Abstract This article presents information about the developments related to the field of accounting. South-Western Publishing Co. has announced a $500 annual contribution to the American Accounting Association (AAA) Fellowship Fund. The only stipulation made by South-Western respecting the annual contribution is that grants to individuals from the Fellowship Fund shall not in any way be identified as coming from South-Western Publishing Company. Mr. Eric L. Kohier, former President of the AAA, has been presented a certificate of appreciation and a life membership in the Federal Government Accountants Association. The Small Business Administration has prepared a listing of Management Research Summaries available free on request. The summaries cover a wide variety of subjects in the broad areas of managing, financing, and operating small business enterprises. The National Association of Accountants has announced special recognition awards offered for research essays written on the topic "Choosing Accounting Practices For Reporting To Management."

Abstract American Accounting Association and its predecessor organization, The American Association of University Instructors in Accounting, have had as a primary objective the encouragement and promotion of research in accounting. On December 28, 1935, the regular business meeting of the twentieth annual convention of the American Association of University Instructors in Accounting was adjourned and the assembled members immediately reconvened in a business meeting and the members were shifted from the old organization to the new. The only changes that had been effected were the change of name and the adoption of a new set of By-Laws. The chief activities of the new Association were listed in the By-Laws as "publications and research." The first of the stated objectives of the Association was phrased thus: "To encourage and sponsor research in accounting and to publish or aid in the publication of the results of research."The means by which the American Accounting Association expected to encourage intensive research on accounting subjects was never fully faced. The Executive Committee did suggest a substantial, but very general, list of topics on which it was felt study was needed. It is quite evident that the master's and doctoral programs in accounting were looked upon as a source of research talent and effort which was readily available in quantity.

Abstract Accounting is a technology that has developed very recently. With accounting, as with any technology in the process of development, there has been of necessity a good deal of uncertainty as to the best way to do things, and indeed what are the precise things that accounting can be expected to do. The practitioners of a developing technology must continually be on the lookout to devise new and better ways to handle situations already faced and to be ingenious enough to contrive acceptable solutions to new and trying sets of circumstances. The paper takes the position that accounting principles and procedures and standards have developed to the degree that now "an orderly array of interrelated ideas and interconnected reasons" must be attempted if accounting is to realize its full potentialities in serving the business and social ends of which it is capable and which is also its obligation. One characteristic of the U.S. accounting has been that it has been very slow in developing the philosophy that accounting must assert itself as being independent of management. The article gives attention to the conditions under which accounting has developed in the U.S. and how these conditions have contributed to the lack of assertiveness and have influenced considerably what are considered to be the functions of accounting.

Abstract Accounting Association is bound to be considered as having the weight of authority of the American Accounting Association behind it. The traditional balance sheet and income statement, employing historical dollar costs, have proved their usefulness and are of primary importance for many purposes. Reports prepared to reflect fluctuations in the value of the dollar may prove to have substantial usefulness for other purposes. The conceptual soundness of any special purpose report can be judged only by knowing fairly precisely what those special purposes are behind the recommendation for adjusted financial statements seems to lie the argument of Henry Sweeney that to add and subtract dollars in financial statements which have different purchasing powers commits a mathematical blunder particularly significant in periods when price levels have changed substantially. Upon close examination it appears that the claims typically made, that accountants do something about the effects of inflation, actually demonstrate that changing price levels breed a whole new and virulent set of stresses and strains in the economy. The urgent exhortation to do something would more appropriately be directed towards economic statesmen rather than accountants. Presumably the stresses and strains imposed by changing price levels would be with us even in a world completely acclimated to financial statements adjusted for those price level changes.

Abstract This article focuses on price-level adjustments. Since 1948 there has been a steady flow of articles on the implications of the price-level changes for accounting reports, by far the larger portion agreeing that these changes had undermined the reliability of the convention financial statements. Between World War I and World War II there had been a very substantial amount of writing with a quite similar import. Expressions of dissatisfaction with conventionally prepared financial statements are widest in periods of rising price levels. At times such as these the detractors of accounting statements bemoan the fact that these statements do not use figures which represent "economic realities," whether asset values, or costs of production, or net income. It is not enough to state an ideal, the approximation of economic income "in accounting terms." The statement that the committee did not attempt to define economic income contains a curious double implication. The purpose of income calculations in practical affairs is to give people an indication of the amount which they can consume without impoverishing themselves.

Abstract The systems of accounts for public utilities have been revised more or less extensively since 1937. Of the several interesting features embodied in these systems, one particular innovation, the original cost procedure, really deserves more careful attention than accountants have seemed willing to give it. The principal advocate (but not the originator of the idea) of the original cost procedure for utility systems of accounts has been the Committee on Statistics and Accounts of the National Association of Railroad and Utility Commissioners (NARUC). The original cost procedure ingeniously utilizes accounting techniques to isolate and emphasize information which the regulatory authorities have said they must have in order to discharge their regulatory functions adequately. Depreciation is universally prescribed for public utilities in modern uniform systems of accounts. This requirement raises the interesting question of whether the acquisition adjustment account is to be subjected to similar periodic write-off. The system, in fact, does provide that the amounts recorded in this account with respect to each property acquisition shall be depreciated, amortized, or otherwise disposed of, as the Commission may approve or direct.

Abstract Reviews the book "Andrea Barbarigo, Merchant of Venice, 1418-1449," by Frederic C. Lane.

Reviews the book "Contemporary Corporate Accounting and the Public," by Dwight R. Ladd.

Reviews the book "Public Utility Accounting," by J. Rhoads Foster and Bernard S. Rhodey.