A survey of current accounting practice indicates rather conclusively that a great majority of bookkeeping and accounting operations are performed with the aid of various types of mechanical equipment, commonly known as accounting machines. Broadly speaking, the term accounting machine. should include not only bookkeeping, analysis and tabulating machines, but also adding and calculating machines, cash registers, etc. Other office machines with important accounting applications, such as addressing machines and duplicating equipment, may also be included. Thus interpreted, the field covered is a very extensive one. The increasing volume of business transactions, the complexity of business organization, the growing necessity for delegation of responsibility and control all these factors have increased the dependence of the business man upon records and reports. Cost is an important factor in the preparation of such records and reports, hence the extent to which the necessary accounting and other clerical operations can be performed by mechanical means influences greatly the degree and type of managerial control which can be efficiently and economically exercised.
The article presents answer to the question of outside practice by accounting instructors. In answer to the question, the author considers two aspects of accounting teaching. These are the efficiency of college administration and the efficiency of college teaching. From the point of view of the efficiency of the accounting teaching. From the point of view of college administration, accounting instructor who has little or no outside practice can be more satisfactorily adjusted in his work than can the accountant instructor who has important outside practice. From the point of view of the efficiency of the accounting teaching, much of the teaching by the accountant who has important outside practice is less effective because of the fact that such an accounting instructor becomes more interested in outside practice than he does in college teaching. Not infrequently such an accounting instructor gives his students the reactions which he gets out of his practice at the time and not the reactions which come from a broad view of the whole field of accounting practice.