MARGINS, EXPENSES, AND PROFITS IN RETAILING MEAT 35 
number of employees, both full time and part time, together with 
the rates of pay and estimates of the time required for various 
duties. The proprietor and any member or members of his family 
engaged in operating the store were included in this employee infor- 
mation. The detailed information served a twofold purpose: (1) It 
served as a check of the accuracy of the amount of wages reported 
paid to employees and (2) it formed the basis for a study of effi- 
ciency in the use of employees. 
In the smaller retail meat stores one man performed a variety 
of duties. Buying, cutting, selling, keeping accounting records and 
other necessary duties of operation all came within the supervision 
of one individual. As the size of markets increased, the tendency 
toward division of labor became evident, so that different individuals 
performed various duties. For example, in some markets, salesmen 
did no buying or cutting, and the duties in connection with cash 
receipts and accounting records were performed by cashiers and 
bookkeepers. 
Under these conditions, comparison of the utilization of em- 
ployees' time was possible on one of two bases: (1) Sales per sales- 
man and (2) sales per employee. The first of these presents a 
difficulty. In small establishments estimates would have been 
required of the proportion of each employee's time spent in selling, 
buying, and other duties. Estimates of this nature would have 
been required from all stores, if the comparison were to be based 
on employees' time devoted exclusively to selling. Otherwise, the 
results in smaller stores in which employees performed other duties 
besides selling would not have been comparable with sales per 
salesman in the larger stores where certain employees devoted all 
or the greater portion of their time to selling. It was practically 
impossible to obtain reliable estimates of this nature, and this basis 
of comparison could not be used. 
Sales per employee were more accurately obtained, and formed 
a fairly reliable index of the degree of efficiency exercised in the 
use of employees. 
In determining the number of employees, both full-time and 
part-time employees, including the proprietor and members of his 
family engaged in carrying on the business, were used. The total 
time spent by the part-time employees in the shop was converted to 
a full-time employee basis. Net sales were then divided by this 
total number of employees and the average annual sales per 
employee thus determined. 
The average percentages of gross margin, total expense, salary 
and wage expense other than salaries and wages and profit for 
129 individual retail meat markets were arranged according to 
average annual sales per employee. (See Table 13.) With the 
exception of the increase in total expense percentage in the second 
group of annual sales per employee, $8,000-$9,999, it was found 
that as annual sales per employee increased there was a definite 
downward trend in the total expense ratio to sales. Similarly, in 
salary and wage expense percentage the same tendency was observed. 
The decrease in salary and wage percentage was continuous and 
did not present the slight increase observed in the $8,000-$9,999 
