LABOR SAVING SYSTEMS REVOLUTIONIZE 

 OFFICE WORK. 



BY HUGH S. FULLERTON. 



[Hugh S. FuUerton, nuthor and editor; bom 1871, Hillsboto, O.", educated at the 

 University of Wooster, Ohio State university, Williams college; began his journal- 

 Lstic career as a writer on the Cincinnati Tribune, 1891 ; became connected with the 

 Chicago Record, 1893, and since then has contributed to newspapers and magazines ; 

 had prominent part in the national business system and office appliance exhibitions 

 of New York and Chicago and is an author of many articles on business topics.] 



The merchant of a score of years ago who took a day 

 off and bought a supply of ink, paper and pens when he wanted 

 to write to his customers in the country, would meet with 

 considerable of a shock were he to be transported suddenly to 

 the executive position in one of the big offices of to-day and 

 confronted with its system and its array of time and labor 

 saving appliances. For that matter the average business 

 man of to-day would experience much the same sensations 

 upon being introduced into an office equipped with all the 

 known devices for expediting work and minimizing the ex- 

 penditure of time and labor. 



The ingenious efforts of inventors who believe that the 

 greater return comes to them from products of their brains 

 that affect and make lighter everyday labor, have resulted 

 in inventions that have practically revolutionized office work. 

 Within the last five years — the records in the patent office 

 in Washington show — 8,174 different appliances and devices 

 have been patented to systematize, hasten, or prevent errors 

 in business. 



The typewriter is of course recognized by this time as 

 one of the necessities in office work in the United States, 

 but even its speed falls short of the demand, and to meet the 

 cry for a machine that will do more rapid work inventors 

 have brought forth the mimeograph. Probably two hundred 

 inventors grasped the mimeograph idea at once and the 

 market became flooded with their manifolding machines. 

 The perfected mimeograph of to-day, however, is a machine 



370 



