Each year along toward the end of November the senior editor, writers and researchers of TIME'S Business & Finance department begin worrying. The time for their year-end review, which goes to press the first week in January, is at hand, and they are faced with the difficult task of putting the year's events in the world of business in their proper perspective. It is a long, exacting, formidable job.

This year's review of Business in 1947 (TIME, Jan. 12) was the most extensive TIME has ever run. A.D. 1947 was a critical, confused, difficult year, and the editors' attempt to evaluate it had to begin, of course, with the facts. Because many final figures are not released until after the year's end, the editors had to go directly to the sources for some statistics that were vital to the story. Many of them were to be had only in Washington, and some weeks before the story went to press Washington Bureau Reporter Marshall Berger was handed a query ("The longest I had ever seen") from Business & Finance. To get the answers, Berger began seeing specialists in the departments of Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, Treasury, at the Federal Reserve Board, the Bureau of the Budget, the Brookings Institution, the Council of Economic Advisors. All were busy with their own year-end affairs, but they obligingly took time out to help TIME.

Meanwhile, Business Researcher Eleanor Stoddard was busy in New York interviewing people and assembling material. The result of nearly three weeks' work was her 50-page report. It covered the year's economy, segment by segment, with a chronology of events, earnings figures, significant developments in industry, etc. Researcher Stoddard also passed along a foot-high stack of pertinent reports on the year's business, selected from the 100-odd morgue folders she had gone through.

Like all TIME stories, the business review is written as close to the deadline as possible. So, on New Year's day Joe Purtell, TIME'S senior editor for Business & Finance, sat down with the assembled facts and went to work. At 6 o'clock in the morning, two days later, he handed his first draft to the night typist, and went home to bed.

From then until the story went to press three days later, he was busy revising and rewriting. The story was completely typed eight different times. Everybody from Managing Editor T. S. Matthews, Executive Editor Roy Alexander and Assistant Managing Editor Dana Tasker read it and made comments. Not until six hours before press time was Editor-Writer Purtell entirely satisfied with the review.

One of the last to finish his part of the project was Robert Chapin, whose department was responsible for the accompanying charts. The difficulty of getting year-end figures and of converting commodity exports to metric tons, etc. held Chapin up until 24 hours before his deadline. His department worked practically around the clock illustrating the significant phases of the story which could best be told with charts. Thanks to a break in the wintry weather, copies for the engravers arrived at TIME'S three printing plants on schedule,

Closing the review was a matter of standing off the impatient Production department until the final version was double checked for accuracy. By that time all of the Business researchers were working on the story. When it was all in, Business & Finance took a belated holiday, and Researcher Stoddard finally got her Christmas cards mailed.

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