Training for the public accounting profession is a continuing process. An accounting curriculum that is not up to date and does not provide men who are qualified to meet the current problems of public accounting practice is one to be avoided at all costs. Many public accounting firms today show more real concern over their social responsibilities and opportunities for real service to business than could be found in a group of typical accounting professors. The leading public accounting firms are today looking for men who have been broadly trained, who have a full understanding of the social responsibilities and standards of conduct which are required of those who enter the public accounting profession, and who are qualified to render to clients real services far beyond the scope of the ordinary audit. The author thinks that the public accounting profession may now be at that stage of growth and maturity where it would be glad to have the teaching profession provide training for various levels of public accounting responsibility and a limited amount of training along more specialized lines.

In 1796, writer Edward Jones's "The English System of Book-keeping" was published in Bristol. The first edition contains a list of over 4,000 subscribers resident in all parts of Great Britain. The Bank of England and the Honourable East India Company each subscribed for five copies. The author is said to have profited to the extent of 25,000 pounds from his invention. His system is stated to have been widely used in both Great Britain and the U.S. It gained an international reputation in a short while, and is probably the only English work on accounting. The publication of the book was preceded in 1795 by "An Address to Bankers, Merchants, Tradesmen and others, intended as an introduction to a New System of Book-keeping." This address contents reproduced as an Introductory Address in the main work, sets out in the author's compelling style faults, demerits and positive dangers of the existing bookkeeping methods, both by single and double entry, without so much as giving a foretaste of the magnificent new system about to be made known to the long suffering commercial world.

Accounting is involved in practically every stage of termination. This must necessarily be so, since accounting is the science of income determination and capital valuation. Whenever profits or values are involved accounting is a must. In termination settlements, the government has adopted a liberal and practical attitude. Accounting principles need not always be rigidly applied in the final settlement. Cost principles governing termination settlements are not applied in the same manner as in settling claims under cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts or facilities contracts. The settlements are more liberal. Furthermore, termination settlements are not complicated like income tax and renegotiation. It is the desire of the government in the U.S. that war contractors, receive speedy and equitable final settlement of claims under terminated war contracts. This desire is expressed by the U.S. Congress in the Contract Settlement Act of 1944 which became effective on July 21, 1944. Provisions in the Act indicate the determination of the government to be fair and square in the settlement of terminated war contracts.

The Arthur Lowes Dickinson Fund was established in January, 1929, at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration by the firm of Price, Waterhouse & Company, in recognition of the debt due by the accounting profession in general, and particularly by this firm, to a former partner, Arthur Lowes Dickinson. The income from this fund was for a number of years used exclusively for the purpose of conducting research in the field of accounting. In 1936, terms of the Fund were modified to provide that in addition there may from time to time be appointed, for one year, a man outstanding in accounting who shall deliver at the Graduate School of Business Administration one or more lectures, and shall be designated as Dickinson Lecturer. Professional standing comes not so much as a result of claims as it does from works of such character that professional standing is conceded by the public, and one of the tributes paid by the public is recognition of the fact that the subject matter in the field of the group in question deserves a place in the higher educational program which the public, through gift or taxation, supports.