Report of Independent Accountants
To the Shareholders and Board of Directors of
The First Commonwealth Fund, Inc.
In planning and performing our audit of the financial
statements of The First Commonwealth Fund, Inc. (the
"Fund") for the year ended October 31, 2000, we
considered its internal control, including control
activities for safeguarding securities, in order to
determine our auditing procedures for the purpose of
expressing our opinion on the financial statements and
to comply with the requirements of Form N-SAR, not
to provide assurance on internal control.
The management of the Fund is responsible for
establishing and maintaining internal control. In
fulfilling this responsibility, estimates and judgments
by management are required to assess the expected
benefits and related costs of controls. Generally,
controls that are relevant to an audit pertain to the
entity's objective of preparing financial statements for
external purposes that are fairly presented in
conformity with generally accepted accounting
principles. Those controls include the safeguarding of
assets against unauthorized acquisition, use or
disposition.
Because of inherent limitations in internal control,
errors or fraud may occur and not be detected. Also,
projection of any evaluation of internal control to
future periods is subject to the risk that controls may
become inadequate because of changes in conditions or
that the effectiveness of their design and operation may
deteriorate.
Our consideration of internal control would not
necessarily disclose all matters in internal control that
might be material weaknesses under standards
established by the American Institute of Certified
Public Accountants. A material weakness is a
condition in which the design or operation of one or
more of the internal control components does not
reduce to a relatively low level the risk that
misstatements caused by error or fraud in amounts that
would be material in relation to the financial statements
being audited may occur and not be detected within a
timely period by employees in the normal course of
performing their assigned functions. However, we
noted no matters involving internal control and its
operation, including controls for safeguarding
securities, that we consider to be material weaknesses
as defined above as of October 31, 2000
This report is intended solely for the information and
use of the Board of Directors, management and the
Securities and Exchange Commission and is not
intended to be and should not be used by anyone other
than these specified parties.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
New York, New York
December 12, 2000
