the standards, and by the introduction of automatic machinery. The Post Office now permits, under certain conditions, the use of a machine which prints a stamp that is really a frank. This is now being used very generally by concerns which have a heavy outgoing mail. Then there are sealing machines, work conveyors, and numerous other mechanical and physical arrangements which operate to reduce the costs. They are useful, however, only if the output be very large indeed.

The personally dictated letter has these costs:

(1) The postage.

(2) The stationery.

(3) The dictator's time-both in dictating and signing.

(4) The stenographer's time.

(5) The direct overhead expense, which includes the space occupied, the supervision, the executive overhead, and like items.

The troublesome items here are numbers three and five. If the dictator is a correspondent then the calculation of how much it costs him to dictate a letter is his salary plus the overhead on the space that he occupies, divided by the number of letters that he writes in an average month. It takes him longer to write a long than a short letter, but routine letters will average fairly over a period of a month. But an executive who writes only letters that cannot be written by correspondents or lower salaried men commonly

does so many other things in the course of a day that, although his average time of dictation per letter may be ascertained and a cost gotten at, the figure will not be a true cost, for the dictation of an important letter comes only after a consideration of the subject matter which commonly takes much longer than the actual dictation. And then, again, the higher executive is usually an erratic letter writer-he may take two minutes or twenty minutes over an ordinary tenline letter. Some men read their letters very carefully after transcription. The cost of this must also be reckened in.

The cost of any letter is therefore a matter of the particular office. It will vary from six or seven cents for a letter made up of form paragraphs to three or four dollars for a letter written by a highsalaried president of a large corporation. A fair average cost for a personally dictated letter written on good paper is computed by one of the leading paper manufacturers, after a considerable survey, to be:

Postage

.0200

Printing letterheads and envelopes .0062

Stenographic wages (50 letters per

The above does not include the expense of dictation.

It will pay any man who writes a considerable number of letters to discover what his costs are-and then make his letters so effective that there will be fewer of them.

CHAPTER XIII

STATIONERY, CRESTS AND MONOGRAMS

SOCIAL CORRESPONDENCE

For

FOR all social correspondence use plain sheets of paper, without lines, of white or cream, or perhaps light gray or a very dull blue. But white or cream is the safest. Select a good quality. Either a smooth vellum finish or a rough linen finish is correct. long letters there is the large sheet, about five by six and one half inches, or it may be even larger. There is a somewhat smaller size, about four and one half by five and one half or six inches for formal notes, and a still smaller size for a few words of congratulation or condolence. The social note must be arranged so as to be contained on the first page only.

A man should not, for his social correspondence, use office or hotel stationery. His social stationery should be of a large size.

Envelopes may be either square or oblong.

In the matter of perfumed stationery, if perfume is used at all, it must be very delicate. Strong perfumes or perfumes of a pronounced type have a distinctly unpleasant effect on many people It is better form to use none.