One who demands that a chauffeur or a
motorman of an electric railway be examined as to his psychical
abilities by systematic psychological methods, so that accidents may
be avoided, does not necessarily demand that a congressman or a
cabinet minister or a candidate for marriage be tested too by
psychological laboratory experiments, as the witty ones have proposed.
And one who believes that the work in the factory ought to be studied
with reference to the smallest possible expenditure of psychical
impulses is not convinced that the same experimental methods will be
necessary for the functions of eating and drinking and love-making, as
has been suggested.
And if it is true that difficulties and discomforts are to be feared
during the transition period, they should be more than outweighed by
the splendid betterments to be hoped for. We must not forget that the
increase of industrial efficiency by future psychological adaptation
and by improvement of the psychophysical conditions is not only in the
interest of the employers, but still more of the employees; their
working time can be reduced, their wages increased, their level of
life raised. And above all, still more important than the naked
commercial profit on both sides, is the cultural gain which will come
to the total economic life of the nation, as soon as every one can be
brought to the place where his best energies may be unfolded and his
greatest personal satisfaction secured.
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