Book reviews [1982, Vol. 9, no. 1]

              The Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 9, No. 1
Spring 1982
BOOK REVIEWS
Dale A. Buckmaster, Editor UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
Lawrence Robert Dicksee. Business Methods and the War (Cam-bridge: at the University Press, 1915, pp. 71); The Fundamentals of Manufacturing Costs (2d ed., London: Gee & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 1928, pp. 39); and Published Balance Sheets and Window Dressing (London: Gee & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 1927, pp. 62). Reprint ed., three vols, in one. New York: Arno Press, 1980, $18.00.
Reviewed by William L. Talbert Georgia State University
Business Methods and the War is a reproduction in book form of four lectures delivered in 1915 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The author directs that the lectures should be regarded "in the light of a few suggestions as to how business men might, with great advantage to themselves, take to heart such lessons as the war may have to teach them. After all, war is a busi-ness, and business—like life—is one long battle."
In the first lecture the author discusses business, military, and labor organization, including an interesting history of organization through ancient, mediaeval, and modern times. He concludes that business has much to learn from the military, and that the Accounts Department of a business should occupy a position similar to that of any other staff department, and that operational personnel "should be brought up to regard them as friends and allies, rather than as natural enemies." In the other three lectures he treats such topics as business training and technical education (comparing them to military drill), the value of accounting as a means of bene-fiting by experience, waste products and by-products, and war prices and balance sheets.
The Fundamentals of Manufacturing Costs is a handbook whose object is "to draw attention to, and to emphasize the importance of, a Report issued by the Federal Trade Commission of Washington,