ters or direct labor hours). This method allowed cost prices to be determined at each successive stage of the production process. The addition of the charges incurred at one level of production to the previous charges provided the cost of the product at that par­ ticular production level. However, since the method did not pro­ vide the original breakdown of the various cost components, com­ ponents had to be recomputed on a separate schedule. The homo­ geneous sections method was adopted in the plan for cost compu­ tations because it allowed precise calculations, and afforded great possibilities of application to various situations. Another characteristic related to product costing introduced in the French Plan was the use of mirror or contra-accounts which allowed product costs to be computed without altering expense accounts. In fact, charges were debited to the appropriate cost accounts by crediting contra-accounts, which preserved the infor­ mation registered in financial accounting’s expense accounts while ensuring the identity of the information carried from financial accounts to cost accounts. Second, the rational classification (discussed in the next sec­ tion) which had developed in France in the 1920s [CNOF, 1946, p. 46] and which, by the 1940s, had been widely adopted by the majority of French enterprises for their balance sheets [CNOF, 1946, p. 23] inspired the 1942 Plan's standard balance sheet. How­ ever, the rational classification was not retained for the 1942 Plan’s chart of accounts since it was inspired by the German chart. The 1942 Plan was mainly criticized for its lack of logic and its complexity, and for being overly oriented toward the determi­ nation of financial results for external purposes, and of product costs for internal and external pricing of products. Not enough attention was paid to the role of accounting in the daily manage­ ment of operations [Brunet, 1951, pp. 252-253]. The other major criticism addressed to the Plan concerned the duality of the operations account and the profit and loss ac­ count, stemming from the possibility of classifying expenses either by nature or by function depending on whether the cost classes (5, 6 and 7) were used or not. This situation deprived national ac­ countants of valuable information needed in the preparation of national accounts [Brunet, 1951, p. 2521. As will be seen in a later section, this criticism was taken into account in the drafting of the 1947 Plan. An official adaptation of the 1942 Plan was only produced for the aeronautic industry. However, Brunet [1951, p. 254] mentions that a number of major companies also adopted the general plan,