He who runs;

              Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 109
He Who Runs
TH E R E are few who dispute the fact
of mental telepathy. Proofs are
abundant that two persons whose mental
apparatus is properly attuned may trans­mit
thought from one to the other. There
are no definite rules governing the process.
It cannot be accomplished voluntarily.
But that it takes place many persons may
be found who will so testify.
Mental telepathy might be used to good
advantage, if it could be controlled, in
establishing the connection between the
work of two sets of men, one following the
other, on the repetition of an engagement
for the same client. How gratifying it
would be if an accountant upon taking up
the audit of a certain client might com­municate
with his predecessor and receive
by means of a mental connection all the
details gleaned from the latter's contact
with the engagement.
Under such an arrangement there would
be no occasion for the client to make a
request that the same accountant be
assigned to the engagement—which clients
frequently do for various reasons but the
outstanding of which is the fact that one
who is familiar with the details takes less
time for the work on a repeat engagement
and asks fewer questions. All such angles
would under a perfect system of mental
telepathy be rounded off, and there would
remain practically only the one of personal
preference.
Much of the difficulty which thought
transmission would remove might be over­come
in the meantime if more attention
were to be given to making notations in
working papers. Too much is left to be
taken for granted. Too much is left to
the imagination and some good account­ants
are so built that they have no im­agination.
On the other hand, so much
time is sometimes given to the preparation
of working papers that even accountants
with the most vivid imagination cannot
conceive of any possible use for certain of
the papers which result therefrom.
Less pencil pushing and filling up of
reams of paper with useless and time-consuming
figures, with more short, snappy
memoranda would be more to the point.
The working paper which causes the reader
to waste fifteen minutes wondering what
it means, why it was made, and whether
or not it is necessary in the present in­stance,
is cumulative in its wastefulness.
It wastes the time not only of the ac­countant
who prepared it but of those who
later come in contact with it.
The copying of sheets containing the
details of inventories is wasteful. Much
more would be accomplished, and the
process would be much more efficient, if,