THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING IN INVESTING IN 1870s AMERICA

The objectives of this study are to understand better the development of investment practices and the information that was available for those practices during the turbulent decade of the 1870s. This was a time of panic, depression, and manipulations by insiders. Nevertheless, outsiders chose to speculate and invest in corporate securities in Wall Street. Consequently, authors began to provide more specific investment advice, some of which required the use of earnings and other financial-accounting information. This study describes the availability of that information in the books and periodicals in an age dominated by railroad kings.