THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



33 



enters into one of these seventy-ton hos- 

 telries on wheels. 



Once the Pullman car was built of 

 wood. The best cabinet-makers in the 

 world were employed, and the ends of 

 the earth were visited in search of fine 

 woods for the interior work. But when 

 the steel car came into vogue the song 

 of the bandsaw was stilled, the planer's 

 plaintive hum was heard no more, and 

 instead there arose, as the poet of the 

 plant has written, "the metallic clamor 

 of steam hammer and turret lathe, and 

 the endless staccato reverberation of an 

 army of riveters." 



AN INSPIRING TAEE OE BUSINESS 



Selling goods to six million customers 

 a year, handling a hundred thousand 

 orders a day in ordinary times, and in 

 rush times nearly twice as many, nothing 

 but the most phenomenal system would 

 stand the strain that the mail-order busi- 

 ness of the world's greatest mail-order 

 house involves. The story of how the 

 vast flood of orders flows in and the del- 

 uge of merchandise flows out is an in- 

 spiring tale of business. 



The main plant covers fifty acres and 

 has more than ninety acres of floor space. 

 From the mechanical letter-opener that 

 can dispose of 27,000 pieces of mail an 

 hour to the shipping room, where the 

 merchandise finally starts on its way to- 

 ward the customer, nothing but organi- 

 zation raised to the nth power could cope 

 with the vast volume of business that 

 sweeps through the great institution. 



Here is an order from Farmer Smith, 

 of Jonesville, Kentucky. It contains nine 

 items. The letter-openers send his check 

 to the cashier and the order and letter to 

 the auditor. The latter receives them as 

 one of a batch of twenty-five such orders. 

 One of a hundred clerks reads the order 

 and decides how the shipment shall go — 

 whether by parcel post, by express, or 

 by freight. 



From the auditor's office the orders go 

 to the entry department. Here five hun- 

 dred girls, operating billing machines, 

 make out orders for each department. 

 Farmer Smith's order affects seven de- 

 partments, so seven tickets are made out. 

 Next the orders pass to the scribing de- 



partment, which makes out all shipping 

 labels, box markers, bills of lading, etc. 



The next step takes it through the 

 great card-index room. Here a record 

 is made and kept of what Farmer Smith 

 has ordered, what money he has sent in, 

 and all information about him that would 

 bear on future transactions. Through a 

 series of endless-belt conveyors the 

 orders are distributed to the girls at hun- 

 dreds of filing cases — each order to the 

 appropriate case — where the record en- 

 tries are made and where the routes of 

 shipment are determined — if by freight, 

 by what road; if by express, by what 

 company ; if by parcel post, in what zone. 



Then the order goes to the distribution 

 department, where the schedule of its 

 transit through the shipping department 

 is made up. Somewhere down in one of 

 the buildings is a great room, marked off 

 into many sections. In each of these sec- 

 tions there are many baskets, and one of 

 these is set aside for the reception of the 

 goods ordered by Farmer Jones. Now, 

 of course, where from 1,200 to 2,600 

 orders every ten minutes are going 

 through, no basket can wait long for all 

 the items in an order or there would be 

 confusion worse confounded. 



EACH ORDER FILLED IN TEN MINUTES 



So every order is filled on a ten-minute 

 schedule. The distribution office writes 

 on each ticket of the order the ten-minute 

 period within which all the merchandise 

 must be in the particular basket assigned 

 to Farmer Smith. Gravity and endless- 

 belt conveyors carry the various items to 

 the designated place, one by one, and 

 from all parts of the merchandise build- 

 ing. After the order is assembled — and 

 you may bet your last dollar that it will 

 not be more than ten minutes from the 

 time the first item arrives to the time the 

 last one puts in its appearance — the bas- 

 ket is sent off by gravity chute to the 

 packers. 



Meanwhile the tickets that were made 

 off early in the routine have gone back to 

 the billing room to be consolidated into 

 one order, which, in turn, goes back to 

 the packer who checks up the merchan- 

 dise and sends the bill out with the ship- 

 ment. Mechanical conveyors then carry 



