General character of the two studies, 320.—Crum's analysis of earning power: the "profit ratio, " 322; the "earnings ratio, " 326.—The return Upon capital invested, 330.—The proportion of profitable operations, 333.—Sloan's analysis of earnings, 334.—Frequency distribution of earnings in 1927 and 1917, 336.—The range of earnings, 339.—Relation between earnings and "especialty products, " 340.—More light needed, 342.

Growth in number of book stockholders in recent years, 561. — More rapid growth in immediate post-war period, 566. — Customer and employee sales important only after 1920, 567. — Examination of income-tax data for possible shift in ownership, 570. — Large shift in ownership from rich to less rich apparent between 1916 and 1921, none thereafter, 574. — Check on validity of figures by examination of methods of manipulation, 575; by examination of income-tax data, particularly for tax evasion, 576; by discussion of possible explanations of shift, 585; by the evidence of growth in number of book stockholders, 591. — Conclusion, 591. — Statistical Appendix, Tables I–VIII, 593.

W HEN the economist of the future compiles the business annals of the past decade, he will find the key to our prolonged and unprecedented prosperity in the stimulus provided by two great industries building construction and automobile manufacturing. Originally gaining momentum because of a long pent-up demand and then feeding upon the demand caused by the new wealth for which their own activities were primarily responsible, creating a market for the products of the iron and steel and other basic industries and providing employment directly or indirectlyin everyhamlet throughout the country, these two industries have constituted both the prime mover and the chief support of our recent prosperity. For the time being, however, this fruitful partnership in prosperity seems to have been dissolved. During 1929, while the building industry lost ground, slackening its pace some 12 or 13 per cent as compared with 1928, the automobile industry put on an astonishing burst of speed and left all its old records far behind. Today the overproduced condition in the motor industry is regarded by many as perhaps the sorest spot in the entire business situation, whereas the construction industry is now looked upon as the industry which will save us from business collapse, cushioning the decline in business activity and stimulating the forces of recovery. Will construction be able to play this role effectively? This is the crucial question which any forecaster of the new year's business must answer. In this brief summary we can only touch upon the three important favorable factors, (i) the readjustment which has already taken place in the building industry, (2) the stimulus of easy money, and (3) the prompt and aggressive mobilization, under the inspiration of President Hoover, of the campaign to use construction as a balance wheel of industry. The stimulating effect of these three forces will be somewhat retarded by (i) the loss of savings and paper profits in the stock market debacle, (2) the present condition of the savings banks, the building and loan associations and certain other lending institutions, and (3) the fact that supply and demand conditions in some branches of the building industry have not been entirely readjusted. The industry will be affected also of course by the general business situation, being retarded by continuing recession or stimulated by sustained activity, whichever may develop. The level of building costs will be a comparatively unimportant factor, though such influence as it exerts should be favorable, as lower prices for certain building materials, probable increased efficiency of labor in a depressed labor market, and lower money rates should tend toward lower construction costs. In the first place, it is clear that the substantial decline in building volume which took place during 1929 and which, in so far as residential building is concerned, extended over a much longer period has been extremely fortunate. This slowing down has enabled the industry to correct many of the excesses which had developed in the last six or seven years of unprecedented construction activity, but, coinciding as it did with unusual activity in the automobile and many other industries, its depressing effect upon general business was largely counteracted. The readjustment whichwe are nowexperiencing in general business, may be sharp enough; it would be more acute and more protracted had it not been for the year's start gained by the construction industry. However, though it has already made much progress, the building industry has by no means completed its readjustment process. In certain localities there still exists an overproduction of certain kinds of building facilities which must be largely absorbed before these types of construction can resume their usual activity. The extent to which the various classes of building activity will be affected during 1930 by existing surpluses of space will be discussed in a later section of this paper. The second favorable factor, easy money, will undoubtedly exert a powerful influence making for the resumption of normal activities in the industry. Comparison of building volume with bond yields, commercial paper rates, or other indexes of the cost of money over the past ten years reveals a high inverse correlation. Cheap

Journal Article Mitchell's Business Cycles Get access Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Schumpeter Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, November 1930, Pages 150–172, https://doi.org/10.2307/1882530 Published: 01 November 1930

Abstract The scope of the engineer is changing. Today's engineer must not only know his chemistry, physics, and mathematics; he must also be familiar with finance, labor problems, and accounting. One finds the engineer as the chief executive of many successful organizations. In such a capacity, he must be more than the master craftsman; he must be the able administrator of functions whose technologies are widely different. Now engineering clearly falls under the general function of management; yet management is more than engineering. To give a general list of the fields of management there are in broad general terms: finance, personnel, public relations, purchasing, traffic, storage, sales, design, production. Certainly engineering is most closely related to production, rather than to the others; and there is where it belongs. Yet production management and engineering are not parallel terms. The engineer solves technical problems of design – of product, of machinery and equipment, of plant, and of operation – but the production management must coordinate these, and cooperate with managers of finance, personnel, public relations, purchasing traffic, storage, and sales, in order to keep production going in balance with the other units of the organization.

Reviews the book "Aptitude Testing," by C.L. Hull.

Reviews the book "Volkswirtschafliches Wörterbuch," by Hereward T. Price.

Abstract The adjustment of the student who has had bookkeeping in secondary school to the college courses in elementary accounting is a troublesome problem. Mingling such students with those who have had no such preliminary work causes disturbances of teaching, and segregating them into separate courses seems to offer just as great difficulties. Probably the larger number of colleges make no distinction in the elementary course between students with a knowledge of bookkeeping and those without. High schools and commercial teachers are of the opinion that the commercial course should either be given preference for admission to schools of business and commerce or that the commercial work lead directly to somewhat more advanced work in the field of business. These teachers frequently look to the schools of business as the goal of their better students and urge them to continue their training. To an increasing extent also the universities are serving as training schools for commercial teachers, and these former students feel their work should be recognized. It is difficult to do this with the usual commercial subjects but it should be possible to make some adjustment for bookkeeping courses since a good deal of such work is necessarily duplicated in our accounting courses.

Abstract The purposes and methods of cost analysis which may be applied to hospitals are similar to those which are encountered in business enterprise. It is sometimes assumed that the output of a hospital is homogeneous, that all patients receive essentially the same type of service except for the external features, such as room furnishings, selection of food, amounting of nursing acre, and type of medical or surgical attention. But the activities of a modern hospital are varied in character, even in the care of in-patients. In-patients may receive three general classes of service which ordinarily are charged against the patient's account as separate items. These three classes of revenue producing services are board and room, diagnosis, and treatment. Board and room includes the use of a bedroom, three meals per day, and a reasonable amount of bedside nursing care. Diagnosis includes the services of X-ray photography, basal metabolism, laboratory tests, etc. Medical treatment includes the use of such facilities as the operating room, physiotherapy delivery room, etc. None of these services include, of course, the advice and treatment by a private physician or surgeon.

Abstract Conventionally, depreciation is a deduction from the original cost, the actual cost of the assets. That actual cost of the assets is not written up generally in order to accord with the present value of the property. There have been accountants who have recognized the objection to the accepted definition that depreciation represents loss of value, and have attempted to find substitutes. A more plausible theoretical definition of depreciation is "Amortized Costs." That is to say, it is that portion of the cost of the asset which has, in fact, been written off, which has been charged against the operating expenses of the previous year. It would seem to imply that a business which, wisely or unwisely, has not in fact written off anything for depreciation, has not suffered a depredation, because if a business does not amortize its capital cost, then there is no amortized capital cost, and by definition there would not be any depreciation. There should be the use of accrued depreciation accounting, rather than the use of retirement reserves in public utility regulation.