Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1917 — American Manufacturers and Merchants Know Little About Their Own Easiness [ARTICLE]

American Manufacturers and Merchants Know Little About Their Own Easiness

By EDWARD N. HURLEY

Former Chairman of Federal Trade Commission

Are we to have America first or America flabbergasted at the close of the European war? The answer depends' on whether we are willing to learn anything about our own business. A farmer can write to the department of agriculture and find out how mucii hay was produced in the country last year, how much is left over from the previous year, and what the market price is, but there is no department of the government to which the manufacturer of steel can go for the same information about his industry. We know less about our own business than any nation in the world. Ninety per cent of the manufacturers don’t know what it costs them to produce their goods. They base their prices upon those the turer around the corner has.fixed, and the man around the corner maj be headed toward bankruptcy at the rate of sjxty miles a minute. Talk about making two blades of grass grow where one grew before I Without a cost-accounting system manufacturers and business men are literally competing for. blue ribbon. Not one business man in ten knows when he is losing money. If he did, he would stop the leak and confine himself to tjie profitable end of the business. That is what a cost-accounting system will do. You hear a lot about our export trade, which now amounts to $5,500,000,000. Do you realize that our domestic trade is valued at $45,000,000,000, and that if there were no lost motion, we could double it in the next ten years ?