INTERNAL RELATIONS. 69 



warehouses. As he has no business there, he generally finds it 

 easier to ask to have purchased what he wants, than to hunt it up 

 in a store, and then have to ask for it besides. 



It may be said that the Commanding Officer or some one in 

 the office should look over the requisitions and supply what is 

 needed from the stores on hand ; but neither he nor any one else 

 in a large arsenal can, under the present system, stand effectively 

 between the demand and the supply, knowing both what there is 

 to spare, and how nearly it may serve the purpose for which 

 something else is asked for. 



Would it not be better to give the foreman an incentive to 

 become acquainted with the resources of the arsenal, so that the 

 requisition may be started straight at first, rather than to let it 

 go wrong and trust to correcting it afterwards, particularly since 

 the natural tendency of routine is to the mechanical approval of 

 what is recommended by subordinates worthy of confidence ? 



This suggests the query as to the necessity of the Command- 

 ing Officer's burdening himself, and hampering the course of 

 business, by requiring his preliminary approval of so many of 

 the functional acts of his subordinates. Does it not seem, that 

 even as he trusts his foremen with the immediate direction of the 

 costly labor under their charge, so he could trust them, for the 

 day at least, with the use made of the less valuable material 

 which they require, and permit them to take from the stores on 

 hand what they need to execute his wishes, subject to his ap- 

 proval after the act ? The stores will not be necessarily de- 

 stroyed, they will be as much under his control with the foremen 

 as they were before with the Ordnance Storekeeper, and any 

 abuse of privilege can in the end be more effectually checked 

 by a timely reproof than by a chronic condition of apparent 

 distrust. 



Meanwhile, the workmen will not be kept waiting ; and the 

 foreman, not having to burden his mind with prospective wants 

 long before they actually arise, will not be tempted to avoid this 

 care by accumulating an irregular surplus which deprives the 

 arsenal as a whole of what he thus exclusively controls. His 



