Reviews the book "Punched Card Accounting and The Professional Accountant," by J. Standford Smith.

Reviews the book "Monopoly and Free Enterprise," by George W. Stocking and Myron W. Watkins.

Reviews several books about auditing. "Cases and Problems in Audits and Examinations," by Christian Oehler; "Case Problems in Auditing," by Arnold W.Johnson; "Basic Audit Case," by Harvey G.Meyer and "Short Audit Case," by Robert Dinman.

This article analysis a questionnaire sent to 1000 alumni of the University of Illinois, College of Commerce. The question as presented to the alumni on this topic was adopted from one of similar type and purpose drafted by the American Council on Education in a survey it made several years ago on Business Education at the Collegiate Level. Of the 1000 questionnaires sent out 471 complete replies were received and 40 were returned because of unsatisfactory addresses. Of the 471 replies received 424 or 90% listed principles of accountancy, 394 or 84% listed written English, and 391 or 83% listed principles of economics as of primary importance. Another substantiation of the point of view of the alumni relative to the first five subjects in importance is the fact that they were also the ones recognized as the most indispensable. Not even one of the 471 respondents marked principles of accountancy or business law as of doubtful or no value and only one each marked principles of economics, written English and oral English in that category.

The article focuses on recommendations presented by the American Accounting Association's Committee on Concepts and Standards, regarding the use of term "reserve" in accounting. The committee recommended that the term reserve should not be employed in published financial statements of business corporations, appropriations of retained income should not be made or displayed in such a manner as to create misleading inferences, and the reserve section in corporate balance sheets should be eliminated and its elements exhibited as deduction-from-asset, or liability, or retained income amounts. In general usage, outside of accounting, a reserve is a fund of cash or other assets. In accounting the term has been used to caption a variety of balance sheet items including segregated retained income, segregated asset, asset valuation and asset amortization amounts, and liabilities. It has been recommended that the word reserve be restricted to captions describing appropriated retained income. The committee believes that the popular understanding of financial statements, and the thinking of the profession, would be promoted by abandoning the term.

In the study of standard costs, the learner usually has difficulty in determining variances in the accounting for the elements of cost and in setting up entries to record these variances. Generally, less difficulty is encountered in computing and recording variances for direct materials and direct labor, where variances are usually considered to arise from two sources, price variations and quantity variations, than is encountered in computing and recording variances for manufacturing expenses, where variances are usually considered to arise from three sources, budget excess variation, idle capacity variation, and efficiency variation. This discussion will disregard the problems arising out of the handling of variances for direct materials and direct labor, it will present a method which has been used successfully by students in learning to determine and to record the three variances that arise in the handling of the manufacturing expenses. Since manufacturing expenses are entered at an applied rate, a difference will usually exist between the actual and the applied expenses at the end of the period. This difference is classified as over-or under-applied manufacturing expenses and is, in reality, a price variation.