American Railway Accounting

Excerpt from American Railway Accounting: A Commentary It was my original purpose to write a book under the title, "Railway Accounts; their Abuses and their Uses." This purpose was modified, primarily because such a treatment of the subject would have been unduly controversial. It would have led to a criticism of most that has been done relative to rate regulation since that unfortunate decision of Smyth v. Ames. The controversial side of railway accounts carries with it too many independent interests, to be covered by a book the chief aim of which is to explain accepted accounting rules, and, by so doing, to make clear what is meant by a scientific system of accounts. The second phase of the original title met with a similar fate. To consider the many uses of a well devised system of accounts, would raise most of.the problems involved in industrial statistics. This, too, covers a field of analysis of sufficient importance to claim individual treatment, and, for this reason, a consideration of the uses as well as the abuses of business records was set aside. What remains is not very extensive, so far as the text is concerned, but it is dominated by a single purpose. It is a Commentary on the standard system of railway accounts promulgated for and used by American railways. It is hoped that this simple analysis of a standardized system of business records will prove helpful to three classes of readers. First. 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.

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