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              56 HASKINS & SELLS June
It is with deep sorrow and regret that
we record the sudden death on May 15,
1921, of M r . J . C. Grabbe of the Chicago
staff. Mr. Grabbe has been a valued
member of our staff since January of this
year, ranking as a supervising accountant.
Book Review
Dewing, Arthur Stone. The Financial
Policy of Corporations. Five volumes.
(New York, The Ronald Press Com­pany,
1920).
This work might, from its scope, be
termed an encyclopedia of corporation
finance. Its chief merit perhaps is found
therein. As a treatise on corporation
finance it is thorough—possibly the most
thorough book of its kind which has been
presented.
But a book to find favor with business
men, bankers, and even college students,
must get down to earth. The story must
be told in words which the average reader
will understand. The author's thoughts
must be presented in a way which will
enable them to be easily grasped.
It is unfortunate that the otherwise
excellent book in question makes any­thing
but easy reading. It is, to say the
least, very abstruse. For the purposes of
the average reader some parts might as
well have been written in Greek. This is
particularly true of the reference to ac­counting
(v. i i i , p. 3) which is erroneously
termed accountancy.
Note, for example, the author's concept
of accounting: "The science of accountancy
is primarily a system of logic. It rests
on one absolutely fundamental presup­position
and three postulates arising
directly out of this." Fortunately, stu­dents
of accounting do not go to books on
finance for their first ideas on accounting.
Again, "Accountancy leads to two modes
of representing a business enterprise. One
is the correspondence between the money
value and the economic value of a business
at any one moment of time." Could any­thing
be more abstruse to the uninitiated?
Lest this review smack of narrowness and
result in giving the reader an entirely
wrong impression, it should be added that
the material in the book has been well
selected and arranged. The volumes deal
respectively with Corporation Securities,
Promotion, The Administration of Income,
Expansion, Failure and Reorganization.
The last named excels in its thoroughness
and cites many interesting and illuminating
cases.
Taken as a whole, the work must be
regarded as a contribution even though
some of the material has appeared before
in other of the author's books. Its value
would have been greatly enhanced had
the style been simpler.
We are pleased to note that Mr. Ferris
I. Palmer of the Watertown office has
passed the recent C. P. A . examinations
of the State of New York.
PRESS OF WILLIAM GREEN