Reviewed by James J. Linn Tulane University

George Soulé was undoubtedly an outstanding practitioner, student and author of business and accounting. All of these are reflected in his book which is primarily and mostly a handbook and secondarily a text. Also, it is a good statement of business practices as of 1903 in New Orleans.

The main emphasis is accounting practice and briefly, the at-tendant theory. There are also sections on commercial forms, corporations and joint stock companies, partnership law and “cor-respondence.” It is very much a handbook in the sense that in part it is a compendium of illustrations, examples, lists, vocabulary and definitions and it is comprehensive. For example, accounts are defined and described by transaction content, something the students of today often request.

In my opinion a major drawback of this text is the quality and amount of the accounting discussion. To make an evaluation of the accounting, it is natural and proper I believe to refer, for comparative purposes, to the three authors, Sprague, Hatfield, and Cole, that represent accounting thought at the beginning of the present century, These were the men who wrote in the transition period of the depersonalization of accounts and the analytical presentation of double-entry first described by Ezra Sprague.

Judged in this context, Soulé’s discussion of accounting, theory, his abstraction from his experiences, is concise, complete but out-of-date. There are less than fifty pages of this 750 page volume devoted to a discussion of accounting basics. However, this defect is offset by a profuse use of illustrations which both further explain the idea or procedure and illustrate applications.

The practical part of this book is the strongest; the accounting is good—very modern. Problems such as liquidation and fire insurance adjustments are discussed and special journals are used. On the other hand, the old personalization of accounts, and the old methods of explaining debits and credits, and transforming transaction data into journal entries are used. The inherent obtuse-ness of these pedagogical tools is more than offset by the profuse illustrations available. But, the student was forced to memorize a large number of specific transactions and their particular transformation, instead of fewer, general rules as we do today.

There are, according to the author’s preface, four major sections in all. They are: Scientific—pp. 18-126; Practical—pp. 127-561; Expert Accounting and Practical Miscellany—pp. 562-679; and Punctuation and Correspondence—pp. 680-710. There is an Index but no Table of Contents.

I found in section three, Expert Accounting and Practical Miscellany, some items of particular interest on locating errors and the use of check figures (digits). There is a short section on auditing that is general but good. For example, it contains an admonition that account balances be verified by investigation and not by mere reference to the ledger; and a comment on determining assets to be free of encumbrances.

Also there is a brief summary history of accounting which was good for the time.

It appears, to this reviewer, that George Soulé wrote a book, and revised it over the years, that was exactly what he needed and used—Soulé Business College is still in existence in New Orleans. It was highly practical and contained material other than accounting and bookkeeping. This book would have been useful as a text and reference for bookkeepers and businessmen. Accountants probably found it useful as a general reference on bookkeeping, forms, letters and other miscellany. I suspect that accountants used other sources as references in what was then accounting theory. It was a useful, practical book it its time. Now, it is interesting to us as an example of commercial and accounting thought and procedure in New Orleans at the beginning of this century. It is interesting to conjecture what it would have evolved to today if a succession of co-authors had kept it current.