The author is satisfied that it is almost as difficult to persuade those who have the responsibility of conducting large industrial undertakings that a complete and intelligent office organisation will save money, time and worry, as it was a few years ago to convince them that the use of modern machine tools was indispensable to good workmanship with cheap production. Now, however, that it has been established by experience that special machinery for each manufacturing operation, the consequent division of labour in the works, is the only economical method of production, it may be clear that the same principle should be applied to the division of labour in the office, by reducing the clerical work to pure routine. To expect this to be carried out with old-fashioned books and foolscap paper would be equivalent to expecting the production of a high-class engine by old-fashioned appliances at the same price and within the same time as one turned out by the aid of the latest labour-saving machinery...Slater Lewis (1896, p. xxvii), cited in Urwick & Brech (1946, p. 76).
