This, in spite of the fact that I have published nothing regarding activities of my own relating to the 1914-1918 World War period.

Probably the feverish demand for prompt and reliable data during war times did more to stimulate the use of graphic chart technique than anything that has happened since 1920. Without realizing what was happening as the war flared, I found myself advising the executives of large corporations, government departments, etc. World trade was disorganized, and the uncertainty of material supply required quick analysis of all available data. For instance, in 1916, a New York silk manufacturer and I went to China and back again on the same steamer to determine the feasibility of building a new plant in Shanghai to employ five thousand.

For one of my age at that time, it was a great privilege to have the opportunity to develop some theories and put them in practice day by day with experienced executives whose decisions were so vital in those hectic war years. Establishing, in a Broadway office building, control methods for quicker "tum-arounds" of eighty-five ships chartered by the Belgian Relief Commission had little relation to strategy in the president's office of a steel company with twenty thousand employees in Pittsburgh, or scheduling, at New Haven, Connecticut, two thousand tool makers scattered in shops throughout New England to assist in producing the light Browning machine gun by a company already working twenty-two thousand employees at the New Haven plant. During that period "Z" chart methods and unit card curve records were