Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 228

Oldroyd offers a fascinating insight into the accounting and management practices of three estates in the north-east of England. The estates, owned by the Bowes, Cotesworth and Ridley families, all had a significant involvement in mining and the coal trade. They were large, complex businesses and the periodic absences of their owners and the broad geographical spread of their interests meant that it was necessary to adopt organizational structures that delegated responsibility to stewards. Oldroyd examines the performance of these structures in four key areas: contractual arrangements, investment planning and returns, the management of labour and the behaviour of managers. He finds that the systematic keeping of accounts functioned to support and protect property rights and enforce contractual obligations. It allowed owners, stewards and viewers (professional mining engineers or managers) to assess productivity, regulate costs, manage risk and engage in forward planning. Accounting also played a vital role in the oversight and management of stewards and viewers, although not in the management of the general labour force in the mines. Here, accounting was used to ensure that workers were properly paid, but did not function as a means of establishing disciplinary control. Oldroyd’s explanation for this apparent anomaly is that, since pay and conditions were relatively good, industrial disputes rare, and there was a shared understanding about what constituted acceptable levels of work, the mines were productive and profits derived from the miners’ endeavours remained high. Thus, there was little incentive to rock the boat by introducing closer oversight or attempting to change working practices.

In spite of the limited impact of accounting on the behaviour of the general workforce, one of the most interesting aspects of Oldroyd’s work is his analysis of how accounting practices functioned to shape the mind set and actions of the stewards and viewers managing the estates. Indeed, accounting could become a powerful tool in aligning the behaviour of the managers with the expectations of the owners. Notably, the requirement to keep records acted as a form of surveillance and particularly served to restrict managers’ ability to defraud their employer. This was especially important to William Cotesworth who, coming from a lowly background and having previously exploited his own employers, harboured a mistrust of his employees. Oldroyd also provides us with the occasional insight into the consequences of the failure to manage this aspect of business properly. William Thompson of the South Shields salt-pans, for example, found a lack of the proper receipts meant that payment for services rendered was not forthcoming. Accounts allowed the judgement not just of honesty and competence but also enabled performance to be monitored. This worked against the mine manager Nathan Horne, who found himself accused of inefficiency and mismanagement as a result of the failure of the mine under his control to turn a profit. But in other circumstances the meticulous construction of accounts protected stewards and, in some cases, enabled them to prove their value and, in consequence, advance their interests.

Oldroyd’s general conclusions run contrary to those of Sidney Pollard in his influential Genesis of modern management. Pollard argued that because of inexact costings, confusion between capital and profits and inability to recognize capital as the central motivating force behind entrepreneurship, accounting was of limited use to those making business decisions. Oldroyd’s view is that accounting was actually an essential and adaptable tool in the management of the estates in question and that it did function as a means of maximising profits. Consequently, Estates, enterprise and investment provides a valuable contribution to the debate about the progress of capitalism during the eighteenth century.