American School of Correspondence

“ Information that is stale is about as useless as no information at all. If you tell a foreman on Monday that the work of his gang for the week ending ten days before was not up to the mark, he will not have much respect for your cost-keeping system; he will certainly not remember sufficiently well the causes that produced his bad work, to remedy them; or he will be able to pick out of the haze of history enough excuses to let himself out of the responsibility of his bad work, and to put his manager at sea as to where this foreman and his gang really stand. ”

“ Whether we call it an advertising or a sales department, the results sought—the reasons for the existence of the department—are the same. To sell goods is the aim of the organization, be its head an advertising manager or a sales manager.
Advertising has been defined to be printed salesmanship; yet there is a well-defined dividing line between the work of the advertising man and the salesman. The advertising man seeks to impress the name of the house and the name and quality of its product, on the public mind; to create interest; to arouse curiosity; to stimulate desire ”

“ For example, if ten thousand persons pay one dollar each to establish a common fund to protect the members against losses from fire, they do so under the belief and expectation that but few of the number ever will sustain loss from the peril of fire. An insurance contract is so closely akin to a gambling contract that persons are not permitted to take insurance on property, or upon the lives of persons, unless they have an individual interest, which they should have a purpose or interest in protecting outside of a mere disposition to wager. ”

“ Nature of a Corporation. A corporation has been defined to be "a collection of many individuals into one body, under a specific denomination having perpetual succession, under an artificial form and vested by the policy of the law, with the capacity of acting in several respects as an individual." In other words corporation is the name applied to an association of persons authorized by law to create, by mutual contribution, a common fund for the purpose of transacting business without rendering the individual members personally liable for the debts of the association, beyond a certain amount. ”

“ A cost-keeping system tells you who are your good men, and who are your lazy men. It shows you whom to discharge, and whom to promote. It tells you whose wages are too high, and whose are not high enough. And, finally, it leads to that ideal condition of industrial organization known as profit-sharing. How often have we read in novels of Utopia, where all men share in the profits of all business ”

“ It would be difficult to find an art that has gone forward as rapidly as telephony. Within its short life of a little over thirty years it has grown from the phase of trifling with a mere toy to an affair of momentous importance to civilization. There has been a tendency, particularly marked during recent years, toward greater complexity; and probably every complicated new system or piece of apparatus has been roundly condemned, by those versed in the art as it was, as being unable to survive on account of its complication. ”

“ He regarded every worker as a thief who would not hesitate at petty larceny of time, even in the face of the foreman, and who delighted in grand larceny behind his back. His foremen were his spies; and he set himself to spy upon his foremen. But cost-analysis engineering is evolving a wholly different class of managers and foremen.
To most people, a cost-keeping system means nothing but a sort of bookkeeping; and they are unable to understand how a bookkeeper can develop into a successful manager. ”

“ A judge sits alone as a court of equity, without the aid of a jury. When there is no remedy at law, and a wrong exists, equity affords a remedy. In this country, the same court frequently sits as a court of equity as well as a court of law. In the case of deeds absolute on their face, if it was the intention of the parties that the conveyance was to constitute a security for a debt, rather than a sale, a court of equity will permit the grantor to secure a return of the property upon payment of his debt. Equity looks at the substance of the transaction disregarding the form. ”

“ Manufacturers recognize the necessity for comprehensive statistics in the manufacturing branch; they realize that they must know what their goods cost to manufacture; but in comparatively few enterprises is the importance of commercial costs recognized.
In the factory, costs are figured down to the most minute detail; what it costs to perform each operation on every part of the completed whole is known; the efficiency of every man—what he costs in wages, in power, and general expense, and the cost of every bit of material he uses—all of this is told by the cost accounting system. ”

“ In presenting a new method to a foreman or superintendent, it is well not to encourage the raising of objections. It is better to let the objections raise themselves in the application of the process; and a man who has not gone on record as saying that in his opinion a new scheme is no good, is a much more loyal supporter of the new scheme than when he has committed himself against it.
One of the difficulties in improving the efficiency of work, is the extraordinarily ingenious line of excuses that the men will present for not getting their work done properly. ”

“ The first step in the organization or systematizing of a business is to determine its natural divisions. What is the nature of the business, and what are its distinguishing characteristics? Be it a manufacturing, jobbing, wholesale, retail, or professional concern, there is some one head on whom rests the final responsibility for the success or failure of the business. He must be surrounded with subordinates, each having certain duties to perform, who will be responsible for the performance of those duties, thereby coöperating to carry out the purposes of the enterprise. ”

“ An agent's assertion of agency does not of itself constitute an agency. If A, without B's knowledge, claims to C to have authority to sell B's horse and does attempt the sale, title to the horse does not pass to C, because A had no authority to make the sale. A mere declaration of authority on the part of the agent without the knowledge or consent of the principal does not create an agency. ”

“ Had any Spanish merchant been subjected to the invariable annoyance which fell to our lot when we endeavored to patronize American houses, he would have given up in despair and remembered the adage of the burnt child, forever.
And, unfortunately, the carelessness of American shippers often costs the foreign merchants good, hard dollars. Tariffs in Latin-American republics are fearfully and wonderfully made, and there is nothing that a pin-headed government employe enjoys more than inflicting a fine for a slip in complying with a little red tape. ”

“ Many business arrangements are made by which property, skill, or labor is combined under peculiar arrangements, as to the division of profits and losses, making it difficult to tell whether a partnership exists. It is not essential that the word, "partnership," be used to have an agreement constitute a partnership. If it is the intent of the parties thereto to create a partnership, one exists regardless of the term used. An agreement to share losses, or to share profits in an enterprise, is some evidence of a partnership, but is not sufficient of itself to constitute a partnership. ”