Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 51
Book Reviews
Kent, William. Bookkeeping and Cost
Accounting for Factories. (New York.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 261 p.)
A perusal of the preface of this book
gives one rather a disagreeable reaction.
"The time has arrived," says the author,
"when there is a need for a systematic
treatise on cost accounting which will start
the student at the beginning with the elementary
principles of double entry bookkeeping
and lead him through factory accounting
to cost accounting, giving him not
only the fundamental theory in accordance
with the views of the ablest modern accountants
but also warning him against the
time-worn fallacies of the older school.
Such a treatise the author has undertaken
to prepare." This duty has apparently
made itself felt to the author because "some
accountants * * * are still perpetuating traditional
errors. Some of them are still insisting
that interest on investment forms no
part of factory cost; that business and selling
expenses are part of cost; and that a
profit cannot arise until a thing is sold."
One finds little in the first fourteen chapters
of the book which is not in other books.
The material is presented without regard
for logical order or sequence of thought. It
might almost be said that this much of the
book offers no excuse for its existence.
Chapters X V to X X are welcome additions
to the literature of cost accounting.
