THE SHOP-ORDER SYSTEM OF ACCOUNTS. 315 



3. To require a clerk, independent of the foreman, to compile 

 the record of the foreman's acts. 



4. To provide a simple symbolic language, common to both 

 office and workshop, by which the same object of expenditure, 

 whether it be a product, a component, or an operation of manu- 

 facture, shall always be called by the same name, and by which 

 the foreman's symbols shall suffice the clerk, without requiring 

 of either a knowledge of the other's work. 



5. To make each act of record an independent unit by enter- 

 ing it on a separate card, certified by significant punch-marks. 



6. To save clerk's work in combining similar entries by assort- 

 ing mechanically cards containing similar symbols, only tran- 

 scribing the summation of the charges they contain. 



7. To provide that no claim for labor shall be allowed, nor 

 any material put in the way of expenditure, unless charged to 

 its most probable object ; so that to every right there shall 

 attach a responsibility of record. 



8. To provide for the transfer between general and specific 

 expenses, of charges more probably belonging to either. 



9. While allowing free play to the foreman, to increase cor- 

 respondingly his responsibility as measured by 



a. The cost of specific work. 



b. The ratio of his general expenses to the causes of such 

 expenses.* 



10. To eschew the use of books, except for final records, 

 because of 



x. Their inflexibility ; they can be used by but one person 

 at a time. 



y. The labor of combining similar entries made in them at 

 different times and places. 



z. The certainty that when used for memoranda, the effete 

 matter will soon obscure the important, so that the longer an 

 entry has escaped attention, the more certainly will it be 

 neglected. 



* It will be seen that relieving himself under one head increases his responsibility 

 under the other, so that the line of least resistance will be the line of truth. The 

 same result is reached by requiring daily records, the immediate bearing of which on 

 ultimate costs can hardly be appreciated at the time. 



