Abstract The article presents a discussion of cost accounting, the pricing system, and the management factor. It preaches to the conclusion that the cost accounting has an important position in these activities. At the same time, it is not all-important. Judgment and discretion in the use of cost data are necessary to deal successfully with the pricing system. The pricing system itself is in some respects a fetish, especially under the conditions that industry is about to encounter. The ability of management to adapt itself to the conditions it meets and to use its ingenuity and resourcefulness in operating under those conditions leads to the most prosperous and profitable results. In the exercise of that ability of management, cost accounting furnishes data that if used wisely and judiciously, greatly expand the opportunities of the manager. Cost accounting at best can be only a tool of management. The skill with which the tool is used is the deciding factor in dealing with pricing situations. It is the man in management that is the truly important factor.

Abstract The article focuses on different aspects of teaching cost accounting. Commerce students who have had little or no business experience present a problem to instructors in cost accounting because their lack of background keeps them from comprehending the aims sought by a cost system and particularly the managerial aspects of such a system. This condition seems to be general with all classes of students, whether they be those in day classes who are taking a complete commerce course or evening students who have some experience in business and are seeking to develop themselves in a special branch of accountancy. It therefore seems necessary for the instructor in cost accounting to carry on some preliminary work with his students to give them a philosophy of cost accounting whereby they will appreciate the importance of internal transactions in a business, the use that can be made of cost records for managerial purposes as apart from mere record keeping and the general relation that exists between all the manifold activities of a business, as well as some idea of what those activities are.

Reviews the book "Cost Finding for Engineers," by Charles Reitell and Clarence Van Sickle

Reviews the book "Material Control and Storeskeeping In Machine Shops and Foundries," by Willis Hissler.