Councilmen, civic organizations, newspapers, etc., wanting copies of any record card should be able to get blue prints or photographs at a nominal charge of say ten cents per card copy. The New York Public Library is successfully working a plan by which photographs of any page of any book in the library can be provided to readers in a few hours at a cost of only twenty-five cents per page. A similar plan could be used for the suggested copies of official curve records.

Progress in the government of the world, and especially in the government of cities and of industrial corporations, has been greatly retarded by the fact that the only information available to executive officers has been provided to the executive in the form which is most convenient for the use of the accountant. It is, of course, necessary that records should be kept accurately from the standpoint of good accounting, and the author has no complaint to make of accounting methods in so far as accuracy is concerned. It is not, however, right that executive officers who must determine pohcies and who must make instant decisions should be forced to base all their decisions on information provided to them only in the form of the accovmtant's standard arrangement of balance sheet and operating statement.

The accountant must necessarily take a bird's-eye view of the whole business from time to time, so that he may see how all the component parts add together, to make certain that he gets a balance. The result is that the accounting officer usually makes up a periodic