Abstract This article focuses on some facts of federal fiscal life and their importance to Americans. At present the United States Government owes about 288 billion dollars to the holders of government securities, and the annual interest expense for carrying that debt was estimated last January at around eleven per cent of the total budget receipts of the Federal Government anticipated in fiscal 1951 or 9.5 billion dollars. The Government is committed in the future for plenty of other costs. For example: first, merchant Marine subsidies and ship replacement just for currently subsidized ships will cost 4.3 billion dollars. Second, 5.4 billion dollars is already committed for future Federal contributions for public housing. Third, Federal civil public works projects al ready started will cost 7 billion dollars after 1961 to complete. Fourth, it may cost as much as 30 billion dollars or more to complete the inter state highway program. It is at this point that the matter of the country's rate of economic growth comes to the fore. For as the economy grows, tax revenues-at the same or even lower tax rates-increase. And that increase in Federal revenues could be used, if not for debt reduction then perhaps to absorb some of the additional costs of added public service.

Reviews the book "Practice Set in Cost Accounting," by John W. Ruswinckel.

Abstract This article focuses on the principles of allocating costs. There appear to be three ways of assigning costs: first, by direct application, second, by allocation and third, by proration. The first method, direct application is used where there is a demonstrable and immediate relationship between the cost and the thing to which it is assigned. The second method, allocation applies to those cases where there is demonstrable relationship between the cost and the thing to which it is being applied but the relationship is not such that absolute accuracy or rightness is precisely determinable. The third method, proration pertains to situations in which there is a desire to assign functional costs yet no demonstrable relationship exists to rely upon for measurement of the various shares to be assigned. This is the problem one faces, for example, when he tries to assign the salary of the production manager to the various production departments, or, to make it even more difficult, the salary of the company president to the various productive and sales departments. It is natural for the cost accountant to want to prorate and allocate costs because that is one of the first things he learned when he went to school, profit measurement being emphasized at the start as a general rule. Sometimes it seems that the emphasis never should have been that way in the first place, because it has led many accountants into the error of indiscriminate allocation in their approach to different problems of costing.

Abstract Reviews two books by E.L. Kohler "Advanced Accounting Problems;" "Solutions for Advanced Accounting Problems."

Reviews the book "Defense Management," edited by Stephen Enke.

The article reviews the book "Quantitative Controls for Business: An Introduction," by John T. O'Neil, Loring C. Farwell and F. Virgil Boyd.

Reviews the book "Cost Accounting," 4th, ed., by W.B. Lawrence and John W. Ruswinckle.