Since the establishment of the General Accounting Office by the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921, there have been published 27 volumes, including this volume, of decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States. The decisions appearing in these volumes have been selected as constituting the more important, from the standpoint of general application and precedent, of those rendered during each fiscal year. The law authorizes and requires that such decisions be rendered in advance, upon request, to the heads of departments and establishments and disbursing officers (sec. 8 of the act of July 31, 1894, as amended, 42 Stat. 23, et seq.); and to certifying officers (the act of December 29, 1941, 55 Stat. 875); and decisions are rendered to claimants who request review or reconsideration of claims which have been disallowed in whole or part, and to disbursing and certifying officers who request reconsideration of items for which credit has been disallowed. It is with the view to preserving such decisions in an authentic and permanent form, convenient for reference, and to provide guidance for the administrative officers of the Government that these volumes have been published.

For the most part, the decisions contained in this series are made available to the various Government agencies in advance of publication of the volume through the circulation of mimeographed copies of the decisions and of the "Daily Synopses of Decisions," as well as by the issuance of separate monthly pamphlets, which eventually are consolidated into the annual volume.

Separate pamphlets containing the appendix, index digest, table of statutes cited, etc., pertaining to a particular volume of the decisions. of the Comptroller General also are published to afford complete fiscal year coverage of the published decisions to those subscribers who receive only the monthly pamphlets.

Also, there have been compiled two consolidated indexes, one designated as "Index to the Published Decisions of the Accounting Officers of the United States, 1894-1929," the other, an "Index-Digest of the Published Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, July 1, 1929 to June 30, 1940." A consolidated index digest for the period July 1, 1940 to June 30, 1946, is being compiled and will be made available in the near future. These indexes are designed to assist in research for precedents with respect to matters coming within the jurisdiction of the General Accounting Office.

Decisions appearing in the published volumes should be cited by volume and page, as 1 Comp. Gen. 100. Other decisions of the Comptroller General, not selected for publication, should be cited by the applicable file number and date, for example, B-12345, June 23, 1948.

1 Office of Second Comptroller created Mar. 3, 1817.

Office of Deputy Second Comptroller created Mar. 3, 1875.

By the act of July 31, 1894, taking effect Oct. 1, 1894, the First Comptroller of the Treasury was made Comptroller of the Treasury and the office of Assistant Comptroller of the Treasury created; the offices of Second Comptroller of the Treasury, Deputy Second Comptroller, and Deputy First Comptroller were abolished.

4 Died in office.