Reviews the book "Stabilized Accounting," by Henry W. Sweeney.

The article presents the author's comments on having a professional college for accountancy. The author says that the profession throughout the U.S. has not yet made an adequate test of the existing programs of accounting instruction or a thorough trial of graduates of colleges of commerce with an accounting major. Too often in taking commerce graduates into the staff, little or no attention is paid to scholarship records as a clue to aptitude and the ability to lean. Occasionally personality and college activities are allowed to out-weigh the evidence of a thorough foundation in collateral subjects. Practitioners could provide an immediate and powerful stimulus to better educational preparation for accountancy if they would pledge themselves for a period of years to absorb the scholastic upper fifty per cent of the accountancy graduates of the colleges of commerce having a satisfactory accounting program. The article further asserts that the profession is hardly ready for separate schools of accountancy with a high degree of specialization because the literature and teaching materials are still inadequate to support a three-year program in accountancy alone. Thus, either collateral or related subject matter, such as economics, finance, law, and business administration, should be added to the work in accountancy in desirable amounts.

In barter for re-trade, expected profit is a judgment regarding relative subsequent exchangeability of the new thing possessed in comparison with other, as yet, un-possessed desirable things. The test of this pre-judgment comes when the anticipated re-exchange is accomplished. If, subsequent to the first barter-exchange, no third person finds a prospective utility in the goods held for re-exchange, there is no second exchange and no accomplished profit for the trader; also if after a second barter exchange, the goods then newly received should prove not to have the expected utility, there can be no accomplished profit. Valuation is a part of the process of exercising sound judgment in consuming or trading, and forms the basis for all production and merchandising operations. And the ability to make sound judgments regarding consumptive wants and uses, and of trade opportunities exists quite independently of records as such. Reality of profit should not he read into a situation too soon or upon inadequate evidence. This is the basis of the so-called realization principle. When an objective test has verified a personal hope, conviction of reality may safely follow but not before. Anticipated profits are mere opinions and therefore subject to individual bias and mistaken judgment. Realized profits on the other hand have met an objective test, under conditions by which the utility of the goods has been further attested by the independent judgment of a subsequent receiver in exchange. But even such realization may prove to be an incomplete test of reality because today's gains may be consumed by tomorrow's losses if the goods last received prove useless.