ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a rebuttal by a cost accountant to an article published in the Practical Engineer. The rebuttal says that since the auditor of a joint-stock company already has the right to interfere with costs and estimates, no effort is being made by auditors to obtain this right by means of legislation; further no auditor is desirous of interfering with "estimates" in any way. Mathematicians possess no prima facie qualification as framers of a system of accounts, and that bookkeepers, as a class, have no very noted aptitude in that direction. An accountant would as soon think of supervising a company's correspondence as of checking its estimates; but the Cost Accounts are records of transactions. Cost Accounts are even more in need of independent verification than we had at first supposed. Bookkeepers, and so-called accountants, who are conscious that their work is unchallengeable, do not usually shriek so loudly when any suggestion of auditing their accounts is advanced.
