Exploring the contents of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Annual Reports: 1827-1856

Authors

Gary John Previts
William D. Samson

Publication Date

2000

Abstract

In 1995, a nearly complete collection of the annual reports of the earliest interstate and common carrier railroad in the U. S., the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O), was rediscovered in the archival collection at the Bruno Library of the University of Alabama. Dating from the company's inception in l827 to its acquisition by the Chessie System in 1962, the reports present a unique opportunity for the exploration, study, and analysis of early U.S. corporate disclo­sure practice. This paper represents a study of the annual report information made publicly available by one of America's first rail­roads, and one of the first modern U.S. corporations. In this paper, early annual reports of the B&O which detail its formation, construction, and operation are catalogued as to content and evaluated. Mandated in the corporate charter, the annual state­ment of affairs presented by the management and directors to stockholders is studied as a process and as a product that instigated the institutional corporate practice recognized today as annual re­porting. Using a single company methodology for assessment of reporting follows a pattern developed by Claire [1945] in his analy­sis of U.S. Steel and utilized by other researchers. This study dem­onstrates the use of archival information to improve understanding about the origins and contents of early annual reports and, therein, related disclosure forms.

Recommended Citation

Previts, Gary John and Samson, William D. (2000) "Exploring the contents of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Annual Reports: 1827-1856," Accounting Historians Journal: Vol. 27: Iss. 1, Article 2.
Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol27/iss1/2