Author: Anonymous
Title: New Sheets! for Mckesson & Robbins, Incorporated [Mckesson & Robbins, Incorporated Liquor List, Oakland California]
Description: S. l. (New York): McKesson & Robbins, Incorporated, 1939. Softcover. First edition thus; 9 x 6 1/4; pp. A-D, 1-91, recto only; black, three-ring, textured paper-over-card stock binder; chipping and wear along spine and edges; pages mostly very clean, with a few occasional pencilled notations; metal brackets of the binder loose; good to very good condition. An interesting and curious piece of Americana, the liquor list was issued by McKesson & Robbins to their wholesale supplier in Oakland, California, just months after the company was in the middle of, arguably, the biggest financial scandal of the 20th century. Founded in 1833 in New York by John McKesson and Charles Olcott as an importer and wholesaler of therapeutic drugs, by 1855 it became one of the first wholesale firms to manufacture drugs and by the early 1900s it had several well-established subsidiaries, forming a national drug wholesaling company. In 1925, a former bootlegger and felon Philip Musica, under the assumed name of F. Donald Coster, M.D. Ph.D. bought McKesson & Robbins, expanding it and distributing various pharmaceuticals and alcohol (after the Prohibition). In order to inflate the business’ reported assets and skim money, Musica enlisted his three brothers and established several fictitious sales agencies, to which he paid "Commissions" and pocketed them. Just in 1937, the company's financial statements showed $1.8 million gross profit on fake sales of $18 million. The scam was discovered in late 1938, when the company's treasurer became suspicious and started digging through financial documents and credit reports. The SEC opened an investigation and the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading of the company’s shares. Coster (Musica) was arrested, fingerprinted, and released on bond. His fingerprints revealed his true identity, agents were sent to arrest him again, but before they reached him, he took his own life with a gun. The publicity in the wake of this sordid fraud was the first public scrutiny of accounting practices. The SEC began requiring that public companies have audit committees of â€oeoutsiders†and that the appointment of auditors has to be approved by the shareholders. The American Institute of Accountants appointed its first standing committee on auditing procedures and made observing inventory and confirming accounts receivable standard audit ones. The price book contained tables of wholesale prices for various alcohols and quantities, including whiskies, gin, wines, rum, and more. Ill.: 0. Good 2.

Keywords: Alcohol, Scandal, California 0


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