Excerpt from The Fundamentals of Accounting
The most striking development in the educational field of late is the rush of students to the commercial departments of our secondary schools and our colleges. Whatever else is or is not taught in such departments, accounting (in the colleges) or bookkeeping (in the secondary schools) is taught. All over the country, moreover, correspondence schools and evening schools are teaching accounting. Thousands of students of accounting are graduated from one or another kind of school every year, and yet professional accountants are constantly calling for good men and cannot get them. This is not because the demand is tremendous, for the number of practicing accountants in the country is not large, but because the supply is small. Comparatively few who study accounting prove competent for responsible positions.
Accounting requires a certain type of native mental capacity, as well as a certain amount of training. That type of native capacity happens to be rare. Two essentials for accounting, as distinguished from bookkeeping, are a highly developed analytical faculty and a good imagination. The first is rare at best, and it does not commonly go along with the second. It is futile to try to produce accountants from material that is lacking in either faculty. Any teacher of the subject should understand at the start that of the many who fancy themselves called few will ever be chosen. Yet though few can ever be accountants, every person charged with executive responsibility should know the fundamentals of accounting, for he cannot understand the reports of his own business (if he has a good accountant) unless he knows what the accountant is talking about, and he cannot direct even elementary accounting (if he has not a good accountant) unless he knows what constitutes good accounting. Every student of public affairs, moreover, should be able to interpret financial reports, both public and private, and know what business facts lie behind them. The study of accounting, therefore, is not futile even for those who cannot be accountants.
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. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Fundamentals of Accounting (Classic Reprint) (William Morse Cole)