Where does the phrase "to make ends meet" come from?

Surely "making ends meet" means just about making income equal to expenditure so both ends of the ledger are equal or meet? If only I could find a reliable source to back this up!

meet (adj.) -- .E. gemæte "suitable, having the same dimensions," from P.Gmc. *ga-mætijaz (cf. O.N. mætr, O.H.G. gimagi, Ger. gemäß "suitable"), from collective prefix *ga- + PIE *med- "to measure." The root sense is thus the same as commensurate.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=meet&searchmode=none

In accounting, "meet" meant equal or balanced.
http://www.joe-ks.com/phrases/phrasesM.htm

I was told, years ago, that this expression actually used to be 'We can't make both ends meat'. I was told that it originated during the depression (or at some distant time in the past when times were tough) they had to resort, when they made their sausage, to stuffing more filler into one end than the other and meat in the end you could more easily untie to make it look like it was all sausage.

Then, over time, I was told, the expression turned and people started thinking of it as meaning 'both ends meet(ing).

From research, I found that either Ogden Nash, or someone unknown wrote it as a poem that almost exactly is the same as the original explanation I had been given with the sausage interpretation.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/24/messages/779.html

From a bit further down the page at star_gazer's link:

"The "meat" interpretation is spurious. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase originally referred to making the two ends of the year meet. (Think fiscal years.) French has a similar phrase, 'joindre les deux bouts de l'an.'

The human tolerance for folk etymologies seems boundless. I think a good rule of thumb is this: if it seems a bit labored, it's probably hokum. (Let's see. If you wanted to put cheap fake ingredients into your sausage, would you a) mix it into the meat so you won't be discovered, or b) carefully make one sausage at a time, half-filling a casing from the grinder, then putting sawdust or soy or whatever into the other half, then repeating the process.) Sound absurd? "

Back when the expression originated, vegetable proteins hadn't come into use in the Western world - vegetables were just vegetables. Fillers like rusk were used in sausages in the UK, and still are, but a sausage maker that put meat one end and filler the other would be more than impoverished - he'd be out of business and probably in a river. Meat in sausages is folk etymology.

The financial one goes back a long way, and the expression itself is dated to 1639 as a translation from the French. (A French sausage maker putting large quantities of filler in his saucissons? Oh yeh...)

The expression would seem to suggest making something ring shaped, or a connection with tunnelling - but neither is supported or really feasible. Which leaves Gm's ledgers...

This appears to be a case of there being no obvious, documented answer. There are many theories, but nothing to clearly evidence first use.

Here is another take:

"Manage so that one's financial means are enough for one's needs, as in On that salary Enid had trouble making ends meet. This expression originated as make both ends meet, a translation from the French joindre les deux bouts (by John Clarke, 1639). The ends, it is assumed, allude to the sum total of income and expenditures. However, naval surgeon and novelist Tobias Smollett had it as "make the two ends of the year meet" ( Roderick Random, 1748), thought to go back to the common practice of splicing rope ends together in order to cut shipboard expenses."

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/make+ends+meet