THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF COST KEEPING IN A LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SMALL BUSINESS

J. Henry Rushton was the preeminent American builder of canoes and small pleasure boats in the late nineteenth-century. Beginning in the mid 1890s, Rushton personally maintained books of cost records and cost finding rules for his boat-building operations. In conjunction with the company's product catalogs and Rushton's personal letters, these books reveal the nature and function of cost keeping for this enterprise. They also suggest that pressures from increased competition and an economic depression may have stimulated Rushton to undertake detailed costing procedures.