Analysis of Government records an emerging profession.

Abstract

URS, in truth, is a "paper civilization." On that substance we depend, even since the advent of the radio, for most of our mass communications and nearly all our permanent records. Some hold that the European invention of printing might almnost as well be called the invention of paper-that the use of type had been tried and discarded probably many times before and that it finally "caught on" in the middle of the fifteenth century because a plentiful supply of paper just then became available. At any rate, by now we are inextricably entangled in our reams and ribbons of paper, and sometimes we hear complaints that it is slowly choking us to death-that our civilization, built on this fragile substance, will ultimately die of it. To repeat this theory is not, of course, to subscribe to it. In recent years it is the mountains of government paper that have aroused special concern. The problem becomes particularly severe in times of war. During World War I the Hoover Food Administration required monthly reports from all licensed businesses and found itself swamped with papers which it could not possibly examine, so that after May i, I9I8, the policy was abandoned." But that was only a small flurry in comparison with what happened in World War II. The output of paper work by government agencies during this emergency has become fantastic. Federal records now in existence approximate i6,000,ooo cubic feet-some say i8,ooo,ooo-and the annual increment is estimated at i ,OOO,OOO. With the close of hostilities the rate of increase has begun to lessen, but not to the point of negligibility. What to do with official papers will apparently be a problem for a long time to come.