One

In the proposed calendar, every month will be like every other month.
day every year will have no week-day name, but will be called Year Day.
Each of the present months will lose a day or so, and a brand-new month
will happen between June and July

the figures are given in round numbers;
actual cases are much more complicated;
but the case is typical.

This sort of thing happens all the time in other businesses.

A weekly periodical gets a larger daily average of receipts on Monday than on any other day of the week. It charges its salaries and wages to Saturday and its other expenditures to Wednesday. In 1922, for example, there were four months in which there were five Saturdays, four months in which there were five Mondays, and four months in which there were five Wednesdays. But those months did not coincide. In January there was an extra Monday; so the periodical's income that month was disproportionately large. In March there was an extra bill-paying day. In April there was an extra salary day. In May there was an extra income day and an extra bill-paying day. In July there was an extra salary day and an extra income day. In August there was an extra billpaying day. In September there was an

extra salary day. In October there was an extra income day and an extra billpaying day. And in December there

Th WTu MSFTW Tu

WATCHES AND CLOCKS AS

CALENDARS

Under the International Fixed Calendar your watch or clock can show the date and day of the week. By a day pointer you can tell the time, not only by seconds, minutes, and hours, but also by days

The Outlook f

was an extra salary day. This irreg larity not only makes it impossible compare one month with the next, b it also makes it impossible to compa the month with the same month in a other year, for each year every month different from the same month in t year before and the year after. Und these conditions what do monthly co parisons mean? In sor Nothing. cases it means worse than nothing, i it misleads directors and confuses exe utive officers.

As a piece of business machinery t month is a joke.

If we had any other piece of machi ery dating from Roman emperors th was as unworkable as the thing which call the calendar month we should scr it at once. In fact, we should not ha We should have scrapped it lo

it.

ago.

W

HY is it then that we people

the twentieth century hold on the present calendar month?

Is it because we think of it as part the immutable processes of time? Is because we think that the month somehow mixed up with the moon? a matter of fact it has very little to with the moon. And even if it had great deal to do with the moon it wou not help matters much, for the mo has nothing whatever practically to with our daily life. The sun provid our daylight, and it causes our season but the moon marks no periods that a of any consequence. And even if it di what period should we select? The are various kinds of lunar months-t anomalistic, the tropical, the sidere the nodal, each differing from the othe The moon is well called inconstant. W have forgotten the moon for a gre many centuries and we can continue forget it in making up our calendar.

If we wish we can make the mon mean something.

IN

N fact a new form of monthly cale dar has been devised. It does awa with all the absurdities of our prese calendar months. It has profited by t wisdom of Moses and the discoveries modern science. It is designed to pr mote at once international good will a business efficiency. If adoptedrather when adopted-it will make li easier for the masses of men. It w benefit women. It will add value scientific study. It will tend to promo sensible and uniform religious obser Most important of all, in t minds of practical people, it will sa energy-and money.

ance.

September 28, 1927

This plan came out of the very practical experience of a railroad man. George Eastman, Chairman of the Board of the Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York, tells about this railroad man in a pamphlet entitled "Do We Need Calendar Reform?" This railroad man is Moses B. Cotsworth. While he was special investigator and adviser to the general manager of the Northeastern Railway he found it very difficult to explain the variations in increases and de

W

From F. Edson White President of Armour & Co.

E believe that the inauguration of the Cotsworth thirteenmonth international calendar will mean the simplification of accounting practices. This would be a great advantage when considering monthly figures on live stock, kill, sales, etc., as data could be more accurately indexed than at present, and comparison would be on same basis. Our accounting is based on twelve periods in the year, eight of which contain four weeks, and four of which contain five weeks. Laborious adjusting is needed to compare four and five week periods. It seems a logical step in the movement for business analysis, which, I think, is one of the outstanding needs in the industrial world to-day.

Chicago, Illinois.

creases of the net earnings of the company each month. Because of the variation in freight traffic during the week, the freight traffic being light over weekends, and the variation in the number of days in the month and in the number of week-ends in the month, he had to make complicated adjustments. He therefore began to study the calendar. And in this study he found that the calendar had similarly unfortunate results in all lines of business, and on churches, and schools, and science, and the daily life of people generally. As a consequence he worked out a proposal which is known as the Cotsworth Proposal for Calendar Reform. After he had worked sixteen years on the subject a plan was under way to call an international conference in the fall of 1914. This conference was blown away with other things by the World War. Now at last the international movement has been renewed. The League of Nations has appointed a Special Committee of Enquiry, and although it has had 185 plans before it, and though it has run up against objections based on nothing better than tradition, and although it is not yet ready to announce a final opinion, this committee by its report has already made it clear that the advantages of this proposal are greater than those of any other.

Out of this proposal has come what is known as the "International Fixed Calendar."

According to this plan

Every month will consist of twentyeight days.

From Roger W. Babson

Founder of Babson's Statistical Organization and Chairman of the Board of the Babson Institute

I

LOOK forward to the day when the Cotsworth calendar will be adopted by most nations of the world. My experience plainly points to many real advantages in this fixed thirteen months' calendar plan. It should appeal to almost everybody using statistics for business, financial, and economic problems. There is constant need, for example, for quickly comparing one month with another, and likewise for comparing the same month in different years. At present this latter cannot be readily done because of our faulty calendar. With the new calendar a part of statistical work ought to be fifty per cent more effective. The old saying is that comparisons are odious, and a chief reason for this is the irregularity of our calendar. This is constantly making statistical comparisons laborious, meaningless, or actually misleading. Moreover, remember that thirteen monthly settlements in the year would mean that money spent for rents, salaries, and monthly accounts would circulate nine per cent faster than it does now. Several business concerns among my clients are already using a thirteen months' calendar in their own accounting, and they tell me it works well. Both from experience and observation I can see wherein practically all kinds of records will be far more useful and far less costly when kept on the new calendar basis. I favor it heartily.

Wellesley, Massachusetts.

It will begin on Sunday like the week and end on Saturday.

It will thus consist of four weeks-no more, no less.

Every month of every year will be exactly like every other one.

Thirteen of these months will make up a year

Except one day.

That extra day, inserted between the last Saturday, that is the last day, of one year and the first Sunday, that is the first day, of the next year, will be an international holiday-an extra Sabbath. The new month will be inserted in midsummer, between June and July.

Every four years the additional day (which is now added to February) will be inserted between June and the new month, as an additional Sabbath.

Thus every Sunday of every month of every year will be either the first, the eighth, the fifteenth, or the twentysecond. Then when you say the nine

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teenth you will mean the third Thursday of the month. If somebody tells you that he will pay you something a month from to-day you will know precisely on what day he will pay you. When you pay rent you won't be paying more per day in one month than you are paying in any other month. If you are receiving a salary by the week and you are paying your bills by the month you will know each month just how much you can count on. If you are carrying on a busi

From George Foster Peabody

Banker of New York, Retired

THANK YOU. I have been out of

my advocacy of a thirteen months' calendar relates to my conviction that it will facilitate clear thinking in unnumbered directions, and thus make for greater service in all lines, not omitting religious.

Saratoga, New York.

ness in which you settle your accounts monthly you will not have any month in which you will have an extra pay-roll to meet. If you have any calculations to make you can know instantly the number of days between any two dates. Election day, as now set for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, will always fall on the third of the month-unless election day is changed to Monday as it might well be, when it will always be the second. The advantages you will enjoy when this plan is adopted, as undoubtedly it will be, will not be merely personal advantages but also advantages which you will get in the common advantage of society. For example, it is estimated that by changing the circulation of money values from twelve times a year to thirteen times a year about two billion dollars will be released in Europe for business expansion, and in all countries about five billion dollars. This is in addition to the enormous saving made in getting rid of unnecessary labor now used in constant and unsatisfactory business adjustment.

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business. If, for instance, we wish to keep Independence Day in July, then it will cease to be the fourth of July but become the second of July. If, however, we wish to keep it on virtually the same day of the year, Independence Day will fall into the new month. As July 4 will become Sol 17 and thus fall on Tuesday, Independence Day will then be shifted one day earlier and become Sol 16. (The name Sol, from the Latin word for sun, is chosen because in that month

From E. W. Beatty

Chairman and President of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company

HE

TH economic advantages that

would follow upon the general adoption of the proposed Cotsworth calendar are clearly evident. Business operation, and particularly accounting, would greatly benefit. And this must necessarily apply to railroading as being an industry in which rapid and informative accounting plays a large part. Another important effect of the proposed calendar reform would be found in the fixing of holiday dates. Many of the annual national and religious holidays of Canada are movable, and they are the less convenient of observance by the great mass of the people. Were these holidays fixed to occur on various Mondays throughout the year, they would be more generally taken advantage of and, being extended by the addition of the week-end rest, would provide considerably enlarged opportunities for rest and recreation.

Montreal, Canada.

will occur the summer solstice). Thus every holiday from Christmas around to Thanksgiving will find its most appropriate Monday.

Suppose this new calendar were to be put into effect on the first of January, 1933, which, it happens, is the next year not a leap year to begin on a Sunday, then in place of January 29th we should

as Washington's birthday. We have forgotten that the day that he was born was called, when he was born, February 12th. An even more revolutionary change has been made in our own times in the Near East, for in Mohammedan

From E. M. Statler

President of the Hotels Statler Company, Inc., owning and operating the Hotels Statler in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, operating Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City: President of New York Hotel Statler Company, Inc.

To the

o achieve the greatest benefits Cotsworth International Fixed Calendar should be adopted by governments.

In line with the development of other economic reforms, the first step will have to be taken by crosssections of the Nation's business represented by basic industries, the first step in this reform being their adoption of the International Calendar.

In order to exert pressure toward universal action, I favor the adoption of the International Calendar by the hotel industry because it would assist us in our efforts toward two fundamental characteristics of successful business-simplification and stand

ardization.

Its adoption would simplify records for and calculations of payrolls, inventories, accounts, all items under the general term of rents, etc. It would simplify all monthly reports. It would regularize the work of the financial department, and therefore simplify their operations.

Its adoption would give us a time standard of great perfection, which would make possible standard-time production and financial series of very great importance to economical operation.

Hotel Pennsylvania, New York.

countries there they have not only changed the date but adopted Sunday instead of Friday as their weekly holiday. What the Turks have done in our times and what our ancestors did in the

the injection of this extra Sabbath, the provision of a two-day Sabbath once a year, a violation of the commandment that man should rest one day in seven, no one else need be disturbed. Indeed, this new calendar really goes back to the principle that was established in the Old Testament. During the captivity and dispersion of the Jews this old calendar was forgotten. Nobody observes it strictly now. We shall be going back in principle to one important feature of the

From Robert Dollar

President of the Dollar Steamship Company, Robert Dollar Company, Admiral Oriental Company, Dollar Portland Lumber Company, Canadian Robert Dollar Company

I

AM very much in favor of Cotsworth's plan of twenty-eight days in every month. All steamship interests have a great deal to do with the fixing of the week-day sailings of ships. We fix the day, but also have to state the date. By the new plan the sailings could be stated as first or second Saturday of the month, as the dates in every month would be the same. It would materially help

in bookkeeping and time calculations. This would be following along the lines of Standard Time, Metric System, and other universal systems so beneficial to mankind. Those changes all take time to get into general use; but the world is rapidly moving towards improvement, and the day is gone when we can say because our grandfathers were satisfied so should we. On the start it would be necessary to get a few of the big nations to join in, then all would follow later. San Rafael, California.

Mosaic calendar when we adopt the International Fixed Calendar with its Year Day inserted at the end of a thir teen-month year.

It is not always that religious tradition is seen to be so clearly a supporter of sound business.

26th we should have March 1st, instead of March 26th we should have April 1st; instead of April 23rd we should have May 1st; instead of May 21st we should have June 1st; and instead of June 18th we should have Sol 1st. The first half year would end with Sol. 14th. That date would correspond to what we now call July 1st.

There is nothing unprecedented about such a change as this. In 1582 ten days were dropped out of the calendar, and as a consequence dates were changed. In 1752 England, which had been laggard in changing her calendar, dropped out eleven days. So for a time dates were designated by New Style and Old Style. We now celebrate February 22nd

ble for us to do to-day.

A

T once the question may arise as to what will be said to this plan by those who believe that one day of rest in seven is enjoined by the Scriptures. Will not the injection of an extra rest day once in every year interrupt the even flow of recurrent Sabbaths? Those who take their Bible literally will discover that there is no occasion for alarm. They have a thoroughly adequate precedent in the calendar provided under the Mosaic law.

According to the Mosaic calendar there was an extra Sabbath injected every year. If Moses, or whoever finally drew up the Levitical law, did not find

OME day a month will have as definite a meaning as an hour, a day, or a year. When that time comes people will look back upon the twelve-month year as a time of incredible inertia. There are people in business even now who have adopted for their own purposes a year of thirteen months of twenty-eight days each. In spite of the fact that they have to do double accounting, since their customers and clients do business on a year of twelve so-called months, these concerns find that it pays. They save enough to make it worth while to keep two kinds of accounts. How much more should we all save if we adopted this sensible plan! Is it not time that business should insist on getting rid of a time measure that never was of any use?

F H. A.

T

WELVE words at the tail-end of

an obscure sentence in a state

ment put forth by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington caused the market value of this year's cotton crop to fall off-at least for the moment-to the extent of more than $75,000,000 on Thursday, September 15. The words were: "it is likely that prices will decline in the next few months."

A dozen simple but, in a sensitive market, highly charged words. They came from an agency of the Government which long ago assumed the prime burden of collecting, interpreting, and putting forth facts having to do with farm. products. The Government's word, particularly as to cotton, is accepted as the most authoritative spoken. No other agencies have such access to facts, or undertake to gather them on such a scale, as do Government bureaus which trail the "fleecy staple."

But nobody can say, as this is written, whether the words which, as one of the newspaper reports said, caused "pandemonium to break out on the cotton exchanges," were truly authoritative.

The recent drop was reminiscent of the ones which occurred in the fall of 1926, when almost overnight the cotton farmers of the South saw the value of the crop they then were harvesting go off about a half billion dollars. And there was no recovery until practically the entire crop had passed from the producers' hands.

W

ORDS and figures out of Washing

ton had a good deal to do with that collapse, one of the severest in the annals of cotton. And those words and figures were not on the whole authoritative. If they had been, the farmers of the South would have been saved at least a quarter of a billion dollars. For they sold at an average price of 12.3 cents a pound an 18,000,000-bale cotton crop that later proved to be worth 15 to 16 cents a pound. A cent a pound amounts to $5 a bale. Four cents a pound on 18,000,000 bales is $360,000,000.

The low prices that prevailed during the greater part of the last harvesting

season were due mainly to inadequate collecting of facts by the Government agencies and to misinterpretation by them of information that was in hand. Final forecasts of domestic production were beyond the facts. Production abroad was considerably less than was forecast during the period of acute low prices. Overwhelming evidences of increase of demand, both at home and abroad, were virtually ignored. Emphasis invariably was put only on the bearish aspects of the situation.

The shortcoming was mostly the Federal Government's, or that of departments and bureaus which collect and dispense information about farm products. But of course some of the blame may belong to Congress for, possibly, not providing sufficient facilities for handling a job the prime responsibility as well as the burden of which had been assumed by the Government.

But the Government's facilities for handling the job are large. They are

114

a fact which, had it been discovered as it might have been and put forth promptly and emphatically by the Government would have prevented the collapse which for a time caused the entire South to tremble and all the country for a while to expect a general economic setback.

Little, if any, more cotton was produced in 1926 than in 1925, but considerably more was consumed. Yet the 1925 crop sold at an average price of 19.6 cents a pound, or $35 a bale above the average of the 1926 crop.

When picking was getting under full headway in the South last fall, the average grower could contemplate the paying off of his debts with enough money left over to assure him and his family a merry Christmas and a comfortable winter. A large cotton harvest was in prospect and prices were good.

Then came havoc. Early in October the Federal Department of Agriculture announced that the aggregate yield would exceed that of the year before. Since that yield had exceeded consumption, the forecast meant apparently the presence of an excess of supply for at least another twelve months. Gregory King's economic law went into effect with a vengeance; cotton dropped 5 to 6 cents a pound.

Later Government forecasts added more than 2,000,000 bales to the prospective yield. Prices did not drop correspondingly, as they should have done had the crash caused by the early October forecast been warranted.

Low prices prevailed, however, from the early part of October, 1926, until late spring, 1927. Then prices began to rise before anything definitely was known about the present crop.

J

UST after the big crash occurred Secretary Jardine, of the Department of Agriculture, said:

"The people of the world need all the cotton that we can produce."

But a little while later his Department was giving out statements about "a burdensome supply of cotton" being "inevitable for the next twelve to eighteen months."

This view was held also by Department of Commerce folk who keep up with textiles; they could not see how consumption could equal the huge production.

Superficially, the facts seemed to warrant the conclusion. The preceding crop having exceeded consumption by 2,000,000 bales, it seemed only a mathematical certainty that a 2,000,000-bale increase in the 1926 production would bring about an enormous surplus pro

N 1926 the cotton farmers of the South lost a half billion dollars mainly because of our Government's misinterpretation of facts inadequately collected. Last week there was a crash in cotton values of more than $75,000,000 due to the same cause. To the cotton farmers of the South these happenings mean disaster, and misery and want which are difficult to describe. This article explains exactly what our Government's agencies have had to do with these two crashes.

The cotton farmer-particularly the little cotton farmer -expects aid from the Federal Government. But he has never demanded a subsidy. He has been maligned by the agitators of the West because he did not grow vociferous in support of McNary-HaugenThe Government aid which he expects is that complete and accurate information which will enable him to get for his cotton the price that his cotton is worth. The

ism.

Crop Reporting Board is charged, along with some other branches of the same Bureau, with the duty of procuring and promulgating that information. From a simple statistical organization this branch of the Department of Agriculture has grown-or swollen-into a great bureaucracy of multiform activities. One of these, apparently, has been to guess, obscurely, what future prices will be. This was the activity which demoralized the market the other day and, as a result, has been squelched—apparently at the insistence of the President. But unless this is to be followed by a calling of the Bureau back to its real business, by a purging and a strengthening of the crop reporting machinery to the point of real efficiency, the Government will still fall short of performing the service for which the people pay.

The Outlook for

vided consumption did not increase abnormally. The Lancashire mills had been brought practically to a full stop by the British coal strike and were otherwise in a depressed state. Manufacturers in this country were complaining about conditions and were getting together to bring about improvement.

Yet the mill consumption of cotton in the United States had increased fifteen per cent. Exports to the Continent of Europe indicated the biggest demand that had ever come from Europe as a whole. Japan was importing about double that country's usual takings of American cotton.

While there had been a carry-over of American cotton 2,000,000 bales larger than that of the year before, the world carry-over of all cotton had increased by only about 700,000 bales. Curiously, that fact, well known at the time, was never emphasized in the discussions of the "over-production" situation.

Moreover, the foreign production situation was mishandled atrociously.

Early in November the Bureau of Agricultural Economics said:

"Foreign production of cotton was greater during the last year than for any preceding year, but reports received so far indicate that total production in foreign countries this year will probably be somewhat below last season's."

Instead of being "somewhat below," it was, according to later announcements of the Bureau, 2,000,000 bales less, completely offsetting the increase in this country. That fact was not made known until far along in 1927, and, in so far as this investigator can find, has not been emphasized to date by any Governmental agency.

T1

HIS doesn't mean that the bureaus in Washington did not take the situation seriously or do what they thought proper towards ameliorating conditions produced by the seeming over-supply which commonly, though not always officially, was estimated by them at around 5,000,000 bales.

All the Government took the situation seriously. A special committee was appointed by the President to devise measures of relief. This committee set up on paper-machinery by which the farmers were to be provided loans at low cost on cotton kept out of the market. But no loans were taken and little cotton was held for possible higher prices by the farmers.

For the situation as defined "authoritatively" seemed to be an irretrievable one. No farmer was simpleton enough to believe that by holding he would conceal the existence of his cotton. It would