Psychology and Industrial Efficiency | Page 9

if the really decisive factor for
the adjustment of personality and vocation, namely, the dispositions of
the mind, were not so carelessly ignored.
Society, to be sure, has a convenient means of correction. The
individual tries, and when he is doing his work too badly, he loses his
job, he is pushed out from the career which be has chosen, with the
great probability that he will be crushed by the wheels of social life. It
is a rare occurrence for the man who is a failure in his chosen vocation,
and who has been thrown out of it, to happen to come into the career in
which he can make a success. Social statistics show with an appalling
clearness what a burden and what a danger to the social body is
growing from the masses of those who do not succeed and who by their
lack of success become discouraged and embittered. The social
psychologist cannot resist the conviction that every single one could
have found a place in which he could have achieved something of value
for the commonwealth. The laborer, who in spite of his best efforts
shows himself useless and clumsy before one machine, might perhaps
have done satisfactory work in the next mill where the machines
demand another type of mental reaction. His psychical rhythm and his
inner functions would be able to adjust themselves to the requirements
of the one kind of labor and not to those of the other. Truly the whole
social body has had to pay a heavy penalty for not making even the
faintest effort to settle systematically the fundamental problem of
vocational choice, the problem of the psychical adaptation of the
individuality. An improvement would lie equally in the interest of those
who seek positions and those who have positions to offer. The

employers can hope that in all departments better work will be done as
soon as better adapted individuals can be obtained; and, on the other
hand, those who are anxious to make their working energies effective
may expect that the careful selection of individual mental characters for
the various tasks of the world will insure not only greater success and
gain, but above all greater joy in the work, deeper satisfaction, and
more harmonious unfolding of the personality.

V
SCIENTIFIC VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE
Observations of this kind, which refer to the borderland region between
psychology and social politics, are valid for all modern nations. Yet it
is hardly a chance that the first efforts toward a systematic overcoming
of some of these difficulties have been made with us in America. The
barriers between the classes lie lower; here the choice of a vocation is
less determined by tradition; and it belongs to the creed of political
democracy that just as everybody can be called to the highest elective
offices, so everybody ought to be fit for any vocation in any sphere of
life. The wandering from calling to calling is more frequent in America
than anywhere else. To be sure, this has the advantage that a failure in
one vocation does not bring with it such a serious injury as in Europe,
but it contributes much to the greater danger that any one may jump
recklessly and without preparation into any vocational stream.
It is fresh in every one's mind how during the last decade the economic
conscience of the whole American nation became aroused. Up to the
end of the last century the people had lived with the secure feeling of
possessing a country with inexhaustible treasures. The last few years
brought the reaction, and it became increasingly clear how
irresponsible the national attitude had been, how the richness of the
forests and the mines and the rivers had been recklessly squandered
without any thought of the future. Conservation of the national
possessions suddenly became the battle-cry, and this turned the eye
also to that limitless waste of human material, a waste going on

everywhere in the world, but nowhere more widely than in the United
States. The feeling grew that no waste of valuable possessions is so
reckless as that which results from the distributing of living force by
chance methods instead of examining carefully how work and
workmen can fit one another. While this was the emotional background,
two significant social movements originated in our midst. The two
movements were entirely independent of each other, but from two
different starting-points they worked in one respect toward the same
goal. They are social and economic movements, neither of which at
first had anything directly to do with psychological questions; but both
led to a point where the psychological turn of the problem seemed
unavoidable. Here begins the obligation of the psychologist, and the
possibility of fulfilling this obligation will be the topic of our
discussion concerning