SHOOTING 



5358 



SHORTHAND WRITING 



The revolution of 1867 restored the power of 

 the emperor and the title of shogun was abol- 

 ished the following year. Foreigners sometimes 

 apply the title tycoon to the shogun. This is 

 merely the English rendering of the Japanese 

 taikun, meaning great lord. With the abolition 

 of the shogun also came the abandonment of 

 the old samurai military system. 



SHOOT 'ING. See MARKSMANSHIP. 



SHOOTING STAR. See METEORS. 



SHORT BALLOT, one of the recent pro- 

 posals for government reform in the United 

 States, is, as its name infers, a ballot contain- 

 ing but few names of candidates for office. 

 The short ballot movement proposes that only 

 the most important offices shall be filled by 

 election, and that all others shall be made ap- 

 pointive and dependent upon a central au- 

 thority, or upon the heads of the departments 

 through which their work is done. In brief, 

 the end sought is centralization of authority 

 and responsibility. 



The short ballot principle advocates what is 

 almost the same as a commission form of gov- 

 ernment, under which a small number of offi- 

 cials are elected to fill important offices, who in 

 turn appoint men to work under their direc- 

 tion in the administration and conduct of city 

 or county affairs. Under such a system the 

 appointment of men can be made according to 

 fitness, entirely independent of popular favor 

 or political influence. 



It is being more and more realized that the 

 affairs of a city or county should be conducted 

 on strictly modern business principles, and the 

 short ballot offers decided advantages for facili- 

 tating the appointment of men calculated to 

 give good service to the community. With a 

 ballot containing column after column of can- 

 didates' names, the average voter concerns him- 

 self with only a few of the most prominent. 

 There are many others of which he knows lit- 

 tle. With a ballot limited to five or even ten 

 'candidates the average voter would be moved 

 to investigate the fitness of those who would 

 manage the affairs of the public. The result 

 of the vote would be an intelligent expression 

 of opinion. 



The short ballot might remove all county 

 officials from the elective list except the county 

 supervisors, or commissioners. These directly 

 represent the people and to them could be in- 

 trusted the task of selecting the men fitted to 

 conduct the public business. Electing an offi- 

 cial to perform certain duties and then denying 

 him the right to appoint the men who are to 



assist him in performing those duties is to 

 handicap him from the start. In some states 

 there is a demand that only the governor, 

 lieutenant-governor and judges shall be elected 

 officials, and that all other state officers shall be 

 appointive. F.ST.A. 



Related Subjects. The reader who is inter- 

 ested in this discussion of the short ballot may 

 qonsult the following articles in these volumes : 

 Australian Ballot Election 



Ballot Electoral College 



SHORTHAND WRITING, a system of writ- 

 ing by symbols which so shortens labor that in 

 recording speech the pen can keep pace with 

 the voice. There are four standard systems in 

 general use which are fundamentally the same; 

 these are the Isaac Pitman, the Benn Pitman, 

 the Graham and the Munson. A person who 

 has learned one of the last three will experi- 

 ence slight difficulty in reading notes written in 

 the other two systems; and if the few varia- 

 tions in the Isaac Pitman system are explained 

 to him he can read it, also. 



This is possible because of the various mod- 

 ern schemes of shorthand writing. Isaac Pit- 

 man was the inventor of what is declared to be 

 a very philosophical and flexible system, and 

 the others have appropriated his foundation 

 principles. He was an Englishman, and in 

 England his work has been adopted practically 

 to the exclusion of all other systems. Isaac's 

 brother Benn, of Cincinnati, Ohio, adopted the 

 same system with about a dozen slight varia- 

 tions and offered it to the American public. 

 Before he did so, however, Andrew- J. Graham, 

 of New York, took the Isaac Pitman system 

 and expanded it to the point where it came to 

 be recognized as the fullest, most complete and 

 most flexible of all systems of shorthand writ- 

 ing. James E. Munson was the third American 

 to build upon the foundation laid by the Eng- 

 lish Pitman. When the term "Pitmanic short- 

 hand" is used, it refers to the systems, alike in 

 principle and varying only in details, built by 

 the four men named above. Other men of 

 lesser note have also published what they term 

 Pitmanic systems. 



However, all shorthand is not Pitmanic. In 

 a hurrying age someone discovered that from 

 six to eight months is too long a time to spend 

 in mastering the art of shorthand writing, even 

 though results might abundantly justify it. 

 Why could it not be possible to devise a sys- 

 tem which, though it might lack the philo- 

 sophical basis and some of the flexibility of 

 the existing systems, could be mastered in 



