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and effective as could be devised, it will be suitable for use on all 

 reserves ; but as for the books and cards, I believe them too cumbrous 

 and require too much work to be valuable on reserves. 



At the Asaph Nursery I tried to devise a system, which, while 

 simple, would fill all requirements. Of course, here conditions were 

 much different from those found on a reserve, for we had only one 

 operation to take care of. Other operations such as surveys and road 

 work, were simply charged to the Department. Here only two books 

 were used in connection with the system of time sheets, a journal and 

 a ledger. In the journal everything was charged as used, except 

 labor, which was entered only at the end of each week or the last day 

 of the month. In the ledger the work was divided into such accounts 

 as operation, protection, grounds and buildings, equipment, etc. The 

 real stock account was headed "Pennsylvania Department of Fores- 

 try," and all goods and checks received were credited to this account. 

 All expenditures made for outside reserve work, but paid from the 

 nursery, were debited to this account. At the end of the season the 

 inventories of equipment, protection, and seedlings, were debited to 

 this account and the account balanced. This system is faulty without 

 a doubt, but having had no previous experience and needing it im- 

 mediately it was the best that could be evolved at the time. 



When I submitted this question for the Convention I had not ex- 

 pected to be assigned it as a subject, but had expected to get some 

 information from the Department as to their wishes in this matter. 

 So far as I know there has never been any statement made to the 

 foresters as to how they wanted the accounts kept. Are we to keep 

 a simple record of expenses and receipts, and allow the profits and 

 losses to be determined for each reserve as a whole, or by compart- 

 ments, at the Department? Or are we to keep a more elaborate sys- 

 tem of accounts so that we can determine at a glance whether the 

 operations on each compartment, or on the reserve as a whole, are 

 being carried on at a profit or a loss? So far, I have been going on 

 the supposition that the second case is the one under which we are 

 working. 



There is one thing which should be kept in mind though, and that 

 is that all operations, expenses, and receipts, for each compartment 

 should be kept separate. Whether this will mean simply a separate 

 account in the ledger or a separate ledger for each compartment, de- 

 pends on the viewpoint. Suppose we use one ledger. In this ledger 

 each compartment or operation should have a separate account, and 

 different accounts such as pole wood, lumber, shingle wood, etc., 

 should be kept. 



The use of a loose leaf ledger will, perhaps, be better than this for 

 at the end of each year the leaves of the various compartments could 

 be separated and filed, each under its own head. 



