Abstract Investors, creditors, and managers are all interested in financial analysis. While they may have different goals in mind and may utilize a number of different methods, the most important methods used have one element in common. This is comparison. The actual data for the firm under analysis are compared to some standard in an attempt to measure the desirability of the results for this company. These standards may be from internal sources, such as a budget or past data concerning operations or external sources, such as results of other companies, in the same industry. One of the most common forms of comparative financial analysis involves the use of various ratios drawn from the financial statements. Many accountants discount the value of ratios used in comparative financial analysis. However, the fact remains that a great number of analysts do utilize such ratios. The purpose of the article is to examine the effect which the last-in, first-out method of inventory valuation may have on the uniformity of financial statements and thus the comparability of the ratios which may be drawn from these statements.

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 Any one who has been closely associated with accounting employment during the past two or more decades readily senses that the internship as a basic program has lost vitality. One of the reasons given for this loss of interest is the demand for accounting-trained graduates has created a situation whereby undergraduate students no longer need the contact provided by the internship to secure a permanent position. Many of the students are married and thus find it inconvenient to shift families from classroom to field and back to classroom. Many universities are on the semester plan which may not be conducive to an internship program. Many accounting firms for reasons best known to themselves are less responsive to accepting undergraduate students for organized internship programs today than in earlier years. Visual educational techniques and other improvements in teaching methods and materials may tend to reduce the necessity for field experience. On the assumption therefore, that the accounting internship is not dead or even moribund, this article tries to bring it up to date and implement it definite working rules.

Reviews the book "Extensions of the Boundaries of Accounting Theory," by Thomas R. Prince.

Reviews the book "Accounting Problems in the Oil and Gas Industry," by W.B. Coutts.

Reviews three books on accounting. "Accounting Practices in the Netherlands"; "Accounting Practices in Sweden"; "Accounting Practices in Argentina."

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

Reviews the book "Profitability Accounting for Planning and Control," Robert Beyer.

Reviews the book "Budgeting and Cost Analysis for Hospital Management," by Leon E. Hay.

Abstract The article presents a report on teaching methods and programmed instructions in the U.S. During the past few years, in the process of continuing search to discover means for increasing instructional efficiency and for developing new materials to cope with the rapidly expanding demands for additional education and training by a burgeoning number of learners, the experimentation and development of programed learning has received the attention of educators and training directors across the country. Programed instruction has found wide-spread usage in industry and in the armed forces in various aspects of training for specific assignments or tasks, in which predetermined performance levels or behavioral patterns had been established. In numerous situations in both education and industry, programed instruction has proved to be effective, and under some circumstances more so than conventional methods. However, at this time research findings, especially at the college level, are totally inadequate to serve as a basis for making decisions on the adoption of programed learning for use throughout any specific course or program.