The educative impact of supervised accounting also appears
to have been perceived as beneficial by the ‘subjects’
who practiced it. In the scenario reported here accounting
was understood as a technology which helped improve life
chances, contributed to achieving material advances in
family income and net worth, and enabled greater control
of business and home operations. Contemporaries noted
how the financial management which accounting encouraged
had positive psychological effects. For families
attempting to make ends meet during a period of depression
its practice resulted in greater peace of mind and
helped instill the confidence necessary to address their
plight. The most vulnerable and impoverished group –
African-American tenant farmers in the South – benefitted
from the empowering effects of acquiring knowledge
about a hitherto unfamiliar quantitative technique. Indeed,
their education may have contributed to longer-term
socio-political advancement. One commentator has gone
so far as to conclude: