Abstract In the article, the author focuses on stockholders, considered to be the minority group in business enterprises in the U.S. Stockholders are minor capitalists whose livelihood depends largely on the prudent and profitable investment of their limited savings. This group has now shrunk in numbers and diminished in importance. This group enjoys neither the security of a liberally-financed corporate pension plan, nor the beneficence of social-welfare hand-outs to the indigent. The author presents his thesis that the individual saver or the private accumulator of small amounts of capital is unduly disadvantaged by present-day conditions in the business sector. A stockholder faces a task of extraordinary difficulty in selecting and safeguarding his investments which stems from the neglect of his interests by those best situated to keep him properly informed namely, the independent accountants who certify to the financial statements of enterprises to which he commits his funds. For them, he is in truth the forgotten man.

Abstract This article presents information on the accounting. Accounting as an art, accounting as a public service, and accounting as a social force, have undergone great changes during the past four decades. The place of accounting in business was very different from the one it occupies today. In the earlier era, most people thought of accounting as an individual and personal record of accomplishment and position, designed exclusively for the enterprisers concerned. The problem of the accountant was how to best meet the needs of owners and managers. The corporation accountant was a little like an actor, playing a part for the benefit of a small and select audience. For many years, public accountants denied the necessity of a code of principles or standards, formulated by anyone. The entire business and financial community took a long time to become accustomed to the new order, which was then coming into being. The New Deal, for all the egregious follies and iniquities of its implementation, did signalize the emergence of a social conscience with respect to the conduct and reporting of business affairs.

Abstract This article presents views of the author on information on managerial accounting twenty years from now as of January 1954. According to the author managerial accounting activities which now, as then, strike him as most likely to be productive include increased emphasis on what might be called "pre-accounting" studies-the preparation of budgets, the establishment of standards, etc. Secondly, greater attention to intensive primary analysis of costs and expenses, to provide more finely subdivided and carefully shaped "building blocks" for subsequent cost determination and performance evaluation. Then, closer study of the relationship between costs and prices, with particular attention to the distinction between recovery and out- of-pocket costs and contributions toward general overhead expenses. Finally, improved arrangement of financial statements, to clarify important internal and inter-statement relationships.

Abstract The article presents information on treatment of income taxes in corporation income statements. The provision for income and excess profits taxes has become a very important item in the income statement of most corporations. In determining the amount, description and placement of this item in the statement, the following questions may require consideration: (1) should federal and state income and excess profits taxes be treated as (a) a cost of doing business, or (b) a distribution of profits? (2) if the earnings of an enterprise for a fiscal period are partly from ordinary operations and partly from special nonrecurring transactions, should the amount of tax applicable to each class of earnings be separately deducted from such earnings or should all earnings of the enterprise first be combined into one figure and the total income and excess profits tax deducted in a single sum? (3) If an allocation of the tax total between classes of income is permissible, may the same principle be applied if one class of transactions has resulted in a profit and the other in a loss? That is, may the statement be arranged to show the saving in taxes as a deduction from the loss, while the full tax without benefit of the saving is deducted from the profit?

Abstract This article focuses on the structural fundamentals of financial statements. Financial analysis sometimes goes astray in assuming that the balance sheet at the year-end represents the average condition prevailing throughout the year, a condition which in some respects is usually not the case. An average balance sheet for the entire year would provide a better basis of comparison. Consistent treatment of the various classes of elements in all financial statements would soon lead even the casual reader to a better appreciation of the basic financial aspects of business activities and their results. The primary relationship expressed in accounts is that of equality. Entries are equations, ledgers "balance." Accounting starts, then, with the primary proposition that this equals that. Naturally many accounting statements stress this feature of "equality of factors." In the balance sheet attention is directed to the fact that property is equaled by ownership. A cash statement may show that the opening balance plus receipts equals disbursements plus the closing balance.

Abstract The Executive Committee of the American Accounting Association has presented a tentative statement of principles, which deals with these questionable points. Everything that appears in this list could be definitely disposed of by every accountant if those principles, or rules, or standards, or conventions, or whatever you want to call them, were universally observed. But, if the universal observance of those particular rules and conventions and standards is not most desirable, then it behaves the accounting profession and those who are teachers and research workers in this field to decide what rules should apply. If qualifications and exceptions are necessary in connection with them, then the problem is to state them. It is a difficult, complicated task, but it is not impossible. Only our diffidence, our preoccupation with other matters, a certain degree of inertia in tackling these things, prevents our getting this job done in some satisfactory fashion. in some satisfactory fashion.

Abstract 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.

Abstract The article focuses on the statement of accounting principles by the American Accounting Association, published in the June 1936 issue of the journal The Accounting Review. The article presents comments in support of the suggested principles. In developing certain principles that would be sound in theory and practical in application, adoption of the best of current practice is involved, but with modifications designed to remove some of the uncertainties and inconsistencies from corporation income statements. Particularly it is sought to eliminate present confusion about the unusual cost or revenue items which sometimes are treated as capital losses or gains, sometimes as adjustments of earned surplus for prior years, and sometimes as current profit and loss charges. It is suggested that all the amortized costs and all the realized gains should be recognized in the income statement of some year, either as special items in the statements for the current year, or through correction and rewriting of the statement for prior years.

Reviews the book "Corporate Profits as Shown by Audit Reports," by W.A. Paton.

Abstract The work of teachers of accounting in colleges or universities falls into two broad divisions. One of the two major responsibilities is the training of students, equipping them with such knowledge of accounting as will be most useful to them in the business world, in professional practice and in all the activities of life. The other of the major responsibilities is the active promotion of research in the accounting field, the determination of sound principles and practices, the development of adequate standards and the formulation of ideals which should guide all those engaged in the application of accounting to economic and social problems. In the author's opinion, accounting teachers have given greater recognition to the first of these responsibilities than to the second. Teachers have built up a great body of teaching materials, and have evolved courses of training which are extensive in their scope and intensive in their method. Conditions in the fifteen years prior to 1930 gave rise to a phenomenal growth in the teaching of accounting in colleges and universities. There are now hundreds of schools and teachers offering accounting courses, thousands of students enrolled in these courses, as of March 1933.