When the growing conscious recognition of the importance of financial data in the ordering of everyday business and economic life, the need of basic economic facts is providing a constantly enlarging opportunity for the accounting profession. The early conceptions of the functions of the auditor were such as to confine him to the duties of a mere checker and verifier of debits and credits. As business became more complex in its interrelationships there has been a compensating broadening demand for the acceptance of new and formerly unrecognized responsibilities by the auditor. The control of business enterprises within and among themselves has emphasized the importance of the budgetary and managerial aspects of the accountants' reports in enabling business units to coordinate their internal and external activities in the scheme of the economic plan. The principles of auditing are partially adaptations from other fields; they are practices from other fields which it has been found feasible to incorporate into auditing procedure and routine, in the attempt to approach as closely as possible to a realistic presentation of dynamic facts.

Accounting data and procedures impinge upon the National Reform Association (N.R.A.) codes and their administration at a number of points. There is for example, the matter of keeping the books and auditing the accounts of Code Authorities. These bodies, whose precise legal status is still a matter of considerable uncertainty, are permitted to collect in a compulsory manner funds from the members of industries under their guidance, and to spend those funds on the basis of budgets approved by the N.R.A. officials in Washington. Accounting data have been extremely useful in the making and amending of codes. The best example of such aid is the ascertainment of the effect of proposed wage and hour provisions on costs. The N.R.A. appears to the author as a challenge to industrial accounting practitioners to bring into play talents which will begin to act because of a recognition that all business transactions are in reality cost matters finding expression not only in the processes of making goods and marketing goods but also in the processes of capital investment and economic readjustments.

No part of the entire corporate mechanism, a vital instrumentality in modern business, investment and speculation, is more complicated or more poorly designed and comprehended than the legal capital requirements and the attempted safeguards against unsafe distributions of assets to the shareholders such as improper dividends, share purchases and distributions following reductions of legal capital. The article presents a brief survey of the prevailing types of statutory restrictions upon dividends with a view to evaluating the efficiency and ascertaining the shortcomings of the standards prescribed. The concept of the legal or "stated" capital are considered, and different varieties of limitations on cash and share dividends, with comment upon the abuses and defects of the existing systems and the need of some further statutory revision are discussed. Whatever restrictions are adopted as to dividends they should be supplemented by a general requirement of the exercise of reasonable care and prudence not merely to ascertain the existence of book surplus or profits, but also needful liquidity and the financial status generally.