The Coolidge examiner., 1933-03-17
Our Government
How 1t Operates
BY William Bruckart
MARKET INFORMATION

IN A nation that is as great as
l. ours in volume of things pro-
duced, there must in the natural
course be an enormous consump-
tion at home of commodities and
merchandise produced here. II is
essential, therefore, that the pro-
ducer Of agricultural commodities.
the professor OF those commodities
and the distributor of them, all must
be up-to-the-minute on market data.
The same is true If it be package
of pins, gusher of oil, a manufac-
turer of automobiles, and on through
the list. So there is the need for
domestic facts and figures.
The bureau of foreign and domes-
tic commerce is just as thorough in
it's study of the domestic markets
as 1t was shown heretofore TO be
in the assembly of information from
the foreign field. Possibly the gath
ering of information at home Is
little more simple than it is abroad,
but that is more apparent than
real; it only seems more simple be-
cause we are more familiar with the
practices Of commerce and industry
here than, say in France or Japan.
Throughout the United States, in
all of the principal cities, the de-
partment maintains branch offices.
Stationed there are men highly
trained for their particular work.
In the territory in which Akron,
Ohio, is located, we find men who
have intimate knowledge of the tire
industry. Along the seacoast there
will be men of shipping experience
as well as men with knowledge of
whatever industries make up the
principal businesses of the area. In
the vast farming areas of the Mid
die West, there are men with init
mate acquaintance with markets for
agricultural staples, and so on.
These men are reporting con-
stantly TO the home office in Wash.
ington, and they are thus serving as
advisers to the nation as whole
since It is calculated with some def
niteness that our national consump-
tion constitutes about 80 per cent
of our production of all commodi
ties put together.
.gal1 aH3oac fbav
are called, there are the various d.
visions in the headquarters here
with specific jobs to do. One OF
them, for example, has been en-
gagged over period of several
years attempting to find out why
some grocery stores prosper and
why others alongside will fail An
other crew has been studying the
reasons for demand in one section
for certain types of merchandise
while another community few hun
dred miles away wants something
Of different type.
The bureaus domestic division
has men who are actually serving
retail businesses of the country In
exactly the same way as a physi-
clan treats a patient. They point
out how TO avoid wasting dollars in
stead Of wasting health; they sug-
gest ways to attract customers TO
increase trade instead Of building
up bodily resistance to disease, as
the doctor would tell his patient.
Statistics constitute an important
adjunct of this service, as well as
that supplied by the foreign service,
and in this the bureau Of the CEN
sus plays its role in behalf of busi
ness. | used TO think before knew
better that all the bureau of the
census did was TO count the noses
of the natioa, but that is only
minor part of its work. 1t does
that job every ten years, and it is
an immense task, but all Of the
other time it is engaged in finding
out how many washing machines
were produced last year. how many
pairs of shoes were manufactured
in the first three months of this
year, etc.
II always has been a matter of in
terest to me to observe those cen
sus statisticians "in action" They
will examine a tabulation several
feet square, spend hours doing so.
From these figures they make 9TH
ers.
Here is one result of constant cal
culation and one that illustrates bet
ter than any that comes to mind at
the moment: In the census Office
is a giant electric clocklike machine.
1t has several hands moving in
clock manner, around the perimeter,
and every time this "clock" ticks,
1t records the birth Of an American
citizen. In something of the same
manner, a death is registered.
OF course, that machine does not
register deaths or births; it merely
registers figures on these vital sta
tistics that represent the average
number of births that have been
shown to occur through tabulation
of statistics.
One may say that has nothing to
do with business, but that is an in
correct assumption. How. for in