Almost four years have passed since the enactment of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, creating the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and transferring the administration of the Securities Act of 1933 from the Federal Trade Commission. Both Acts, viewed as a framework of regulation, implicitly assume the validity of traditional economic premises of securities distribution and trading, and the usefulness of the forms and mechanisms which had been developed to accommodate securities transactions. The legislation did not seek to fashion new instruments of investment procedure nor the alteration of basic concepts of the function of the investment banking process in the national economy. The process was to be invigorated and fortified by dissemination of information relating to the merchandise circulating in the markets. Administrative responsibility under the statutes is phrased in terms of protection of investors, and administrative authority, broadly speaking, is phrased in terms of disclosure

Professor Perry Mason's monograph on the "Principles of Utility Depreciation" with great interest and consider it as valuable a contribution to the literature of accountancy and public utility regulation as can be made by the traditional discursive method of presentation and by what is still essentially a "single machine" approach. Unfortunately, the subject is far too complex for these limitations. To give its students a bird's-eye view of the main problem unobscured by innumerable conflicting opinions, decision, rulings, etc., it is necessary to make, first of all, an introductory comparison of representative methods of depreciation, as applied to a composite plant consisting of many similar items of equipment which are continuously replaced. After demonstrating, how the "rate" chargeable to the consumer is determined by the method in various circumstances, it is in order to investigate the theoretical requirements, which the "true" method must fulfil. Finally, the enormous practical difficulties may be pointed out and compromises discussed

While the corporation has contributed much to economic development, it is not fundamentally an economic entity, nor is the legal corporation fundamentally an accounting entity. For purposes of economics and accounting, the corporation might well be viewed as a group of individuals associated for the purpose of business enterprise, so organized that its affairs are conducted through representatives. Numerous illustrations may be cited of instances in which this latter, or representative, viewpoint has been taken even by the law and the courts and in its attempt to control the development of trusts, the law has frequently found it necessary to go behind the corporate fiction and prescribe penalties for corporate officers as well as for the corporation. The income-tax law and regulations dispense with the corporate entity in the principle of constructive ownership, in the imposition of a tax upon corporations for improperly accumulating surplus and of a surtax on personal holding companies

The article focuses on accepted principles of accounting. A person unacquainted with accounting or the work of professional accountants, might suppose that the accepted principles of accounting are embodied in definite form somewhere in accounting literature. He might expect to find an official document-a code, or set of regulations, or series of court decisions on the subject. In any field it may be true that the broad fundamental principles are so generally known and universally accepted that their formal statement becomes unnecessary. It is accepted without argument that the ordinary financial statement of a business enterprise is presented on a going concern basis, that conservative provision should be made for probable losses, while profits are not recognized until fully realized. There are a number of vital points, however, on which no such agreement exists. There is no official declaration covering them, and they are not covered positively and uniformly in the accounting textbooks or elsewhere in the literature of the profession. Accounting practice discloses only a complete uncertainty as to what constitutes the accepted principle which should be applied