Office Organization 
 
 and 
 
 
 n y- 
 
 4 ,4 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE OFFICERS OF 
 THE QUARTERMASTER RESERVE CORPS 
 ON APRIL 17, 1917 
 
 V 
 
 By 
 
 CAPT. CHARLES P. DALY 
 
 QUARTERMASTER CORPS 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 1917 
 
J)11o 
 
 GEN. SHARPE’S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Officers of the Reserve Corps: 
 
 This is the second of our series of lectures, and just now I 
 want to say that the matter is under discussion of having the 
 lectures once a week instead of once every two weeks, and we 
 hope to arrive at a definite conclusion about that, and you will 
 all be notified later. 
 
 Two weeks ago I outlined in a very brief way the general 
 duties of the Quartermaster Corps. As you, of course, all 
 realize, nothing can be accomplished in this world wdthout or¬ 
 ganization. That is the essential feature which distinguishes 
 an army from a mob, and by means of organization in an army 
 you are able to secure discipline and effect the purpose for which 
 the army is created. It is the most essential feature of all 
 enterprises. Even with a good and able administrator, nothing 
 can be accomplished of any permanent good without a proper 
 organization. The subject of the address this evening is “ The 
 organization of the office of the Quartermaster General and the 
 correspondence in connection with the transaction of business 
 therein,’ 5 and I want to introduce to you Capt. Daly, who has 
 largely been instrumental in effecting the organization of the 
 office, and who will describe to you the present organization, 
 and will indicate to you how that organization is carried out 
 in our different depots and in the field so that there is a co¬ 
 ordination all the way through which facilitates the transaction 
 of the business. Officers of the Reserve Corps, I wish to intro¬ 
 duce Capt. Daly. 
 
 96657—17 
 
 # 
 
 3 
 
♦ 
 
OFFICE ORGANIZATION AND CORRE¬ 
 SPONDENCE OF THE ARMY. 
 
 Officers: 
 
 The subject to-night is “ Office organization and correspond¬ 
 ence in the Army.” We will first deal with office organization. 
 It might be well to first get into our minds what organization 
 means. Our definition of organization, in so far as it pertains 
 to the Quartermaster Corps in its offices and other activities, 
 is a systematic union of individuals in a body, whose officers, 
 agents, and members work together for a common end. That 
 is our conception of organization. Based on that definition, the 
 organization of the Quartermaster General’s Office and its aux¬ 
 iliary offices, the offices at posts, depots, and in the field are 
 based. The parent office is organized into five great divisions, 
 the division being the principal unit of the office. The divisions 
 are: The administrative division, the finance and accounting divi¬ 
 sion, the supplies division, the construction and repair division, 
 and the transportation division. Each of these divisions are 
 divided into branches, each branch being allotted its particular 
 part of the work of the office. The administrative division is 
 the controlling division of the office. The administrative divi¬ 
 sion is the Quartermaster General’s division; in other words, 
 it is the members of the administrative division who are the 
 agents of the Quartermaster General in coordinating the work 
 of the office, in governing the work of the other divisions of 
 the office and the branches of those divisions. The branches 
 of the administrative division consist of: 
 
 First. The administrative branch. The administrative branch, 
 as its name indicates, is the mouthpiece of the Quartermaster 
 General, or is the agency through which he operates directly 
 with other branches and divisions. The mail and record 
 branch, the personnel branch, the office personnel and miscel¬ 
 laneous branch, the national cemeteries branch, the claims 
 branch, and the estimates branch. 
 
 The finance and accounting division is made up of the appor¬ 
 tionments branch, deposits and allotments branch, officers’ money 
 accounts, contracts, cost keeping, subsistence returns, property 
 accounts, and finance branches. 
 
 5 
 
6 
 
 OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 The construction and repair division is made up of the con¬ 
 struction branch, miscellaneous branch, mechanical branch, res¬ 
 ervation branch, and drafting branch. 
 
 Transportation division is made up of the miscellaneous 
 branch, land transportation, water transportation, and remount. 
 
 The backbone of any office or the index to the efficiency of 
 any office and of every office is its records; I mean, particularly 
 the index to the efficiency of the office is indicated by the effi¬ 
 ciency of its records. If in an organization you devote all your 
 energy toward the building up of the activities of all the factors 
 or units entering into the organization and neglect your records, 
 your organization is far from efficient. If you devote your 
 energies toward making those records such that they are of easy 
 access and are a complete and true record of the activities of 
 the office, it will naturally follow’ that* your office is efficient 
 throughout. The mail and record branch of the administrative 
 division, of vdiich I have spoken to you, must not be taken as 
 being the record division of the Quartermaster General’s Office. 
 In the mail and record branch of the office is received all of 
 the mail that comes into the office. It is given the name of 
 record for the reason that the old files are kept there, but each 
 division of the office conducts its own record, and the efficiency 
 of the division is generally indicated by the efficiency of its 
 records. 
 
 In organizing an office the first thought of the organizer and 
 of those that are assisting him must be a coordination of the 
 work. Their aim must be to effect an organization that will 
 produce results, that will produce an output equal to the amount 
 of business coming in without a duplication, or with as little 
 duplication as possible—it isn’t possible to always avoid dupli¬ 
 cation in its entirety, but it is possible to reduce it to a mini*.* 
 mum—that should be the first thought of the officer in organizing 
 an office. To so organize his office as to take care of all of the 
 lines of activity that enter into the duties thereof without 
 duplicating the work. When you duplicate, of course, you simply 
 add to your troubles and labor and to the volume of business. 
 
 Consideration must be given to the amount of w’ork to be 
 handled. In a smaller office it would not be necessary to have 
 the five divisions that are enumerated as making up the Quarter¬ 
 master General’s Office. You w T ould establish the principle of 
 organization so that you could expand as your business grew T , 
 but you need not organize your office into five divisions. The 
 organization for a post is in principle the same as for the 
 Quartermaster General’s Office—five divisions—w r ith as many 
 
OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 7 
 
 branches as are necessary for each division, depending upon the 
 volume of the work, but it isn’t necessary to organize your five 
 divisions as separate divisions. If the office is small, the organ¬ 
 ization should be one that the executive himself can handle 
 without entering into the details, so that in the organization 
 of a smaller office the administration and finance might be 
 combined, and generally would be combined. Your transporta¬ 
 tion division, or probably called a branch at a post, would be 
 a unit in itself, as would be your supplies, so that ordinarily 
 at a post even as large as a regimental post you would not have 
 actually more than three divisions in an office and probably no 
 branches, depending altogether upon circumstances, and upon the 
 judgment of the officer. 
 
 The principle of organization as stated here for the Quarter¬ 
 master General’s Office is the same throughout all the offices 
 of the Quartermaster Corps. You will find the same organiza¬ 
 tion based upon the same principle, the same lines, in the 
 smaller offices—the department headquarters, depot or post, 
 and possibly in a recruiting station and in the camp. 
 
 In working out an organization the executive should place 
 in charge of the various principal activities men of experience, 
 men who are familiar with the duties of the corps. He should 
 always endeavor to have that force with him; that is, to have 
 the good will and sympathy of the force, for if you have not 
 the force with you, you don’t have efficiency. It should be the 
 aim of every officer of the Reserve Corps who may be called 
 upon to handle these offices to always remember that he, as 
 well as his subordinates, are all working toward the same end 
 and object—Uncle Sam—that the efficiency of his office does 
 not depend upon him alone—he can’t make it efficient alone— 
 he must have the good will and cooperation of his assistants. 
 He should always have that in mind, else his office will not 
 be as efficient as it might be, or as it should be. There are two 
 exceptions to the assignments of branches to divisions. One is 
 in the organization of a depot office having settlement of trans¬ 
 portation accounts. That office has an additional branch desig¬ 
 nated as transportation accounts or settlement of transport- 
 tion accounts. The other exception is the depot quartermaster’s 
 office having charge of transports. They have what is called 
 the transport branch. We have that in our office, and only in 
 the Quartermaster General’s Office and the office of a depot 
 handling transports do you find a transport branch. It doesn’t 
 obtain at posts. 
 
8 OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 It is probably well to confine myself to the operation of the 
 Quartermaster General’s Office, and if you will bear in mind 
 the organization of that office and apply it to your duties in 
 the field you will probably get by without much difficulty. The 
 Quartermaster General’s Office handles a great volume of busi¬ 
 ness. It handles in finance in normal times probably 80 per 
 cent of the money appropriated for the support of the Army. 
 It embraces every activity known to the commercial world. I 
 don’t think there are any exceptions. It builds ships and 
 operates ships; it operates and supplies railroads, manufactures 
 clothing, manufactures harness, manufactures wagons; it is a 
 wholesaler, buys goods and sells them, dispenses them around 
 to the posts—goods of every character, food, forage, etc. Every 
 activity known to the commercial world you will find carried 
 on in the Quartermaster Corps. Having that in mind, you must 
 realize that the Quartermaster Corps is a serious proposition. 
 It isn’t something to be thought of in a moment and considered 
 as something to be played with, and the man that comes into 
 the Quartermaster Corps as an officer, also as a civilian, as¬ 
 sumes a great responsibility; the officer in particular has a great 
 responsibility. 
 
 To carry on these activities there must be organization. With¬ 
 out organization the result is chaos, confusion, and long years 
 of trouble for the officer responsible. With organization, and 
 proper organization, while the work is hard, the quartermaster 
 will find when he is relieved of those duties that he is entirely 
 through with them and with the Quartermaster General; that 
 he will have no trouble with the Treasury. I refer to the man 
 having effected a good organization—that studies his work and 
 knows his work. So in the creating of an office in the field your 
 first thought must be to coordinate your work, to avoid dupli¬ 
 cation, to instill into the minds of your co-workers good fellow¬ 
 ship, to protect the interests of the Government, and to serve 
 faithfully and well the Quartermaster Corps. 
 
 The second subject is correspondence in the Army. I may 
 get back to organization again. The two go together, and there 
 are certain things that I will probably have to go back over. 
 I am not going to attempt to give you the details of correspond¬ 
 ence. You will get that in the Army Regulations and the Quar¬ 
 termaster’s Manual. The Army Regulations are quite clear on 
 the subject and need no interpretation. The Quartermaster’s 
 Manual is quite clear on the subject, but I propose to give you 
 a little of the unwritten law—for want of a better term— 
 things that you don’t find in books. 
 
OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 9 
 
 In military correspondence the ceremonial address “ Sir ” and 
 salutations are all omitted. The letter is from the writer to 
 the person addressed, and the subject is stated. The making 
 up of the letter is one of the things that ought to receive con¬ 
 sideration. The style of a letter coming out of an office is, in 
 addition to the record, an index to the efficiency of the office. A 
 letter should never be sent out that runs clear across the page 
 from margin to margin. A letter of that character does not 
 attract attention. It takes time to read it and it doesn’t appeal 
 to the reader. It saves paper, but we might waste a little paper 
 to present a letter to an individual that will attract attention and 
 receive consideration. The preferred letter provides a margin 
 an inch or an inch and a quarter on each side, putting the subject 
 matter in a compact body near the center and so arranging the 
 typewriting as to leave the right-hand margin as nearly in a 
 line as possible, and properly paragraphed without numbering. 
 A letter of that character, without erasures, a clean sheet with¬ 
 out thumb marks, indicates a careful and efficient office. 
 
 Another thing to be avoided is letting your temper run away 
 with you in a letter. Frequently we have correspondence with 
 people whom it is hard to make understand the matter we 
 are driving at, and we become “ peeved ” or vexed and we express 
 our peevishness in a reply to him. Avoid that particularly if 
 you are writing to a subordinate—I don’t think you would do 
 it to a superior—it isn’t necessary. You will only aggravate 
 him and keep the ball rolling. 
 
 Don’t devote your time to long-winded arguments in a letter. 
 Make your letters short, clear, and understandable. If you 
 want to say “ no,” say it—NO. But don’t write a half dozen 
 lines to tell a man that you want to say “ no ”—just say “ no ” 
 and he will understand that it is “ no,” wherein if you attempt 
 to analyze the word and tell him how you reached it he may 
 come back again; that is not correspondence—simply argument. 
 
 Now, for the moment, we will deal with the filing system. I have 
 grown up, we will say for the purposes of this talk, with several 
 filing systems. When I began business in the Quartermaster’s 
 Department twenty-eight years ago we kept our records in a 
 book. We devoted a great deal of our time each day to writing 
 out and copying in longhand letters in books, one after another, 
 day after day, and that was the end of it. Those books con¬ 
 tained all the way from 600 to 700 pages. It was the best and 
 only known system at that time, so far as I know, in the Quarter¬ 
 master’s Department. If a letter came in on the subject of oats 
 in January, 1889, and it was referred to in January, 1900, you 
 
10 OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 found the letter by taking a book and thumbing back in the 
 pages until you came to the letter about oats. That was the 
 process of locating it. That work in time showed its faults and 
 weaknesses, and the card system came out in about 1895 . That 
 system was a vast improvement over the old book system, not so 
 much because of the cards as because of the facility in locating 
 the record. That in time became cumbersome, the volume of the 
 index outgrowing the volume of the record. It became necessary 
 to make, where three indexes sufficed in the early days of the sys¬ 
 tem, 10 , 12, and 15 indexes in the latter days of the system. It, 
 however, provided a record that could be reached and it provided 
 a very good record, but required a great force to operate it. As 
 the volume of the record of the index grew, so did the volume of 
 the force grow, until, in the minds of the thinking men in the 
 department, it became apparent that the system was cumber¬ 
 some, and a study was made of the vertical file system and sub¬ 
 jective classification. That system the Quartermaster General 
 was the first to introduce in his office. After a careful study of 
 the system the War Department created a board, and the board 
 worked out an index but did not order the installation of the 
 system. It left it with the bureaus, and the Quartermaster 
 General took it up and installed it in his office in, I think, 1914 . 
 
 The results of that system in the Quartermaster General’s 
 Office were an increase in the efficiency of the office, an increase 
 of at least, in the first years of its operation, sixty per cent and 
 later probably as high as eighty per cent. Under the old system 
 it required forty-six operators to conduct the record system of 
 the office, and one-third of the time of those in the office was con¬ 
 sumed in traveling from the office to the record room and back 
 searching for records. It delayed getting out the mail of the 
 office. To handle correspondence it was necessary to get the 
 previous records, and that took time. The installation of the new 
 system placed the record in a branch—placed it under a subjec¬ 
 tive classification so that it could be found without difficulty and 
 without unnecessary indexing, because the classification or the 
 book published by the War Department was the index. The 
 system is of such flexibility that it can be extended indefinitely, 
 but it requires intelligence to handle it. The system is readily 
 adaptable to any condition. I mention this system because 
 some of you may have field work, and one of the great weak¬ 
 nesses in the field is want of the proper record, due, it is claimed, 
 to the impracticability of keeping good records because of im¬ 
 proper facilities; but I do not agree with that claim. The ver¬ 
 tical file system, in my judgment, under the subjective classifi- 
 
OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 11 
 
 cation, is an ideal field file system. It isn’t necessary to carry 
 with you a book containing the War Department classification, 
 but you provide your own classification and file your papers by 
 the subjects classified, and you will find in your work in the field 
 that your subjects are limited. If you are dealing with trans¬ 
 portation, keep a jacket or folder for transportation, and in 
 chronological order file in that jacket everything that has to do 
 with transportation. You have only one place to go then for 
 the transportation record. The same way with other subjects 
 that come up, and, as stated, the subjects that will come up in 
 an office in the field are limited. But you must not have in 
 mind that the record will take care of itself. It needs your 
 assistance. You should give it the same careful attention that 
 you are bound to give to other duties. Don’t neglect it. That 
 is one of the faults in Government offices. That has been my 
 experience. 
 
 The record room in the Government offices has always been 
 considered, and is yet in a great many offices—it isn’t so in 
 ours now, because we haven’t any separate record room—but 
 it has always been considered a place to place the derelicts, or 
 those that have outlived their usefulness in other activities of 
 the office. If it were found that a man in the personnel branch 
 was no good, he was sent to the record branch, a wrong system. 
 Your record system is the heart and brain of the office, and in 
 the keeping of your records you must use the very best talent 
 in the office. When I go into an office the first thing that I 
 ask is to look at the records, and from the condition of the 
 records I judge the condition of the office. I have inspected 
 a great number of offices in the last six or seven years and 
 have never found myself mistaken; if I found a poor record I 
 found a positively poor office; if I found a good record I found 
 a fairly good office; if I found an excellent record I found an 
 efficient office. 
 
 Getting back to organization for a moment, in effecting the 
 organization of a quartermaster’s office in the field—in dealing 
 with the camp! 1 —the quartermaster should have with him or 
 arrange to have with him a good record clerk, one familiar 
 with records, record systems, and correspondence; a good 
 transportation clerk, and a good supplies clerk. That is for 
 a camp of a regiment—regimental camp. That is the least 
 that he should have. There is one other that I have overlooked, 
 the finance clerk. These make up the skeleton force of the 
 office. On that skeleton he builds and expands as the activities 
 of his office grow until he gets his office into proper condition. 
 
12 
 
 OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 
 
 The addition of the force to extend the office to its full activi¬ 
 ties are, of course, men that you pick up here and there, tem¬ 
 porary men, but with the quartermaster having a knowledge of 
 the work of the department and with the four trained men I have 
 mentioned organize the branches accordingly: Your mail and 
 record as administrative, your transportation, your finance and 
 supplies. He will in a short time, by devoting his attention to 
 the office, build up an organization. Keep his eye on the weak 
 spots, cast out the weak men and put in some one better; 
 don’t quibble with him, but get some one to take his place. He 
 will in a short time have built up an office organization follow¬ 
 ing the outline I have given for the Quartermaster General’s 
 office that will produce proper results, that will give him a 
 fairly efficient working force. In the conduct of his office he 
 should make every effort to avoid a duplication of the work, 
 coordinate the work of all of the branches, centering all in 
 the administrative division, through which he controls the whole 
 organization. There will probably be some variations from 
 that under certain conditions and in certain camps, but in fol¬ 
 lowing that principle and effecting an organization along that 
 line the quartermaster will find himself relieved a little later 
 of many difficulties. 
 
 Now, getting back again to correspondence. The Quarter¬ 
 master’s Manual has not yet been published. It will be out, I 
 learn, in perhaps a week or ten days. It may be possible for 
 officers of the Quartermaster Reserve Corps to get copies— 
 probably will be possible. Correspondence in the Quartermas¬ 
 ter’s Manual begins at paragraph 390. I want to suggest that 
 that be given the most careful study. I don’t mean to say that 
 I want you to neglect other parts of the manual and devote 
 all of your time to correspondence; you should give the manual, 
 careful study throughout, but give correspondence particular 
 study and give organization careful consideration. You will 
 find organization begin with paragraph 281. Now, while I am 
 on this subject I want to say that you will find the Quarter¬ 
 master Corps and its duties most interesting. The duties of 
 the Quartermaster and the Quartermaster Corps are such that 
 will require the full attention and the active energetic work 
 of every man assigned to duty in the corps. He should have as 
 his objective always bettering, always elevating and increasing 
 the efficiency of the Quartermaster Corps. 
 
 Those who are assigned to the Quartermaster Corps are a 
 part of its organization. It isn’t the Quartermaster General 
 that makes the Quartermaster Corps a success—he can’t do it 
 
OFFICE ORGANIZATION, ETC., OF THE ARMY. 13 
 
 alone—and it isn’t the assistants in his office with him that 
 makes it a success; it is the hearty cooperation and earnest 
 activity of the quartermasters in the field and subordinates 
 that will make the Quartermaster Corps a success. Forget your 
 personal feelings. Forget your likes and dislikes as to the rules 
 that may be issued by the Quartermaster General—they are 
 issued for a purpose. There is a reason for every rule given 
 by the Quartermaster General. Carry out the rule. We have 
 some men in the Quartermaster Corps—good men—who when 
 they get an order or circular that contains instructions as to 
 the duties of the Quartermaster Corps devote their best energy, 
 their time, and their thought to finding a way to get around 
 those instructions. If those same men would devote that same 
 time and thought to carrying out the instructions, their trouble 
 would be less and our efficiency would increase. So I want to 
 repeat that it ought to be the earnest effort of every member 
 of the Officers’ Reserve Corps, quartermaster’s section, to do 
 his level best to give the best that is in him, and that is all 
 we can or will ask of him, is to give the best that is in him 
 for the Government for the welfare and efficiency of the Quar¬ 
 termaster Corps, and if you give it to the Quartermaster Corps 
 you are giving it to the Government. Do that and you will 
 find that you have made yourself a more efficient man for your 
 work in private life. 
 
 I want to thank you, gentlemen, for your kind attention. 
 
 o 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 062103350