Ohio History Journal

KEEP THE RECORD STRAIGHT*

 

by ROBERT H. BAHMER

 

Every time I am introduced as an archivist I am reminded of the

story that was written back in 1935 by one of the Washington news-

paper columnists who writes about government people. The story

appeared shortly after the National Archives was established and

our big building at Seventh and Pennsylvania Avenue was con-

structed. The first archivist of the United States had just been ap-

pointed, and there was some publicity about the government putting

archivists on its payroll. The columnist, it seems, received a number

of inquiries as to just what an archivist was. He did some investi-

gating and finally came up with his answer. As nearly as he could

determine, he wrote, an archivist is a "dead file clerk." The in-

triguing point about his statement was that the punctuation didn't

make it clear as to who was dead, the file clerk or the files.

Every story ought to have a moral, and this one illustrates perhaps

as well as any the need for a better public understanding of the

role of the professional archivist and of archives in our society.

For the archivist who serves government, whether state or federal,

it is imperative that any notion that the archivist is a "dead file

clerk," regardless of how this phrase is interpreted, be dispelled.

Unless such erroneous notions are eliminated no archives or records

program worthy of the name can succeed, because it won't be sup-

ported either materially or administratively.

Traditionally perhaps, the archivist has been regarded as a

cloistered being, as a fellow slightly stooped and more than a little

nearsighted, who spends his time poring over fading parchments

and yellowing papers, an antiquarian quite removed from the stern

realities of modern competitive life, who if he should ever emerge

from his ivory tower, would be dazzled by the bright lights and

fast pace of present-day bureaucracy.

Whatever justification there may have been in the past for the

 

* An address delivered before the annual dinner of the Ohio Historical Society,

April 30, 1954. Dr. Bahmer is the assistant archivist of the United States.

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traditional picture of the archivist, certainly today and certainly in

the United States the archivist finds himself anything but a cloistered

scholar. This is the first matter about which the record should be

kept straight. Today, for reasons that I hope will be obvious during

the course of these remarks, the archivist is all too painfully aware

of his existence in the modern world; for the archivist, as well as

administrators, executives, and management specialists, lives in the

presence of the "paper work problem."

What is the paper work problem? From one point of view it is

a problem of quantity. It is the problem presented by the sheer mass

of records created year after year by the operations of government

and business.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Last year, for example, the

agencies of the federal government created over four million cubic

feet of records. This method of measurement probably means little

to most of you. In more understandable terms four million cubic

feet of records is enough to fill four buildings the size of the

National Archives; it is enough to more than fill the Pentagon

Building; it would almost fill the Empire State Building two and

a half times. If put into standard four-drawer filing cabinets and

arranged according to file room practice, four million cubic feet of

records would cover eighty football fields.

Permit me to repeat that this is the volume created in one twelve-

month period, not the total accumulation on hand. And I should

emphasize that the federal government has no worse record in

respect to the creation of records than have state and local govern-

ments and private businesses. Management Review, the organ of

the American Management Association, has estimated that American

business is creating records at the rate of nearly 100,000,000 cubic

feet a year.

The federal government is the largest single creator of records

simply because it is the largest enterprise. In any government the

volume of records created has a direct relationship to the number

of dollars spent. It is our guess that one file drawer of records is

created for every $25,000 spent. The volume of records created

has also an obviously direct relationship to the number of white

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Keep the Record Straight                 227

 

collar workers employed. Every non-industrial worker on the pay

roll will very likely create one file drawer of records per year.

In the federal government fifty percent of all civilian employees

are white collar workers: 110,000 clerk typists; 200,000 typists,

stenographers, and secretaries; 30,000 tabulating machine operators,

to be specific for only three classes of employees whose activities

contribute to the growing mass of paper.

It has also been shown that more than fifty percent of all workers

in banks and insurance companies are engaged in paper work

operations. In the United States today there are as many office

workers as there are agricultural employees.

The truth of the matter is that twentieth-century government and

business move on a flood of paper work: correspondence, memo-

randa, reports, forms, bills, receipts, vouchers, inventories, blue-

prints, directives, handbooks, manuals, and scores of other papers

and documents have become essential to the day-to-day operations

of all of us engaged in business or government.

The paper work problem is a twentieth-century problem and

largely a problem of our own times. It may seem inconceivable but

the facts indicate that the federal government in the twenty-two

years from 1930 to 1952 created more than seven times as many

records as it did during the preceding 155 years of its history. The

total accumulation of records in the federal government now on

hand is close to 24,000,000 cubic feet. Perrin Stryker has pointed

out that in 1920 office workers were outnumbered by employees in

manufacturing enterprises four to one. By 1953 this ratio had

dropped to two to one.

There are a number of reasons for this development. First, the

technological revolution in office methods and office machinery.

American ingenuity gave us the typewriter about 1870, and this

machine was in general use by the close of the nineteenth century.

Carbon paper, introduced a few years after the typewriter, was in

general use shortly after 1900. Between them, these two devices

started the trickle that has become a flood.

Stencil processes of reproduction were in use by 1910 and since

then there has been developed an amazing variety of efficient paper

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reproducing machines and processes. One student of public ad-

ministration was so impressed when he looked at the results that

he remarked that we were living in the "carboniferous and neo-

lithographic age."

Behind the technological revolution in office methods lies, of

course, the desire to speed up work to the end of greater production

and lowered costs. More important than this are the requirements

of large scale organization for improved means of communication

and control. Fundamentally it is big business and big government

that give us the big paper work problem, but on the other hand

paper work and improved means of communication have made

large-scale organization possible.

The larger the organization, it seems, the greater the percentage

of its energies that must be devoted to paper work. Six or seven

years ago the Harvard School of Business Administration made an

analysis of the record making and record keeping habits of a num-

ber of business firms. It was found that in small firms from 3 to

61/2 percent of the total employees were engaged in paper work,

depending upon the complexity of the business; in medium sized

firms the proportion increased to 51/2 to 10 percent--almost doubled.

In the really large scale enterprises an even larger percentage of

total employees are record makers and record keepers.

I have presented these assorted facts and figures with no intention

of implying that records and paper work are an evil in themselves.

Both of them are essential. It is only when they are allowed to get

out of hand that they become an unjustified burden on the taxpayer.

Neither did I intend to frighten you as to the future. There are

many things that can be done to keep the paper work problem within

reasonable bounds. Rather I set out to demonstrate that the modern

archivist is neither a cloistered scholar nor a dead file clerk, for, as

I have said, the archivist today lives with the paper work problem

and has a definite responsibility for helping to solve it.

The modern archivist cannot afford to live in the past, letting the

present and the future take care of themselves. Someday the present

and the future will also be past. Archives are created in the present

not in the past; many, if not most, of the problems of the archivist

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Keep the Record Straight                229

 

of the future have their origin in what is done to and with the

records created today.

In the National Archives we learned this within the first decade

of our existence. Out of our experience has come an integrated

program for the handling of the government's records. By no means

can we say that we have solved all problems. We haven't, but we

have made enough progress technically and otherwise to prove the

value of our program. And what has been done in the federal

government is being equaled in a dozen states: Virginia, Maryland,

North Carolina, your sister states in the Middle West, Michigan,

Wisconsin, and others. And, of course, private business has many

times pointed the way to those of us serving in bureaucratic ranks.

I need mention only the records programs of the Ford Motor Com-

pany, the du Pont Company, the Firestone Company, Alcoa, General

Electric, and Westinghouse.

I have observed a number of these programs, and I should like

to draw a number of conclusions from them as to what makes a

records program successful. These conclusions might well be

labeled "principles essential to a good records and archives pro-

gram.

1. The records program should be comprehensive. It should be

comprehensive in the sense that it deals with all phases of the life

of records from the time of their creation to the time of their final

disposition. The latter action may involve either complete elimi-

nation of the records by destruction or by sale as waste paper, or it

may involve permanent preservation. If continued preservation is

required, the program must make provision for the adequate ad-

ministration of the archives. In fact, the existence of an archival

establishment is basic; it is the key to the success or failure of the

program.

The records program should also be comprehensive in the sense

that it deals with all record creating activities within the jurisdiction

of the organization served by the program.

2. The records program must be coordinated. It must have central

direction. At some point there must be someone entrusted with

responsibility and authority. Ours is an age of specialization--often

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overspecialization to the point where divergent practices develop on

common problems in different parts of the same organization. The

handling of records is most susceptible to this fault. Everyone

makes, uses, or handles records. And what appears to be everyone's

problem generally turns out to be no one's problem. A records

program is the corrective that can be applied to bring about the

desired measure of standardization and improvement of practices.

3. The records program must be continuous in its operation. It

is not a "one time" action. There is no magic wand that can be

waved, no secret formula that can be applied once, after which

everyone lives happily. An effective records and archives program

requires the continuous and alert attention of a competent staff func-

tioning as a regular and accepted unit in the administrative entity.

4. Finally the records program must be supported by top manage-

ment. For a government program this means, in the last analysis,

that the program must be accepted as desirable by the taxpayers

whom we serve. But what I have in mind here is the support of the

top executives and administrators who manage the bureaus, de-

partments, and divisions. Any good records program will force

some changes in the working habits, the day-to-day routines, of

large numbers of employees. Unless there is a willingness at the

top to carry through, no small central coordinating staff can hope

to succeed.

To be more precise, "lip service support" is not enough. There

must be material support in the form of funds for personnel and

facilities, and administrative support in daily operations. To define

responsibilities and the scope of the program, a basic charter to

which all agree is essential. In government this usually means

legislation. Any records or archives act deserves the most careful

consideration in terms of objectives and responsibilities.

Our top executives, whose support is so important, are intelligent

men. With overall responsibility for the administration of our

governments and our businesses, they are naturally skeptical of

proposals that add to their overburdened budgets. We can't expect

them to buy a "pig in the poke." Unless we are prepared to demon-

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Keep the Record Straight              231

 

strate that a records and archives program has values that justify

support, we can't expect it to be supported.

Fortunately, we do not have to speculate as to the values inherent

in a program for the administration of the public records. We can

show that a properly conducted program will result in returns of

several kinds: (1) substantial dollars and cents savings in the form

of reduced costs of record keeping; (2) increased efficiency in cur-

rent administration; and (3) enhanced educational and patriotic

service to the citizens.

To appreciate the possibility of direct monetary savings in a

records program we should examine some of the costs of record

making and record keeping. It is estimated that it costs from $0.75

to $1.50 to produce the average letter, or $1,000 to produce a file

drawer full of records. It costs an average of $200 a year to main-

tain a four-drawer cabinet full of records.

The federal government today probably utilizes two million filing

cabinets to house its current records. Cabinets cost fifty dollars apiece.

The records occupy over twenty million square feet of space at an

average cost of around two dollars a square foot. Clerical costs to

keep the current files of the federal government probably exceed

$150,000,000 a year.

Now it is obvious that anything we can do to obtain a measure

of "birth control" in records creation will cut down costs; anything

we can do to reduce the amount of equipment and supplies used

will cut down costs; anything we can do to reduce the amount of

high-priced space occupied by the files or the number of clerks

required to maintain and service them will pay off handsomely.

We have estimated conservatively that in the past fiscal year our

program in the federal government produced savings of over

$1,000,000 in space and over $3,000,000 in equipment alone.

How have we done this? The details of our operation are too

numerous to discuss here. I shall present, instead, one or two

examples that represent the types of action taken.

In one field office of one of the government's bureaus we recently

completed a correspondence control project that eliminated the

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232     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

making of 200,000 file copies and 300,000 extra copies of papers

and forms per year. When extended to similar field offices of the

same bureau, this project will save the government over a million

dollars a year.

One way we reduce equipment and space costs is by the orderly

transfer of files from high cost office space and filing equipment to

cheaper space and equipment in our system of regional records

centers. During the past three and a half years we have moved over

two million cubic feet of files to these centers, releasing thereby for

re-use over 110,000 filing cabinets and two million square feet of

space. By the release of equipment from the records centers and by

the review of requisitions for new cabinets, the government's pur-

chase of filing cabinets has been reduced from a high of 97,000 in

1951 to about 10,000 in 1954.

The transfer of files to records centers is but one phase of our

larger effort to develop a program for the systematic and orderly

disposition of records. Without minimizing the importance of con-

trols on records creation or the desirability of improved records

handling procedures, I may say that the area of disposition of

records is where the records program usually begins. It is also the

area where the professional archivist plays a key role.

A planned program for the elimination of useless files as soon

as they become useless, and for the orderly transfer to the archives

of record material worthy of continued preservation will pay off

for two reasons: The first is that of all the papers created in the

course of the year's business only a small percentage have sufficient

value to justify their retention in the archives. The identification of

this small core of records is one of the most important functions

of the modern archivist.

The second reason is one that has been proved time and again in

federal and state governments and in private business. This is that

in any organization lacking a planned records program, more records

are kept than are required for purposes served by that organization.

After surveys in two state governments, three large cities, and

forty corporations, the National Records Management Council con-

cluded that an initial records housecleaning could cut down office

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Keep the Record Straight                  233

 

files by two-thirds, with probably one-third of the records being

destroyed and close to twenty percent being moved from office space

either to the archives or to low-cost storage. And this can be done

without taking unnecessary legal, financial, or administrative risks.

I mentioned earlier that the federal government was creating

records at the rate of four million cubic feet a year. At this point

I should add that under our program for the disposal of records

over three million feet are discarded annually and the volume is

growing as the program develops. The largest freight car loadings

in Washington consist of waste paper.

The elements of a planned records disposition program can be

outlined simply. The files must be inventoried and then evaluated.

The evaluation must take into account not only the administrative

usefulness of the material, but must consider also any legal and

fiscal requirements, such as the statutes of limitations, and, of course,

historical value.

The archivist cannot make all the determinations on his own. He

must have the advice and official agreement of the administrative

officials, the legal officer, the comptroller, and other interested

persons. He can, in most cases, render the decision as to historical

value, although these decisions are not always easy. And good

decisions can be arrived at only from a background of intensive

knowledge of the organization which created the records and a wide

knowledge of the total documentation in the field in which the

particular records fall, whether this be economics, sociology, political

history, genealogy, vital statistics, or some other.

One further point about the evaluation of the records. It is not

an evaluation to be applied only to old, scattered, and dispersed

accumulations of records that have been allowed to pile up until

space pressures force their removal to attics, basements, garages,

and unused corners of warehouses. To do this is an unplanned and

unbusinesslike method of handling records disposition. The evalu-

ation of records in a planned disposition program should provide

a continuing policy which administrators and file clerks alike can

apply to the various classes and types of records. Operating officials

are always surprised at how short the retention periods can be for

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234     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

the major portion of the records that serve only a temporary ad-

ministrative usefulness.

A large part of the "pay off" in a planned records disposition

program comes from the determination and observance of the safe

minimum retention period. This is what relieves the congestion and

speeds up the work in the file rooms and reduces the demand for

new equipment and additional space.

I speak for all archivists when I say that we would rather be

known for the lesser quantity of records we keep than for the tons

of papers we discard. We believe, in other words, that the archives

serve a useful purpose. We feel that the value of an archives

activity, although it cannot easily be measured in dollars and cents,

is nevertheless a real and tangible value.

In keeping the record straight I should emphasize here that the

history of archival establishments shows that their first and primary

usefulness is to the administrators of the organization in which the

records originated. The records of an organization are its "memory,"

and just as no individual can function satisfactorily without a

memory, so it is with institutions, governments, and business enter-

prises. As one eminent scholar put it: "Public records are the solid

ground on which statesmen can tread with security in the incessant

toil of conducting the affairs of a nation."

The usefulness of an archives activity to the government it serves

is indicated by the fact that of the 400,000 reference services per-

formed yearly by the National Archives over fifty percent are to

offices and officials of the federal government. To illustrate com-

pletely the uses that a government makes of its archives would be

to catalog the principal functions that government offices perform.

Let us consider, for instance, an example of the way archives are

useful to the legislative branch.

The present congress, for reasons that need not be gone into here,

considered and acted upon a grave question concerning the admis-

sion to the Union of the first great state carved out of the Northwest

Territory. From accounts in our local newspapers some of us for a

time wondered whether the state was legally a member of the Union.

My fears were dispelled when I saw a reference service report pre-

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Keep the Record Straight                235

pared in the National Archives at the request of a congressional

committee that indicated the question at issue to be which of five

possible dates should be considered as the legal date of admission.

I don't know whether our report, prepared from the archives, in-

fluenced the final action of the congress or whether that action

pleased the citizens of the state of Ohio. I feel sure, however, that

it contributed to informed legislative action.

I trust, too, that the Hoover commissions, the second of which is

still deliberating, have profited by having access to the studies and

investigations of earlier commissions with similar objectives, in-

cluding the Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency of pre-

World-War-I days.

Government lawyers are among our best clients, as witness the

extensive use of cartographic and survey records by state and federal

officials in connection with the tidelands oil question. Or take the

case brought several years ago by the city of New Orleans to recover

damages for what was claimed to be the illegal seizure by General

Sheridan during the Civil War of some $500,000 in Louisiana bonds

and notes. From our archives the treasury department was furnished

with a complete record of the seizure, and the government's case was

prepared from the documents.

Another example of the use of archives for legal and other pur-

poses is the cases brought before the Indian Claims Commission.

These are tribal claims that for the most part originated in charges

that lands had been taken from the Indians illegally. To date some

852 claims have been filed. They range from a reasonable amount of

$38,793, to the Chippewa claims, which total $448,000,000. For 244

cases the amount claimed is a little over $3,000,000,000. Californians

will be interested to know that two tribes are claiming that they

were wrongly deprived of the whole state of California.

How could these claims be properly adjudicated if there were no

archives to be used by accountants who have to determine previous

payments or by the expert witnesses including ethnologists, econ-

omists, land appraisers, and historians, who are called to testify by

both tribes and government? We have the records of treaties and

agreements and of Indian Office administration; we have the maps

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236    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

and other cartographic material from the use of which these im-

portant claims will be settled.

One final example of the use of archives for legal purposes. Few

people know that the government secured the conviction of "Axis

Sally," "Tokyo Rose," Douglas Chandler, and Robert Best by the

use of sound recordings, scripts, and other records of propaganda

broadcasts by the enemy during World War II. These materials

were a part of the records of the Federal Communications Com-

mission that had been selected for preservation in the National

Archives.

State governments use archives too--if there is a good archives

activity, state officials will use their records in proportion and just

as frequently as do the agencies of the federal government. Let me

illustrate by a few examples of how state governments have used

federal as well as state records. One example concerns the state of

Ohio. Last July we received a request from your department of

natural resources inquiring about records concerning the closing of

abandoned coal mines during the days of W.P.A. As the letter

stated, "the location and identification of Ohio's many abandoned

mines have become a matter of grave concern in many areas, turn-

pike construction through the area being only one." I hope that our

identification of forty-two W.P.A. projects in Ohio concerned with

mine sealing assisted in some degree to further the progress of your

great turnpike project.

There is a case still pending in the courts in which the state of

Wisconsin and the Chippewa Indians are contesting ownership of

certain swamp lands. The case goes back to an act of congress of

1850 that gave the lands to the state of Wisconsin and to provisions

of an 1854 treaty giving the lands to the Indians. The attorney

general's office in Wisconsin was grateful for the documentation

we were able to provide him on this subject.

If archives are of value first to the government, a close second

would be their value to the individual citizen in proving his many

rights and privileges. Records and archives become important when

citizenship is at stake. In the 1940's a young man came to the

National Archives who, like the fellow in the radio serial, couldn't

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Keep the Record Straight                 237

 

prove he was born although he knew that he was born in the United

States. He was of Arab descent and he knew that his grandfather

had been a camel driver who came to the United States in the 1850's.

Since he lacked definite information we couldn't search the steam-

ship passenger lists or the census schedules. He appeared to be out

of luck until one of our brighter archivists recalled that during the

1850's, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had the army experiment

with the use of camels in the western deserts. An examination of

the records of the army's camel project proved that the young man's

grandfather not only had come to the United States in the 1850's

but that he had become a naturalized citizen. From the evidence the

young man established his citizenship.

Thousands of individuals have proved their age, as required by

federal and state old-age benefit laws, by obtaining information

from the census records, passenger lists, land entry papers, pension

records, World War I draft books, and the like.

Property rights rank with individual rights, and in both of these

areas the records in our counties and municipalities assume the

highest place. As the archivist of the United States has said, county

records are "grass roots" records. No government touches our per-

sonal lives more intimately. Here are recorded our births and our

deaths, our marriages, our school careers, our delinquencies, the

titles to our property, the licenses of our businesses as well as our

dogs. County records are important records and their proper preser-

vation is a very real responsibility. It would be a shame, indeed, if

because of the pressures of increasing bulk, the basic records in these

jurisdictions were destroyed.

Archives have also a cultural value. An archives establishment

can be fairly regarded as one element in the educational system of

our nation. To question the keeping of archives is to question the

value of historical research.

Our democratic traditions insist rightly that our government be

accountable and that its actions be open and aboveboard. Account-

ability requires records, records of our failures as well as of our

triumphs, records kept under auspices that assure their authenticity

as historical sources. Freedom of inquiry is also a democratic tradi-

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238     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

tion, and from the free use of archives will come a better appreci

ation of our democratic institutions and the knowledge and resolu

tion necessary to strengthen them in the future.

That archives serve a patriotic purpose was demonstrated beyond

doubt by the success of the Freedom Train. Three and one hall

million people received a stimulus to good citizenship by viewing

the documents exhibited on the Freedom Train. All of us are in

terested in preserving our historical sites, the artifacts that depict

our past. It is important to preserve these, but surely the archives

which tell so much about the functioning and makeup of our society

deserve equal consideration.

In conclusion let me repeat that the values I have outlined can-

not be realized if the archives are stored in attics, basements, and

closets, where they are bound soon to decay. They must be cared for

in proper space (fireproof and air-conditioned) and administered by

a staff of sufficient size and competence to arrange, catalog, and

make them available for use.

Julian Boyd tells a story about an old fellow by the name of

Agard, who could be found in the Queen's archives at Westminister

back in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Agard felt pretty keenly that

the archives were neglected. He identified the hazards. "There is,"

he wrote, "a foure fold hurt that maie bring wrack to records (that

is to say): Fier, Water, Ratts and Myce, Misplaceinge." We have

other hazards today but Agard's list is still important. More readily

than Agard we can repair the damages resulting from neglect or

mismanagement. Preservation and repair methods and techniques

have been taken out of the realm of guesswork. The use of lamina-

tion and of microfilming are but two of our modern successful

techniques.

Mr. Agard as an afterthought listed a fifth danger to archives.

This, he said, is "even plain takeing of them away . . . by a Privy

Counsellor ... or anie of the Kinges learned Counsell." We may

know how to solve the preservation problems listed by Agard, but

like him we haven't yet solved the final danger. The solution to

this problem will come when we develop the proper traditions and

maturity of administration.

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Keep the Record Straight                239

 

As an archivist I am, of course, delighted to learn that there is

a renewed interest in your society in providing better care and ad-

ministration of your state's archives. A state as rich historically as

Ohio, one that has contributed so much to our nation's development,

deserves no less than the best.

I close with a final quotation--one used by archivists so often we

know it by heart: "The care which a nation devotes to the preserva-

tion of the monuments of its past may serve as a true measure of

the degree of civilization to which it has attained."

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