to floor and hand trucks, conservative estimates showed 8,000,000 in use, while annual sales were in the neighborhood of 250,000!

Next he found out, as accurately as possible, how many hard rubber tires were sold as original equipment. The 3,200 trucks and tractors had 12,300 wheels. But 95 per cent of them were equipped with rubber tires at the factory. On the other hand, only 7 per cent of the floor and hand trucks were thus equipped!

Outside of the truck and tractor people, he found the equipment makers opposed to hard rubber tires. Let's not go into the reasons. Yet representative manufacturers in a dozen different lines stated, when he asked them: "All future equipment purchased by us will be equipped with rubber tires."

The whole report wasn't twelve pages long. And three tables, carefully compiled from available facts and figures, told the manufacturer everything he wanted to know.

In short, upon this SIMPLE ANALYSIS, he was able to build a plan for manufacturing and merchandising solid rubber tires. Much good, though, it would have done him had he done his planning first and then found out there weren't enough wheels to wear the tires after he had made them!

So much for our "beneficent circle." Let us look into this thing called PLANNING and find out if there isn't some way of developing a knack of planning which will help us over the second major hurdle in our road to managing.

There is, we shall find, a single problem with which the planner, the constructive manager, deals. Again, it doesn't make a particle of difference whether it's Mr. Schwab and Bethlehem Steel or Tonio and his peanut stand. No business is so "different" that the principles of management fail to apply.

All right, then. The problem of every planner is first to determine what is the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE—the "initiative"—behind his job, and then to find the EASIEST PLACE TO APPLY THAT FORCE in order to set up the required MOTION or ACTIVITY with the LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT THAT WILL GET THE BEST RESULTS.

A long sentence. Go over it again and you will find it is divided into four distinct parts:

1. Deciding on the PRIMARY MOVING FORCE with which to set the wheels in motion.

2. Applying this FORCE at the PROPER PLACE TO GET EASIEST ACTION.

3. Directing this action along lines which either offer LEAST RESISTANCE or assure GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT.

4. Bringing the activities to a focus at the place or time that will best carry the work to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION.

The PRIMARY MOVING FORCE may be the selection of media in an advertising plan; it may be the pushing of a button in the White House which opens a dam in Arizona, a Century of Progress in Chicago, or the Annual Convention of Whammit Manufacturers at Atlantic City; or it may be the memo from the big boss which gives the research department carte blanche on a development project.

To apply this initiative to a place where it will get QUICK ACTION may be to suggest an idea in the headline of an advertisement that will set the reader to thinking of salmon fishing at Mooselookmeguntic, or of the time the ice cubes gave out just when they shouldn't. Or it may be to classify the output of a factory before shipping so that freight cars can be packed to best advantage or so that lowest freight rates may be secured. Or it may be a simple method of sorting mail so that subordinates get the jobs they can handle and only the important business is brought to the president's attention.

Directing this ACTIVITY along the lines that ASSURE GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT may be—in the advertisement—the presentation of facts or advantages which will persuade the reader that the fishing tackle you manufacture is desirable. Again, it may be the dovetailing of a thousand elements in a huge project like the Russian Five-Year Plan so that an adequate supply of ore will be available when the blast furnaces roar into operation; so that the steel will be on hand when production in the Cheliabinsk tractor works is stepped up to meet the requirements of the new agricultural regime. Or it may involve the simple sweeping of a floor in a manner which raises a minimum of dust.

And bringing the activities to a SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION may mean working up the arguments of the advertisement to the psychological closing of a sale—to the point where the ardent member of the Isaak Walton League figures he can live no longer without your fishing tackle and sets out gaily in the general direction of Abercrombie and Fitch's. Or it may be coordinating the entire production of a factory so that the Diesel generator set ordered by the Santa Fé can be delivered at the exact date specified in the original order. Or it may be handling the day's correspondence on the credit man's desk so that letters which must "make the Century" are ready to go at 11:45—so that the rest of the day's work is ready to sign, stamp and mail before the 5 o'clock whistle blows.

FOUR ELEMENTS, then, in any job which is to be PLANNED. Every plan, if practicable, will follow them.

There is, by way of further illustration, the story of the factory manager of a food manufacturing plant who laid out a PLAN for an operation no more intricate than the scrubbing of the floors at night. Now it can be told.

And for two good reasons. First, because it was a practical plan which, even on such a lowly operation, saved quite a bit of money. Second, because in its construction the plan is, from the point of view of our four elements, what has sometimes been called a "natural."

One night, it seems, the manager and his wife went to the movies. The town didn't have daylight time, so it was quite dark. They passed the plant, a large six-story building.

"Why, Ed!" exclaimed the wife, "you didn't tell me the factory was working nights."

Ed, like most husbands, was in the habit of telling friend wife 'most everything. For once he was at a loss. Sure enough, the lights were going full tilt on all floors. Hitting on all six, you might say.

Then he laughed. It all came to him—"It's just the scrubwomen at work."

One feature picture, one newsreel and one animated cartoon later, they walked past the plant again.

"Look, the factory's still lit up," remarked the wife who turned off the living room lights religiously when she went out to get supper ready.

This time Ed didn't laugh.

In days like these one doesn't. Not, at any rate, at the thought of mounting electricity bills.

The very next evening he was on the job. Time somebody found out what was what. In came the cleaners. They switched on the office lights—all of them—and two of the crew went to work. A couple of others went up to the second floor, switched on all the lights and pitched in with a vim. And so ad infinitum—or at least to the sixth story.

And all the while the electric meter went round and round!

Twenty-four hours later the janitor had a new plan of work.

First the manager thought he'd start the whole crew at the top and work down. On second thought, a better plan was born—like the goddess of wisdom who sprang full grown from her papa's forehead. If I must go at this cleaning job, he thought, I might just as well make a first-class job of it and save not only on light, but on cleaners, too.

We shall pass lightly over that part of his plan which had to do with releasing scrubwomen for other productive work, for in days like these—or in any other day—we just can't figure