Bean counter

Meaning

A disparaging term for an accountant, or anyone who one who is excessively concerned with statistical records or accounts.

Origin

When researching the expression 'bean counter' there is a difficulty - the term has several different meanings. The common usage these days is as a name for a rather pedantic accountant, the implication being that, while most of us are content to buy beans by the bag, fussy accountants want to know exactly how many they are paying for. Before the first hapless accountant was called a 'bean counter', the phrase was also used as the name of a place where beans were sold, especially in the USA where 'pork and bean counters' were commonplace in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Added to that, our inventive predecessors used machines to count beans - and there's no need to tell you what they called them. This variability can lead to some confusion when scanning old newspaper records and other references. Nevertheless, I'll plough on and try to sort the leguminosae from the chaff.

Bean counters, that is, 'counters where beans were sold', came first. The US newspaper the Lewiston Evening Journal referred to these in June 1907:

The Clerk, seeing himself worsted by numbers... walked over to the bean counter where he again busied himself putting up packages for the evening trade.

This was followed by bean counters, that is, 'machines that count beans', which meaning is cited in the Pennsylvania newspaper The New Castle News, March 1916:

City Registry Clerk Stanley Treser has invented a new device. It is known as the bean counter.

Then, lastly, we get to bean counters, that is, 'accountants'. The earliest reference that I can find to the use of 'bean counter' with this meaning is in the US newspaper The Fort Wayne News And Sentinel, February 1919, in an article titled The Bean Counter:

The son of Josephus has been promoted in the quartermaster's department. "I suppose," remarked the Gentleman at the Adjacent Desk "I suppose that somebody has to count the beans for Colonel Roosevelt's fighting sons."

The 'fighting sons' were the US soldiers engaged in the latter part of WWI. The story alludes to the American politician Josephus Daniels who served in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, who was himself a colonel during his military service and was a strong supporter of the US's involvement in WWI.

The phrase appears in Australia soon afterwards, either by migration from the USA or by independent coinage. An example is found in The Parliamentary Debates of the Australian House of Representatives, 1928:

It is not a bean counter's bill. There is no attempt to make any savings.

This insinuation that 'bean counters' were penny-pinching accountants who could't see the bigger picture chimes in well with the no-nonsense reputation of Australian politicians. The phrase thrived down under during the 1930/40s before becoming commonplace throughout the English-speaking world later in the 20th century.

[Adopting my previous guise as a bean-counting maths student, I couldn't resist counting the beans in the attached picture. Go on, you know you want to (or click here).]