Classes Now Forming
In the spring of 1932 two Manchester, New Hampshire based accountants met and developed a plan for a partnership. They set out to form a business with two elements: a traditional accounting practice serving area businesses and a private commercial school that would train aspiring accountants, bookkeepers, and secretaries in the practical skills they would need for their professions. The men were Joseph Francis Moran, a 55 year old accountant who had previous experience operating private business schools in Portland, Maine and Harry Alfred Benjamin Shapiro, a 28 year old accountant who had been building up his practice in Manchester over the previous few years.
Private commercial schools were narrowly focused. They provided practical training in marketable skills that would make a student workplace ready for a desk job in as short a time as possible. The accounting and secretarial subjects covered by Moran and Shapiro’s endeavor were typical of similar institutions of the time. Such schools were operated on a for-profit basis, were generally unregulated and unaccredited, and showed a great deal of variance in size and quality from small, short lived, fly by night operations to larger institutions that had been in existence for decades.
The decision to develop such a school in Manchester in 1932 was an interesting one. A franchise of the Bryant and Stratton Business College, which advertised as the largest business college in New Hampshire, had closed its doors at 999 Elm Street around 1919. The heyday of private commercial schools had been in the latter half of the 19th century when high schools and colleges both viewed practical, vocationa train as un-academic and inappropriate for their contexts. By World War I, however, business and commercial education was becoming prominent at the high school, college, and even graduate level. In fact, Mr. Shapiro had graduated in 1927 from Boston University’s College of Business Administration which was founded in 1913. Local public schools in Manchester were offering night school courses in commercial subjects, as were organizations such as the YMCA. This shift in acceptance of business education meant that, by 1932, there was significant competition for students interested in training in commercial subjects.
Even as a private business school, Moran and Shapiro were not the only game in town. Hesser Business College had been founded in 1900 and offered training in “ACCOUNTANCY and SECRETARIAL courses that are complete in every detail, can be completed in one school year or less, and fit for immediate, active office situations.” At the same time, The Royal Typewriter Company at 86 Manchester Street was offering “NIGHT SCHOOL – 3 months course, typewriting, $5.00; shorthand, $10.00. Weekly payments.” Potential students had options in the city that were more established or promoted as inexpensive.
It was also a complex time economically. The Great Depression was at its height, and Manchester’s cloth and shoe manufacturing industries were suffering. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, once the largest cotton textile plant in the world, closed down its cotton division for three weeks in the summer of 1932 due to lack of orders, continuing to operate only its worsted (wool) division. The workers at the mill would engage in extensive strikes in the following two years, ushering in the beginning of the end to one of the city’s largest employers. Despite the economic downturn, accounting was seen as an industry that was only minimally impacted. Moran and Shapiro advertised their school as a good use of time for the un- or under employed: “Are you wasting your time. Or are you preparing for better times ahead. Study accounting. Start now!”
So despite the economy and the competition there was still reason to believe that accountants were needed and that their training could be profitable. Added to this mix was Joseph Moran’s experience and Harry Shapiro’s belief in a need for better accounting instruction.
Joseph Moran had been the proprietor of a series of private commercial schools and a correspondence school in Maine including the Portland School of Accountancy, Maine School of Accountancy and Finance, and a branch of the International Accountants Society an organization that developed and franchised business education programs at specific locations or as correspondence courses. He had moved to Manchester to continue operating a branch of that school. This had equipped Mr. Moran with a workable curriculum and a feel for the ease with which a private commercial school could be started (or stopped or started again).
Harry A.B. Shapiro was fueled by a belief that accountants were being trained in the mechanics of crunching numbers without a real understanding of the underlying theory. In a 1951 radio interview he recalled an exchange with the treasurer of a finance company in Boston. The treasurer asked: “Mr. Shapiro, I understand why an asset has a debit balance, but can you tell me why an expense account has the same kind of balance as an asset?” Mr. Shapiro stated that “I then realized that he and a great many others, while they may be good bookkeepers, actually do not understand the basic theory of bookkeeping… To get bookkeepers to really understand the theory of debit and credit was my basic drive to start teaching.”
This tension between practice and theory was prevalent in the discussion of the appropriate place of accounting education in the higher education landscape of the time. Some colleges offered liberal arts-based approaches to accounting that deemphasized the practical aspects of the profession in an effort to legitimize it as a college-level subject. Moran and Shapiro’s school had no need to justify itself academically, and so was able to teach both practice and concepts.
Moran and Shapiro formed a copartnership, formalized on August 11, 1932, but informally functional in the spring of that year. Each man put up the sum of $400.00 “...to be used and employed in common between them for the support and management of the said business, to their mutual benefit and advantage.” Rooms were rented on the second floor of the Athens Building at 88 Hanover Street in Manchester which had recently been vacated by the Chung Mee Chinese restaurant, providing space for two classrooms and an office. The expectation of the copartnership was that Mr. Moran would operate the school and Mr. Shapiro would operate the accounting practice. Eve Alter, one of the first students, recalled the school consisting of Mr. Shapiro and two other teachers.
There are few records of the early operation of the school. Some understanding of its offerings, schedule, and audience can be gained from the advertisements that it ran in the Manchester Union Leader. The first advertisement for the school was run on June 15, 1932, the day before Harry Shapiro was to marry Gertrude Crockett who would become a central figure in the school’s development. The ad read simply: “New Hampshire Accounting Secretarial School, 88 Hanover St. Tel. 896, Classes Now Forming.” Throughout the rest of the summer, additional details of the school’s offerings were revealed. On the 29th they advertised: “On account of the keen competition in business today, there is a big demand for COST ACCOUNTANTS Our course in cost accounting is taught by a former United States Government Cost Accountant. The summer session commences July 5. In addition to accounting, we are offering courses in shorthand and typewriting.” Advertisements indicated that the enrollment office was open from 9 to 5 daily and introduced the schools long running 896 telephone number. The former Government Cost Accountant would seem to have been Mr. Moran.
The effects of this initial wave of advertising appears to have been minimal. Gertrude Shapiro did not believe that the school had any students in the summer of 1932, and the July 5th date may have come and gone without courses being run. The name of the school, often shortened in advertisements in various ways, was, at the outset, “New Hampshire Accounting and Secretarial School,” a name both descriptive of the schools offerings and ambitious in its proclaimed state-wide reach.
Advertisements were run again in August, this time targeting parents interested in having their children prepared for employment and offering a September 12th start date for both day and evening classes. A September 1st advertisement laid out the offered accounting and secretarial curriculum.
Of particular note was the statement: "Students finding it inconvenient to enter classes may arrange for private instruction.” Other advertisements also emphasized the customizable curriculum: “…we can fit you for the specific business in which you are now engaged or for any position you may be interested in.” This level of customization of a student’s experience was made possible by the institution’s small size and the nimbleness of the private business school format which did not demand a set curriculum leading to a specific degree.
The identity of the instructor who taught secretarial courses is unknown. The Bay Path Institute (now Bay Path University) was a private commercial school located in Springfield, Massachusetts.
This time, the promotions had the desired effect. 7 day students enrolled as well as 35 in the evening division. While these numbers may sound small, they fit within the business model of a private business school. In fact, in a letter to Professor Walter J. Coggin of Boston University inviting him to participate in the opening ceremonies of the school, Mr. Shapiro said: "Even if we do not get another student, our school will be on a paying basis.”
The names of those first 7 day students were preserved in the letter (no longer extant) to Professor Coggin: Eve Alter, William Eastbourn, Margaret Hammond, Marie Healy, Ellsworth Larrabee, Agnes Linen, and Humphrey Scannell. Agnes Linen, at 2.3 miles distance, was the student who lived farthest from the school.
The training offered by the New Hampshire Accounting and Secretarial School, at least initially, had mixed results. 2 of the first seven students became shoe workers, the type of factory employment that one would go to a private business school specifically to avoid, though the achievement of any level of employment during the depths of the Depression could be viewed as a success. On the positive side, one of the male students found work as a clerk which ultimately grew into a position as a store manager. Two of the female students became bookkeepers, and one eventually went on to engage in secretarial work.
As the first few months of the school’s operation proceeded, a rift developed between Mr. Moran and Mr. Shapiro. Because the people directly involved have long since passed away, it is impossible to determine exactly what occurred. Gertrude Shapiro provided some insight into the events stating that: “It wasn’t long before the partner became a drudge to us. He was reaping the benefits and we were struggling along on the money Mr. Shapiro was making as a CPA. So, we paid him off, and I think he left the first year.” The buyout, for the sum of $1.00, was formalized in a dissolution agreement signed by both men on January 14, 1933. Mr. Shapiro took on all assets and debts of the school and became its sole proprietor. For Mr. Moran to walk away from his $400 investment in a school that, according to Mr. Shapiro, was already operating at a profit, it seems likely that Mr. Moran was engaged in some indefensible level of wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, this was not an unusual situation in the world of private business schools. Because the institutions were operated on a for-profit basis and were largely unregulated there was significant opportunity for abuse. Common criticisms included the recruiting of students who were too young or lacked sufficient foundational education, attracting students with exaggerated promises of future employment, and the placement of profits above quality in facilities, instructors, and curriculum. Mr. Moran’s approach to the school as well as to his younger partner appears to have been one that fit the exploitative model.
With Mr. Moran’s exit, the New Hampshire Accounting and Secretarial School became a smaller operation. The Secretarial program was dropped, perhaps because of low enrollments, though this seems unlikely when one considers that more female than male students were enrolled in the initial class. The school stopped advertising for a period of over a year. Mr. Shapiro may not have been interested in taking on many new students without a partner and there was likely financial difficulty in the wake of Mr. Moran’s malfeasance. The school entered a period of low-level activity about which we have little information.
At some point in 1934 or early 1935 Mr. Shapiro hired William Wallace Lee, who held a Bachelor of Commercial Science degree and had previously worked as an accountant in Massachusetts and locally as an insurance agent, to become the school’s educational director, teach tax and accounting courses, and to be a field man for the school. Field men acted as professional solicitors, attracting prospective students, often through in-person interviews in the home with the students and their parents. The 1938-1939 pamphlet distributed by the school described this as follows: “If it is not convenient for you to visit us, our educational director will call at your home by appointment. You will be under no obligation and will undergo no expense for this service.” The use of field men was seen, externally, as another opportunity for exploitation, if the field men were more interested in attracting students than telling the truth about a program. Field men who also taught, which was the case with Mr. Lee, were seen as the best-case scenario as they were less likely to mislead students who they would then face in class.
When the school resumed promoting itself in June of 1934 is was under a new name: “New Hampshire School of Accounting and Finance.” Having dropped the secretarial program, the school focused on its accounting courses. Advertisements targeted recent high school graduates and their parents, informing them that “Accounting is still the highest paid of all professions.” A few similar advertisements ran in 1935 and 1936. Student lists from these time periods are incomplete and confusingly marked, so it is uncertain how many were enrolled. The school did begin promoting itself as the “only complete accounting school in the state.” A 1935 full-page advertisement in the Aglaia, Manchester Central High School’s yearbook, gave a full breakdown of the curriculum.
It was also in 1935 that the school began to promote its placement services, stating that “An active placement bureau enables us to place a great many of our students. Many are placed among the school’s own clientele… All our 1934 graduates are working.” A 1938 advertisement stated: “The school has established an enviable record in student placement with almost 100 per cent placement record” and that “Our graduates are all working – Our Best Testimonial!” The school’s 1938 -1939 pamphlet stated that “An active placement bureau has enabled us to place most of our students. All our graduates prior to and including 1937, have been placed.” Positions held by graduates included: public accountants, state auditors, public utility accountants, chain store accountants, office managers, bookkeepers, stenographers, and private secretaries. The placement of graduates was facilitated largely through Mr. Shapiro’s accounting practice. A period article states that “Most of the school’s graduates have been placed among the accounting department’s own clientele.” Edward Shapiro recalled his father’s process for recommending students for employment:
“I remember him telling me that instead of calling a person and asking him, if he would hire Mr. Y, many times he would write a letter telling him about Mr. Y and then he would follow up with a phone call so the person would have a chance to think about it.”
Many of the school’s early students came from the families of immigrants. Of the 13 students identified in the class of 1937, 2 were born in Canada, one was the child of Canadian immigrants, and one was the child of an American born father and Canadian mother. 3 were the children of Syrian immigrants, 2 the children of Polish immigrants, and one the child of Italian immigrants. For only three of the students were both of their parents born in the United States.
We also know, in alignment with the practices of some private commercial schools of the time, that not all students admitted to the New Hampshire School of Accounting and Finance held high school diplomas. One of the class of 1937 had completed one year of high school and another had an 8th grade education upon admittance.
Something changed as the 1937 school year approached, and the school entered a period of increased visibility in local media and the expansion of school activities beyond the in-classroom experience. Mr. Shapiro decided to expand the school, adding programs, instructors, and promoting extracurricular activities. Marie Elise (Demers) Bouchard, a college graduate with stenographic and teaching experience, was hired to head a re-constituted secretarial program. The school announced: “To match the unequalled success of the only complete Accounting School of the State, we are opening a SECRETARIAL DIVISION with the latest typewriters, calculators, bookkeeping machines and Dictaphones.”
The 1938-1939 bulletin listed the following elements to the secretarial curriculum: Shorthand Theory and Dictation, Typewriting, Dictaphone Practice, Office Practice, Filing and Indexing, and Office Management.
The hiring of faculty with college educations was an increasing trend in private commercial schools. In previous decades such credentials were viewed as a liability, as they suggested that the instructors were academic rather than practice-focused. By the 1930s, however, over 40% of instructors and administrators at similar schools held a bachelor’s degree or higher, and most schools required such credentials of newly appointed faculty. Mr. Shapiro focused on the hiring of faculty who had a combination of education and business experience.
In addition to the expanding faculty, the school began to publicly communicate about student activities through newspaper articles. On June 10th a class photograph featuring 13 students and Mr. Shapiro was printed and it was announced that diplomas would be awarded in exercises on June 23rd. The photograph also identified student officers: Mitchell A. Burkush, president; Jeannette M. Laverdiere, vice president; Omer J. Lacasse, treasurer; and Gertrude Beaudet, secretary. This is the first indication of a student government, and a November 5th photograph depicted the student officers for the next school year.
The school hosted a Christmas party at the Massabesic Lake Inn featuring a Christmas tree, the distribution of gifts, and a “playlet,” “Always a Bridesmaid But Never a Bride” which was performed by a group of students. The school also sponsored a men’s basketball team which held a practice in Milford and later beat the Abbott Machine company team 44 to 31 in a game held in Wilton. The team consisted entirely of students, which may not always have been the case with the school's early athletic teams. A women’s basketball team is also mentioned, but no additional details are available. The introduction of publicly announced commencements, parties, and athletics set a tone for the school that distinguished it from other private business schools, where extracurricular activities were not the norm.
The increased offerings and visibility resulted in a growing enrollment for the 1938 school year and a need to rent additional rooms at 88 Hanover Street. The school also took on recent graduates Richard Varnum to both perform bookkeeping duties and to teach accounting and Agnes Dlugosz to perform secretarial duties.
Also in 1938 the school began working under contract with the New Hampshire State Department of Education Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. The contract for the first student in the program, dated September 12, 1938, was for “instruction and practice in the accounting course, and help in securing employment upon the completion of the training.”
A review of the students depicted in the 1937 class photo shows that, indeed, all were employed and most were employed in fields related to their training. Of the 13 students, by 1940, 5 were employed as bookkeepers, 4 as clerks or filing clerks, and 2 as stenographers. The two students who did not have employment relevant to their training were employed as a meat cutter and a gas station tender, and the school newspaper indicated that the meat cutter obtained his position through the school’s employment bureau.
The growth in the school’s visibility resulted in a slight expansion in the geographic areas from which it attracted students. By 1940, 8 of the 48 students were not from Manchester, though (with the exception of Maurice Crockett, Gertrude Shapiro’s brother who listed his residence as Deer Isle, Maine) the farthest afield was just from Wilton. In 1939 the school advertised seeking local residents willing to provide room and board for students in exchange for services, the first indication of a resident student population.
Additional social activities became standardized, such as a spring prom, Halloween party, and winter carnival. All activities were under the direction of student committees selected by the student body and generally involved dancing and refreshments. In 1939 the students also started a monthly newspaper to “voice the wants and suggestions of all the students, helping them to take their places as good citizens in school and in their community.” Copies could be purchased for 2 cents.
The school also began to recognize the achievements of its students in their areas of training. The Gregg Publishing Company, which provided the school’s shorthand materials, provided awards for students who achieved certain levels of performance in typing and shorthand. In 1939 three students were awarded pins for transcribing, in shorthand, from the Congressional Record at a rate of 140 words per minute. Articles regarding the awarding of such pins ran regularly in the local newspaper around the time of graduation.
As the 1930s drew to a close, the New Hampshire School of Accounting and Finance could boast of a successful placement record for its students, a successfully re-launched secretarial division with award-winning students, the only complete accounting program in the state, and extracurricular activities far in excess of those typical at a private commercial school. In the following decade, events on an international scale would impact the further development of the school.