As it may not be desirable to have department heads in a business know anything about the finances of the company as a whole, or anything regarding the records of departments other than their own, it may be best to have the curve cards filed in several drawers with a separate drawer for the cards relating to the work of each department head. If the drawers are equipped with spring locks, each department head could have a key to his own drawer, yet it would be impossible for him to go through the records of departments other than his own. The chief executive would, of course, have a master key to all the drawers, so that he could compare the records of one department with the records of any other department whenever he desired. The presence of the man in charge of the record department would in itself tend to keep minor officials from going through the cards relating to bank deposits, earnings, etc., for the corporation as a whole. There would necessarily be times when the head of the information department would not be in the room while minor officials were there, and the expedient

298 GRAPHIC METHODS

of locking up the summarized control curves for the whole corporation is therefore mentioned here as a possible safeguard.

Directors and executives change quite frequently in large corporations. When a new man comes into a corporation as an executive or a director, the value of his service to the corporation is at first practically nothing, and he may even for a while be considered a handicap to the corporation in that it is necessary for men who have been associated longer with the corporation to spend a great deal of their time in explaining to the new member the facts relating to the various departments and to the present scope of the business.