The Plant as a Source of Supply.
It is invariably a surprise to the management, as well as the workers, to find how much reading matter for the home reading box is available in the plant itself.
Every business man receives quantities of catalogs and other business and technical literature, and sample copies of publications, sent in the effort to get new subscribers. These are glanced at by the man receiving them, and then and there usually thrown into the waste-basket. A catalog is the best literary effort of the concern it represents, and usually contains valuable instruction. Now if the mail sorter or the purchasing department see no immediate need of the things in the catalog, it usually finds its way quickly to the waste-basket. That such catalogs have a decided interest to the users of the home reading box is shown by the fact that new catalogs are always taken away to the homes. The average manager has not the time to give each catalog the attention that it really deserves, but in the majority of cases there will be one or more men out in the plant who have both the time and interest to devote to the catalog. These usually discarded catalogs are sometimes read to see if they will not contain a thought for the “suggestion” box; the by-product being that the plant is kept up to date, so far as information contained in new catalogs is concerned. In the same way sample magazines or papers may come in, which make no particular appeal to the man to whom they are sent, or a magazine brings a marked article which is cut out and put on file,—the rest of the magazine being thrown into the waste-basket.
All of this usually discarded material can be, with profit, sent to the home reading box. The man in the office, who looks at and discards it, simply stamps or writes on it “34,” the symbol of the home reading box, or the number of its station in the inter-office postal system, and puts it in his “out” basket. On his next trip for distributing papers, the messenger takes the reading matter marked “34” from the “out” baskets, and deposits it in “34,” the home reading box.
Another source of supply consists of the newspapers, magazines, or books bought by the members of the organization as they come to work. The average man in the management departments buys a paper or magazine as he comes to work. His daily paper is surely discarded, his magazine is often discarded, sometimes even a book is thrown aside as completed. These also go through the “out” basket to the home reading box. A cent or two a day for a morning paper is little or nothing to some members of the organization. A cent or two a day is a very important element in some working men’s budgets. Besides there is an enormous waste, if daily papers are thrown away after having been read by but one person.