OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 97 



maintenance; but the difficulties are in no way dififerent in kind from those that stand 

 in the way of getting the original data on which to base estimates of first cost, which has 

 been tolerably well done for many elements of landscape work, mainly by contractors. 

 The basis must be a more or less considerable number of cost-accounts, kept not only 

 with accuracy and discrimination, but in accordance with some tolerably uniform schedule 

 of subdivisions. The following is a preliminary discussion of certain principles in keeping 

 and interpreting cost-accounts, and is prepared in hope that it may lead to the assembling 

 of some detailed and accurately comparable data upon the subject, from which landscape 

 architects and superintendents, if they use them rightly, may draw helpful conclusions. 

 Any cost-accounts will mislead if they are used mechanically and unintelligently, and 

 even the loosest accounts are capable of yielding useful information, if used intelligently by 

 a man who keeps his common sense wide awake all the time; but the more closely the form 

 of the cost-accounts is adapted to yielding the precise kind of information that is wanted, 

 the more valuable will be the information to be derived from them by the application 

 of a given amount of intelligence. 



The factors in cost of maintenance of grounds may be divided into two principal 

 groups: 



A. Initial factors, which are settled before the maintenance-work begins. In this 

 group are included such factors as: (i) Character of areas to be maintained and extent 

 of each (e. g., acres of clipped lawn, acres of hayfield, square yards of macadam road, 

 acres of woodland, etc.); (2) Quality of original improvement as aflfecting amount 

 of repairs and renewals (including gradients of roads, quality of macadam, character 

 of soil preparation in lawns, etc.); (3) Convenience or inconvenience of arrangements 

 provided for doing maintenance- work; (4) Natural drawbacks or advantages of the locality, 

 climatic, topographic, and otherwise. 



B. Administrative factors, which vary during the progress of maintenance. These 

 fall under three main heads: (i) Price of labor and supplies; (2) Quality of upkeep 

 required; (3) Efficiency of management. 



Obviously, for any given set of initial factors the maintenance-cost will vary directly 

 as the prices and as the quality of upkeep and inversely as the efficiency of management. 



Ordinarily the immediate purpose in keeping cost-accounts is to afford an indication 

 of the efficiency of management, by comparison either with previous costs on the same 

 piece of work, or with costs in other cases where the initial factors are similar, or where 

 allowances can be made for differences in the initial factors. To make such comparisons 

 instructively either the price factor and the quality of upkeep must remain fixed, or allow- 

 ance must be made for the differences in those factors. In regard to the price of materials, 

 to do this in detail would be very difficult; but, in the kind of maintenance we are consid- 

 ering, the labor-cost is so very large a proportion of the whole that it is usually pretty 

 fair to make allowance for differences in the price factor on the basis of the difference 

 in the price of labor. Barring dishonesty (in the form of padded pay-rolls and connivance 

 at "soldiering" because of political considerations, etc.), which is properly chargeable 

 to inefficiency of administration either "higher up" or lower down, the price per hour of 

 common labor affords a pretty fair basis of comparison for the price-factor in the cost of 

 maintenance, and it is always easily to be learned and easily applied. 



For example: The city of Hartford pays for labor on its parks $1.75 per day of nine 

 hours; the city of Boston pays $2 per day of eight hours. The rate per hour in Hartford 



