APPENDIX. 



THE SHOP-ORDER SYSTEM OF ACCOUNTS. 



Extracts from a paper read before the American Society of Mechanical 

 Engineers, Chicago, May 26, 1886. 



I. 



LET us imagine the art of music before its notation was 

 devised. Think of the strains which might have been immortal, 

 but which d'ed, as voices die, and were lost. Imagine the energy 

 wasted in repetition ; the effort beginning afresh with each new 

 learner of each new tune, enlarging his own experience merely 

 and leaving no vestige to guide another's way. 



Look forward, on the other hand, and imagine it possible to 

 catch and fix the vibrations of an untrammeled voice seeking 

 expression in speech or song. Is not this the ideal toward 

 which stenography and phonography are but instinctive and 

 feeble approaches ? 



Now, administration without records is like music without 

 notes by ear. Good as far as it goes, which is but a little 

 way ; it bequeathes nothing to the future. Except in the very 

 rudest industries, carried on as if from hand to mouth, all recog- 

 nize that the present must prepare for the demands of the 

 future, and hence records, more or less elaborate, are kept. 

 Their elaboration depends on what their results are worth. 



I used to think that only government workshops suffered from 

 circumlocution, and took it for granted that private establish- 

 ments had simple and direct methods of procuring supplies, of 

 keeping track of work in progress, and of determining its cost 

 when done. I knew, of course, that no shop running to make 

 money could afford to wait, as I have had to do, for the most 

 necessary material, and assumed that, in other respects, their 



