"Qrga nization and Cooperation"

(Continued from Page 41) one to rcalize that the real cause of trouble is not excess ability to take care of business but blindly grasping for volume to use that capacity. Excess capacity is an inanimate thing that is powerless to do you any harm of itself but grasping for business isa human trait that must be held in check by reasoning.

And reason will tell you that getting extra volume will not get you more profit-it will get you less. Individuals must be brought to see this and to cure themselves by their own thinking of the craze for volume at any cost, and fear of not getting enough volume. This means a scientific quoting of prices based on cost plus a reasonable profit. It means sticking to quotations. It means going after (and you cannot put too much emphassi upon those two words -going after-) only a reasonable proportion of the total business based on the average for previous years-and being satisfied with that volume. It mearrs sticking as much as possible to your own economic territory instead of spreading out all over the country. It means getting a reasonable volume of business by sane and ethical methodsand making sure of a legitimate profit on what you do get. trt means learning that increasing volume by taking it away from the other fellow only to have him in turn retaliate by taking volume away from-you, is just about as economically sound as taking in each other's washing.

When you get all through you have just about the same proportion of the total volume of business as if you had concentrated your efforts and held for your price. Most price cutting is the result of chasing after the other fellow's business and most of the high cost of selling comes from that same source. It is not the orders from vour customers that run up your sales expense, but the cost of the calls made upon the folks you don't sell. And it is the alibis of your salesmen of these same calls that get you "all hot and bothered" about competition. This war that we have all been waging upon one another over existing customers has been one of the major reasons for the excessive increase in the cost of selling in recent years, and for the constantly narrowing profi t margins.

I realize thatio undertake to change men by education is a slow process, but I do not know of any short-cuts that have gotten results for any length of time and it seems to me that the long road is the only sure road. The problems that confronted you twenty years ago were possibly better solved by individual action, but the problems that confront you today are impossible of solution except by group thinking and group action. Only by unity of purtpose and unity of action can an industry win the fight for prosperity today.

You know, gentlemen, co-operation is no longer just a fine theory-it is an economic necessity. And co-operation doesn't niean, as too rnany seem to think, everyone else giving up his pet ideas and adopting yours-it means all working together on the most feasible and practicable common meeting ground that can be found. In the nature of things that common meeting ground is going to be a compromise; partlyyour ideas, partlythe other fellow's. It must be developed out of a willingness to see and analyze things from a variety of angles-yours, and maybe that of some hundred others in your particular effort to work together here in Arizona.

You can write the best set of by-laws or formrulate the most theoretically perfect plan of organization conceivable and have it visaed by a corps of attorneys, and it will be just so much efiort wasted if the members go into it with the mental reservation that they will get away with what they can. If some members live up to the letter of the law only, and take advantage of every loopl,ole to use the organization as an umbrella to enable them to {ake advantage of the man who is living up to the spirit of the plan, then the organization is certain to be wrecked. But if every member puts his heart into the accomplishment of the objectives of the group with which he has associated himself and judges his own acts by the yard-stick of whether they help to achieve those objectives, then vour organization will succeed without anv kind of a contract and you will need only those few rules that are necessary to reliect what it is that all members are of the same mind that each should do.

It is the spirit that counts. You are going to get out of any co-operative effort just about what you put into it. The spiritof tolerance, of live and let live, the open mind to consider and profit from your neighbors'viewpoint, patience with the failure to co-operate on the part of the man who has not yet caught step with the majority of his fellows, will make mutual understanding and good will the dominant note of industry

And not the only reward will be the profit that you take out of your business. The pleasure that it adds tolife to associate amicably with your partners in the industry are one of its richest rewards. Just to make money is not the only end arid aim of organization. Jtrst to make money is not enough to ask of life. To make money comfortably, pleasantly, without bitter after-tastes; and by giving value to make money inevitably is highest form of commercial wisdom.

A Modified Italran Ensemble

The composition of this Stair Hall in the residence of Mrs. J. B. Gunther at Altadena, California, is a superb example of modified Italian architLcture. The room is oval in outline, two stories high. Floor is done in contrasting slabs of black and white marble. \ffall treatment above second foor line is ornamental plaster. Entrance doors, panelings around entire room to second foor height, staircase and hand-rail of balustrade are of Black !7alnut, each unit a masterpiece of the woodworker's art. Millwork contract by Pacifrc Manufacturing Compan)r', Los Angeles and Santa Clara. Architects, Postle & Postle, Los Angeles.