8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



that command of accounts which every business man should 

 possess, as distinguished from the professional information and 

 expertness included in " accountancy." And it is quite clear 

 that, in the sense here meant, accounting deserves a large place 

 in any scheme of higher commercial education. It begins with 

 book-keeping in the ordinary sense of the term ; but it does 

 not stop there. As soon as the student has been well drilled 

 in the necessary rudiments, accounting proceeds to become a 

 critical study of financial stability and prosperity as revealed 

 (or concealed) by balance sheets ; and starting from a mere 

 arrangement of figures by single and double entry, it insensibly 

 makes its way to those questions of expediency and efficiency 

 which are suggested by such words as "depreciation," "reserves," 

 and the like. Properly taught, it is a subject of high educational 

 value ; for it makes its appeal in the last resort not to arith- 

 metical dexterity, but to a sound judgment of a business 

 situation. Moreover, accounting, adequately taught, will handle 

 in a thorough manner the whole difficult question of "costing." 

 And though, to use the term already employed more than once, 

 even cost accounts are only "instrumental " — mere tools in the 

 hands of their users — yet they are tools which possess the quality 

 of themselves stimulating reflection. To determine the wise 

 policy to adopt with regard to selling price at a particular 

 juncture is a different thing, it is true, from the mere knowledge 

 of what the thing cost to make. But there is nothing so likely as a 

 knowledge of what a thing costs under varying circumstances, 

 and of the proportion to be assigned to fixed charges, to promote 

 a wise decision as to the price to be asked for it. 



The really constitutive and most characteristic part of a 

 commercial curriculum at the university must, however, after 

 all, be found in Economics. Yet, without desiring to provoke 

 controversy, I am bound to express the opinion that economics, 

 as that subject has generally been taught in this country, 

 will hardly satisfy the needs of the new academic situation. 

 Whatever may be its value as an instrument of sociological 

 investigation, political economy, as represented by the usual 

 textbooks, is defective both in its character and in its scope 

 for the purposes of business education. In its character; 

 because of its tendency — with " marginal utility " and " con- 

 sumers' rent," and the like — to become a branch of psychology ; 

 in its scope, because it gives a quite inadequate amount of 



