16 iST. H. Agri. Experiment Station [Bulletin 251 



tion of time for each employee was obtained. Representative types 

 of stores were chosen in various sections of the state. All of these 

 five stores have appeared in the preceding discussion except Store 172. 

 One report covered the business days for a whole month; the others 

 were for a week. (Table 11). The distribution of labor averaged: — 

 delivering, 19.2 per cent; unloading, 16. per cent; store trade, 14.7 per 

 cent; book accounts and correspondence, 13.9 per cent; sales on road, 

 7.2 per cent; cleaning and repairing, 4.6 per cent; collecting accounts, 

 3.8 per cent; telephone, 1.8 per cent; mixing, 1.4 per cent; time with 

 salesmen, .2 per cent; and idle time, 17.1 per cent. The average daily 

 sales for all stores were $215.13. The information obtained from this 

 small sample for so short a period suggests that further study should be 

 made along these lines. Those stores which have a low sales per man 

 undoubtedly would have many unproductive hours per employee. By 

 referring to Figure 1 and Table 22, it is possible to note the sales, 

 costs, margins and profits of these stores. 



Many differences may be observed in the portion of time given un- 

 der the several items. For instance, Stores 185, 19 and 7 require more 

 time for delivery than for waiting on trade. The reverse is true of 

 the other two, mainly because they were one-man stores. Stores 185 

 and 7 have the highest percentages in amount of time given to book 

 accounts and correspondence, as an office girl is employed regularly. 

 Collecting accounts is an important item for Stores 172 and 19. Much 

 time is used by Store 7 in canvassing for more business. 



The effects of time busy, time unoccupied, and total number of 

 hours the store was open, in relation to the sales are also shown. The 

 stores operated by one man have an advantage over the others when 

 weekly sales are compared with the hours worked. This advantage 

 is apparently lost when the number of hours the store was open is 

 compared with total sales, although Store 172 continues to hold first 

 place in both illustrations. One reason Store 29 drops to lowest place 

 in the latter comparison is because of the long hours per day the pro- 

 prietor is on the job. He does the majority of his delivering after 

 usual closing hours, working more than IOV2 hours a day. 



The yearly average sales per man for Stores 49. 185, 19 and 7 were 

 $23,900, $23,346, $28,819 and $22,100 respectively which is consider- 

 ably below the average of all 41 stores. The average sales per store 

 for all employees during the time the store was open varies in a sim- 

 ilar fashion, i. e., those stores having the lowest yearly sales per man 

 employed also have the lowest average sales per hour the store was 

 open. 



If we judge these five stores on the basis of sales per hour of oc- 

 cupied time, the one-man stores, 49 and 172, are the most efficient. 

 Their average sales per hour were over twice as great as the average 

 sales for Stores 185, 19 and 7. On the other hand, the one-man stores, 

 49 and 172, spent 64 per cent and 39 per cent respectively of the time 

 in idleness, whereas the other stores reported 20 per cent and 9 per 

 cent and in one instance no idle time whatever. No checkup was made 

 of the number of customers and size of individual purchases for all 

 stores. 



