manufactured goods, but I do not believe that the bale is as yet employed to anything like the extent that could be done if the advantages and savings of this method were fully appreciated and the force of habit could be broken. The savings are extremely important and goods properly baled are better packed than cased goods, and in every case baled goods will arrive at destination in far better shape than the same goods cased, while the economy effected by the use of the bale cannot be obtained by the use of any case yet devised, either as to cost of material or labor. To illustrate the points made here I am going to make use of my records obtained during the war; the work during this period was on such a vast scale and covered so many different commodities that no ordinary commercial records could give as much information. Economy of Process.-After the signing of the armistice goods shipped to France began to come back to us in the original bales, and among this great mass I remember two bales containing 460 pairs of leggings which came back to us in just as good shape as they left the country. It happened that the balance of this shipment of leggings was packed in cases, and when these came back we found that many of the cases had been broken in shipment and a considerable portion of the contents lost and damaged. The two bales took up a little over six cubic feet and cost the Government $6.60 to return to the United States, while the cost of the same quantity of the same goods in cases was $30.80. This is a difference of more than five and one-quarter (54) cents on every pair of leggings for freight alone, an amount of money that would represent a big portion of the profit to any one handling the line. I could multiply this example by hundreds of a similar character, but this is sufficient to show immediately that where it is possible to bale goods no other method should be used. Another great saving that is made by baling goods is in the tare, for baled goods will save 97 per cent in tare as compared with cased goods. When we entered the war we were packing in cases overcoats, blouses, underwear, breeches-in fact everything that a soldier uses, and it was a regular thing (QMC Manual) to require 48 pounds of overcoats packed in 40 pounds of case. In 1917 and after it was very difficult to buy cases and we could not be particular about what sort of wood was used. In consequence vast quantities of yellow pine were bought and made up into cases, and these cases often weighed more than 90 pounds, and this 90 pounds of case had to be shipped not alone to Europe but all over the United States, enriching the express companies, it is true, but costing the Government large sums of money. We paid as high as $14 per hundred pounds when we had to send goods to the far west, and it does not take much effort to figure the immense loss when 48 pounds of goods had to go in 90 pounds of case, and when on every pound 14 cents or more had to be paid for transportation and in addition an excessive price had to be paid for cases. If we had used then as we did in January, 1918, bale packing we would have saved 45 per cent in transportation, 70 per cent in space and 82 per cent in the cost of packing materials for the war. Our saving throughout the whole period, calculating a list of 141 articles packed in standard 4 cubic ft. bales and also in standard (previous to January, 1918) 6 1/5 cubic ft. cases is shown by the following ratios: This comparison is based on an equal quantity of goods in each one of the ratios. Up to November, 1918, the amount baled in the New York District was a little over 137,000 ship tons, and although no one knows exactly what it cost to send over a ship ton, there was an arbitrary cost adopted in Washington of $240.00. However, I know of a good many instances where the cost was nearer $340.00 a ship ton, and there was an instance of a shipment where the cost ran as high as $22.50 a cubic foot. I believe that when the bill is finally settled and all the costs of convoys, losses and other incidental expenses are figured out that $10 a cubic foot would represent a fraction of the real cost. The fact that $6 a cubic foot or $240.00 a ton, is the price that has been fixed probably will not affect the result so far as the individual citizen is concerned, for the money has been spent and we have got to pay it. But what does interest the individual citizen is that this great cost was not altogether unproductive, for out of this immense transportation task certain absolute facts were developed which will mean great savings to the people in the future. To put the situation in a different form it may be safely stated, that the saving to the Quartermaster Corps resulting from the use of bales instead of cases was over $100,000,000. Had the war continued we should have been able to bring about still greater saving, and had we been prepared to use bales at the start we would have cut out big slices in the nation's bill of expenses. With reference to warehousing, the use of bales shows important savings in rent, for baled goods not only occupy less space than cased goods, but they can be stowed much more compactly. I believe it is safe to say that fully 70 per cent in space is saved by baling. There is great saving in dunnage, and another important saving arises from the relatively small space occupied by a baling plant as compared with that absorbed by a casing plant. In the latter the wood of which the cases are made is itself bulky, and the manufactured cases occupy a great deal of valuable floor space, which in these times of inadequate storage space and high rents is a consideration of great importance. The baling plant, on the other hand, occupies less than one-sixth of the space taken up by the casing plant, the material of which the bales are made can be most compactly stored, and there is no space taken up by an intermediate product represented in the casing plant by the unfilled box. We have thus clearly demonstrated important savings in the chief factors of shipping expenses: we have saving |