Abstract Cost accounting is fundamentally an analytical approach to the development of useful and necessary specialized management information. Techniques are only chosen methods of analysis and reports are a device to report results. Whether or not formal accounting routines and records are used is a matter of convenience and internal check. One of the first difficulties met in teaching cost accounting is the fact that there is not even a single fundamental definition or idea of cost which will meet all requirements. Cost has many different meanings, with only an extremely indefinite unifying idea to justify the application of the same term in such widely varying senses. The economist has long recognized this fact and carefully differentiates different meanings he attaches to the word. The basic business approach to cost was one of financial outlay. As developed by accountants, the businessman's primary idea of cost has been one of a normal average amount, determined as the sum of an accumulation of direct factory outlays and of a reasonable proration of indirect factory outlays. By outlay he means actual use or consumption of goods or services for which he has paid or is obligated to pay cash. The future of industrial cost analysis is bright, for it is a vitally essential business service. It has shown and can be expected to continue to show a rapid development in the quality of its service to industry. There is a need for better-trained juniors to enter cost accounting as a career.

Abstract The article discusses several issues related to the training for the controllership. The approach has been that any discussion of training for controllership must start with a definition of objectives and a division of the problem into sections. Economists have been concerned here with training for the administrative, policy-making responsibilities of the controller and his immediate assistants. Various methods of training have been recognized but a combination of formal academic work with an organized apprenticeship program has been accepted as the most promising. To apprenticeship has been left the task of developing facility and judgment in meeting particular situations. Upon the academic program has been placed the burden of developing depth of analytical thinking, breadth of background, and the proper point of view. For these reasons the emphasis in the academic work has been upon analysis and breadth. The impossibility of including all desirable topics in the curriculum was accepted and a program was developed which was divided into three parts, covering, (1) technical subjects, (2) general business courses, and (3) background work in economics and related subjects. The desirability of undertaking the program as graduate study was advanced.

Reviews the book "Economic Problems of Modern Life," by S. Howard Patterson and Karl W.H. Schols.

Reviews the book "Forms in Modern Business Systems."