Cuarter II STANDARDS AND STANDARD COSTS T= use of standards by the human race dates back to the early dawn of civilization. The sparks made by a stone- age savage in chipping a flint arrowhead falling upon some dry grass and setting fire to it resulted in the adoption of a standard method of producing fire, which was very little changed until the lucifer match was substituted for the flint and tinder of our forefathers’ time. The savage who tiring of the effort involved in killing fish by means of a spear and who using guile in place of force took advantage of the greediness of his prey and made a primitive hook by lashing a piece of curved shell with fibre to a piece of bone or wood, introduced a standard method of catching fish, the principle of which is identical to that followed by the modern angler. The forward march of civilization has only been rendered possible by the adoption of standards. Standards passed on from father to son and from generation to generation represent the ratchets on the wheels of progress, and have enabled each forward step painfully and slowly made, to be maintained. Without the privilege of drawing on the accumulated experience of the race as represented by its standards, each individual would be compelled to start at the beginning and progress would have been impossible. Whereas the savage had very few and simple standards, as civilization developed standards increased in tremendous degree both as regards number and complexity, and in modern life the standards covering the multitudinous activities of human kind are of incalculable number. In dealing with the subject of cost accounting we are in- terested only in standards so far as they concern industrial life and here at the outset we are confronted with the fact that it is possible to have many standard ways of doing the same thing. Until recent years the standards followed by the various trades were largely rule-of-thumb or traditional knowl- edge and as Mr. Taylor stated in “The Principles of Scientific 33 Google