For carrying on its numerous branches of work the County Council needs large supplies of money. In the year 1901–2 its total receipts were £61,760; in the year 1910–11 they had grown to £190,927. These figures show how the work of the Council increased during the nine intervening years.
About one-fifth of this large sum of money is provided by the Government, the rest of it by the inhabitants of the Riding. The latter is made up of rates, rents, licenses for traction engines and motor cars, fees for pedlars’ and chimney sweeps’ certificates, fines imposed by magistrates, and so on.
Of course very accurate accounts have to be kept of all items of Income and Expenditure. In the accounts for 1910–11 there are such items as the following:—
| Income Account:— | £ | s. | d. |
| Charge for Loan of Hose Pipe | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| Sale of Old Hurdles, etc. | 0 | 8 | 3 |
| Cash found on Drowned Person | 0 | 16 | 6 |
| Expenditure Account:— | |||
| Caution Posts—Painting and Repairing | 18 | 9 | 6 |
| Skerne—Tree-Topping | 2 | 9 | 0 |
| Taking Samples of Bread and Expenses | 0 | 0 | 1 |
All moneys received and all moneys paid away must be accounted for, and the accounts for 1910–11 show that for the whole year the Receipts amounted to £190,927, while the Payments amounted to £191,161. You may, perhaps, think that you see in these figures something like a mathematical impossibility; but that is only because you have not reached the higher stages of commercial arithmetic.
The meetings of the County Council and those of its different Committees and Sub-Committees are held at the County Hall, Beverley.[[73]] That is the reason Beverley, though only a small town, is called the ‘Capital of the East Riding.’
The Council Chamber at the County Hall, Beverley.
The full meetings of the Council take place in the Council Chamber four times each year—in the months of January, May, July, and October. Each meeting is presided over by the Chairman, or in his absence, by the Deputy-Chairman; and the conduct of the meeting is in accordance with a set of rules known as the Standing Orders of the East Riding County Council. To each resolution brought forward and put to the vote the members give their assent, or refuse it, by the words Aye and No.