December 23, 1985

Each year, some 2.5 million people who are outdoors enthusiasts - or just want to look the part - make a pilgrimage to L. L. Bean Inc.'s famous retail store, a landmark in this small Maine town. With visions of down vests, chamois shirts and rubber-bottomed Maine hunting shoes dancing in their heads, most probably do not even notice the sprawling, metal-skinned building that stands unidentified off Route 1, just about a half-mile down the road from Bean's store. But in recent years, this nondescript building has attracted a different kind of pilgrim: corporate executives from companies as diverse as I.B.M. and J. C. Penney, Xerox and Eddie Bauer, Digital Equipment and Time Inc. This 315,000-square-foot building is L. L. Bean's distribution center, the backbone of its mighty mail-order business. From this building, Bean annually sends out 5.8 million packages that contain some 11 million items worth some $260 million, or about 86 percent of its total sales. What these corporate giants have come to study is not merely Bean's remarkable efficiency, but the way Bean has achieved that efficiency: by relying on people rather than robots.

The farm bill now on President Reagan's desk, the costliest in history, is an expensive gamble that America's agricultural troubles can be cured with lower prices and bigger Government paychecks, its defenders and its critics say. It is a gamble, they say, that price reductions for American commodities can stimulate enough foreign buying to reduce burdensome surpluses and provide something closer to full use of the American agricultural establishment - the 2.3 million farms, their suppliers, the railroads that move their produce and the mills and shippers that process and sell it. Even the projected costs of $52 billion over the first three years of the five-year measure are, like those of farm legislation of past years, far from a certainty, many say. For example, current farm programs, which were enacted in 1981, wound up costing five times as much as their authors had expected. Some economists believe the cost has been underestimated for the new measure because, they say, far more farmers are likely to apply for benefits than now participate in Federal farm programs. Although the estimated costs are higher than under the original farm proposal Mr. Reagan made in February, Administration officials have said that the President would sign the bill early this week.

The company that employed a deliveryman accused of trying to sell secret documents to the Soviet Union appears to have violated Government rules requiring thorough destruction of classified material, a senior Federal official said today. The official, Steven Garfinkel, head of the Information Security Oversight Ofice, said the procedures attributed to the Acme Reporting Company of Washington by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for discarding classified documents did not comply with a June 1982 Federal directive. It requires companies and Government agencies to shred or burn unneeded classified material or turn it into pulp. Mr. Garfinkel's assessment was based on testimony by an F.B.I. agent, Michael Giglia, at a court hearing Saturday. Mr. Giglia said an Acme official had told him that the company ''maintains copies of top secret and secret documents in its safe. These documents are disposed of by ripping them by hand and placing them in the trash.''

TWENTY-TWO sets of hurricane lamps have been ordered, and the shopper has moved on to the next item on her Christmas list: gifts with $150 price tags. ''I take it these are people who pretty much have everything?'' the salesman inquires. The shopper nods. ''That's difficult,'' he says sympathetically. ''We can do a dozen wines or a dozen champagnes. Or perhaps a superb-looking decanter.''

A picture caption yesterday in some copies of the Sports section with an article about the Knicks game misidentified a New York player. He was Gerald Wilkins.