THE SHOP-ORDER SYSTEM OF ACCOUNTS. 351 



necessary for different shops. I confess I am a little alarmed at 

 the two or three thousand tickets a week, which I might have to 

 use if I carried it out strictly ; but I believe, in a great many 

 shops, the system exactly as it stands is just the thing. There 

 may be other shops where a modification making a card last 

 a week instead of a day for one workman would be better. 

 There may be cases where it would be better to put more than 

 one job on the card, and there are cases, as I said, where the 

 Metcalfe system could be used in its entirety. But all of this 

 wants looking up, and in the happy future I hope that some 

 committee or commission (perhaps of this Society) will have a 

 chance to devise some systems of shop organization, not one 

 system only, because we cannot apply one to all kinds of shops. 

 The shops of this country want classifying into so many classes, 

 and the best possible kind of organization for each will be ascer- 

 tained only by careful study and by the collation of the expe- 

 rience of a great many persons. 



In regard to the soiling of the shop cards, I do not think it 

 amounts to anything. In the concern with which I am con- 

 nected we have allowed workmen to write directly on cards for 

 a long time. We have never had any trouble with their being 

 lost or soiled, or too much torn for practical use. 



Captain Metcalfe. So many suggestions have been made, it 

 is rather hard to take them all up in order, and I may omit 

 some. 



Mr. Hawkins made a point about men idling. That suggests 

 to me one point which I had not dwelt upon, which is, that by 

 making a workman start a record of what work he is doing, it 

 gives him an interest in doing it rapidly from a feeling that it 

 will be recorded somewhere in the office. 



A gentleman asked me about the cost of production. The 

 workman has to charge his time every day to some job so as to 

 get paid for it. He is presumably disinterested in the cost of 

 any particular job, so he tends to put it to the most probable 

 one. We check his record by its verification by the foreman, 

 and we make the probability greater by recording everything as 

 nearly as possible at the time when it was done. I believe that 

 the tendency will be to charge expenses in fact, I have noticed 



