Abstract The Article traces the origin and development of accounting as a science. In the United States during the first quarter of the twentieth century, accounting was a young and rapidly growing profession struggling to improve its adaptive behavior in an environment of mechanistic science. Accountants appealed to science for authority and found employment in a search for principles that would place accounting on a high plane of orthodoxy in an economic world arranged by a natural order of things. William Morse Cole defined his subject as "scientific analysis and record of business transactions,". In 1910 a LaSalle Extension University publication reported that "accounting is a science which aims at systematic presentation of business facts and whose rules are designed to indicate or state the principles upon which such a record of business facts must be made." The bright days of the golden 1920's found accounting with definite direction toward an acceptable goal. Hat- field wrote of the "science of accounting" in a formative stage, and warned against the foolhardiness of attempting categorical treatment of the subject. Science requires an instinctive faith in an "order of things." Is it not to be expected that many modern accountants, living in a scientific age, would search for authority with a faith in "nature," and with a desire to subdue the discipline with "irreducible and stubborn facts"?

Abstract Accounting has been defined as "the act of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of a financial character, and interpreting the results thereof." Accounting is an art, not a science. It has two major functions: to record and classify events and transactions which are, in part at least, of a financial character, and to summarize, analyze, and interpret the records. A more significant definition would be of inestimable value to students and laymen alike—perhaps to accountants themselves. Unfortunately, it is not possible to reduce a complex subject to simple terms. Accountants use many common words, such as profit, loss, income, expense, and capital, with a variety of meanings, and with meanings that frequently differ from those of every-day life. The accountant's attempt to give common words a chosen meaning—neither more nor less—is not always successful, and it is therefore important to take heed. But accounting is nevertheless an act, and its terms, no matter how common, have meaning with reference to accounting operations.

Abstract Reviews the book "Theory of Accounts," by Arthur H. Rosenkampff and William Wider.

Abstract The article discusses the relation between the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement. The income account is not more fundamental than the balance sheet. It cannot be so because balance sheet valuations are generally another aspect of income measurements. When researchers are concerned with the amount of Accounts Receivable, for example, they are concerned with the amount of revenue for a past period or periods. When they are interested in the valuation of machinery, they are also interested in the amount of depreciation. It may be that researchers have more use for the information provided by the profit and loss statement, but they cannot have faith in that information unless they believe in the balance sheet valuations. All enterprise accounting is, in one sense, profit and loss accounting, for researchers are always concerned with the distribution of receipts and disbursements through time. All enterprise accounting is therefore dynamic. The fact that we exhibit momentarily the amount of the leads and lags should not distract from the kinetic character of procedures. The balance sheet and the profit and loss statement are complementary; each completes the picture by presenting a different aspect of enterprise receipts and disbursements.

Abstract The authors of "Tentative Statement of Accounting Principles" have accomplished something for which the accounting profession, teachers and practitioners alike, should be grateful. They have described carefully and concisely what accountants do and their "statement" indicates the nature of current "good accounting practice." They have not attempted to prepare a text for those who have no knowledge of fundamentals, for such texts exist in ample number. As was to be expected, the results of this effort did not meet with universal approval. Accounting, as author A.C. Littleton declares, is "...relative and progressive. The phenomena which form its subject matter are constantly changing. Older methods become less effective under altered conditions: earlier ideas become irrelevant in the face of new problems." Professional accord seldom occurs in such fields of knowledge. Fortunately much of the recorded disharmony is more apparent than real: Disagreements frequently arise when conclusions are stated without reference to premises. The evolution of accounting practice sometimes, in fact usually, proceeds more rapidly than the statement of postulates. It is therefore intended, in this paper, to indicate how some of the grounds for discord will disappear when the premises of an accounting and a theory of business enterprise are made explicit, and to suggest that some of the work by the committee for revision should be concerned with a statement of premises and a theory.

Abstract All two frequently a university student begins the study of accountancy with a sample balance sheet. After he has mastered a few questionable definitions, he is introduced to the dynamics of business operations through the statement of profit and loss. Once the form and content of the two schedules are outlined, he may explore the records of bookkeepers at great length. In the end, he may have a comprehensive knowledge of ordinary procedures, but he is not, in any fundamental sense, prepared to appraise the work of an accountant. The accounting for a balance sheet may be explained, but the statement cannot be understood without first conceiving some elementary notion. Accountants do not act as though they believed assets to be property or the subject of property. The former, in its strict legal sense, is "the indefinite right of the user and the disposition which one may lawfully exercise over particular objects or things." The property holder has "rights to the chance of the future services of wealth. Wealth coupled with possession, is "the visible manifestations of invisible rights, the evidence of things not seen.