reply to u/atomicnotes at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1fa0240/early_1900s_3_x_5_inch_card_index_filing_cabinet/

This is an excellent question. I strongly suspect you won't find a booklet or book from Macey after 1906 that does this, though there may have been something before that.

You'll notice that on page 9, the 1906 Macy Catalog takes what I consider to be a pot shot at their Shaw-Walker competition in the section "Not a kindergarten". Shaw-Walker was selling not just furniture, but a more specific system, as well as a magazine. Since there's something to be learned for current knowledge managers and zettel-casters in the historical experience of these companies and the systems and methods they were selling, I'll quote that section here (substitute references to enterprise and business for yourself):

Not a Kindergarten

Every successful enterprise knows its own requirements best, and develops the best system for its own purpose. We manufacture business machinery. Our appliances and supplies are boiled down to a few parts, and simple forms, and will accommodate any system in any business. The office boy can understand and use them. If we undertook to teach the whole world how to run its business, we would have to saddle the cost on those who buy for what we tried to teach those who do not.

System in business is desirable, but no system can make a business successful, where the management is deficient. So called ‘Systems’ often result in useless expense and disappointment. We retain what experience proves useful and practical; so far as possible, eliminating all complicated and useless features. This explains how we can employ the best workmanship and material, combined with pleasing designs, and sell our goods with profit at lower prices than the inferior articles offered by others.

There may have been some booklets at some point, but I've not run across them for any of the major manufacturers of the time. (I've only loosely searched this area.) Some of the general principles were covered in various articles in System Magazine which was published by Shaw-Walker, a filing cabinet manufacturer, in the early century. System Magazine was sold to McGraw-Hill which renamed it Business Week, but it is now better known as Bloomberg Business Week. In the December 1906 issue of System, W. K. Kellogg, the President of the Toasted Corn Flake Company, is quoted touting the invaluable nature of the Shaw-Walker filing system at a time when his company was using 640 drawers of their system.

To some extent the smaller discrete "system" was really a part of a broader range of information and knowledge of business and competition. This can be seen in the fact that System Magazine still exists, just under an alternate name, along with a much broader area of business schools and business systems. We've just "forgotten" (or take for granted) the art of the smaller systems and processes which seemed new in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Other companies had "systems" they sold or taught, much like Tiago Forte teaches his "Second Brain" method or Nick Milo teaches "Linking Your Thinking". However, most of them were really in the business of selling goods: furniture, filing cabinets, desks, index cards, card dividers, etc. and this was where the real money was to be found at the time.

A similar example in the space is the Memindex System booklet that came with their box and index cards. The broad principles of the system can be described in a few paragraphs so that the average person can read it and modify it to their particular needs or use case. The company never felt the need to write an entire book along the lines of David Allen's Getting Things Done or Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal Method. Allen and Carroll are selling systems by way of books or classes. Admittedly, Carroll does have custom printed notebooks for using his methods, but I suspect these are a tiny fraction of the overall notebook sales for those who use his method.

Here's evidence of a correspondence course from the Library Bureau some time after 1927, which was when they'd been purchased by Remington Rand: https://www.ebay.com/itm/335534180049 . Library Bureau had an easier time as their system was standardized for libraries, though they did have efforts to cater to business concerns the way Shaw-Walker, The Macey Company, Globe-Wernicke and others certainly did.

I think the best examples in broader book form from that time period are Kaiser's two books which still stand up pretty well today for those creating knowledge management systems, zettelkasten, commonplace books, getting things done/productivity systems, second brains, etc.

Kaiser, J. Card System at the Office. The Card System Series 1. London: Vacher and Sons, 1908. http://archive.org/details/cardsystematoffi00kaisrich.

———. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/296414315589

Shaw Walker steel cabinet with brass pulls offered for $800 at auction ($1,200 buy it now) o/a 2024-05-03

Modular in 4 sections with 2 sets of drawers (each 6x3 for a total of 36 drawers) and a top and a bottom.

Cost per drawer: $22.22

This is a rarer modular set up.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/945071177181845/

2024-02-01 Listed Shaw-Walker four drawer side table for $95 and it sold within a day for local pick up.

Cost per drawer: $23.75

I inquired about this, but missed out on it by just a few hours. I totally want a pair of these as end tables for a couch or a cozy club/reading chair.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/694743405502203/

Seller description: 1902 Shaw Walker Card Catalog and File Cabinet 3 piece stackable $765 Listed 19 weeks ago in San Bernardino, CA Details

Condition
Used - Good
Color
Brown
Material
Wood

Super nice old antique card catalog Stackable Oak wood Very few marks for its age 1902 original tags inside it Simply elegant piece No missing pieces no scratches 76 t 16 w 19 d

Jeanie Lowry listing from October 2023 and sold in late 2023 potentially for $765 or less.

Sectional Shaw-Walker modular card catalog and filing cabinet. 3 sections of 2x3 drawers for 3x5" cards and one section of 2x1 along with a two 8.5x11" filing drawers and a writing desk pullout section.

22 total drawers but 20 for index cards

Cost per drawer: $34.77 (sold)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276296844684

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204539906243

According to the card on a Shaw-Walker desktop card index, the follower block was patented on October 10, 1902.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235238777043

Uncommon Shaw-Walker 4 drawer card cabinet/side table in a 2x2 configuration with leg-based stand. Listed around 2023-10-04 for $1,375.00.

Possibly modular and made of 3-4 individual stackable pieces.

Free pick up or shipment from DeKalb, IL

cost per drawer: 343.75

(This may be one of the most expensive per drawer I've ever seen.)

2023-10-11 The seller made me an offer to purchase for $950.00 bring down the per drawer cost to $237.50.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204449941096

2 drawer 4 x 6" card index<br /> Listed in September 2023 for starting bid of $32.95

Cost per drawer: $16.45 <br /> Cost per drawer with approx. shipping: $25.75

Purchased 2023-09-10

https://www.ebay.com/itm/404291953051

HH West Co. was a stationer in Milwaukee that sold Shaw Walker card indexes in the early 1900s.

Watts, Charles J. The Cost of Production. Muskegon, MI: The Shaw-Walker Company, 1902. http://archive.org/details/costproduction01wattgoog.

Short book on managing manufacturing costs. Not too much of an advertisement for Shaw-Walker manufactured goods (files, file management, filing cabinets, etc.). Only 64 pages are the primary content and the balance (about half) are advertisements.

Given the publication date of 1902, this would have preceded the publication of System Magazine which began in 1903. This may have then been a prototype version of an early business magazine, but with a single author, no real editorial, and only one article.

Presumably it may also have served the marketing interests of Shaw-Walker as a marketing piece as well.

Tangentially, I'm a bit intrigued by the "Mr. Morse" mentioned on page 109 who is being touted as an in-house consultant for Shaw-Walker.... Is this the same Frank Morse who broke off to form the Browne-Morse Co.? (very likely)

see: see also: https://hypothes.is/a/Sp8s4sprEe24jitvkjkxzA for a snippet on Frank Morse.

https://www.facebook.com/muskegonheritagemuseum/posts/browne-morse-companyin-1907-former-shaw-walker-executive-frank-morse-partnered-w/3640379512645950/

Attached image of the factory has a sign across two sides of the building that repeats the words: "Quality Cabinets Browne-Morse Company"

Frank Morse, a former Shaw-Walker executive, partnered with retired plumbing dealer Richard Browne in 1907 to form the Browne-Morse Company which would manufacture office equipment.

Shaw-Walker. Flexowriter File-Desks. Accessed March 24, 2023. http://archive.org/details/TNM_Flexowriter_File-Desks_-_Shaw-Walker_20171021_0001.

An interesting in-desk filing system for punched cards. Interesting I've not seen anything like this prior for a mini card index maintained in an office desk drawer.

Perhaps such a system wouldn't have been as easily accessible for use on a daily basis versus potentially more portable small systems that could have been transferred from desk to desk (person to person).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115727768658

The Shaw=Walker Card Systems catalogue from circa 1899.

Arch Wilkinson Shaw<br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Wilkinson_Shaw

• Founder of Shaw-Walker with Louis C. Walker,
• publisher of System: The Magazine of Business which was sold to McGraw-Hill Company in 1927/8 and renamed Business Week which was later renamed Bloomberg Business Week.

Furniture icon Shaw Walker dead at 95 Published: Aug. 14, 2009, 12:06 p.m.

And Mr. H. Beebe of Chicago, using but one drawer, says: "It has made me keep appointments and lay out my work to increase the things I can do in a day. "

In the December 1906 issue of System, a magazine which would eventually become Bloomberg Business Week), W. K. Kellogg, the President of the Toasted Corn Flake Company is quoted touting the invaluable nature of the Shaw-Walker filing system at a time when his company was using 640 drawers of their system.