SUCCESSION PLANNING
What will happen to your funeral home or cemetery after you retire?
Are you training someone you trust to succeed you?
The future of your company—your legacy—can hinge on a good succession plan.

For many Americans, owning and operating their own business is a dream come true.  Being your own boss and making or breaking it on your own terms has a certain allure that inspires many entrepreneurs. But once a business is established, there's more to think about than where the next contract will come from. You need to make plans for how the company will evolve in the years ahead and after you stop working.

While people often assume the family business will just pass from one generation to the next, statistics suggest otherwise. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, only 30 percent of all family businesses succeed to the second generation, and of these, only 15 percent survive into the third generation.

If yours is a family business and more than one of your children has joined, you face some especially delicate issues. They include determining what roles your children will play now and what management responsibilities they will take on later. Very fortunate families transition
smoothly, but that may be less because of luck than because of good planning. So smart business owners develop a plan with contingencies.

How to Prepare
Whether you intend to transition to relatives or to close members of your company's "family," or you plan to hire your replacement or even sell the company outright, a good business succession plan helps the process. To prepare for the transition, ask yourself some important questions:

•    Have you discussed your vision for the company in a way that is clear to all involved?
•    Is it more important to you that your successor be the person best able to run the business or best able to keep peace in the "family"? (If you're lucky, that will be the same person.)
•    Do those not selected to lead have a clear picture of what their role is to be, and have you prepared them well to take on that role?
•    Do you have a backup plan if any of your designees decline the responsibility you have in mind for them?
•    Is a buyout part of the transition, even if it's to family members or longtime employees?
•    Will you stay on as a consultant, or turn over the reins all at once?

These questions are important whether you are passing the company to family members or unrelated employees.
If you have always been a sole proprietor, you'll need to adjust to sharing responsibility during the transition. If you're sharing it with an adult child, that will likely require an even greater sensitivity.

To some people, leadership comes naturally; others make great team members but are less inclined to take the risks associated with leadership. Be aware of these kinds of issues and mentor your replacement. Keep in mind that a mentorship is not a dictatorship. Learn to step back and let your replacement assert his or her authority. Sooner or later, that person will be in charge and needs to practice that leadership.

Allow a reasonable time for the transition; six months to two years may be appropriate. But once you start the process, don't leave it open-ended. The new manager needs to know when he or she will formally take the helm and so do the employees. Otherwise, everyone will continue to defer to you and management may break down.

Business Agreement
Whether your successor is an employee or a family member, you need to draft and sign a business agreement to clarify:

•    Who is responsible for what?
•    Who owns what assets at what values?
•    How to handle banking and income distribution?
•    Who controls access to information (such as records and financial statements)?
•    Any conflict resolution that may be needed.
•    How the baton will actually be passed, including buy-sell agreements and contingency planning?

Throughout this process, you should rely on your financial advisor for guidance and recommendations. Transitioning a business can have complex financial implications, and even a good business planner can benefit from a financial consultant who may be able to make suggestions about insurance, estate planning, wealth management and other issues the business owner may not have considered.

Is cremation an afterthought at your funeral home? Will your business still be viable—not to mention profitable—no matter what the cremation rate is in 2010, 2015 and beyond?
The time to reconfigure your business model and how you market to cremation families is now, not when your "traditional" business has all but disappeared.

Although today I continue to operate a business my parents founded nearly 50 years ago, the business my Mom and Dad ran and the business I operate are hardly the same. One of the more significant of the many ways they differ is that today nearly 50 percent of the folks prearranging their services choose a different form of disposition, different items of service and different merchandise—if any—from what was delivered by my parents beginning in the 1950s and continuing well into the 1980s (in Pennsylvania).

Picture in your mind for a moment the funeral of President John F. Kennedy.  Now, picture the funeral of his son, JFK Jr. Those two pictures speak volumes about changing consumer attitudes and preferences with regard to funeral service.

This change in consumer preferences, the fragmentation of services selected, the reduction in merchandise purchased and increased competition have created great financial challenges for the funeral profession.

It's Time To Bury The Old Financial Model
Since the advent of "direct cremation," most of us funeral directors have based our financial model on a system that increasingly burdens the consumers who choose a traditional funeral with covering the funeral home's overhead, while treating the direct cremation financial transaction as an "add on." This model does not work, and its failure is ever more accentuated as the cremation rate rises.

Over a period of many years, our funeral service forefathers brilliantly created a system that supported the outcome of the arrangement. They introduced items of service such as embalming, the rental of funeral home facilities, coaches and limousines. They introduced various types and models of caskets and burial vaults. They developed a system that supported the outcome of the arrangement when a consumer came to them to "bury Dad."

Today, we have in place in many markets a not-so-brilliant system in which the outcome supports the arrangement. You've seen the ads: "Cremation—$595."

Personally, I cannot comprehend that anyone's primary consideration in making final arrangements for a loved is the lowest possible price, but research tells us that about 27 percent of cremation consumers make a buying decision based on price. The problem is that as an industry, we've educated the other 73 percent of cremation consumers on how to make a purchasing decision based on what that 27 percent wants.

We have made cremation a commodity. In many instances, the outcome (low price) supports the arrangement. So what's the difference in the eye of the consumer between the cremation services you offer and those offered by your competitors? The price!

By and large, a significant problem in the funeral service profession today is that this model does not support our true overhead. The answer to the problem lies in creating a model suited to today's market conditions that supports the outcome of the arrangement just as the one our forefathers created in the past. That answer lies in the system we choose to put in place for the 73 percent of cremation consumers for whom the primary purchasing decision is something other than price.

To be specific, to support "Full Price" we need to differentiate ourselves from our competition in order to give consumers a reason to call us and pay full price.

One example: having a private, consumer-friendly crematory on site, a facility with a non-threatening and non-sterile appearance operated by certified crematory operators and open for inspection at any time.

At our funeral home, we spotlight value (as opposed to price) in our ads, such as:
•    "Your Loved One Never Leaves Our Care."
•    "Where will my Loved One be Cremated?"
•    "Funeral Directors at Bean are Crematory Operators Certified by the Cremation Association of North America."
•    "There's No Doubt with Bean, our Trained Professional Funeral Directors Handle Everything."
•    "Only Bean has a Private On Site Crematory, Available for your Inspection at any Time."

In light of the events at Noble, Georgia, these messages address issues important to consumers. My friend and colleague Ernie Heffner has run an ad with the direct and thought-provoking theme: "Whose Ashes are in the Urn?"

When meeting with a family to make cremation arrangements, we conduct ourselves in the same manner as when we meet with a family who has chosen a traditional funeral. By that I mean that we make no assumptions as to their wishes.

I hope that, at a minimum, everyone in this profession today insists on an identification viewing prior to the irreversible process of cremation. This is an ethical and a legal necessity, given the litigious nature of our society.

One of the most important questions we ask a family when making cremation arrangements is if they would bring in clothing for the identification viewing. This immediately communicates a high level of respect and signals the fact that we are providing a dignified level of care for their loved one.

We need to focus on the fact that the family has just suffered the loss of a loved one. As Trust 100 President Alan Creedy says, we need to remember Mom, remember Dad.

Many families at first will say they don't want a viewing. However, we have found that after the cremation arrangements have been thoroughly explained, the date and time for the identification viewing have been set and the clothing has been gathered by the family for the viewing, many people will arrive for the ill viewing accompanied by several other family members—sometimes as many as 20 or 30—and sometimes with their minister for a short prayer service.

In fact, this occurs so regularly that we have factored this overhead into our overall pricing strategy. It is a "win-win" situation in that consumers are more satisfied and the funeral home receives a fee proportionate to the level of service provided. The outcome supports the system simply by focusing on people, not on price.

Another means of creating value is package pricing, or compressed pricing, in which you create several packages and include them in your General Price List. As an example, we have a package called "Direct Cremation with Memorial Service Including Ceremonial (Rental) Casket For Private Family Viewing with Committal Service,” which includes the following:

•    basic services of funeral director and staff and overhead,
•    transfer of remains to funeral home within 20-mile radius,
•    preparation of remains for private family viewing,
•    staff and use of facilities for private family viewing,
•    staff and use of private crematory for cremation,
•    up to three days' use of refrigeration facilities,
•    use of ceremonial casket for private family viewing,
•    staff for memorial service,
•    staff for visitation up to two hours prior to memorial service,
•    funeral coach,
•    urn ark,
•    limousine (local),
•    flower/service vehicle (local),
•    committal or other disposition service,
•    acknowledgement cards (25),
•    guest register,
•    personalized memorial tributes & prayer cards, and
•    temporary grave marker
The package includes most of the services and merchandise found in a traditional funeral service, and we price it accordingly, including a proportionate share of our true overhead. We have found that families are more than willing to pay the necessary charges because they perceive value in the many services covered by the package, even though historically the arrangement may have been thought of as "just a direct cremation."

Over the past couple of years, we have seen the introduction of memorial tributes that incorporate several photographs of the deceased along with service information, poetry and scripture or thoughts written by loved ones. These tributes can be tied into a seemingly endless array of themes, from which the family can select, such as the ocean, civil or military service, hobbies or nature.

These types of memorial tributes can be pricey and time-consuming to produce, but we have found them to be invaluable to consumer satisfaction, so we incorporate them into most of the package selections we offer.

Why are the memorial tributes so important? They give family and friends a keepsake of photographs they will treasure all their lives. Recently I met a gentleman in a social setting who could not thank me enough for the memorial tribute we had provided at the service for his best friend.
 
He told me he framed the tribute and keeps it on his desk, where he can glance at the photographs and remember his friend every day.

This type of product can differentiate your funeral home from your competitors. It can communicate that your funeral home is special and offers something valuable that, because of the cost and effort involved, few of your competitors offer.

When factored into your overall pricing strategy, these tributes will infinitely impress the people who attend services at your location, will offer something of tremendous value to the families that you serve and will differentiate your funeral home and promote your brand.

Be Brand A, Not Brand X
What do I mean by promoting your brand? A brand is a promise to fulfill a consumer's expectation of a certain level of integrity, quality and consistency. A premium brand is a recognized product for which consumers are willing to pay a premium based on their higher expectations.

We see brand recognition in everything from facial tissues to ketchup to automobiles. Recently I've noticed that hospitals and homebuilders are focusing on promoting their brands in their marketplaces by differentiating their services from those of their competitors.

Rather than focusing on the price of an arrangement, those of us in funeral service would be well advised to focus on differentiating ourselves with special products and a higher level of service—and promoting the same at every opportunity. By doing this, we are developing a special brand in our marketplace, one that leads families to expect a premium level of quality, integrity and consistency, a level that our companies deliver.

What are some specific concepts you can use to develop a brand? We develop our brand by delivering on our promise to deliver that premium level of integrity, quality and consistency. We do it by reinvesting in our facilities and in our staff, by offering special products (such as those memorial tributes) and by having a private on-site crematory that communicates a special level of care. We do it by offering a level of care and consideration that our competitors do not offer, by personalizing services with photographs and mementos that hold special meaning to those attending services.

We develop our brand by focusing on people, not on price.

You also need to communicate that brand, that level of integrity and quality of service, in all of your advertising. Develop a unique logo and brand your signage, your Web site, your newspaper and television advertising, your newspaper death notices, the memorial tribute folders and memorial folders you offer—everything you can think of.

It may seem adverse to our ingrained funeral service logic to take this contrarian approach by offering more for more. But simply by remembering "Mom," remembering "Dad," by focusing on people rather than on price, you will ensure your client family's satisfaction and your financial success as you adapt to the changing funeral service environment.

Adapted from a presentation at the 2005 ICFA Convention

If you are going to run a sales program, you have to have a cost model that you're going to maintain. In any sound cemetery operation, I suggest that 70 percent of your sales ought to come from prearrangements; 30 percent of your revenue should come from at-need services.

Your cost of sales should be managed somewhere around 23 percent or less, providing a gross margin of 77 percent.

Your marketing should be 25 percent or less. Maintenance expense, 21 percent; administrative expense, 12 percent; operating expense, 58 percent; and net operating margin, 19 percent.

You need a weekly report for your sales program. Financial statements are always behind or done late, so it's hard to monitor your sales program without a weekly sales report.

I meet weekly with my sales managers, my administrative managers, accounting managers and operations managers to review our sales results and to determine what we can do to support the sales program.

We also analyze our sales reports every week so we know on an annual basis how we're doing, what pace we're keeping.

The weekly sales reports monitor:
• your at-need and preneed sales compared to budget;
• your staffing goals, average contract, unit sold;
• individual performance of sales managers, unit managers and memorial counselors; and
• family service ratios of preneed families to at-need families.

On examination of annual statements of cemeteries as published in Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening, there seem to be two kinds of perpetual care funds:

First, and the most general, are the funds given for the perpetual care of individual lots. Such funds, it seems to me, should be called "Funds for perpetual care of lots."
 
Second, sums set aside by the cemetery officials for the perpetual care of the whole cemetery. We will call such funds "General reserve or general care of cemetery funds." The existence of either or both of these funds assumes that the location of the cemetery is permanent and that no change in environment will necessitate abandoning the land as a burial place. Before any cemetery officials give a contract or receipt binding the corporation forever, has proper precaution been taken, through legislative action or otherwise, to assure the permanency of the location of the cemetery grounds and their perpetual use as a burial place? We all know of many instances where cemeteries have been condemned, the interments ordered removed to a different location and often the identification of those interred completely lost. Suppose perpetual care had been provided for on lots in such cemeteries, how are the officials to carry out the binding contracts of their predecessors? Is it not paramount to all other considerations that the greatest caution be exercised to insure the permanency of location?

Next to the permanency of location, the permanency of the organization must be considered. Are our cemetery companies or associations so organized that provision is made so that they can carry out the contracts for all time themselves, or turn such funds or obligation over to some organization of an unending nature, which will bind itself and its successors to carry out the original agreement? If permanency in these two vital points has been provided for, we are in a position to accept the trusts imposed upon us, but if not, it were far better for us to be honest and candid and tell our patrons that we are a short-lived body and can only agree to bind ourselves for a specified time. Assuming that perpetuity can be guaranteed, so far as human foresight can guarantee what such a stupendous word implies we are in a position to consider the "proper and legal methods of applying the principle."

The laws of the State of Wisconsin have made provision for cemeteries to accept funds for perpetual care of lots as follows:

"Every such association *** owning and using lands for cemetery purposes shall take, hold and use such gifts, bequests or devises of personal or real property or the income or proceeds thereof, as may be made in trust or otherwise, for the improvement, maintenance, repair, preservation or ornamentation of any lot, vault, tomb, chapel or other structure in such cemetery, according to the terms of the gift, bequest or devise and in accordance with such reasonable rules and regulations as may be made by the officers charged with the duty of caring for the cemetery.

"If money is given or bequeathed for any such purpose and without direction as to the manner of its investment the income of which is directed to be used for any such purposes, it shall be invested by the proper officers in bonds of the United States, of this State, or of some county, city or village, town or school district of this State, or in bond or note secured by mortgage on property in amount not exceeding one-half the value of such property. * * * It shall be the duty of * * * such treasurer or other financial officer of any cemetery association to which any gift, bequest or devise has been made for any purpose within this section, on the first secular day of January in each year to make a written report to the Judge of the County Court of the County in which the cemetery thereof is situated, showing in detail the amount of funds and the value of property which has been received for such purposes and the disposition thereof, * * *. The said Judge shall examine all accounts rendered and audit the same and also examine into the investments made and securities taken hereunder.

"Property given, bequeathed or devised and trusts created for any of the purposes herein authorized shall be exempt from taxation and from the operation of laws against perpetuities, accumulations and mortmain."

Such are the statutory provisions of the State of Wisconsin to safeguard the funds left by individuals for the perpetual care of their lots and are the "legal methods of applying the principle."

The Trustees of Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, gave the matter of perpetual care of lots a great deal of consideration before drawing their contracts, or receipts for funds to be deposited and it is with great pleasure that I give you the following form as a result of their deliberations:

"Received of ________ the sum of _________ dollars to be invested and the income of which is to be expended in the manner hereinafter stated, for the perpetual care of Lot number _____, in Block number _____, in Section number _____ in FOREST HOME CEMETERY, in the County of Milwaukee, WS, in doing work on said lot as follows: _______________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________.  Said sum of money has been received on the following condition, to which: That the amount received shall be invested, together with such other sums as have been or shall be received for like purposes, to the best advantage and kept in a separate fund, and the income arising from such invested fund shall, on the first day of May in each year, be apportioned as follows: One percent of the total amount of said fund shall be retained and carried into the General Reserve Fund of the Cemetery, and the balance of the income of such first named fund shall be apportioned pro rata to the several amounts in said funds and the amounts so apportioned shall be the amounts that may be expended during the current year on the lot, lots or graves, for the care of which said sums of money shall have been received. Any amount left over unexpended for any year or years on any given lot or lots or graves shall be added to the amount allowed to be expended in any subsequent year or years.

"No gift or bequest shall be entitled to any benefit from the income of the fund, unless such gift or bequest shall have been received at least one year prior to any first day of May. No gift shall be received for a less sum than one hundred dollars."

The form of contract is so simple that it does not seem to need explanation, but there may be some among us who have an inclination to use the word "why" and I will try to forestall such by giving the reasons before the questions are put. The one percent is carried to the general reserve fund for the purpose of paying the expense of looking after the investment of the moneys left in trust, and for reimbursing any loss that might possibly occur and also for the purpose of helping to maintain the cemetery, when the income from the sale of lots and other receipts have become so small as to be inadequate. While every lot owner, who is willing and wants to have his lot looked after in time to come, is particularly interested in such individual lot, he also wants to know that the drives, approaches and general appearance are kept up, and we have as yet failed to find anyone who does not see the wisdom of such provision and who is not perfectly willing to contribute his share for such purpose.

The wisdom of agreeing to spend only the income less one percent has been already shown; for, when Forest Home began taking funds for perpetual care, the prevailing rate of interest paid on first class mortgages, such as they could accept, was six and seven percent, while now it is only 4½ and five and in some instances they have accepted as low as four. Suppose the Trustees had agreed to spend five percent of the amount deposited; or a sum equal to five percent, which only a few years ago seemed like a reasonable calculation, they could not carry out the trust without loss. The management of every cemetery is now doing and always will do the best they can for their lot owners and they will get the best returns for their money obtainable with good business judgment and so depositors are and should be, satisfied to accept what the principal will bring. In case depositors are not satisfied with the form of contract issued, they have the alternative of depositing special securities and the entire income of such securities will be credited without deduction for the general reserve fund until such time as the securities so given shall mature or be paid, when the amount realized there from will be added to and invested with the special fund and the pro rata amount of the net income will be apportioned as provided for in above form of contract.

Another precaution to be observed is to avoid making contracts providing for too much detail, as they are sure to cause trouble. In a letter from one of the prominent members of our association is the following: "A contract made for setting tulips in a lot where the stone work destroys the greater part of them each year, is now making trouble for me." This contract was probably made during the time of the present incumbent and when it was made no doubt was entertained as to its practicability. If such snags are encountered in so short a time after the contract is issued, what right have we to burden our successors in years to come with provisions that to us seem reasonable, that to them maybe impossible of fulfillment? Were it not the wiser to agree to something like the following, changing the wording to cover the wishes of the depositors:

"The net income to be spent on said lot in keeping the lot, graves, monument and markers in the best possible condition" and then add, "if funds are sufficient, after the foregoing work has been done, plant and care for flower bed, or fill and water flower vase, or do any other special work as may be desired or specified”. The wisest among us cannot tell what conditions may surround our successors, and we must not do for others what we would not like to have done for us.

In one cemetery that I have heard of where contracts were made guaranteeing to "water the lot," the water supply gave out and the guarantee or agreement became, for the time being at least, null and void. Could not the depositor, if he were still living, or his heirs, if he were dead, claim that the contract had been voided by non-fulfillment and demand the refund of the amount deposited? How easily this danger could have been avoided by simply agreeing to give the best care possible to the lot.

No set rules can be made covering all cemeteries and each must work out its own problem. I would most urgently suggest the greatest caution be exercised in not making contracts or agreements that it may not be possible to carry out.

One writer to Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening says, "Three percent is a safe rate of interest to be allowed on perpetual care funds." Is any rate safe when United States bonds paying two percent are now selling at a premium? Suppose laws are passed making it obligatory for cemeteries to invest their trust funds in United States bonds, where is the safety of guaranteeing three percent? Not so many years ago, the trustees of a cemetery not five thousand miles away from Milwaukee, accepted funds for the perpetual care of lots and agreed to expend annually a sum equal to five percent of the principal.  Fortunately there were not many of those contracts issued, for if there had been, I fear that in a few years, judging from the decline in the rate of interest in the past fifty years, the trustees of that cemetery would think their predecessors were, to say the least, not good business men. Guarantee to do only what is possible and then do it for all time.

The neglected and unsightly appearance of many of our cemetery lots, when the immediate members of the family have passed away or have moved to distant locations, plainly shows the necessity of providing for perpetual care. I heard of a case not long since where the owner of a lot who was possessed of a large portion of this world's goods, stipulated in his will that twenty-five thousand dollars should be spent in the erection of a suitable monument on his lot. The executors faithfully carried out the provision of the will and the "suitable" monument was erected, and the remaining portion of the estate, after paying sundry bequests to charitable institutions, was distributed among the heirs. Nothing was left for the perpetual care of the lot and the monument, and in an incredibly short time the heirs failed to pay any attention to the matter and the twenty-five thousand dollar monument was surrounded by a hay field, which perhaps was fortunate, as it prevented passers-by from seeing that the grave of the one whose money paid for the "suitable" monument, was badly sunken and neglected. It seems to me that this one incident is better than a whole volume on the necessity of providing for perpetual care, and I would strongly urge on each and every cemetery official to advise his lot owners to be sure to provide funds for perpetual care.

Injustice to the purchasers of lots, the subject of "General Reserve Funds" for the perpetual care of the whole cemetery must be carefully and conscientiously considered and as large an amount as possible of the annual receipts should be set aside for this purpose. The Trustees of Forest Home Cemetery set aside 20 percent of the amount received from the sale of lots and single graves, after deducting the amount paid for lots and single graves repurchased and as the general income of Forest Home is still adequate to maintain the cemetery, the income on the principal is added to the principal each year.

We are all vitally interested in making our cemeteries as beautiful as possible and we must see that funds are provided for maintaining the standard in years to come.

TO RECAPITULATE

I. Make your location and organization permanent.
II. Secure funds for perpetual care. In doing so, first, avoid impossible contracts and, second, thus secure perpetual fine appearance of both individual lots and of the entire cemetery.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 19th Annual Convention
Held at Washington, DC
September 19, 20, 21 and 22, 1905

In presenting the subject of perpetual care I can but do so in such manner as has come under my observation and coming in contact with officers and managers of our associated cemeteries in various parts of the United States. To relate my first experience on the subject of perpetual care and general care: During the year 1880 a gentleman of our city, returning from a visit from his old home near Boston, MA, on looking over Forest Hill, Mount Auburn and Mount Hope cemeteries, near and in Boston, he learned that money could be placed in the hands of a cemetery board for the future care of his cemetery lot. In Oakwood Cemetery, which is now under my care as superintendent by request, his attorney asked me to suggest a plan of care. I proposed lawn mowing, also keeping the graves sodded and the lot in good order. This rule was adopted and a provision in his will followed and was carried to completion. Another rule was passed, subsequently, by our board of directors, that the lot shall be lawn mowed, the graves resodded; the foundations of monuments should be kept in reasonable condition and good general care given to the lot. My experiences in these contracts were: the first proposition did not mean much, and the second contract offered too much and would lead to endless confusion. I find the best contract we have finally is the safest and best both for lot holders and the cemetery associations. It is very plain and simple, strong in law and expressed in but few words and is certainly binding and yet liberal enough to the several parties to the contract. I will here give the main points in our agreement:

"Therefore, in consideration of said trust the trustees, in behalf of said corporation, and their successors in office, do hereby agree to cut the grass and to take proper care of the graves on said lot and to keep lot in all respects and at all times in good condition. This agreement shall be perpetual. And if at any time said corporation shall fail to keep and perform the agreement to be kept and performed upon their part herein mentioned, in all respects, that in that case they shall pay over to any person or corporation appointed in their stead by the Circuit Court of Henry County, Illinois, to carry out the provisions of said agreement."

As a means employed in soliciting a fund for perpetual care, first it requires a cautious approach to the lot owner.

In presenting the real object, first, the care: the benefits derived there from at once relieving the owner of the lot caring for the mowing and cleaning the lot; that adds so much to the beauty and pleasure of the lot and its surroundings.

Next in the general good order observed: settling at once who are the owners of the lot and those having the rights of burial on said lot, also explaining to the lot owner that the interest or income on the moneys paid in to the association can only be used in the care of said lot, that the principal cannot be used for any other purpose; that the amount paid in shall be loaned out at a rate of interest that is prevalent; that all such moneys paid in as perpetual care shall be loaned out to responsible parties or invested in reliable stocks or bonds by the board of directors. That for all such moneys, stocks or bonds the secretary-treasurer shall give good and sufficient security to the directors for said fund.

Without a full explanation of the nature of the plan of perpetual care very little can be done. While our perpetual care funds have gone into the thousands, we still have various plans of work. In presenting the objects, first asking the payment of moneys without the making of a will of the amount required, so that the lot owner can see the work done, while others contemplating the future or perpetual care can see how it is carried out.

Our next suggestion or plan is that by their will a certain sum shall be left and applied as a perpetual care of their lot in the cemetery. This manner of soliciting funds has been a successful one, as is shown in the great number of wills that have been made and now being contemplated and finished. In our first efforts in starting the perpetual care fund we placed the price per square foot at sixteen and two-third cents. Later the amount was fixed and now remains at twenty-five cents per square foot and now the problem is strong in its requirements of an advance to thirty-five or forty cents per square foot.

In my travels and experiences in the plans of perpetual care, as a means some cemeteries issue a card of rules, others have their plan in their rules and regulations. But I observe in some of their contracts they promise very little of what they propose to do.

Now I take the position that the idea and plan of perpetual care means what it says--that this money received is not only trust funds, but a very sacred trust and that all cemetery associations and the lot owners should surround this fund with all the safeguards that are found possible in the law; that the fund shall be carefully loaned; that the interest shall be carefully applied and that all excess of interest shall revert back to the perpetual care fund.

In looking at the different phases of human nature, we find they have changed.

A few years ago I called the attention of two of our lot owners to the idea of perpetual care for their lots in the cemetery. They regarded it as a good and desirable thing to do, and they promised to do so with cash or by their wills. But as their several wills have been settled, no such provision was made and nothing has been done to that end as yet. No care has been taken of these lots--only as the association has done by order of the cemetery board.

Now, the best plan or mode of treatment of these lots is to let the weeds and grass grow and I notice that the grass is tall and the weeds are blossoming nicely.

When a lot is placed under perpetual care we place a painted board marked "Perpetual Care" on it. After a short time we change the board. I find some lot owners object to the perpetual care signs being placed near their unkempt lots. Yet we take a certain degree of delight in keeping the perpetual care cards very near uncared-for lots.

A gentleman of our city, on returning from the interment of a dear friend in a cemetery neat Chicago, noticing the beauty of perpetual care and of a well-kept cemetery, called on me and suggested that our association should set aside certain blocks and lots to be sold only under perpetual care, looking forward to the time when all lots should be sold at a price to cover the perpetual care cost.

In reply to the question, "What will we do with those of moderate means?" I will say that this can be obviated, as we have varied locations and various priced lots and locations.

I have frequent inquiries as to what is perpetual care, and its application to the small cemeteries. I will say that in a country graveyard no provision or plan is possible to deposit moneys so received and a contract to do the work as proposed. In some instances money can be deposited, in savings banks whereby the interest is to be applied to the care of a certain lot. There is no law or authority whereby such funds can be cared for. I would suggest that such moneys designated for this purpose can be placed in a trust and savings bank with provision for paying the interest or income on such funds, also the compensation allowed for the work performed. While I have in mind two cases where the sum of one thousand dollars was left by will to two country graveyards to be applied in the care and keeping in good order of their lots, in a stated locality, now after many years no further provision is made for carrying out the terms, of the wills. One mode of relief would be to ask the courts to allow the remains to he removed to a chartered cemetery association and accept the benefits of a genuine perpetual care.

While my investigations show the most favorable line of cemeteries are stock companies and controlled entirely by an elective board of directors and that a lot holder association is not a desirable or successful plan, I further believe that a cemetery association should in no sense be a speculative enterprise.

Some inquiring friend asks, "Will these funds so deposited for perpetual care be applied honestly? Are men or associations as honest and trustworthy today as they were one hundred or even fifty years ago? I say, unhesitatingly, yes, there are today, gentlemen and lady superintendents of cemeteries who are endowed with superior knowledge in the care of cemeteries and cemetery funds to direct properly the use of all moneys required and well know the security that should be given each year; and today greater safeguards are thrown around our trust and savings banks; they with the strength of a well established association coupled with a responsible board of directors as a cemetery board such as we find are chosen each year. I refer to the character of all well-known cemetery associations, men and directors of the highest standing, superintendents and treasurers of the sterling variety are sought for and selected to fill these places. We can safely place perpetual care funds in the kindly care and keeping of all these, then when one of these lays down the armor we well know the refrain, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter into the joys of everlasting remembrance and the embrace of perpetual care."
 
From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 18th Annual Convention
Held at Chicago, IL
August 23, 24 and 25, 1904

There are in the United States two monthly Magazines SYSTEM and MOTOR devoted to business and each month they both have articles by business men on the methods of accounting and methods they have found successful in obtaining custom. There is also in each Magazine a red hot story of a successful strategy whereby some large contract was obtained or a good customer recovered by the head of the firm who showed the boys how to do or a story by the cub salesman who thought it all out by himself: Oh! The story is beautiful and the method of obtaining customers succeeds so well, but THEY DON'T WORK FOR ME! And so I may present to you sources of income which succeeds so well at my Cemetery but may be of no use to you.

In displaying to you the sources of income that appear to me open to a Cemetery I expect only to speak of those which relate to the operation of a Cemetery and do not include ordinary farming or market garden operations for at West Laurel Hill Cemetery there are no sources of income which are not directly applicable to any Cemetery. West Laurel Hill Cemetery Greenhouse sells nothing outside the Cemetery. Anyone can run a Greenhouse; anyone can be a merchant for anything and a Cemetery can grow and market potatoes or spinach or any farm product—it can hire its gardeners out to care for private places as West Laurel Hill Cemetery has often been solicited by its lot holders to do (but never has allowed) but all of these sources of income are outside the scope of this article, as they are open to anyone—but legitimate sources of income for a Cemetery are those open only to a Cemetery.

The sources of income open to a Cemetery as I see it may be put under twelve heads and several sub-heads:
First-Courtesy
Second-Persistent Advertising
Third-Psychological Salesmanship
Fourth-General Good condition of Cemetery
Fifth-Sales of Burial Rights
(Lot sales)
(Single Graves)
(Community Mausoleums
(Crematory & Columbarium)
Sixth-Inculcation of the idea that the Cemetery in which is his lot is HIS Cemetery rather than the Cemetery of the selling Company.
Seventh-Institution (and addition to it from each sale) of a fund the income from which shall maintain the Cemetery.
Eighth-The institution and inculcation of individual ENDOWMENT of the individual lot holders own lot:
Ninth-Burial Charges
Receiving Tomb Charges
Rental of Special Mausoleums instead of use of Receiving Tomb
Charges for digging graves and usual attention at a funeral
Charges for special grave structures
Charges for grave and dirt pile decoration and use of tents, etc.
Removal charges from grave to grave or as ordered.
Tenth-Income from construction of foundations and work connected therewith, as corner post holes and derrick guy line posts.
E1eventh-Greenhouse work
Bouquets, cut flowers and floral designs
Christmas designs and decorations
Faster and Memorial Day floral requirements
Flowerbeds
Planting Graves
Sodding and grading
Special trees    
Special yearly care of lots and
Talking up endowments:
Twelfth-Endowments

In presenting to you after twenty-seven years of Cemetery work the sources of income that appear to me open to a Cemetery, I expect only to speak of those which relate to a Cemetery and do not touch the farming operations which may be proper for the outlying or undeveloped parts.

First. Courtesy-I put courtesy and a spirit of interest in everyone coming to the Cemetery as one of the best sources of income a Cemetery can have—in the early days of West Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Yes! In the very early days when West Laurel Hill Cemetery was so far from the haunts of men that anyone could be excused for saying “Where is it at? I mean in the years 1869 to 1876. The Secretary at the City Office was a man who was courtesy itself; Listen to you, hear all about your life and remember it!! and yet he was always putting the Cemetery where the talker remembered it—Did his hours spent with aunt Jane and cousin Mary pay? Yes. They paid. By courtesy I do not mean an outward overflow of hand shaking and what I may call palaver, but that indescribable something which bespeaks interest in you. No matter if it is a child—no matter if it, is the poorest owner of a single grave—the child or the poorest owner of a single grave may have the word to say to some wealthy person "Go to West Laurel Hill Cemetery." Yes!! I see you say that is a low reason for courtesy-true!! But you want to see behind the scenes and I am showing you. I know whereof I speak—indeed, I have known of people once poor to become rich and the warmth of the courtesy shown them when poor made them a client, ah! That's a word!! Made them a client when rich.

Second. Persistent Advertising. Where—When—How. At West Laurel Hill persistent advertising through the last forty years has been by a two or three line ad in one or two daily newspapers and by a small pamphlet scattered broadcast over the city from the City Directory by mail—it pays—in one particular case the lady who bought a $500.00 lot told us she had thrown our pamphlet in the ash barrel and then, the next day, fished it out again. Again, and most important of all, West Laurel Hill Cemetery advertises by the persistent bombardment three times a year of lot holders and all whose names and addresses it is possible to obtain connected with lot holders; you come to our office and ask to see the lot or grave of John Smith—at once or as opportunity offers we get your name and address and relationship to John Smith and send you advertising matter three times a year.

Third. Physiological Salesmanship: What is it-Well! It is just the reverse of the psychological purchase of a horse. When you are psychologically purchasing a horse, you can see more defects in that horse than you can find after you purchase him—when you sell physiologically, you are weighing every point of the customer for that inkling of how high he will go—It is not his clothes; it is not the paint on his auto—it may be a sigh—it may be a hesitation as you walk by a lot—it is feeling the pulse of the prospect and at last perhaps shooting far ahead of his supposed mark so as to back gracefully down—it is saying—this lot is $15,000.00 dollars and noting an indescribable delay—perhaps be says to his wife—"How will that suit you Mother"!! The tone is enough—after that if you look at another lot you say, "It is not as good as your lot" clearly meaning the $15,000.00 lot. What is Psychological Salesmanship—it is so hard to tell—I give it up. You can cultivate it and never know you have it.

Fourth. General Good Condition of Roads and Lawns: Of course the appearance of the Cemetery will influence the prosperity of the Cemetery but there is often a neatness and evidence of care although all the grass may not be cut to hand mower shortness and the condition of roads and edging may vary in accordance with the locality; but neatness and evident care of the Cemetery are a source of income.

Fifth. Sales of Burial Rights.
Lot Sales
Single Graves
Community Mausoleum
Crematory and Columbarium

In most cemeteries the greater part of revenue from Lot Sales and in some communities the income from Single Graves is a source worthy of consideration but in Philadelphia I know of no Cemetery where it is worth considering and in my own Cemetery, West Laurel Hill, only 387 single graves have been disposed of in forty-eight years.

In regard to income from Community Mausoleums, Crematory and Columbarium, I am not in a position to speak as my own Cemetery has none and there is only one small community Mausoleum in or near Philadelphia and only one small Crematory and Columbarium which are under a society rather than in connection with a cemetery although the Society does own a few acres and sells lots. It may not be generally known that the Community Mausoleum was widely exploited as early as 1875, the idea then being, however, that the building would be in the built up portion of the city or on a lot in the city, entirely unconnected with the Cemetery.

Sixth. Inculcation of the idea that the cemetery in which is his lot is his cemetery rather than the cemetery of the company from whom he bought his lot.

A wise and successful owner of a department store in Philadelphia told people to come in, make yourself at home, the store is yours—but until his time such was not the fashion; the idea has spread until at lunch counters and such places, little watch seems to be kept of what people take. If we can get our lot owners to think of the cemetery as My Cemetery and not as belonging to he West Laurel Hill Cemetery Company—he will be a good missionary for the Cemetery. Some may say that the idea of ownership leads to the claim for privileges which would ride over all reasonable rules and' to read some Cemetery pamphlets it would seem as if the pages should each be headed with the good old German Sign "Es ist verboten".

Of course, the guiding hand must be there and the restraining and guiding must be done through our first heading COURTESY which is ever working from prospect of a sale to the grandchildren who may, and often do, endow a lot. And now I must touch on a point which will seem great heresy to many of you and that is that nothing awakens the feeling of affection and a desire to spend money for flowers and care of the lot as does the grave mound. Ah! My fellow members of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents do not allow yourselves to believe you are true economists from a Cemetery standpoint when you smooth out your lots and destroy the evidence of burial. You are cutting the ground from beneath your feet—you are destroying a perpetual source of income. Trouble!! WHAT IS TROUBLE? You say a grave mound is in the way of your lawn mower—you say a grave mound burns out in summer: But if you will cultivate your lot owners and their sons and their daughters you can get orders to plant and replant the grave mounds and those you can't get orders to plant and replant stand you in good stead to show the awfulness of neglect. My friends, a thousand grave mounds mean several hundred dollars profit a year when you work it in the right manner—WORK!! Oh yes work—perhaps our positions would fade away if we did not and do not work. Mrs. Smith says "Look how nice Mrs. Jones' graves look—"I cannot be behind her!!!" This PROFIT on grave mounds will go on for years and will grow and grow.

Seventh. Institution and Maintenance of a fund the income from which will provide for the future care of the Cemetery—this fund to be IN TRUST with a reliable Trust Company and out of the hand's of the changing Cemetery authorities. West Laurel Hill Cemetery has from the first sale of the lot laid away ten per cent of the purchase money to form with like sums from all, other lot sales a Permanent Fund, we call it, income from which is and shall hereafter be applied to the care of the Cemetery, its roads, walks, buildings and appurtenances and, as a matter of fact, as far as it will go to the care of lots. The money so laid away is placed IN TRUST with Trust Companies (Fifty Thousand dollars to one and then Fifty Thousand to another). This fund now amounts, July 1st, 1925, to $350,731.53. The founders of West Laurel Hill did not know who would follow them as managers and were quite aware that a man might be a first class Cemetery manager and a bad financier. So the managers were relieved of all care of the principal of the PERMANENT FUND—the interest and income being paid the Cemetery Company for the care of the Cemetery.
 

The Permanent Fund for any lot is not added to the selling price but is paid by the Cemetery Company itself as agreed in its deed to the first lot purchaser and with all purchasers after him. As you can see the Permanent Fund is a great source of income to a Cemetery and a little arithmetic will tell you that West Laurel Hill Cemetery with a permanent fund of $350,731.53 will receive within a year at only five percent, an income of $17,536.56 from this source alone.

Eighth. The Institution of Individual Lot Endowments and inculcation of the fact that the lot holders lot should have a fund or endowment placed IN TRUST, the income to be for the upkeep of his property—HIS lot separate from the Cemetery General Fund. In all the States of the United States there are laws against trust in perpetuity except trusts which apply to Cemeteries and the care of cemetery lots. Seeing from the early years of our Republic that the European law of primogeniture held land and money in one family, to the detriment of the general public, our laws forbade such a course and no one can will their estate beyond their grandchildren; grandchildren cannot be denied the right to do as they choose with an estate received from a grandfather—however, our wise lawmakers, seeing every man must be allowed his burial place, and having in their hearts the feeling of us all, yes! Even us Cemetery Superintendents, that the place where our family is buried should be cared for FOREVER, have so shaped our laws that a fund may be left in perpetuity for the care of a Cemetery lot. At West Laurel Hill Cemetery we assiduously cultivate the placing of an endowment (as we call it in distinction from the Cemetery Company's Fund for the Perpetual Care of the Cemetery) for the care of the lot owners' own lot; and so successful is the system that in six months of 1925 we have received as follows:

January, 13 endowments totaling    $20,477.13
February, 7 endowments totaling        3,300.00
March, 12 endowments totaling        7,750.00
April, 10 endowments totaling        2,750.00
May, 10 endowments totaling          11,200.00
June, 18 endowments totaling            7,910.00

And in 1924 there were 107 endowments totaling $59,527.75. We have now 874 endowments totaling $528,891.25 besides hundreds of endowments placed separately with Trust Companies under the Wills of lot owners. If the lot is not endowed before his decease as soon as the lot owner is buried we send the heirs or the heir whom we know best a suggestion for an endowment and follow this suggestion in a proper manner until an endowment is made or the matter fails for the time being-perhaps another burial of a son or daughter of the lot owner will awaken a grandson or granddaughter to create the fund. The endowment when received is placed IN TRUST with the other endowments, all the endowments being lumped into one fund. When interest is paid, the proportional interest due each endowment is placed to its credit in the endowment ledger and each year a bill is rendered against each endowment just as our bills are rendered to our living customers. The West Laurel Hill Cemetery Company and the West Laurel Hill Cemetery Company TRUSTEE FOR ENDOWMENTS are two separate and distinct persons. The Bank account of the endowment income is, of course, a separate and distinct bank account from the Cemetery Company Bank Account. I cannot say too much in regard to ENDOWMENTS as a source of perpetual income to a Cemetery as lifting off the Cemetery Funds the care of lots and steadily producing income from the profit in doing the work required by the ENDOWMENT.

 
Ninth. Burial Charges:
(a) Receiving Tomb Charges
(b) Rental of Special Mausoleums
(c) Charges for digging graves and usual attention at funeral
(d) Charges for special grave structures
(e) Charges for grave and dirt pile decorations
(f) Charges for use of tent
(g) Removal charges

(a) Receiving Tomb charges after deducting cost of entrance of body and interest on the investment, upkeep and cleaning are not much of a source of income but the Receiving Tomb at West Laurel Hill Cemetery is, nevertheless, a great source of income. Family reasons often make it proper that the final interment should be delayed; for such eases the Receiving Tomb offers a temporary resting place and the Receiving Tomb is a feeder for sales.

(b) In 1911 the West Hill Cemetery Company built three Mausoleums for rent at a cost of $3,000.00 and from the time they were ready for occupancy they have never been vacant, except one at a time for a month; the rental charge is at the rate of $25.00 a month for each Mausoleum, being an income of $900.00 a year on an investment of $3,000.00. In 1921 we built three more of much better quality at $35.00 per month each and they are never vacant—indeed we have had a waiting list—an exchange from the Receiving Tomb being made to a Mausoleum as soon as possible. The construction at these Mausoleums was brought about because a prospective customer wanted to rent nine crypts in the Receiving Tomb so that there might not be anyone near his wife—but the Cemetery Company could not grant this request fearing the crypts might be needed.

(c) The charges for digging graves and usual attendance at funerals are a source of small revenue at West Laurel Hill Cemetery, far smaller on analysts than lot holders suppose—the margin of profit is often a loss as the ground at West Laurel Hill is often stony and men frequently work all night. However, it would seem absurd' not to mention these charges, but in my Cemetery we often write the profit on the ice.

(d) Grave structures as brick graves, whether enameled brick or plain red brick, concrete and brick and all the various structures, including concrete tombs or over boxes, all have a profit for the Cemetery.

(e) Charges for graves and dirt pile decorations in the many and various forms used throughout the country are all sources of profit.

(f) Some cemeteries charge for the use of tent and chairs. West Laurel Hill Cemetery does not charge for a tent; however, a tent is erected without charge in very inclement weather but never for clear winter weather or high wind.

(g) Removal charges might be included under the digging of a grave except that the profit on removal charges is greater per removal than the profit from a grave at the time of a funeral.

Tenth. Income from Construction of Foundations and Work Connected Therewith. In West Laurel Hill Cemetery all excavation and all foundations and exterior walls of vaults below the ground level are done by the Cemetery Company—all foundations are eight feet deep—the depth of a grave—and may of course, be deeper. There is a profit from this work, the percentage varying with the size of the work.

Eleventh. Greenhouse Work:
(a) Bouquets, cut flowers, floral designs
(b) Christmas designs and decorations, Easter and Memorial Day floral requirements
(c) Special yearly care of lots
(d) Sodding and grading
(e) Grave planting
(f) Flower beds
(g) Special trees
(h) Talking up endowments

All the above items at West Laurel Hill Cemetery come under the greenhouse. The greenhouse salesroom and the office are under one roof and it is hard to tell where one begins and the other ends—they lead up to each other. Special yearly care of lots is a heavy item at West Laurel Hill Cemetery; grave planting is a heavy item and flower beds also are an item of profit and the greenhouse work leads up to that important item of which I have spoken before.

Twelfth. Endowments: If I am placing emphasis on endowment of lots—special trust funds whose income is only to be used for the designated lot—it is because, like interest, it is working all the time. The income will continue long after we are dead and not only lift the expense of caring for that lot from the Cemetery, but will give a profit year after year. The solicitation for endowments is going on all the time at West Laurel Hill Cemetery even to the great grandchildren of the original lot holder. The money from a sale soon disappears but the income from an endowment will go on and on.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain
And not neglected, for a hand unseen
Scattering bounty like a summer rain
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
Longfellow.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

In the few years in which I have been in charge of the business of our cemetery and a member of this Association I have watched with considerable interest the papers presented to the conventions and the various topics that appear in our magazine "Park and Cemetery". Organizing, planning, landscape, management, rules and regulations, care, accounting, advertising and laws affecting cemetery operation have all been freely discussed and with much benefit to us all. But there seems to be one subject above all others in which practically all modern cemetery men are most interested, and that is Perpetual Care and how it can be provided for.  I believe those two words "Perpetual Care" are about the most commonly used words in our modern cemetery business.

I know they are words that have different meanings to some of us, depending upon the age of our own cemeteries, and how the term applies to them. But I am not here to talk to you on this point for I realize that each of us have a problem more or less different and distinct from the others. Whether or not we have perpetual care provisions in any of the various methods to which the term applies, we probably are convinced to the last man of us, that in this day and age it is absolutely essential that our cemeteries be properly cared for so that we shall not be guilty of the disgraceful neglect that has characterized the past.

I think, too, that we are all pretty well convinced that the purchase price of ground should be sufficient to provide its proportionate share toward the up building of a trust fund for the maintenance and perpetuation of the entire cemetery. That, of course, would be the ideal condition under which. to operate, and is a condition that prevails in the affairs of some of our largest and best cemeteries, especially in the larger cities where the percentage of sale price as applied to the care fund is immediately sufficient for this purpose.

But, perhaps there are others here like myself who are realizing that in selling ground with the promise or contract, of perpetual care we have taken on an obligation that might some day become difficult of fulfillment. In other words, we have sold our ground for too small a price, and thereby sold more of it than necessary, and as a result we have increased our burden for all time to come.

A small price must, of necessity, yield but a small fund, for we all know that from our annual sales there must first come the bulk of our annual expenditures. To most of' us in the smaller cities high prices for cemetery ground are out of the question. We are just as ambitious to have our cemeteries beautiful and provide the best care possible but we cannot obtain the prices that will do these things and also add sufficient to the care fund.

This is exactly the situation that we face in our business at Freeport, Illinois. We have been operating for 23 years one of the most beautiful cemeteries in America and have from the beginning sold all lots with perpetual care provided. Our fund at present is far less than it should be, amounting to but about 5 1/10 cents per foot of sold ground. When there is added to this sold ground its proportionate share of the upkeep expense of the whole cemetery it shows how ridiculously small it is. During the earlier years of our business there was a ten percent deposit to the trust fund and later this was increased to twenty percent.  This latter figure most of you would say is a fair proportion of sales to devote to the fund and I believe is used by many cemeteries. However, when you consider that with our prices advanced each year we are now obtaining only sixty to ninety cents per foot for ground you will readily understand why it is still too small to accomplish what a trust fund is created for.

Shortly after assuming charge of our cemetery I began to wonder just how large our fund would become under the plan; what the perpetual care of the cemetery would require in interest earnings and whether, after all our ground was sold, it would be in any way adequate.

We were drawing all interest from the fund annually to assist in caring for the cemetery so that the fund could be increased only by the sales installments we placed to it. Therefore, for example, when our property, which consists of a little over one hundred acres, had possibly totaled sales of three million dollars we would have but six hundred thousand dollars in the fund.

In endeavoring to estimate our needs I find that some of our cemetery men have reached the conclusion that there should be at least fifty cents per foot in the trust fund. This seems more than necessary until we consider that it is not merely the individual lot that will sometime be dependent upon the interest earnings but rather the entire property, of which the general or public parts may be the more expensive in maintenance. Looking into the long, dim future none of us can tell just what the costs of operating or rather perpetuating our cemeteries will be, so that all we can do is try to provide abundantly and trust in the future conditions.

Studying over the problem, I decided that even if at sometime we were to obtain sufficiently large prices for our ground there would yet remain all the ground already sold that had not contributed its full share to the fund. There can be but one solution to this problem of inadequate apportionment to the fund and it is through the assistance of compound interest.

I have prepared printed copies of a sheet of figures that I worked out and these will tell you more than I have time to tell you here. I have here also a chart of some of the results obtained by my method of building up a trust fund' which is now to be adopted by our Association. The surprising figures will show you that we will cut our deposits in two, create a vastly larger fund and draw out more interest than under the simple 20% plan.

There are four uncertain factors in figuring as I have done. We do not know just what acreage or footage will be developed from the property we own; how long it will take to sell it all; how much may be sold each year and what the prices will be. And so for a basis of figuring I begin with estimated sales of twelve thousand dollars a year as an average for the next ten years and increase it one thousand dollars every ten year period, estimating that it may take 150 years to sell out. I have assumed that five percent is a fair expectation of interest earnings. Both our old and new methods are therefore figured alike as to sales and interest. No consideration has been given to the cost of administering the fund either way tor it is rather negligible as compared with the total earnings.

To begin at the beginning of our whole program regarding our Perpetual Care Fund. We are incorporated as Oakland Cemetery Association, though in fact we are but a stock company and are not in any way operating under any laws of the state governing cemeteries. If we interpret the laws correctly, we, as a profit sharing corporation cannot set aside a perpetual trust. We therefore propose to incorporate a voluntary lot owners association which will nave for its object the care of the trust fund and finally the perpetuating of the cemetery. This association will be empowered to create and elect a Board of Trustees, this Board to have the actual control of the Perpetual Care Fund. The further purpose of this second Corporation is to prevent the stockholders of the Cemetery Association having any chance to recall any or this entire fund.

Agreements will be made and recorded, between the operating company and the lot owners association which will set forth the methods and purpose of creating the fund and defining the conduct of both parties for all time. Each and every deed given for lots will carry with it enough of a contract for the ten percent of the purchaser's money to make it binding on both associations. Our attorney believes he can in this way make a three cornered contract that, as he expressed it, "no man on earth can ever break."

The application of the ten percent of sales will be made as long as ground is sold, so that, for as long as there shall be lot owners alive, there may be expected to be interest manifested in the project from these lot owners. Beyond that time a competent court will have to appoint the Trustees.

Each year the Trustees will retain two percent interest on the total fund as of the first of the year. To offset the loss due to inability to re-invest the odd amounts of earned interest to the last odd dollars and cents, the installments from sales shall be paid over to the Trustees semi-annually. The actual investing of the fund shall be through one of the largest Trust Companies in Chicago and all investments will be ratified by our local Board of Trustees. The Secretary of the Cemetery Association shall be the Secretary of the Lot Owners Association, thus providing the latter Association with a working officer who will always be in a position to look after its affairs.

I have figured various other compound interest schemes for long periods of time only to discard them when they failed to produce the desired result. We cannot afford to appropriate to the fund much more than we have in the past, and so I finally found that by using two percent as the compounding figure we would actually be saving something to ourselves for some years to come. Then, gradually, it will turn to a loss to us until the interest earnings mount up to a considerable figure when it will again begin to show a balance in favor of the cemetery.

The printed copies show only figures for each five years but to arrive at these it was of course necessary to carry out the entire scheme for each year. Some of the interesting items from the detail of the yearly figures are as follows:

In the 48th year of our new plan shows its first gain in the total amount in the Trust Fund and in the 115th year it is double the amount in the old plan. In the end it is more than three times as much.

Each year, in the beginning, shows a result in favor of the cemetery, decreasing yearly. The Total gain up to the 14th year is $6,033.27. The following year the result is in favor of the trust fund and it continues so until the 85th year during which time the operating income has suffered a loss of over $58,000.00. In this 85th year it again begins to add to the operating revenue and as the two percent interest earnings are now beginning to build up heavily, the gain of operating revenue increases very rapidly until at the end of the 150 years it shows a net gain over the losses of $544,937.11.

In speaking of loss or gain I mean that in the old plan we take all the interest earned. Under the new plan, we take all interest over the two percent which is returned to the fund, also the ten percent of sales which we do not place to the fund. The difference between these two incomes produces loss or gain to the operating revenue.

I know that the statements on this chart look like a paradox, but strange as they may seem they are nevertheless true. We will put in half as much, build possibly three times or more as big a fund and draw out more in earnings.

Now, there will be a provision made that whenever the fund has reached a total equivalent to fifty cents for each foot of ground that has been sold and that fifty cents per foot appears at that time to be sufficient, the compounding rate may be decreased below two percent by agreement of the operating association and the Trustees.

We have formally adopted the entire plan as I have outlined it to you and our attorney is now engaged in the work necessary to the perfecting of the Lot Owners Association. We have gone at it with much thought and we are satisfied that it will guarantee to our lot owners the full meaning of Perpetual Care. If there are others like us, whose fund is too small to represent the amount of ground already sold, I believe they can find in our plan a way to improve their fund slowly and surely, without lessening their income. If you cannot apply from your sales price enough to be immediately sufficient, there is no other way than through compounding a portion of your interest, to keep faith with your lot owners.

A comparatively small initial fund, invested and compound in g at its full interest earnings would in a like time produce an ample fund, but it would yield no annual returns for the care of the sold ground. It may seem queer too, that we should add to our fund an amount from lot purchasers money which would be much less than what we would withdraw from the fund but in this we are following the belief that people are really not much interested in anything that has not east them, something and we earnestly solicit the interest and aid of our lot owners.

We desire that our people shall think of the cemetery as a community affair and cooperate with us in making and keeping it forever beautiful, well cared-for and absolutely permanent.
 

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

I am somewhat handicapped, perhaps owe you an apology for being down to read a paper, but coming across the border from Canada I stopped in the village of Detroit for a little while and went up town, opened my grip to get out something and sitting down on a street corner a Billy goat came along and ate my paper. I believe that Frank Eurich is somewhat responsible for it, and I have no paper to read. I had to hastily jot down a few memos and I unfortunately have no paper.

When I decided to read this paper at this convention, or rather this subject and the committee asked me what it would be I gave them a subject and they switched it on me a little bit and changed it. I gave them a subject "Dead Horse Finances." It, perhaps, to a cemetery superintendent, seemed a little gruesome to talk about anything dead and they switched it on me and made it "Cemetery Finances."

Cemetery finances might mean a great many things. It might mean lot selling campaigns, investment of perpetual care funds or the allotment of various classes of labor or the purchase of new grounds and the setting aside of so much money annually for the purchase of extensions, etc., etc. That has been covered in a great many ways.

My talk this morning is not going to be particularly on cemetery finances generally, but what my subject really intended to be—dead horse finances.

John Bright, great British parliamentarian, whenever a question was raised in the House of Commons that had been dealt with and had been voted into oblivion many a time was brought up by some new member, John Bright usually said "Oh, that is dead horse, gone, forgotten, voted on many a time and passed up."

I am going to say a few words on delinquent finances, finances that we have given up hope of ever collecting. This question does not apply to new cemeteries that have been started right under the perpetual care plan. The cemetery that I represent was started in 1848. Of course those of you that were at Hamilton will realize that Woodland Cemetery, the new one on the bay front, will not have the problem of the collection of dead horse finances that we have in this old cemetery.

I know that these questions have been discussed from every angle. I am only a young cub at the game, although I was a member of our Cemetery Commission for many years previous to becoming the Superintendent and you all know that cemetery board members or cemetery commissioners have but a very meager knowledge of the actual cemetery problems. They attend board meetings, the secretary or superintendent introduces his report and they have a very superficial knowledge of what really is the cemetery superintendent's problem and I know that these questions have been discussed from every angle.

I was only in the office six months before I found a state of affairs that rather astounded me. I will admit we all have our strong points in every sphere of life on certain things. One man will be able to accomplish great things in a certain sphere, along a certain line. Another man will supersede him and he will have strong points on entirely different lines and make a success of something else that the other chap had perhaps forgotten or, rather, was not strong on. So we all have our strong features.

I realize my predecessor, who was one of the best cemetery men, Mr. F. H. Rutherford, took hold of an old practically medieval cemetery, with the various grades and copings and fences and iron and tripods and wood and glass bottles by the million and everything else and devoted the most of his time to the outside grounds and made a magnificent cemetery out of an old practically rural burial ground, even though we have 120,000 population in our city. But when you concentrate on one particular thing naturally other things suffer.

When I succeeded Mr. Rutherford I did not have very much to do, as it were, on the outside grounds, but could devote the majority of my attention to the office. No individual is at fault, neither a superintendent, office staff, commission or a board, but rather a system that had grown up in practice for many years.

The question I found was that thousands—we have 11,000 lots in our cemetery, apart from our single graves—we had about 3,000 cards that we were sending out for annual care. Those that were square and honest came and paid; those that did not want to pay never came near the office. Naturally, while we checked it up against the lot, many lots had no card as far as the financial end of it was concerned, no card at all.

I said to my board "Is it fair to permit or allow or compel some people to pay and let many other people get away with it without paying at all? Something must be done to try and collect some of this old money."

I used to see a woman come in, one, two, yes a dozen of them, when carnations were $1.00 a dozen and roses $1.00 a dozen, drive up in their motor cars and want to know "where is the gardener? Where is the sub-gardener? How is it that this is not done on my lot and this on my lot?" I'd go over the card and say "Madam, do you know you have not paid any care since 1914, and you want the service of a gardener and you complain about it and you complain about the ant hills. I can't tell the ants what lot to go on. You complain about the condition of the graves. If you don't pay your care you will get no service in this cemetery. You can come up here when carnations and roses are $1.00 a dozen and place them on your lot, but we don't get a cent of care and we pay our men 50¢ an hour and we care for your lot and have got it charged up against you."

True, we have the same rule that the majority of you have that no interment can take place in a lot until the care dues are paid, but you have got to wait until somebody kicks in and you may go before they do, and your successor may not be as strenuous as you to collect it.

I had a younger man appointed on our board by the City Council.  He was in the wholesale grocery business, a shrewd young financier, and he used to say to me "What are our assets?"

I said "You get them. You get our buildings. You get our supplies, tools and everything, an inventory in the annual statement. You know what our assets are."

"Oh, but I mean our assets, our bills receivable."

I said "Forget it. They are receivable after you have got them. You will see them in the report on the right side or the statement after we get them. There is no such thing as bills receivable because very few people are paying."

He said "What kind or a business do we run? We ought to have assets showing our bills receivable."

He pressed and pressed and kept on every meeting for about a year for these bills receivable. I said "Frank, forget it. If I show you an account of our bills receivable in this cemetery it will make your nose bleed." But he insisted upon the bills receivable, and I got busy and gave him some bills receivable. No, what I did was this:  I arranged it for an annual report in one of my annual reports, and after it was printed and was not bound, still in the printer's hands, I asked him to strike me off a certain number or copies, and I went to the Chairman of our Finance Committee and the Chairman of our Board, Mr. Peebles, who, by the way, visited my office a day or two previous to the convention and asked me to convey his best wishes to the members of the Association—our former Chairman who, by the way, is not now our Chairman—he was elected to the City Council, and had to resign, because our by-laws don't permit an elective member in the City Council to act on our board and I took it down to the Chairman and read it to him. This was the statement:

"ANNUAL CARE AND DELINQUENT LOT OWNERS"

I have frequently been asked to compile a list of our assets, i. e., monies due for annual care, of from three to twenty years or more.

I have not as yet been able to complete this list, owing to the many lots tor which no card exists. This work, which is long and tedious, owing to the imperfect records kept during the early years of the Cemetery, necessitates a great deal of research, but is steadily going forward.

As far as we have proceeded we find there is due the Cemetery Board $22,643.13 for annual care, which consists of 188,365 square feet of ground, which, if placed in Perpetual Care would mean an additional $65,927.85. And it is safe to say that the unlisted lots when completed will add an additional 50 percent of the above figures (a report of which will be made later when the report is completed), with means that there is due the Cemetery Board for delinquent annual care about $30,000.00, and if placed in Perpetual Care an additional $90,000.00 or a total of $120,000.00.

Taking into consideration that many of these lots are filled, and the owners passed away, others left the city, descendants refusing to acknowledge obligations, etc., etc. only a small percentage of this is collectable.

When I showed that to the Chairman and the Chairman of the Finance Committee, they said "Don't put that in your report. We don't want the public to know who are paying that there are a lot of other fellows not paying or they will stop paying." They said "Cut it out." 

I mailed it to the board members, but this young smart business man insisted upon having a complete report of the assets. I kept telling him to forget it, but he insisted upon the assets and I gave him a final report when it was completed.

February, 1925

To the Board of Management of the Hamilton Cemeteries:

Gentlemen:

I have frequently been asked to prepare a resume of indebtedness to the Hamilton Cemetery, or "Asset", i. e. if all lots were paid up, as far as Annual Care was concerned and the same placed in Perpetual Care.

At the end of 1923 a part report was presented and the "Assets" were so large it was thought unwise to reproduce the same in the Annual Report. At that time only part was shown as there were many old lots for which no card existed.

In this Report all Lots in the Cemetery are listed and tabulated which shows an enormous amount of money so called "outstanding".

Eventually about ten to fifteen percent or this will be collectable; hence while a copy is prepared, I feel it would be very unwise to make it public, as it would be misunderstood and many who are now paying and those who have a further tendency to pay up later may defer payment on the plea, with so large an "Asset" in addition to the Perpetual Care sinking fund, there is already ample funds to carry on the Cemetery for the rest of time.

There are all told 10,660 plots in the Hamilton Cemetery of which 6,446 are in Perpetual Care and 4,214 not. Of the 4,214 not in Perpetual Care; 3,261 are not paying at all while 955 are paying some regularly and some occasionally.

Of the 3,261 who are not paying at all, 1,561 are two grave lots of 60 square feet each or a total of 93,600 sq. ft. They owe $25.00 each back care or a total of $39,025.00 and if placed in Perpetual Care would mean an additional $32,781.00.

The rest of those not paying 1700, own four grave lots 120 sq ft. each, owe $50.00 each for back care or a total of $85,000 and if placed in Perpetual Care 204,000 sq. ft. would mean an additional $71,400.

Of the 955 that are paying if these were to pay up the Annual Care to date at an average of $2.00 each per year would mean $19,100.00 and if placed in Perpetual Care would mean a further sum of $29,610.00 or a general grand total of
39,025.00
32,781.00
85,000.00
71,400.00
19,100.00
29,610.00
-------------
 $276,916.00

All of which is respectfully submitted,
S. L. Landers, Secretary

I said to my board "It is going to be an absolute impossibility to collect but a very, very small proportion of that fund. If you members of this board will give me a free hand and I will use it very reasonably, and cooperate with me, and give me your endorsement, I will get a pretty good proportion of that dead horse finance, if you will back me up."

You see, we care for all lots in our cemetery, whether they are paid for or not, that is, whether care is paid for or not; even if they don't pay annual care we care for every lot in the cemetery from the East gate to the West gate and from the North gate to the South gate, and the man that pays does not get a bit better attention than the fellow that does not pay. We feel for humanity's sake, general appearances sake—of course we rob Peter to pay Paul, we take it from the other fellow that does pay and spend it on this fellow, and we don't guarantee, as was spoken of last night, to devote the particular money on that particular lot. We are not bothered with the question of taxation, as municipal cemeteries. We agree to take care of that man's lot in perpetual care, but we don't pledge that that money will be spent particularly on that lot, but devoted to trees, shrubs, roads, administration and the general care of the cemetery.

The first thing I said to my board was "Our rules are somewhat antiquated. Revise your rules according to certain suggestions and I will get the money." The first thing we did—people used to walk in there and order a monument. The first few months I was in there I watched the girl. The monument men came in and ordered a foundation and the girl would get the card out, give the foreman the order and the foundation was ordered. People would come in and want various work done, transfer a lot from father to son or friend to friend, if there were no burials in it and everything was done without any consideration as to the actual status of the lot.

We had the rules changed. No transfer could be made, no flowers could be planted; we would not do any work for them; nothing for nothing. We said "You are not paying us anything and we will give you no consideration and no favors until you do pay." We made certain restrictions that no transfer could be granted on a lot upon which the perpetual care was not paid.

I said to my board, "Under the new system we compel people to pay the perpetual care at the time of the purchase of the lot. Now is it unfair to make that rule retroactive and make the old lot owners, when they come up for burial, pay the perpetual care on the old lot? If Bill Smith comes up and says I am a blacksmith or shoemaker—unfortunately my wife died; I want to buy a lot, we don't ask him any questions. We sell him a lot under the new system with the perpetual care added to it. He asks no questions and pays it. Is it any more unfair to make it retroactive and if Bill Smith or John Smith or Pete Jones or somebody—by the way, Mr. Jones, we have them there, too—if Mr. Jones comes up and wants to bury we say “Yes, you have an old lot, but you have to pay the perpetual care on your lot and the back care before you can bury in that lot."

My board said to me "Sh, sh, you can't do anything like that. The deeds don't call for that. That is illegal. You can't do it. How can you make a non pay perpetual care on a lot when he bought it under the old system of annual care? You can't do it."

When it was referred to our corporation counsel he said "Tut, tut, tut, no, no, don't start anything like that. You are going to get into lawsuits. You are going to have trouble. It is illegal."

It reminded me—we had a political campaign on in a town that was called Berlin, but was changed to Kitchener during the war, up in Ontario. We had an independent political campaign on the same as your late recent friend LaFolette. We had a political campaign against the two old parties, and I happened to be with the independent party and we were discussing the question of method and various questions came up. One fellow suggested this and' another chap suggested that. One fellow said something and then another man got up and said "Oh yes, hold on a minute, but that is illegal."

Sitting in that same room was, not an elderly man, of German descent, and old Henry Stultz had been in a great many political campaigns with the old parties. As soon as that fellow said "This is illegal," Henry got up and said "Vas is illegal. Nothing is illegal," meaning anything you can get away with in reason is not illegal.

I told my board and corporation counsel, "illegal nothing. Leave it to me. If you will give me the cooperation I will get away with it. Put that in your rules that at the time of an interment in an old lot the perpetual care on that old lot must be paid."

The furthest I could get them to go was that it should be paid, and they revised the rules and said that at the time of an interment in the old lot the perpetual care should be paid. I said "If that is as far as you go I am an opportunist, all right. Let it go at that." They passed it and we revised the rules. But I soon forgot the should and I made it must immediately.  I sent out my card with my annual care, and this card went out with it, with the annual care cards or bills the following year to cemetery lot owners:

"This is your notice for the care of your lot for 1925. This account is really due in advance; when you received your first notice in May.
As a result of many non-payments we were compelled to borrow the money to pay the workmen during the season.
An immediate response will be appreciated.
This account can be paid at the City Treasurer's office, City Hall, if accompanied by the enclosed bill.

Very truly yours,
Board of Managers of Hamilton Cemetery,
S. L. Landers, Secy-Supt

"To Cemetery Lot Owners under "ANNUAL CARE"
You have often been reminded that commuting and paying a lump sum places your lot in PERPETUAL CARE and gives you a perpetual care deed.

"I will some day" has no doubt oft been your thought—
WHY NOT NOW?
Especially since the new ruling, that all old lots under Annual Care must be planed in Perpetual Care at either the time of an interment, disinterment, or the placing of a monument.
Phone the Cemetery Office: Regent 1320 for information.
S. L. LANDERS, Secretary"

On the bills that I sent out in red type, I had a panel inserted in red type which said "all lots under annual care must be placed in perpetual care at the time of an interment." The result was—you know, there are two ways of killing a chicken. One way is to simply lay him down on a block and knock his block off. Another way is, you can taka that chicken and smooth the feathers up and down one way and humor him to death and—jerk it and break his neck.

I said to my board, "Leave it to me. I will get the money and I will do it very, very carefully." You might be astounded' to know that in three years we have had absolutely no difficulty in collecting our perpetual care at the time of interment. We have had a little argument. I remember the worst two cases I had—one was the police lieutenant and one a lieutenant in the fire department, who kicked and were not going to pay.

I will tell you one thing—the only instance in which it works an injustice is the man who paid religiously and regularly his annual care in advance; as soon as he got his bill his check came, or they paid it at the city hall, at the city treasurer's department, or at the cemetery. It worked somewhat of a little injustice to those people who paid regularly, but they were few and far between.

I had people say to me "Do you mean to tell me that I can't bury in my lot and you refuse to let me bury if I don't pay this perpetual care?"

I said "No, I would not say that." At the same time I meant it all the time. "No, I would not think of saying that you can't bury in your lot and that we are going to prohibit you from burying." I knew that they would not get out to get a compulsory order or a restraining order from the judge, restraining us from interfering with them, because they usually want to bury the next day or two days after and before they could get a restraining or a compulsory order it would take some time. "No, I would not think of saying anything of that description. Of course, if you insist on burying and will not pay, that is different. But now look here, you don't want any special privileges over all the other citizens, do you? We have had so many thousand burials since the rule has gone into force and everybody met it without any discussion. Do you want any special favors? You will thank me in six months or a year because I compelled you to pay for perpetual care. Haven't you been thinking every time you got the bill that you ought to put it in perpetual care?" "Well, yes, ____” "Well come on, don't make two bites of a cherry. Let’s clean it up. Why stick at this little perpetual care? I'll admit at the time of a funeral there are funeral expenses and everything."

The main object was, we didn't care so much about the past annual care—our cemetery was practically sold out—we wanted to clean up that dead horse finance, so the old annual care was difficult to collect. You know yourselves, everyone or you, that when it gets down to second and third generations and grand nephews and grand nieces and brothers-in-law it is hard to collect, even from the first generation. Sons as a rule refuse to pay. We made all sorts of rebates on the old annual care in order to get the perpetual care. If a man came in and owed $70 or $40 or $50 annual care in arrears—like the women for bargains; they are out this morning—a lot of people like to get something for nothing. If you tell a man "You owe $70 back or $40 back care; I will tell you what we will do. We will rebate that to 50%."

It all depends upon the circumstances. If it is a son we make him pay the biggest portion. We make him pay half. If it is a second or third cousin or friend or a society or something we almost cut the entire back care off. But get the lots into perpetual care, because we knew if we could get that into our sinking fund it would mean for all time looking after that lot.

Then we had this abandoned lot act passed. I think the state of New York, the state of Iowa and the state of Wisconsin have this abandoned lot act. We had this abandoned lot act passed.  I think the state of New York, the state of Iowa and the state of Wisconsin have this abandoned lot act.  We had this abandoned lot act passed.

An Act to Amend the Cemetery Act

His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, enacts as follows:

1.    This Act may be cited as The Cemetery Amendment Act, 192.3.

2.    Section 23 of The Cemetery Act is amended by adding thereto the following subsection:
(2) The owner of a cemetery may after having advertised once a week for three successive weeks in a newspaper approved by the local board, for relatives of the person in whose name an abandoned cemetery lot stands (where such abandonment has existed for at least five years) and where such lot is not claimed and any dues or charges with respect thereto are not paid within six months after the last publication of such notice, the owner, upon the expiration of the said period may apply to the Judge of the County or District Court and the Judge upon such application and upon proof of the facts and of the publication of such notice and of the non-payment of such dues and charges and upon such other evidence as he may deem necessary may make an order authorizing the owner to repossess and sell the unoccupied part of such abandoned lot and apply the proceeds of such sale for the perpetual care of the occupied part of such lot .
(a) This section shall apply to every cemetery owned, controlled or managed under the authority of any general or special Act.

3.    Section 24 of The Cemetery Act as amended by section 4 of The Cemetery Amendment Act, 1921, is further amended by adding thereto the following subsection:
(3) The council of every county shall appoint one or more local inspectors who shall have the duties and powers within the municipality of inspectors appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council under the 'provisions of section l0a.

4.    This Act shall come into force on the day upon which it receives the Royal Assent.

That is a state or a provincial law.

Legal decisions perhaps were against some of those things, but with the act to back us up and the use of common law on the other questions—I was speaking a moment ago of them—or the "gift of gab", and if you are able to handle people—a man may be a civil engineer, a landscape artist, a horticulturalist and understand the finer arts of cemetery work, but if he does not know how to handle the people and how to induce the people along certain lines, he is lacking as a cemetery superintendent, and if you have the persuasive, persevering argument you can collect the majority of these finances.

Now I would like to tell you about how much money we have collected in those two or three years that we have had this in effect. It won't take me a minute to read these right over for comparison. Before these questions were introduced from 1915 to 1919, there were 507 old lots placed in perpetual care, 47,215 square feet, with an income of $16,521.25. The following five years, after the introduction of this system, and killing the chicken in the usual way, we put 1574 lots in perpetual care, or an increase of 1067, an increase of 102,285 square feet with an increase in revenue of $37,024.41. The first six months of the current year we put 273 additional lots in perpetual care, 22,362 square feet, with $7,831.10 increase in income. During the month of July we put 54 lots in perpetual care with a revenue of $1,535.10. During the month of August, just before leaving I found that the rate was carrying on just the same, and if this continues with the addition that after the six months have expired of the several thousand lots we advertised under that act, which we have the power to resell, and I already have power of attorney from a great marry families, not to publish their names and allowing me to sell—it simply means a great proportion of this old finance will be collectible and will go into our general fund.

Now I don't know it all. I am not like the old Quaker that said to his wife "The whole world is queer but me and thee and sometimes even thee is a little bit queer." I don't know it all, but this I do know, that our facts and our figures and our results show that the methods adopted will collect and get us some of that old dead horse finance.

I have a picture that I brought back from France, and I saw it in actual happening in France, when an ammunition column was going up and shells were coming over and fell in among the batteries and the ammunition columns, that a horse had one leg shot off and ran down the road on three legs. I actually saw that, when an old battery man came back and put his arm around the horse's neck stopped for a while and said "Good bye, old pal." The horse was about gone, and the boys up the road said "Come on, Bill, come on, Bill." He put his arm around the horse's neck and said "Good bye, old pal," and then left him.

With these circumstances and conditions we can go into our vault and put our hands on our dusty old books that have been lying there a good many years and say to the old dead horse finances, "Good bye, old pal."

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

Education! What is it? A great Irishman (all Irishmen are great as well as good) said education is a fine thing, but it is better to know something.

A mere earthworm, a professor of biology, said education, that is what a man learns in school and college, adds no more to what he consciously or subconsciously, really knows; and acts upon than would a thin coat of transparent varnish, added to the weight of an orange.

One of England's greatest men said "figures won't lie, but it has been my experience that there is nothing quite so deceptive as figures, unless it be facts."

Yet simple arithmetic is one of the things we all learn in school because it simply helps us to think straight about facts, and facts really do influence our actions. Even such intellectual giants as Edison, Rockefeller and Ford could not think very straight very long without figures.

Of course each of us secretly knows that we, too, can think very straight, but modesty prevents us from mentioning. Besides it is said that the Devil though he can think very straight acts very crooked and is therefore preeminently the biggest fool extant, and of course none of us want his reputation, even here in Chicago. Nevertheless we all like Chicago, don't we? Don't we really like her because she is really a great and good city? And only just wicked enough to make those who visit her feel quite at home? True she does not now offer us a Martina cocktail, but hasn't Professor A. S. Eve of McGill University given us dizzy arithmetic to take its place? Don't it make you delightfully dizzy to think that your wife is one million molecules of she who was Helen of Troy and then what a joyous sense of power accompanies the further thought that your wife knows that one million molecules of Julius Caesar is now you and respects you accordingly.

Besides a little of Professor Eve's simple arithmetic makes us see very clearly that if the whole human race could bathe at one time in Lake Ontario each man, woman and child would have sixty square feet to swim in and would raise the water in the bath tub less than half an inch. 

Being cemetery men we perhaps unconsciously use a little simple mental arithmetic and know at once that a cemetery as large as Lake Ontario would without doubt be large enough to bury all the people in the world, and more than half of it could be used for roads and park-age.

Perhaps that is rather a large vision of the cemetery business but are we not in Chicago, where a world viewpoint is not uncommon and a US viewpoint very common?

From a US viewpoint a little simple arithmetic shows us a cemetery about fifteen miles square. Given all the money one cared to ask for and assured that the undertakers could and would do their part, are there not men here present who feel fully competent to operate a cemetery of that size?

A basic difficulty in cemetery management is the instability of the good old reliable gold dollar.  How many cemetery trustees have solved this problem?   How many lot owners have given serious thought to it?
 
Chicago has already organized all of her grave diggers into one union. She has vision. Is she planning to organize all her cemeteries under one management? Are not Chicago men usually leaders who can and do think straight and act straight.

The world buries about one-thirtieth (1/30) of its population each year. How much of her population does Chicago bury? Is not the answer to such a question necessary to the intelligent management of the cemeteries of any community?

I am willing to confess that I cannot vision so small a thing as a million molecules, can you? However when we talk about square feet we are down to brass tacks and know exactly what we are talking about. I have used the words “given all the money you cared to ask for”---can you vision that?

In 1921 I was talking to a very small group of men and offered to give a dollar to anyone of them who would tell me what a dollar was. One said it was a mark on a banker's book. Another replied "It's a joke". I tendered him 95 cents. Remember Gladstone said "There is nothing more deceptive than figures unless it be facts." A dollar is a fact, so is or was a ruble, or a mark, or a frank. (Through Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University, I am indebted to a Chicago man, Mr. Cecil F. Elmes, for the diagram)

Irresistible and probably beneficent economic forces are at work and reliable statisticians tell us that 90% of all the wealth in the US is now in the hands of 10% of its population. Most of us have to "count the pennies" and therefore it is easier for us to Vision a hundred pennies than a hundred million dollars. So let us take it easy and do our thinking in pennies about this bask economic fact of 90% of all the wealth of the US being in the hands of 10% of its population." That means, if we look at the US as a whole and think in pennies, that on the average when ten of its men, women and children are gathered together one will have nine hundred (900) pennies in his pocket and nine will on the average each have eleven (11) pennies in his pocket. That is a perfectly clear vision of the US as a whole and is down to brass tacks. A few years ago I visited a benevolently operated cemetery and the Superintendent being absent the sexton "showed me about." Before bidding him adieu I said "It strikes me that the price of your single graves is high and your large lots low" and he quickly replied "Oh Mr. Green we got our money from the poor and spend it on the rich."

Would you have called him an eleven (11) cent financier? He certainly would have deserved that name if he had been managing all the cemeteries of the US as one----but may not statisticians have found that in his community there were nine thousand (9,000) people with eleven (11) pennies, to one (1) with nine hundred (900).

About a quarter of a century ago an intimate friend of mine was offered a million dollars if he would tell a multimillionaire how to give away a million dollars without doing more harm than good. My friend reluctantly gave it up. In defense of my sex, I think the ladies present should know that my friend was a bachelor.

Another friend of mine, a millionaire and president of a cemetery, to whom a multimillionaire tossed his pocket book for my friend to play with, was so surprised that he mistook it for a brickbat and promptly fired it back. Mr. friend, however, though ordinarily a very genial gentleman, was over three-fourths of a century old.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie said it was a disgrace for a man to die rich and gave his money to the erection of library buildings and the pensioning of college professors.

I notice that the newspapers state that "Mr. Leopold Schepp, who made millions in coconuts and is now eighty-five years old" desires suggestions as to how he can best give away his remaining millions. Have any of you energetic active young men suggested to him that cemetery entrances are quite as harmless and nearly as useful as library buildings?

My experience is that unpleasant experience has taught at least one multimillionaire that some architects should attend a course of lectures on cemetery entrances.

Mr. O. P. Van Sweringen, the young man who in the railroad business, is now tossing hundreds of millions about as a professional juggler tosses baseballs, is quoted as saying, "Dollars don't have the attraction for me that they have for some people. I have enough of them. I am not sure whether to be rich is to be poor or to be poor is to be rich. I am inclined to believe the latter." His salary is twenty-five thousand ($25,000) per annum.

The newspaper reports seem to make it quite clear that Mr. Rockefeller has a fixed habit of giving a dime to any boy who happens to do him a favor. Is he afraid a larger sum might be fired back at him, or might produce another Harry Thaw, or is he trying to attract your attention to a very difficult and delicate art? The art of giving.

Are we not all getting our education every day in the University of Hard Knocks? Is Mr. Van Sweringen profiting from the lectures recently delivered in that University here in Chicago by Professors Loeb, Leopold and Shepard?

Does not the successful cemetery man really carry a mental attitude which may be quite accurately described as a basic religious, or a scientific Christian, or a Christian science mind?

Does he not aim to do the right thing at the right time in the right way?

Does he not aim to do some things better than they were ever done before?

Does he not aim to eliminate errors and to anticipate requirements?

Does he not aim to act with equanimity and in moderation and from reason rather than rule?

Does he not aim to work for the love of work and to be satisfied with nothing short of perfection?

Does this seem true? "We are all moved by an unseen hand, to an unknown end, for an unknown purpose. Do your work as well as you can and be kind-there is no greater wisdom."
 
Do you not hate, or at least dislike, me because perhaps I am trying to make you think thoughts you never thought to think before?

Is that education?

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

I believe I have put in as strenuous a cemetery day as you ladies and gentlemen have. I started out this morning at 9:00 o'clock by attending a funeral and it was very interesting to me, because this one happened to be a Catholic funeral and I had never attended a Catholic funeral before in my life. It led me into a Catholic cemetery and I was extremely interested there because the Catholic cemeteries that I have seen differ somewhat from the Protestant and the Jewish cemeteries.

This afternoon when I got back to my office I found that sometime during the night one of the water mains in the streets of the city of Chicago had burst and flooded the telephone wires that run underground, had broken them and my office was without telephone service all day. I was thankful for that, because it enabled me to get down and do some work. So I took up a cemetery tax case and tonight I am winding up the day by speaking to you gentlemen on cemetery matters.

Mr. Cassidy had one thought in his mind which, as he expressed it, cleared up one in my mind. In taking a number of tax cases to Washington the conferees with whom I met on matters laughingly spoke to me and told me that, "We hear that every time a cemetery brings a case in to us." I had mentioned a case out west where the letterhead said, "The Cemetery Beautiful." And I know now where they got the idea. Every cemetery which takes a tax case to Washington endeavors to tell the government that theirs is a special case because theirs is the most beautiful cemetery in the country.

It is true that your tax matters have forced upon you the idea that your accounting is perhaps not what it should be. I cannot go into detail tonight and tell you what your accounting should be. I am going to try to leave a simple idea with you and if you wish, you can take that idea home, consult your own bookkeeping department or your own public accountants in your own home town and they perhaps can fix your accounting so that it will be, perhaps, what it should be.

The paper is entitled "Cemetery Accounting" and I have been requested by several to digress enough from the accounting to touch on the tax matters, but that is unnecessary, because I have classified the accounting into four classes. This is merely an arbitrary classification. The first is the Legal Accounting; the second, the Good Will Accounting; the third, the Financial Accounting; and fourth, Tax Accounting.

Now, the first two I will touch on very lightly.

Legal Accounting. By that I mean the accounting which is necessary to record the sales of land, lots and graves, the. sales of your perpetual care in contracts and the other contractual relations with the buying public. Of course, your deeds, the form of your deed, the wording of the deed, and the wording of your contracts should be passed upon by your attorneys. After they have been passed upon, then those papers should be passed on to your public accountant or your own accounting staff so that they will be tied up with the office records in a way so as to minimize your work.

I am sometimes surprised in going into a cemetery association's office and finding some of the things which they do. For instance, I was in one office where they do not number their deeds and do not even record them in the deed resister. Now, how anyone can go on for years and this cemetery has been going on for twenty years, issuing deeds without recording them in a book or even giving them numbers, I don't know. You don't believe it, but it is true.

Those legal records, whether they are merely contracts to perform service like perpetual care, or the deeds, should be recorded in some form, so as to be accessible at all times. A good many cemeteries record their deeds in numerical order; they give their deeds a number and it is in consecutive order. For very large cemeteries, that is perhaps all right. With the smaller ones perhaps if you recorded your deeds by sections, if you gave your sections of land numbers, some of them give them names, if you give your sections numbers, I would suggest that the number of the section containing the lot which you are deeding should be the first number on the left of the deed. If you were selling land in Section 15, then you might issue Deed No. 15,122, so that if anyone called you up on your phone and gave the number, you could tell immediately what section of land it was in.  Those are various detailed matters which I don't care to touch on, you don't need it. But the legal accounting should be tied up with the general accounting.

I have in mind tonight two classes of cemeteries. There are various ways of classing cemeteries. You might class them into the unethical and the ethical, because I know as well as you do that you have that kind. Or the King Johns and the Robin Hoods. Or, as we say in plain King's English, the Gentlemen and the Pirates. But that is not the thing I have in mind. I have in mind tonight the classes of those in the business for profit and those which are classified as non-profit corporations. What I say to you I think wilt be applicable to both classes, except perhaps the taxation part.

The second accounting, the Good Will Accounting. The good will accounting consists of the various memoranda records which you carry for performing services. In some cemeteries it consists of taking an order for flowers or decorating a grave or filling or sodding over the telephone on the back of an envelope or the first thing that is handy and this is handed to you superintendents with orders to carry out. Such accounting goes to make mistakes. It is forgotten, it is misplaced. And so I would say to you that the records for carrying out of services should be recorded in such a manner that they are tied up with the books. If an order is taken to perform services, it should be taken in such a manner that the superintendent gets the order, the office gets the order and then there should be some sort of a follow-up, triplicate, if you please, to see that it has been carried out, because neglect to carry out these service orders creates, as we call them in our own language, "kickers." You know in your own cemeteries that you have what you call chronic kickers, people who kick every year whether there is anything wrong or not. I know that you have them because I have been told time and time again that you do.

The good will accounting as I have called it is these small charge slips or order slips which go through which, if taken care of properly in your accounting system, will enable you to either perform the work or it will enable the superintendent to catch it when it has not been performed promptly and by catching it yourselves, you correct your error before the buying public is able to catch it and become the chronic kickers. This good will accounting department prevents kickers, and if you have chronic ones, it has a tendency to cure them, because when they become chronic kickers and you have these little memorandum slips to prove that you have performed the services, then you change a chronic kicker to a booster.

Now, the financial accounting. This deals with the records which go to make up your profit and loss statement. As a preface to this division of the accounting, I would like to say that I believe all cemetery accounting should be based upon business methods like we have in any other line of business. When I go into an office, a strange office, sometimes, the managers or the officials attempt to explain to me that their business is entirely different from any other business on the face of the earth. They realize that I know absolutely nothing about their business, but they are going to call me in and ask me a few simple questions which might lead them to the right solution. Everybody feels that their individual business is unlike any other and the cemetery companies I have found are exactly the same as the other business organizations.

Now, then, you must recognize these three things if you expect to have a profit and loss statement tell you what it should tell you. The first is that no original service should be rendered free of charge. lf you do something wrong and have to correct it, you might not charge the second time for it, but no original service should be rendered free of charge, for the simple reason that we are not supposed to get something for nothing on this earth and the second reason is that those who do accidentally get something for nothing never appreciate it. Therefore, that is the first thing.

The next one is important also One class of service should not pay for another class. I don't believe it is sound business policy for you folks to render some service below cost and make it up on your greenhouse or some other department. Each class of service which you render should be made to pay for its cost.

And third, which is really allied to the second, no person should pay for services rendered for another person. In other words, you mustn't change a little for one class of service taken by one class of people and charge more on some other class of service which others take.

Now, then, in your financial accounting all cemeteries can divide their profit and loss statement into three divisions. First is the sales of land. The second division is the sales of merchandise other than land, as flowers, wood and cement boxes, foundations, filling and sodding and crypts. There are many others but those will illustrate what I mean.

The third division is that of service charges such as the opening and closing of graves, re-interments, mowing and watering, cremations, chapel, chapel rentals, decorating graves, the rental of lowering devices and vault rentals. I have classified them into the sales of land as the first division, sales of other kinds of merchandise as the second, and third, the sales of services.

Your accounting does not have to be an elaborate cost system. Your accounting should be as simple as possible, keeping your bookkeeping expense at the minimum. We have to recognize the fact that bookkeeping is a necessity in any line of business. You do not operate a cemetery for the sake of giving some bookkeepers a job. You merely have to employ them because you operate the cemetery and you want to keep track of your accounts. It should be simple, no elaborate costing, but the results of each day should be so tabulated that you can make a fairly good estimate of where your costs are, keep an account of such costs and at the end of the month or at the end of the year, at the end of your season, you have a fairly accurate idea of what your costs are.

"The troubles which a good many cemeteries have had with the department at Washington have been because they could not give the department those figures which it wanted. If the cemetery associations which had tax troubles could have made clean-cut statements, which were directly reflected from their books, their troubles would have been eighty per cent less than they were. But because the books did not reflect properly the conditions as you stated they were, you had to dig in and dig out and analyze and borrow figures from one place and put them in another and criss-cross them until no one knew where they were at, and so you had your troubles.

Now, then, real accounting, financial or otherwise, consists of daily recording the facts which you wish to know at the end of the year, and in the modern methods of bookkeeping we record those facts each day, so that at the end of the year it takes nothing but an adding machine to tell you your results. If you have labor, and most of you do, and you keep an account on your ledger called "Labor" and divide it no further, at the end of the year you are in a terrible mess as to know how much labor was in the greenhouse, how much labor was watering lawns, how much cutting the grass, how much was used in your cement box department, how much was used in the chapel. You haven't any conception of it. But if you keep a fairly accurate idea of that each day, so that your ordinary clerks can record it, at the end of the year you would know it. But you have to keep it.

Your bookkeeping records are historical facts. They reflect things which have happened. Remember that Bookkeeping is not prophecy and I call your attention to it for this reason. I had occasion to install a very simple system of recording labor just about a year ago in a cemetery association that kept no records. They didn't even keep that deed register that I spoke of. And so we had a simple sheet whereby every day the thirty or forty men who were employed in that cemetery, a record was kept of their work, so we knew where they were working.

Now, I suspected that that record was not going to be kept properly and so I visited that cemetery one day and asked for these labor sheets. The bookkeeper asked me which one I wanted and I said I wanted yesterday's, because I wanted to find out if the superintendent had marked down the labor of the day before, how many men were working at this and how many men were working at that.

He said, "Why do you want that?" I said, "That is the latest one."

He said, "Mr. Stolp, it is not; I can give you this morning the labor sheet for today.”

I asked him how so.

"Well," he said, "this morning the superintendent wrote down the names of all the men and where they were going to work today and how many hours they were going to work at those things." So I had the labor sheet at ten o'clock in the morning showing what the men were doing at five o'clock that night. (Laughter). That is where bookkeeping records are prophesying instead of telling historical facts.

Now, as to the taxation part of it. We are getting pretty well crystallized in our ideas with the government on taxation. Gradually the Internal Revenue Department is learning something about cemeteries. I would say two years ago they knew about minus nothing, but they are learning something about cemeteries and at the present time they seem to be very friendly. Maybe it is because they know something about it. This knowledge of the other fellow's viewpoint seems to be softening them and helping them.

At the present time it seems that the government has accepted as a well established fact that the real income of a cemetery is not all taxable, that there is some income which is exempt. In regard to the sales of land, if you have bought land for three cents a foot way back in the early days, in the eighties and seventies and sixties and you are now selling it for two or three or four dollars a square foot, of course your original cost of two or three cents, plus these improvements you have put on it, equaling, we will say, twenty-five or thirty cents, deducted from your two dollar sales value, gives you your real profit. But that real profit is not all taxable. It is real profit all right enough, but it is not taxable income for the simple reason that the government has accepted that the value of that land on March 1, 1913, is for taxing purposes, its cost value. So if you had land which cost you, plus its improvements, forty cents in 1890 and that land was worth in 1913 $1.50 a square foot and you are selling it today for $2.00 a square foot, all the government is entitled to or interested in is the fifty cent profit, the difference between what it was worth on March 1, 1913 and what you are selling it for now.

What it was worth on March 1, 1913, may be determined in two ways. It may be determined by an appraisal or it may be determined by what it was selling for in 1913. If you have an appraisal made, if you have it made now, it is a retroactive appraisal and subject to very sharp criticism by the government. They are regular doubting Thomases on appraisals made at this date as of 1913. But nevertheless it can be made.

But the easiest way to overcome the matter is by establishing the selling prices of adjacent lots. If you can show for 1911 and 1912 the selling prices in a certain section of a cemetery, the average selling price per square foot will govern that section and that will be, for taxable purposes, your cost of that land. If your selling price is not very much greater now than it was at that time, then you haven't very much taxable profit and against that taxable, profit which you do have, you can deduct all your administrative and selling expenses, so that you should not have very much taxable profit left, very little, in fact.

It is fairly well fixed with the government now that if you sell perpetual care with your land, the value of the perpetual care must be deducted from the total sales price as of March 1, 1913. We are a little bit hazy on the matter as yet. The government claims that the perpetual care is a long term contract to perform services and that it is no part of the selling price of the land, which is a fairly good argument for them. Such being the case, you cannot add to the selling price the perpetual care price; you must deduct it and get the net selling price of the land in establishing your March 1, 1913, values.

However, the greatest difficulty came with the government because they insisted that the money that you receive for perpetual care was taxable income to you and I don't know when I have seen so many sane men rave when the government told them that.

Now, I can readily see---I am an outsider, I am not so vitally interested in the cemetery as you are, because you own one and I don't, but I can see how the government can tell you that perpetual care can be taxed, because everyone of you have a different kind of perpetual care contract. If your perpetual care contract is, in its intent, one whereby the money is not given to you outright but is turned over to you as a sort of trust fund, either actual or constructive, the Revenue Department has now accepted it as a trust fund, the income of which you receive only, and they have said that that is not taxable when you get it. In other words, if a man in buying a lot pays you eighty or one hundred dollars for the perpetual care, if your contract with him says that you are to receive one hundred dollar's and for which you agree to take care of his lot perpetually, then you are receiving the money and it is a long term contract and you report the receipt of that money as profit when you receive it and you deduct the charges when you give the care. But if your contract says that you will hold that in trust, or the contract infers that you hold it in trust and you can prove to the government that you really cannot possess that money and use it as you please, but that you must keep it in the fund, then they are willing to look upon it as a trust fund and the amount of money, the one hundred dollars, is not taxable income. Of course, the interest from that investment is taxable to you when you receive it, because you spend it and you deduct the expense as an expense of your business.

There are many variations of this proposition. I have merely tried to outline to you the general idea conveyed by it. The matter is still being fought out with the government. I have noticed that there are at least two cemetery associations which have carried their tax. case to the United States Board of Tax Appeals; one of them out West I noticed in the reports not more than a week ago is appealing the very thing which the government now concedes, so I feel sure that you needn't worry about it, but they are appealing it because perhaps a year or so back the government turned them down on the proposition and they didn't wish to pay the money, so they are appealing their endowment fund proposition. But the government has already accepted that viewpoint and I hope the United States Tax Board agrees with you.

Now, it is a warm evening and you don't care to listen to any more of my ramblings, so I will conclude with this thought, which I want to convey to you. Try to arrange your accounting so that you are able to tell at the end of the year if you are losing money on any particular service which you are rendering. If you keep your accumulating in such shape that you are able to tell whether or not you are losing money on any particular operation, then your books are in such shape that you will have no trouble in making out your tax returns to the government and of proving the same when they are audited.

If you are a cemetery operating for profit and you think you have your accounting arranged in a fairly good order, just for once call in some local public accountant; and you don't have to ask him to audit the books ask the auditor to look your books over and to criticize your methods, ask him if he can find anything wrong with them. He will not have to know very much about cemetery accounting to be able to tell you whether you have your financial, your tax accounting, your good will and your ether accounting all tied up properly. The legal, the good will, the financial and the accounting should be properly tied up together, so that you can operate efficiently, not as an idealist, but as a practical business man.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

The Committee on program has asked me to discuss the management of a modern cemetery, but if I confine myself to telling how we manage Lakewood, in Minneapolis, I feel that I will be better able to offer something which will be worthy of the attention of the members of the National Association. If, while talking about Lakewood, I am able to make suggestions that will be useful to gentlemen who are interested in the management of modern cemeteries the purpose of this paper will be fulfilled.

Lakewood is conducted on what is known as the mutual plan, and every lot owner is entitled to a vote at the annual election of trustees. All lots are sold with a provision for perpetual care, one-fifth of the receipts from these sales being placed in the hands of a trust company for that purpose. It seems to me, however, that the proper way to create this fund is to estimate the amount per foot which will be required at interest to maintain the grounds, and set it aside for each foot of ground sold, instead of figuring a percentage of sales, as is the rule at Lakewood.

The management is vested in nine trustees, three of whom are elected annually. An executive committee of three is appointed by the president to manage the finances, arid have general supervision of ail cemetery work. This committee has all the power of a full board and our expenditures must be approved by at least one member of it.

The superintendent has a monthly report blank which contains a statement of receipts and expenditures for the month, and for the year-to-date, a copy of the trial balance for the past month, and a recapitulation or balance for the year-to-date. All accounts of money transactions are kept in the city office, together with a set of plats, records of deeds, and lot and interment records. At the cemetery is kept a daily interment record, giving name, age, social state, nativity, place and date of death, place and date of burial and name of undertakers officiating, also, duplicate sets of plats and interment and lot owner's records. Our books show in itemized form all sources of income and expense, and we are able at any time, by referring to them, to know what departments yield a profit. We also itemize our maintenance account daily, keeping an accurate record of the time on each kind of work.

Our sources of income are eight in number, and they may be named in this order: Sale of lots, burial fees, single grave fees, special care of flowers, building foundations, setting monuments, vault charges and box making.

Of course, the lot sales are the principal source of income. Prices range from fifty cents to one dollar and fifty cents per square foot, according to location, the average price as per sales for the past two years being about seventy cents. In prosperous times, it should be said however, this average would be much higher.

In a cemetery conducted on the mutual plan, as is Lakewood, the price need be set only high enough to pay running expenses, erect and maintain proper buildings and secure the amount per foot that is necessary to guarantee perpetual care. The prices in some cemeteries are greater than with us, but the prices of preparing the ground originally is also greater. Before offering any part of a section for sale we grade and plat the entire section, put in heavy cast iron corner stones for each lot, and make the price cover the whole. I have heard of cemeteries where there was a special charge for grading and another charge for posts; and, indeed, until a few years ago that was the practice at Lakewood. I think that the plan we are now pursuing is decidedly the better.

The superintendent at Lakewood has a small index book, which he carries in his pocket, and which contains, in order, a statement of every lot sold and unsold in the cemetery, an alphabetical index of lot owners, and considerable other information of value. This book is used in the sale of lots, and we find it much more convenient than carrying plats around with us. When a person decides to buy a lot we issue him a sale ticket giving date, number of lot, price, etc. This ticket is taken to the city office, where the contracts are signed and the cash handled. When I assumed control of Lakewood it was the rule to make no burials until lots had been fully paid for, but I was not long in seeing that such a rule was keeping away many deserving people who otherwise would have been our patrons. Accordingly I induced the trustees to try the contract system, and I am sure that it has been a success. Our usual terms are one-third down, and the balance divided into monthly or quarterly payments which draw six percent interest. Such a plan makes it easy for a man in moderate circumstances to buy a desirable lot. We have a printed form which this class of purchasers sign. Under it we are empowered, in case payments are not made promptly, to remove all monumental work and any bodies which may be buried in the lots, to lots equaling in value the money that has been paid, after deducting the removal expenses.

Our charges for burial and this includes opening, closing and sodding graves, and re-sodding when the dirt settles, are four dollars for persons under twelve years of age, and five dollars for persons twelve years or over. This is probably as cheap as the work can be done without loss, although I have in mind cemeteries where the charges are less. Whether their services are the same as ours or not I cannot say.

In winter all bodies are deposited in the receiving tomb, and for this no charge is made, unless they are removed for burial to other cemeteries, or remain in the vault after June 1st. from which date a charge is made of two dollars per month per body. At the time of deposit in the tomb we make a charge to lot owners of the price of burial, which pays for the burial in the spring. To persons who are not lot owners we make a charge of the price of a single grave, which amount is credited in the spring, if a lot is purchased, or pays for a single grave. If a body is removed from our grounds for burial the full amount of the deposit is retained.

During the summer months few bodies are placed in the receiving tomb, and those few we require to be sealed in zinc-lined boxes, as is the rule with contagious diseases.

For single graves we charge up to twelve years of age, twelve dollars; twelve years of age and over, fifteen dollars. This includes opening closing and sodding the grave; and in case a lot is purchased, the amount less the burial fee is credited. We allow no individual mounds in the single grave section, but instead make the burials in a long tier, the width being the length of two graves foot to foot, with a four foot walk at the head depressed four inches. Our single grave section receives the same care in every way that is given the other parts of the grounds.

For special care of flowers, watering, etc., we charge $1.50 for each grave or vase for the season. This item is a source of some profit to the association, and of course the more flowers that are under care the better the grounds look.  Planting is not allowed on individual lots, except on graves and in vases.

All foundations and other underground work are done by the association.  Charges for foundations are: twenty cubic feet, or less, thirty-five cents per foot; over twenty cubic feet thirty cents. We require foundations to be laid under all work larger than 6 x 12 inches. That the association should do all work of this sort I consider quite important, for contractors will not do it properly, unless an inspector is constantly with them. In this connection I will speak of the setting of monuments, for the association does the entire monument setting in Lakewood, except in small cases. This requires one good man, accustomed to handling ropes and to directing men, but the other help can be common labor. By setting our monuments we are saved a great deal of annoyance, and realize a profit besides. Contractors allowed in cemeteries to do such work are chronic borrowers. They want ropes, blocks, planks, bars and numerous other things, in a great many cases forgetting to return them. The result is that when you need them a grand hunt is in order.  Contractors also seem to take a delight in hitching guy ropes to trees and in many ways they are great nuisances in a well regulated cemetery.

Nearly all of the pine boxes used in Lakewood is furnished by the association. As many of our funerals are arranged by telephone, this is a great convenience to us and to the undertaker. It saves the latter a trip from the city with a box while we can take the box direct to the grave and put men to work, knowing that we have the proper dimensions. Our box account last year paid for nearly all the lumber that was used at the cemetery, and had a credit of about two hundred dollars besides. We buy the sides and ends sawed to size and saw the tops and bottoms on the grounds. "Rainy day work" is what we call box making, for whenever it rains hard enough to interfere with the regular routine, the teamsters and other employees who are paid by the month, turn in to make boxes.

There are minor sources of income, not mentioned in this paper, but it is scarcely worth while taking up your time to name them.

The common laborers in the grounds are directly under a foreman who looks to the superintendent for instructions. He hires and discharges his own men, and I think this is the best plan, for when men know that a foreman has absolute authority over them their respect for him will increase and the character of their work will improve. The mechanics, watchmen and other assistants are hired by the superintendent, who looks after them in person. All work is itemized daily, so that at any time we can know exactly what any piece of work is costing us.

We have no special set of men for grave digging, or mowing, but accustom the employees to all kinds of labor, in this way being prepared for any emergency.

The hours for keeping the grounds open are 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. during the summer months; late in the fall and during the winter the gates are closed at 5:30 or 6 o'clock in the evening.

As is the case in many cemeteries, we have as yet been unable to bring about all of the reforms suggested by the association members. But we are slowly working toward improved conditions and hope to do better in the future. I think that you will find that where a large city cemetery is behind the times, it is more frequently the fault of the lot owners, than of the cemetery management, for every important reform is contested inch by inch.

It is quite possible that in this somewhat hurried account of how business is done at Lakewood I have told little that is new. The principal good coming from these annual meetings is the exchange of ideas that they encourage; each member being invited to bring the best that he has, and exhibit it for the benefit of his neighbor, to the end that the neighbor, if he sees fit may profit by it or offer suggestions that may be a source of profit to others. It is in this spirit that I came before you today, hoping, that if I am not able to be of any special service to you in what I have said you may be of service to me in the discussions that are to follow.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 8th Annual Convention
Philadelphia, PA
September 11, 12 and 13, 1894

The necessity and importance of making some provision for the perpetual care of cemeteries is now so fully recognized and appreciated throughout the country that it is gratifying to know that the increasing interest and admirable results already obtained owe very much to the influence and intelligent efforts of this association. Such progress is surely sufficient excuse for our existence and some compensation for the labor and expense in attending these annual conventions.

A burial ground (says a writer) unprotected and neglected, presents a cheerless and sad spectacle. It would seem that the dead who lie in such a place had been strangely forgotten by the living, and that philosophy is cold and repulsive which teaches us that the body being an insensible mass of matter may be buried from our sight and never thought of any more, and so inseparably do we connect the feelings and character of the living with the appearance and condition of the place of their dead that Franklin's saying is applicable, "I only need to visit the burial ground of a community to know the character of the people."  Hence no cemetery or burial ground today is complete or satisfactory which does not show not only evidences of care and respect paid by individuals and families to the memory of their own dead, but evidences also of that respect which the community of the living should ever bear toward the community of the dead.

Now, while I cannot hope to enhance the importance of this subject, it may be well to call attention to the diversity of opinions and of practice that prevails as to the best method of securing perpetual care, and as the charges and application of this vary in different cemeteries, I have no desire to recommend a fixed scale of prices for all cemeteries, or any "best plan." In my opinion each cemetery must be governed by the local conditions and advantages of its section of the country, such as the rate of interest, the cost of labor and materials, condition of the soil, severity of the climate, etc., or the exacting taste of your respective communities. All these and many other considerations will govern somewhat the cost of perpetual care. I might say here that the words "perpetual care" (although as smooth and consoling as a life insurance policy) are too broad and often misleading, and seemingly promise more care than the interest of the fund or money left will admit.

The original intention and meaning of perpetual care in my vicinity included the care of the grass only, and I hear of many disappointments because myrtle graves, watering vases, cleaning headstones, etc., are not included. Of course all these can be provided for by increasing the fund and it would be well to have all such things definitely stated in the bond or contract made between the proprietor and the corporation and thus avoids many misunderstandings in the future.

In my opinion, there are only two or three things connected with a burial lot, the care of which should be included and provided for, viz. the good appearance of the grass and all hardy shrubs and trees, and the cleaning and permanent position of head-stones and monuments. Many other items, some of a perishable existence and doubtful taste, could be readily dispensed with, and we continually discourage perpetuating flower beds (excepting hardy subjects) myrtle graves, vases and the care of hedges, fences, etc.

New cemeteries have no great difficulty in adopting perpetual care, at least for the grass and good appearance of the grounds, but these remarks are intended more for the older cemeteries which it is desirable to rescue from dilapidation and neglect, many lots and ground sold years ago, or before perpetual care was thought of.

To accomplish this, and before appealing to proprietors to leave money for the care of their respective grounds, the cemetery or corporation should do its part and give some assurance of greater neatness and higher keeping of the grounds, and thus secure the confidence and respect of the public.

When perpetual care was adopted in the cemetery under my charge, and when it was understood that dilapidation and neglect would no longer be tolerated, our sales perceptibly increased, and that too to citizens already owning lots in the numerous cemeteries in our vicinity, so that it is very evident that the greater the assurance a cemetery offers against such neglect, not only for our day, but for the future as far as human foresight can suggest, the more surely will it provide what the public demand, the greater will be its success and the higher will what it has to offer for sale be valued.

In all the catalogues and reports kindly sent me by brother superintendents, only one has a printed scale of prices for Perpetual Care. Spring Grove, Cincinnati, although all make an urgent appeal to their lot owners to leave money, the interest of which will be faithfully applied to the care of their respective lots. So for lack of knowledge of its workings and application in other cemeteries, and without any egotism, or comparison with older or wealthier institutions, a brief allusion to its adoption and progress at least, financially, in the cemetery under my charge, may be acceptable.

Swan Point was consecrated in 1847, and perpetual care was not adopted till 1877. During those 30 years many proprietors left money, by will or otherwise, and many more who were able and could have done so, but by their delay and the reverses of fortune they have been prevented from making this provision for themselves and their families. Suffice it to say that since the adoption of perpetual care the amount received in anyone year exceeded the voluntary contributions of the first 30 years.

The increase for each year is as follows:

AMOUNT OF ALL MONIES RECEIVED FROM
        1847 to 1875 inclusive was …………………     $10,219.05
            1876 …………………………………        1,788.00
            1877 …………………………………        3,524.95
            1878 …………………………………      11,037.00
            1879 …………………………………      12,181.94
            1880 …………………………………      13,625.96
            1881 …………………………………      17,522.75
            1882 …………………………………      11,037.00
            1883 …………………………………      15,999.50
            1884 …………………………………      11,790.00
            1885 …………………………………      11,296.00
            1886 …………………………………        9,946.00
            1887 …………………………………      15,461.00
            1888 …………………………………      10,127.00
            1889 …………………………………      12,961.00
            1890 …………………………………      18.004.00
            1891 …………………………………      12,841.00
            1892 …………………………………      10,575.00
                                    --------------
                                                      $209,937.15

The above may encourage many cemeteries contemplating Perpetual Care, although I know from experience how difficult and remote the accumulation of funds of one or two hundred thousand dollars seems on such small beginnings, and without even "a silver lining to every cloud," but don't be discouraged. In the language of statesmen, "the only way to resume is to resume."

About this time a scale of prices was adopted having reference to the care of the grass only. This was headed "Perpetual Care of Lots," and was mailed to the older proprietors as a guide and reminder to place their lots under care, and thus look like the newer sections.

The printing and distribution of this scale of prices was, I think, a mistake, as it deceived many who intended to provide for everything, when by will or otherwise they left only sufficient to care for the grass. The better way would be for the lot owner or his representative making this provision to visit the cemetery, see the condition of his lot; state what he desires to provide for and obtain the proper information from the superintendent, and with all due respect for cemetery officials, he is the proper one to consult.

Scale of prices for perpetual care of grass only:
    100 square feet ……………………..    $ 50
    200 square feet ……………………..    90
    300 square feet ……………………..  120
    400 square feet ……………………..  144
    500 square feet ……………………..  165
    600 square feet ……………………..  186
    700 square feet ……………………..  206
    800 square feet ……………………..  226
    900 square feet ……………………..  245
    1,000 square feet …………………… 264
    1,100 square feet …………………… 282
    1,200 square feet …………………… 300

For lots containing over 1,200 feet, 25¢ per square foot

When the above scale was adopted, some 16 years ago, the basis of our reckoning was 6%. Last year these funds earned only 5% and they are likely to realize still less in the future. So with the rates of interest decreasing and wages, etc., increasing, it may be a question if our scale of prices is not too low, but I will leave this to the convention, and as I said before, each cemetery will be governed by the conditions and advantages of its own section and people.

While the moneys or funds of cemeteries may be under various headings and not always intelligible, I would suggest at least two funds: A perpetual care fund, which has reference to private lots only, and a permanent fund, the interest of which would be sufficient to care for all the property of the cemetery and meet expenses when there is no further income from the sale of land.   This fund should be absolutely fixed and as carefully guarded as the perpetual care fund. The method of its accumulation may vary, but the principal with the yearly additions and interest should be allowed to accumulate for a long number of years or till the land which created them is all sold. I think this fund is of vital importance, but I am anxious to make improvements in my day and so would like to leave its creation to my successor.

In conclusion, gentlemen, our Association must be true to this Gospel of Perpetual Care. We know how pleasant and easy it is to receive people's money, and how uncertain and difficult it is to carry out the obligations assumed, especially in our severe and eccentric climate, but we must keep faith with the people, and secure to our citizens at least a burial place, indicating not only respect for the dead, but which will also be a source of pride and consolation to the living.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention
Minneapolis, MN
August 22, 23 and 24, 1893

When I was asked by your President to write a paper for this meeting, it seemed to me that so many subjects have been covered in the past that there is comparatively little new to be said, unless one considered the cemeteries from a new angle.

In thinking over Cemetery problems for the last few years the great changes which have come about in cemetery methods and ideals have been subjects to which I have given a great deal of thought and the paper which I am presenting to you to day is along these lines. Sometimes I think I am dreaming and if I am I want you to dream along with me and look into the future of Cemetery development.

As we compare the earlier Cemeteries with those of today we find many changes have come about. These have been due partly to economic conditions, but also very largely to the taste and ideas of the lot owners and while many Cemetery men have been leaders in these ideas it is also true that the public are demanding even greater changes, and that there are many forces at work which I believe will result in more beautiful cemeteries. As Cemetery men we cannot shut our eyes to these changes in public sentiment or we will be carried off our feet by forces which we cannot control anymore than the winds and the tides.

Economic conditions are making for simpler tastes in Cemetery Memorials and our public is demanding, not merely submitting, to regulations in regard to memorial stones. This will gradually result in fewer stones and in far better stones, each a work of art in a beautiful location.  Here is a problem of cooperation with designers of memorials which must be worked out carefully.

When all is said and done I believe their business will improve rather than otherwise and they will have less competition and greater opportunity to study their work and make finer memorials.

Cremation means easy burial and should be looked upon as merely a preparation of the body for interment. When looked upon that way the sentiment remains, only the body is in a different form while neither earth burial or ashes are pleasant the public seem to be tending toward cremation which will I believe, especially in the East, simplify the Cemetery problem. Trenching will not be necessary and the natural landscape can be preserved.

So much then for a glimpse of some of the things I have been thinking about and which I hope you will take home with you for serious consideration.

What are some of the practical cemetery problems of today and how do they compare with those ten or twenty years ago? Working conditions have changed materially in the last ten years, probably more so than at any previous period in the life of the ordinary cemetery unless possibly during and after the Civil War period.

What of labor costs? Ten years ago for the week ending August 1, there were on our payroll 118 men working 54 hours per week. In 1924 there were 96 men working 47½ hours per week, or a loss of 1822 working hours. Is this because the men work harder and it requires fewer working hours to keep up a constantly increasing area? I hardly think so! Our Cemeteries are growing larger and we all know men do not work any harder than they used to.

Now let us look further into the problem. Since August 1, 1914 we have sold nearly 1,000 new lots besides hundreds of single graves and there have been erected in the cemetery several thousand additional monuments and headstones, everyone of which has added to the labor of maintaining our grounds. With the great reduction in working hours our payroll is over nine hundred dollars more for the week and yet our income for perpetual care on the old lots has not increased. We have accomplished more in fewer working hours.

I have pictured a condition no worse than that in which the average cemetery find's itself and what future labor charges will be few would care to predict. Now what have we done to balance these increased costs? Do we keep our Cemeteries looking as well as ten years ago? And what of the future?

The average Cemetery probably is as well kept as ever and many improvements have been forced upon us which have made work easier and made it possible to keep a pace with the new working conditions.

We have substituted modern equipment in the way of trucks, automobiles and motor lawnmowers and the following table shows the effect upon the cost of perpetual care of the grass.

Cost Per Square Foot
1914……….……. .0126
1915…..……..…. .0121
1916…....………. .0121
1917…..…..……. .0157
1918…..……..…. .0177
1919…....………. .01765
1920…..…..……. .02493
1921…..……..…. .0248
1922…....………. .02315
1923…....………. .02016
1924…..…..……. .022549

The result of these improvements with us has meant that while it averaged .0126 per square foot to give a lot perpetual care in 1913, in 1923 with labor 150% it should have cost .0315 while it actually cost only .0225 or a saving of nearly one cent per square foot and I can definitely say that the Cemetery is kept as well or better today than ever.

We have also eliminated many unnecessary Cemetery groups of summer bedding plants substituting for them hardy shrubs, trees and grass. We are eliminating bothersome terraces or planting them with hardy plants which are easy to care for and we have done away with useless grave walks, substituting grass which greatly improves the appearance of the grounds. We have improved our roads so they require less care and are adapted to automobile traffic and altogether made many improvements which have resulted in the double satisfaction to us, saving work and beautifying the grounds. What is there left to do to these older parts of the grounds? I am afraid not much. Our hope then is that conditions shall not become worse, but better.

What of the future. This opens up many avenues of thought and leads us to think of the past, the present and the future. A class of students in Landscape Gardening recently visited our Cemetery and was told that it was a fine example of a Cemetery, but in a few years would be out-of-date, or words to that effect, because the Cemetery of the future would have only ground markers.

Our old Cemeteries had terraced lots, gravel paths, poor avenues, granite curbs, iron fences, monuments and headstones galore until you get the incongruous mass stone work seen in some of the old Cemeteries in the large cities. Then came the lawn plan, with a reduction in many things, but still too much grading, too many monuments and too much show, not enough of quiet, peace and harmony.

Is it going too far to say the Park Plan is appearing in the horizon and that such a Cemetery will really 'be the most perfect of all? Not a park in the ordinary sense of the word, or a play ground, but a memorial plot of sacred ground where all who enter may be quiet, mediate and think of the lost ones. The memorials here shall be simple, natural boulders, covered with vines and bushes, with plates recording the names of those buried there, grade markers wherever desired and beautiful memorials, erected by contributions from lot holders and in suitable locations to commemorate the dead in that portion of the Cemetery. Such memorials would be carefully designed by the most famous artists and sculptors of the day-each one a gem in itself in a beautiful setting and erected of the finest suitable material, regardless of cost. What an opportunity to design special sections; the whole a harmonious pot with a definite theme beautifully carried out.

Would not such a Cemetery be far more beautiful than the battlefield at Gettysburg, which we saw last year, where the monumental work is often too thick and ugly even though the area is large and the landscape beautiful. Natural landscape will be retained and possibly the day will come when the earth burial is as uncommon as the cremation is today and the necessity of digging graves in difficult ground will be eliminated.

Are we dreamers when we talk of such things? I don't think so. I think we must get this idea into our heads or a new group of Cemetery men, under the direction of the best landscape architects, will come along and build these Cemeteries while we are worrying about it. This is the Cemetery beautiful and we must study the idea and show our public how such a Cemetery may be made possible. How much more satisfactory such a Cemetery will be, nothing depressing but only sacred ground, quiet, peaceful and altogether lovely.

We have all of us studied the difficult problems of laying out Cemeteries to make them beautiful with rolling lawns, trees, shrubs and graceful avenues only to have them ruined with the laying out of lots and erection of memorial work and all our efforts seem to be in vain.

In the old days Cemetery Superintendents always laid out the Cemetery in squares, now we try to do better, but our problem is difficult and the results often discouraging. The park Cemetery will solve many of these problems and we all know the fewer lots in a section the better it looks. We have discarded curbing and fences soon we will discard other useless decorations and gradually approach the ideal.

We must study these problems seriously, intently and practically and develop our various cemeteries along the ideal which we have in mind, ever remembering that we are but servants of the public and that our duty is to crystallize and develop the highest ideals in our Cemeteries.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Convention
Portland, Maine
August 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1924

In discussing the subject assigned "The Importance of Landscape Engineering Work in Planning Cemeteries" it is not my pleasure to dwell upon the artistic side of the question. I shall not speak of the magnolia grandiflora whose myriad blossoms twinkle in their setting of green as star lights in a velvet sky, of an air redolent with the perfume of many blossoms, or resonant with the song of sweet-voiced birds. Nor, shall I attempt to carry you in word-built boats along the banks of crystal waters, where the wave lips are dimpled into kisses for the lilies on the shore. But rather, I shall dwell upon the subject of producing the beautiful, long, green foliage which your stockholders long to behold upon the date of the annual dividend-Landscape Engineering-with the purpose of producing a businesslike, clean cut paying proposition without frills or fancy work agreeable to the eye of the public.

In the not too far distant future we must better correlate the work of the Landscape Artist and the Landscape Engineer, or recognize in them two utterly distinct professions, performing diversified missions in the field of cemetery development. The present translation of the two professions defined by nothing other than the great majority of their own works shows the two terms to be as widely indifferent as day is from night. With the Landscape Artist who plans for beauty alone, who creates a picture with the same spirit that his brother enjoys when he lays colors upon canvas, there is no criticism held, provided his work be done under conditions favorable to this type of treatment. When the appearance is paramount and means unlimited for the purpose, it is most assuredly the mission of this artist to allow his artistic sense every latitude and produce, to the best of his ability, a monument to his art.

In the planning of the cemetery, his artistic trend must, on the contrary, be constantly tempered by knowledge and experience in actual cemetery operation built on a foundation of engineering, training. There are limitations in the search for the artistic which must be recognized to a greater extent in cemetery building. These limitations are three-the cost or construction, the cost of operation and the cost of maintenance. Each step in cemetery planning must be weighed carefully in the balance, by all three standards, before a decision is reached. It must be remembered that construction cost is but the first cost, that certain short cuts which appear feasible to the cemetery designer and which on the spur of the moment are desirable, due to the pressure created by lack of time or finance, often sway the judgment to unwise decisions for which operation and maintenance must pay many times during the life of the cemetery.

Construction is the first step and a slippery one. During the construction period, the landscape engineer must be continually alert to reaching proper adjustments between the construction cost, the operating cost and the maintenance cost. For only during the construction period can the desired savings be affected at a minimum of expense.

Too frequently do we hear the boast that a new cemetery was placed on a sales basis in an incredibly short time and at unusually low costs. These figures are usually based on acres graded, rather than on yards of earth removed on lineal feet of roadway, completed without mention of sub grade conditions or specifications on material and method of placing. Drains also are often considered as outlets for storm water through the catch basins, although the drain laid to collect the soil water after a short study of strata and incline would produce dryer burial ground and a better labor condition at an initial cost quite favorable by comparison. First cost and speed in construction are desirable. Both must be given full weight, especially during a time when completion of burial ground means a return on a large expenditure, but never must the cost of operation and maintenance be forgotten. Thinking in the abstract, dreaming of effects and guessing at results will not bring the answer. Real study, plans based on actual conditions and available records of past cemetery operations are the only safe guides.

In modern practice the initial action in planning the cemetery is the topographical survey, usually worked out with care and precision. The second step, to which many of our modern cemeteries bear mute witness, is the location of roadways on the topographic map obtained, with an utter disregard for any of the information thereon. Perfect circles rapidly appear straight, broad avenues intersect contour lines with reckless abandon. All energies are bent on producing a fancy map, regardless of the mounting prices of steam shovel and scraper operation. Thousands of yards of earth are moved to fit this beautiful plat but seldom do pencil and paper make contact to determine the amount of earthwork involved in the choice of several routes.

In selection of roadways another vital element is frequently forgotten namely the trend of travel within the cemetery's limits. Ton miles mean money for road upkeep just as surely as they mean money for truck and auto upkeep. Cemetery employees must use these roadways for transportation their time and the wear and tear of cemetery equipment is an expense. The construction of long sections at right angles to each other prevents the continuation of radial drives and defeats direct travel. While roadways should, in the main, be curved, they should approach the radial plan from the cemetery entrance in the same scheme that modern city planning recognizes as good practice for main thoroughfares into the business section.

On every industrial project under consideration today, whether it be the maintenance of an automobile factory, the construction of a building or the operation of a cemetery we must consciously or unconsciously make provision for those intangible costs known as "Overhead and Contingency". The contractor adds a certain percent to his bid precedes it with these items and presents his figure for doing the work. The Cemetery Superintendent, wrestling with the cost of "Perpetual Care", lays aside his actuary tables unit costs and integral calculus and puts down a figure which he thinks will cover "the rest of it". "The rest of it" means our aforesaid items, persistent overhead and contingency. He knows his roadways, park spaces, drains, buildings, transportation and a dozen other items must be paid for from cemetery profits that directly they do not earn one cent. That is overhead. He knows that when he set that mausoleum under the big tree, some day someone must settle for the damage done when the tree blew down. He knows that when he bought the poorly designed catch basin grating, which will some day slip out of place and break an ankle, he set a trap for a damage suit. He knows that when the sharp turn was placed at the foot of the steep roadway grade he built a scenic setting for an auto accident. These are some of the constituents of "Contingency".

Neither of these items can be entirely eliminated. Every business must carry their cost; but the measure of that cost is usually the measure of the success of the business under association. The Cemetery Superintendent with his zealous care and careful observation cannot undo all these errors within reasonable cost or human ingenuity. The theories of the efficiency engineer can but in small measure assist in alleviating bed rock circumstance. The time to reduce the cost of Overhead and Contingency begins with a vengeance the day the cemetery is planned and dwindles away to nothing on the day the cemetery is abandoned forever.

In conclusion, let us ever keep in mind, when planning the cemetery, that it is a business proposition as well as a picture. That the grounds planned with an eye to operation and maintenance cost must in time, have the better financial condition to preserve appearance. From the moment that plans are begun, we must never forget that overhead is a factor in maintenance, whether the project be considered on the perpetual care basis or individual upkeep and that moneys spent on overhead are never visible.

The complete design of the cemetery cannot be left to the artist alone. While every element of cemetery construction must be considered from the standpoint of beauty and aesthetic value, the weight of construction, operation and maintenance must be found and recognized at the time of beginning.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Convention
Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 14 and 15, 1921

Cemeteries render certain services which may be divided into two classes: First, those for which direct charges are made, such as providing burial lots and opening graves; second, those for which no direct charge is made, as for instance, maintaining avenues, shelters and office facilities. Inasmuch as the cost of furnishing and maintaining avenues and buildings is provided for in different ways by the various cemeteries, this paper will treat of those services for which direct charges are usually made. Everyone on whom the responsibility of superintending a cemetery rests has certainly been confronted, and probably will continue to be, with the difficulty of adjusting charges to meet the ever increasing costs. To some the difficulty of securing sufficient labor and a fair output has been perhaps more urgent than that of securing sufficient funds to pay those they have. The output per man per hour has generally decreased as the number of hours’ labor per day increased. The actual cost of operations must be known to intelligently fix the proper charges for these operations.

For a concrete case, perhaps foundations for monuments furnish a good example. If labor costs were 15 cents per cubic foot and material costs 17 cents per cubic foot and profit or overhead was 8 cents, foundations were built for 40 cents a cubic foot. When labor advances to 45 cents and material to 40 cents and profit and overhead is still 25 percent, the sum of labor and material costs the charge per cubic foot should be $1.06. The cost of foundation includes excavating and removing earth, very frequently three handlings, to say nothing of wheeling and teaming. The size of the foundation is in very many cases so small that extra material must be excavated, to give a man room to work, and then replaced and the surface re-sodded. The sand, stone and cement must be wheeled sometimes fifty or more yards. Where the headstones are set by outsiders, no matter how carefully, there is inevitably more or less repair necessary to the lawn surfaces. The high costs of monumental work is doing more to reduce the size of monuments and headstones than all the cemetery superintendent's advice and counsel to lot owners ever could. Sometimes the maker of a two by one headstone will compare the cost of a cemetery foundation, containing about twelve cubic feet, with the cubic yard price of mass concrete in engineering work requiring thousands of cubic yards. But let not his comparison or the unthinking lot owner's amazement at "such a terrible price" deter the superintendent from figuring all the elements of cost when readjusting his foundation prices to a higher level.

The charges for opening graves are so largely a matter of labor. whether in the field or in the office that the percent of increase paid grave diggers for this labor applied to former charges is somewhere near the proper charge. However, in many cemeteries the interment charge formerly included besides the labor of digging, filling and removing surplus earth, the use of the lowering device, the laying of board walks, covering with evergreen and even the use of tent and chapel. Whether it is wise to continue to give all these extras under one charge or whether it would be better to make some, or all of these, the matter of extra charges, rests with the particular cemetery. In a cemetery catering to all classes, it does not seem fair to make those who do not want these extras pay for them. The trend of the times seems to be away from the good old table d'hote to the a la carte method, and perhaps this simile may be a bit strange, yet it is well for cemeteries to observe the operation of natural economic changes that are going on.

The charge for flowers, planting, grading, watering annual care and such matters are all to be figured on the same basis; namely the charges must meet the costs of doing the work and doing it according to the standard previously established by the cemetery. There is a certain human tendency to trust that soon the time will come when things will right themselves and by keeping along and slighting the work that somehow one will get by until that time. But it seems a wrong thing to do where annual charges are made that may be revised as occasion requires. In the matter of annual care some cemeteries must find themselves in a quandary. For instance, in an old cemetery which is now selling lots only with Perpetual Care, many of the old lots were sold without Perpetual Care. Some of these old lots were under annual care, but many were absolutely uncared for. For the general appearance of the cemetery these uncared for lots have been fixed up and grass cut, without any payment by the lot owners to the cemetery. The annual care received may be small, if the cost is materially increased as it should be; some of those who have paid for years will probably refuse to continue. Then the cemetery will have so many more lots to care for without direct return, or it may give up caring for all lots which do not pay. The result will bring a generally unkempt appearance which no amount of care lavished on new and Perpetual Care lots can overcome. In a case of this sort and probably many have somewhat similar problems, that are peculiar to cemeteries, it seems better to continue to keep up the general appearance of the cemetery even though the expense has to be charged to new lots or overhead. There is another point that constantly comes up in connection with these old lots and that is this: the present proprietors of these lots are usually numbered in the great middle class; they have not received the immense profits that have accrued to the operators in foodstuffs, merchandise and manufacturing enterprises not the 200% to 300% increase in wages of many workers. In fact, times are pretty hard with them in many old communities and they have much difficulty to live and clothe themselves. Whether it is charity to accept $5.00 where $15.00 should be charged or good business to take $5.00 rather than nothing is for each one to decide for himself.

The increased costs of labor have a very varying effect upon the price of new lots, depending upon the amount of labor necessary to bring the reserves or newly purchased land into shape for lots. Those who have adopted the excellent accounting system, embodies in the paper read at Buffalo by the late A.W. Hobart (an able man whose kindly presence and big heart we all miss), will have little difficulty in setting down a base price per square feet. Unfortunately, some must dig out the cost of the land and estimate the carrying charges, look up the cost of drains and avenue construction and compute and estimate the grading charges to be applied to the net area available for burial lots. Few must include the cost of blasting and excavating rock, but all these things must be considered and figured into the new selling price.

How many know the percent of gross area of a forty-acre tract that will be available for sale? More care than some have exercised in the past is necessary in accurately compiling all the elements of cost because the amounts involved are much greater than formerly; because one must be sure to have his balance on the right side of the ledger and because that has generally characterized their operation and no charge of profiteering brought against them because of a superintendent’s easy-going guessing instead of knowing.

Perpetual Care is the specific performance by the cemetery of a contract made by and between it and the lot owner, the consideration being a sum of money paid to the cemetery by the lot owner with the proviso that the cemetery will use the income forever to care for the graves on the lot and such other care as may be stated in the contract. Some Perpetual Care contracts thus limit the liability of the cemetery to the amount of work the income will pay for and others guarantee to do the specific things enumerated. Though there is a very marked difference in the legal aspect of these two forms of Perpetual Care contracts, the practical difference in a going cemetery is not so marked, for this reason: If a cemetery does not continue to maintain the same general appearance of care as formerly, the confidence of the public will be weakened and when confidence and trust go, the decline of that cemetery starts.

The amount of Perpetual Care endowment any lot requires is determined by two factors, both variables. First - the cost of doing the work and second - the rate of interest that the fund will yield. The yield must be sufficient to include the expenses of administering the fund and the actual losses to which all large funds are subjected. Of the variation in the cost of doing the work every superintendent is aware. The difference in the interest rates on money is also apparent to the readers of newspapers, to say nothing of those who are carrying overdue mortgages. There appears to be no fixed relation between these two variables, because they are each subject to different influences. For instance, restricted immigration has been a very strong factor in the wages of common labor and its influence on money rates is rather remote. Furthermore, the income received from conservative investments and the wage paid labor is different in the different localities.

In 1893 a superintendent states in our proceedings that a fund established sixteen years earlier on a basis of a yield of 6% earned in 1892 five percent and was likely to earn less in the future. So the question of the proper amount necessary to take Perpetual Care is not a new one with this Association. There is no rational formula that can be employed. Just as an engineer in designing a structure uses the latest data he can secure on the strength of materials, not the empirical formula he used five, ten or twenty years ago for similar structure, so those entrusted with the designing of Perpetual Care funds should consider the stresses and strains which the present times have developed in the Perpetual Care structure.

One old conservative practice in some places was to figure a yield of 3% on these funds this at the time the return was from 3¾% to 4% from state and municipal bonds. What rate of yield or what conservative figure less than the real rate at which bonds may now be purchased shall now be figured. I hazard a guess that 4½% would be a fairly conservative figure on which to base the estimate for Perpetual Care. The present yield of liberty bonds is better than 5½% and the yield of municipal bonds twenty years ago was 4%.

Suppose it cost $3.00 a year to take Perpetual Care of a lot containing 150 square feet under pre-war conditions, and $100.00 was the amount required for the endowment of the lot. Let us assume that it cost $7.50 to do the same work today, then on a 4½% estimated yield, the endowment should be $166.67 or an increase of two-thirds in the endowment. Of course these figures probably do not agree with any particular cemetery but the principle seems a reasonable one to adopt. It may be said that the rate in twenty years will be back to the old figures and it is unsafe to figure 4½% on a perpetual investment. An answer to such statement is that when money rates drop to such figure the costs of doing the work will probably likewise drop.

But what about the lots now under perpetual care which cost perhaps two and a half times as much as the income from the endowment fund estimated at 3 percent? Certainly a going cemetery must fulfill its contracts; the grass must be cut and the settled graves raised. In the language of the day it is up against a tough proposition. To be sure in the conservative practice of estimating assumed, there is probably a return on the original $100.00 investment of $4.00 instead of $3.00, and if the bonds mature now fixed principal of $100.00 may be reinvested to yield $5.50 in absolutely safe obligations of the national government. But even under such conditions there is a deficit of $2.00 on each $100.00 of the endowment. In some cemeteries, probably a good many, more work is done on the perpetual care lots than is called for in the contract-for instance, the care of grass alone may be specified in the contract for perpetual care and one or more myrtle graves may be cared for. This care of myrtle graves may be a matter of annual charge or additional endowment.

But suppose there is no chance for any such relief, then revenue from operation must be sufficiently increased to take care of this deficit. To be sure when the lots are all sold and only a very small income is obtained from operations the income from the perpetual care fund is practically all the fund available to care for the cemetery; then there will be no means to raise revenue needed to make up a deficit if present conditions then obtain. In case of the continued duration of these conditions the only thing to do is to make a systematic addition to the endowment fund by devoting a sufficient amount from future lot sales to make the endowment fund such amount as will yield enough to fulfill the contracts at the time the last lot is sold. These accretions will naturally diminish the amount necessary to raise yearly from the operating income.

Here is what Timothy McCarthy said twenty-seven years ago at Minneapolis: "In conclusion, gentlemen, our Association must be true to this Gospel of Perpetual Care. We know how pleasant and easy it is to receive people's money, and how uncertain and difficult it is to carry out the obligations assumed, especially in our severe and eccentric climate, but we must keep faith with the people, and secure to our citizens at least a burial place, indicating not only respect for the dead, but which will also be a source of pride and consolation to the living."

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September 7, 8, 9 and 10, 1920

“What are you going to do when the rent comes 'round?” expresses in realistic terms the question that all of us who study finances are asking ourselves today.

In the not too far distant future it is probable that we shall again face a "buyer's market." For seven years most of us have had a seller's market wherein we prospered-or at least we were fooled into thinking so. Very soon people are going to be very loath to let go of their money for anything. The threat of continued war and the actuality of taxes are upon us. If is a sad fact that the people of the great middle class (wherein has lain the great purchasing power of the United States) are rapidly running out of money.

The Three Great Lags-It would appear to the student of economics that the cemetery industry is soon to be hit with the greatest impact in our history¬ the three great economic "lags." These "three musketeers" of evil fame I call the "gross sales lag," the "profit lag," and the "cash lag.” If I do nothing else in this talk but to arouse you thoroughly and place you on guard" against the great danger of these three sly, insidious, treacherous, undermining termites I feel I shall have performed in part my duty to you.

The Gross Sales Lag-In terms of today's devalued dollar, your gross dollar sales should be twice your 1940 gross dollar sales and 60% more than your 1945 sales, if present day dollar sales are to be really equal to the old days. There are only a few, if any, who could accomplish that miracle-unless you possess a new property, in which case doubling a small amount of gross sales can be done very easily.

The sales resistance attitude of the public will grow stronger and stronger because of many things, such as growing taxes that will take from your cus¬tomers cash they might have spent with you, threat of an unknown war, govern¬ment propaganda against increased prices, the uncertainty generally prevalent because of a confused Washington. And yet, your prices must rise to keep step with your rising costs, which creates even more sales resistance. Money is changing hands, and it may be that in some degree we can overcome this "sales resistance lag," by giving particular attention to the so-called laboring classes. If we want money, we must go where the money is.

The Profit Lag- The "profit lag" has two phases. Economic history teaches that during an inflationary period, labor and material costs rise much faster than the public's willingness to accept higher prices, which means greatly reduced profits. The second phase of this "profit lag" is the higher cost of replacement of inventory. Most of us today are making a fictitious profit because we are selling inventory that was manufactured at a much lower cost than that of today. Men we begin to replace this inventory, be it crypts, niches, graves, vaults or what not, we shall find that the difference between what this new inventory costs, and the price at which we can sell it, is much less than before.

The Cash Lag- The last and perhaps most dangerous lag is the "cash lag." Contrary to public and government opinion, profits are not all in cash. The fact is if our bookkeeping was such that we could isolate this year's cash receipts from the payments on last year's business, we would find that the cash content in the total profit is much lower than we think. In fact, it is entirely possible that none of this year's profit is in cash but is in accounts receivable-trucks, maintenance equipment, inventories of salable products, operating supplies, new buildings or additions to the old, etc., etc.

We, however, are compelled to pay all cash or partially cash on many things¬ such as payrolls, city, county, state and federal taxes, operating supplies, sales¬men's commissions, contractual payments on buildings, etc. I do not need to emphasize to you where and how your cash slips away from you. Again your cash income will continue to dwindle because, in order to offset the "gross sales lag," you will endeavor to make it easier and easier for your purchasers by asking less and less cash for their monthly payments.

As expenses go up this cash lag becomes greater and greater until you may well find yourself borrowing money to pay your taxes and other items that have in themselves no hope of compensating return. As the outgo of cash exceeds the accumulation of cash year after year, you will soon find your cash supply always inadequate to take care of your cash necessities, and borrowings therefore steadily increase.

From the publication:
“1950-1951 Cemetery Yearbook”
NCA 21st Annual Meeting
Hotel Schroeder, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
October 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1950