report, in which he gives at the end of any month or at the end of any year a complete bird's-eye statement of the status of the business at that particular time. Because of the nature of his problems, the executive's mind must necessarily work in a manner absolutely different from that of the mind of the accountant. The executive does not often want a bird's-eye view of his whole business at any one period of time. What the executive must have is a cross-index of the accountant's information, so that he may see over a long period of time the whole history of any portion of his business. Most managers are forced to work from the accountants' monthly statement, and their procedure is accordingly to go through the separate operating statements for several months and take off on scratch pads the figures for the items in which they may be particularly interested at the moment. These figures may have to be added together in order to compare a certain number of months this year with the same months of last year. This work not only takes the time of the highest paid man in the organization, but the hasty scratch-pad figures are likely to contain errors. It is absurd that executive officers should be forced to make their own cross-indexes of the accountant's statement, and not only make these cross-indexes but make them while holding the long-distance telephone or at other rush times when seconds are important.
The information as it comes from the accountant's office should be passed to the man in the executive department whose function it is to provide information for the executive by cross-indexing all information from the accountant's reports and putting this information in the form of curves. The accountant's report would, of course, be filed carefully for future reference purposes if reference is ever necessary, but for the purposes of the executive the curve cards with the figures they contain are sufficient. Not only is the information for any subject shown on the cards as a curve over a long period of time, but the actual figures of the accountant's report are visible in such manner that they may be found instantly and quoted directly from the curve cards without having to refer back month by month to the original figures in the accountant's report.
The manager or chief executive of any business using curves in order to keep in close touch with all departments will find that he needs a liberal education in logic to enable him to draw the correct conclusions quickly from the large number of facts available. There
