Business & Finance: Impulsive Accountant

If there breathes an accountant with a soul dead to every healthy human instinct for mischief, he may never have imagined the fun of playing hob with a company’s books. Expand an asset here, thumbnose at a liability there, list the right figures in the wrong columns, and a company would soon be unable to tell its assets from its inventory. Last week, the Manhattan Curb Exchange and the Amsterdam Bourse suspended trading in the stock of Interstate Hosiery Mills, Inc. while its officials tried to make sense of its balance sheet. A small, rather bald accountant named Raymond Marien was being held in jail. Accountants all over the country sighed sympathetically.

In 1928, when Raymond Marien answered a want ad from the Manhattan accounting firm of Homes & Davis, he had already been in jail once for forgery. But no one at Homes & Davis knew that, and Raymond Marien had a good head for figures. He got the job. He worked hard, and in 1933 he was put in charge of the accounting of Interstate Hosiery. Because of the activities of Mr. Marien, Interstate Hosiery statistics are highly dubious, but a rough guess by officers at its current net assets last week was $925,000. Every month Mr. Marien went to the company mills at Lansdale, Pa. and looked over the books. Every month he went back to Manhattan with a report in which the figures for cash on hand, accounts receivable and inventories were pure, purple hyperbole. When anyone asked him how Interstate Hosiery was doing, he replied with considerable pride that it was doing very well.

Anybody could have found him out by comparing his reports with the books at the mill, but nobody did. When, early this month, Homes & Davis accidentally heard what had been going on, they promptly discharged him. Very soon they asked him to come back for a while to straighten things out. Mr. Marien’s overstatements had been so exuberant—in 1936 to the extent of $879,000—that the officers had voted themselves big bonuses and paid much too much in taxes. But apparently Mr. Marien himself had not acted for profit. To Interstate Hosiery officials he could not “account for his impulses.” Meanwhile, impulsive Mr. Marien had been charged with what seemed to be an extracurricular forgery for $141.75. New York Assistant Attorney General Ambrose V. McCall, who was shaking his head over the case, began to wonder if it were quite so clear an example of frustration as the newspapers thought. Interstate Hosiery stock had gone up from $7 to $42.50 a share while Mr. Marien was doing its accounting. That fact was noted with interest by SEC. But before Mr. McCall and SEC can find out anything very definite they will have to wait while a new firm of accountants tries heroically to untangle Mr. Marien’s cat’s cradle.