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.
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