekhouding (CCLB). On Friday, 4 May 1917, the conference hall above the Cooperative Dairy Bank in Leeuwarden hosted a gathering of a 100 people interested in the creation of the accounting co-operative. The meeting was presided over by Tj. Kuperus, administrator of the Bank, P. van der Meulen of the Inspectorate for Direct Taxation, and J. van der Meer, secretary of the Friesland Society of Agriculture. Van der Meulen had originally launched this initiative to establish collaboration between the tax authorities and the farmers. The new income tax, he claimed in his speech, made it necessary for farmers to ‘break with the old habit of not keeping books’, and Kuperus went as far as to say that ‘Many people have experienced this firsthand, especially through taxes, that bad and good book-keeping can produce results.’ Despite some opposition, the assembly approved the idea to charge a committee, including Kuperus, van der Meulen, van der Meer, and Rauwerda, with the task of preparing the statutes of the new institution.
23 Tresoar 144.824, Onderlinge Coop. Centrale Landbouwboekhouding, s.d. The new co-operative was created with the goal of fostering agricultural book-keeping, printing model books and forms, and helping farmers with their inventories, books and accounting, especially for fiscal reasons. It became one of the constituent parts of the Friesland Society of Agriculture. Already in 1918, curious journalists or accountants were writing from Geeldria, Holland and as far as South Africa, asking details about the arrangements.
24 Tresoar 144.824, various letters. By the 1920s, the CCLB had 1,569 members.
25 Tresoar 144.377, Secretary of the FMvL to Riksfoerbundet Landsvygdens Folk of Stockholm, unreadable date.While the Central Bureau established in Groningen and the Co-operative created in Leeuwarden differed in institutional structure and legal status, they both served to separate book-keeping from accounting: farmers kept their everyday records at home, but the accounting and the inventories were done by professionals. Moreover, both tried to create economies of scale to lower the cost of professional accounting and thus to make accounting accessible to a broader share of the farming population. As we will clarify below, other provincial societies, but also private companies, created or tried to create similar institutions through the Netherlands over the course of the 1920s.
The approach adopted in Switzerland since the late nineteenth century, instead, despite similarities, had fundamentally different goals since policy making was, from the very beginning, its main (but not exclusive) purpose. Only over the course of the 1920s, and not without resistance, did the accounting offices that had sprung up in the Netherlands in the wake of the implementation of income tax begin aggregating their data for policy purposes.