Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/149

 schemes as a solution for industrial unrest, will oblige all employers to publish really full and informing accounts, observing definite and accepted rules for the treatment of depreciation. But that is another story.

Rents, interest and dividends (presumably from the licensed premises and investments owned by the company) bring in £259,000 odd and with the trifle received on transfer fees (charged by the company for registering transfers of its stocks and shares from one owner to another in its books) and the carry forward from the previous year, £93,429, the total receipts to be accounted for come to £1,620,525.

Looking at the other side of the account we find that what may be called inevitable charges under the headings

(1) rents, rates, taxes, insurance and compensation fund,

(2) salaries and all the other items bunched up with them (though subscriptions and gifts may perhaps be called optional),

(3) interest (presumably to creditors) and interest on debenture stocks,

absorb in all £828,588.

What may be called optional items—those about which the opinion of the directors as to