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Excerpt from Accounts: Their Construction and Interpretation for Business Men and Students of Affairs It is common to read in a report concerning the failure or suspension of a business house or corporation that not until experts have been at work upon the books for several days or weeks can any one learn the exact state of assets, liabilities, or loss. The frequency with which this statement is made naturally suggests a causal connection between accounting and success. The connection suggested will be found on examination to be existent in a large proportion of the cases of business failure. The average business man does not know what things cost him. The head of the manufacturing department of one of the large consolidations, commonly called "trusts," recently remarked that before consolidation he used to wonder how some of his competitors could afford to take contracts at their own bids. After the consolidation he discovered that these competitors never knew even approximately the cost of manufacturing their goods and often took contracts at an inevitable loss - which simply happened to be made good by large profits on other contracts. This is typical for much of our American business, but good accounting can forestall many of the elements of bad luck and show just where lies the good. In view of the remarkable success of American trade in spite of much bad accounting, - or, rather, in spite of no accounting at all in thousands of establishments, - one is forced to anticipate phenomenal success when good accounting shall become general. Perhaps no field in connection with business activity in America has advanced so little in the last twenty-five years as accounting. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.