ARSENAL BOOK-KEEPING. 37 



ing the internal economy of the arsenal, for these are the very 

 source and origin of all the changes which require the rendition 

 of accounts. 



These details are often regarded as insignificant, and they are 

 perhaps not worthy of comparison with many of the higher 

 problems with which the ordnance officer has to deal ; but for 

 him whose duty brings him close to them, they assume a great 

 importance, because unless they are properly handled they take 

 up so much of his time that he has none left for the other prob- 

 lems ; his energy is wasted in constantly repeated efforts to do- 

 that which has always seemed to him before, must somehow be 

 done of itself. 



This work of collecting data to serve for revising tariffs of 

 piece work, for the preparation of estimates, for statements of the 

 cost of finished work and the like, has seemed, in the years which 

 I have served in and about Ordnance workshops, as part of the 

 unwelcome price I had to pay for opportunities elsewhere enjoyed. 



" They order," said I, " this matter better in France ;" so think- 

 ing that the force of competition had stirred private manufactur- 

 ers, at least, to a sense of its importance, I made inquiry of 

 such as came in my way with the purpose of finding a more 

 simple mode of reckoning than that followed in the Department, 

 and yet one that should be at least equally exact. 



Except in the workshops of Messrs. William Sellers & Co., I 

 found that our methods did not suffer by comparison. I found 

 several establishments in which methods somewhat similar to 

 those herein described had been adopted, but none that I now 

 remember in which they had been carried further than was 

 required for merely present purposes. A loose system of averaging 

 results seemed to be the rule, leading sometimes to selling 

 machinery by the pound, and at others to simply making things 

 as cheaply as possible, and selling them at the market price with- 

 out regard to the fact that the circumstances of the shop might 

 make sales even at market prices detrimental if they were made 

 at a loss. 



The refuge for this state of things is everywhere sought in 



