in a successor so that there would be no change in the methods of collecting data and plotting curves. This possibility of taking on a new college graduate every few years permits having an excellent record department, even for a small-size business in which it would be thought undesirable to spend more than $3,000 or $4,000 a year to cover the total yearly departmental cost.
It should be a strict rule for a record department of the type described that no original papers shall be taken from the room. The record department should be in a quiet place to which the president or any other official may retreat to get completely away from the distractions which are common in his own office because of the telephone and constant visitors. In the record room the executive would be free to concentrate his whole attention on the records of what his business has been doing in the last weeks or months, so that he may be able to formulate plans for the future. Though the arrangement of the files in the record room would be well known to the executive, so that he could lay his fingers instantly on any desired curve or other record, the chief of the record department would be at hand most of the time so the executive could send word ahead to have certain curves or other records laid out for instant reference when he arrived. To save time the executive should not be required to put back into the card files the curve cards which he has taken from any file drawer. By using a large table the executive could simply push to the other side of the table any cards which he may have laid out for careful comparison. The man who has charge of the room can later put the cards back in the files. There is an advantage in having one man put all the cards back in the files, as in this way there is less chance of the cards being misplaced in the file than if several different executive officers were to use the cards and themselves put the cards back. It should be stated here that in the ordinary use of curve files such as are shown in Fig. 217 an executive would not need to remove the cards from the drawer. He would simply turn the cards over one at a time, raising any card of special interest about three inches to look at it, but not removing it sufficiently to cause any danger of restoring the card in a wrong position. It is only when cards for a series of years are taken out and laid down for comparison with some other series of cards that there is any necessity for removing the cards from the drawer.
The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh regularly plot about four thousand curves which record the
