Book Reviews; Additions to the Library, March, 1919;Index;

              Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 31
Book Reviews
Morton, D. Walter. Banking and
Bank Accounting. (Chicago, Lyons and
Carnahan, 1917.) 112p.
As stated in the publisher's introduc­tion,
"for years there has been an insistent
demand on the part of commercial teachers
for a course in banking which would not
only give instruction and training in bank
accounting, but would instruct in the theory
of banking as well." This statement is
essentially true. It may be added that the
present work answers the purpose rather
better than anything yet offered.
The chief defect of the book is that it
has no index, suggesting thereby perhaps
that it was not intended for use other than
a text and basis for laboratory work. The
author, who is the Dean of Accounting in
the University of Oregon, after presenting
a banking chart which sets forth the
organization and relationships, proceeds to
a discussion of credit. In connection with
this discussion, there are numerous finan­cial
statements intended to offer oppor­tunity
for the application of theory to con­crete
cases. The chapters which follow
discuss in an interesting and complete man­ner
the following subjects: Kinds of
banks; sources of a bank's earnings and
losses; receipts and disbursements; officers
and their duties; books used; opening the
books of the Crete National Bank; trans­actions
of the Crete National Bank.
The text is accompanied by the books
and forms necessary to the working out of
the transactions.
Finlay, James Ralph. The Cost of
Mining. (New York, McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Inc., 1909.) 415 p.
The content of this book embraces vari­ous
things other than the cost of mining,
all of which, however, are related to the
subject of mining. It contains interesting
descriptions of the processes of mining the
various materials as well in some instances
as the statistics of production. Some of
the more important topics covered are:
The value of mining property; factors
governing valuations; partial and complete
costs; statistics of coal production; cost of
mining Lake Superior iron; cost of silver
and lead smelting; occurrence and pro­duction
of gold.
Gillette, Halbert P., and Dana, Richard
T. Handbook of Mechanical and Electri­cal
Cost Data. (New York, McGraw-
Hill Book Company, Inc., 1918.) 1739 p.
This book gives shipping weights
capacities, outputs, and net prices of ma­chines
and apparatus and detailed cost of
installation, maintenance, depreciation and
operation, together with many principles
and data relating to engineering eco­nomics.
Like most books of its kind, its particu­lar
use to the accountant is the discussion
of depreciation, repair, and renewals.
The author defines depreciation as fol­lows
: "Depreciation is loss of value. It
may occur as a result of the loss of useful
life of a plant unit or its parts or because
of the invention or design of a more
efficient plant unit, or because a larger
plant unit is more economic, or in conse­quence
of a drop in the prices of equivalent
plant units, or because of accident, injury,
or in consequence of any change that
makes it more economical to render an
equivalent service with another plant unit."
The author makes a distinction between
natural depreciation and functional depre­ciation.
Natural depreciation is said to
be "loss of value due to physical or chemi­cal
changes in plant units; e.g., rot, rust,
electrolysis, wear and tear, loss of value