Now, we may consider three things, belonging to a given institution, that every employee of that institution has in his care. If they are properly conserved the institution will be efficiently administered, and the visible machinery for conserving them constitutes system. They are time, property and reputation. A large part of the system under which any institution is conducted has for its object the utilization of every bit of time. We Americans, with all our hustling are great wasters of time. Workers do nothing, not so much in periods of actually shirking or laziness as in getting started, in passing from one task to another, in fruitless pottering about, in endeavoring to decide some unimportant question of detail and in one or another of a thousand different ways when they seem to themselves to be at work, while they really are doing nothing useful. As for talking, it is the bane of many different kinds of work. I am inclined to think that all work should be done in silence. Possibly, however, this would be a mistake, for an occasional word keeps workers alive and in good humor where absolute silence is not necessary. It is, however, difficult to stop with a word. Words group themselves into phrases, phrases into sentences and sentences into conversation, and the workers who assert convincingly that they get on exactly as well while they are talking, succeed in cutting in half, not only their own sum total of useful achievement, but that of the annoyed toilers anywhere within earshot. System surely requires close conservation of valuable time; by promptness, by quickness, by keeping the cobwebs from one’s brain, and above all, by silence, relative if not absolute.