CONVICT LABOK FOR ROAD WORK. 37 



The per capita cost of maintenance per calendar day being thus 

 developed, the second set of accounts is necessary to determine the 

 unit and total costs of work. The cost of maintenance per individual 

 work day, which is equivalent to the cost per calendar day corrected 

 for unproductive labor and lost time, should be treated as the wage 

 of labor, and should figure in the cost of construction. In addition 

 there must be a careful record of wages directly paid to officers and 

 hired employees, of the cost of teams used on construction work, of 

 materials consumed in the construction, of depreciation of tools and 

 machinery employed, and of the amount and proper allocation of 

 what are known as overhead expenses. All of these items entering 

 into the cost of the work should be properly accredited to the par- 

 ticular operations and parts of the work to which they are appfied. 

 For example, the records should be complete enough to show in the 

 case of the construction of a macadam road not only the total cost of 

 the road, but also the itemized cost of clearing and grubbing, grading, 

 quarrying rock, crushing rock, spreading surfacing material, rofiing, 

 etc. The keeping of such records impHes the determination of the 

 amounts of the various kinds of work, such as the cubic yardage of 

 earthwork, the square yardage of surface, the area cleared and grubbed 

 in acres, etc. Without such a determination of the amount of work 

 done any system of cost accounting is valueless as an aid in the 

 improvement of methods of work. 



The accounts comprised under the above classification are neces- 

 sary for the determination of unit costs of maintenance and construc- 

 tion. In addition to these, certain operating forms are necessary, 

 such as the usual forms of requisition and order blanks and inven- 

 tory sheets, and a system of books suitable for recording the busi- 

 ness incident to the work. These may consist of the old form of 

 journal and ledger, or more suitably of a system of voucher files and 

 records to replace the ledger. 



In the design of the forms to serve the various purposes outlined 

 above it is essential to bear in mind not only what information it is 

 desired to record, but also the desirabfiity of presenting that infor- 

 mation in logical and orderly manner and of so regulating and stand- 

 ardizing the size of sheets as to permit of their convenient use and 

 proper filing in a systematic manner. Large forms are cumbersome, 

 and irregular sizes are difficult to file properly. 



Forms 1 to 12 represent a series of report and record forms 

 designed in accordance with the above principles. They are 

 presented as concrete examples to illustrate the technical methods 

 of securing the desirable information. It is not expected that 

 they will meet entirely the requirements of any particular sys- 

 Utm, })Ut it is beheved that they are correct in principle, and with 

 suitable modifications can be readily adapttnl to the use of any State 



