employment, or transfer--any one of which means more income, more
responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully.

Business might very logically take another view. It _might_ believe that
the single man is the better employee, because single men are free to
travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the
risk of going home to trouble. It _might_ believe that the home
experiences and environment of the people it hires are not its concern.
But business is concerned with these aspects and young people should
know in what way and why.

While business negotiates with the husband, it has long since learned
that _both_ husband and wife are entitled to consideration whenever one
is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more
important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to
keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business
can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic,
and tactful man _if_ his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot
afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home--not necessarily
vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment,
and misunderstanding.

As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major
objectives and policies, I attend several times each week conferences
during which men are discussed for promotion, transfer to new work or
new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business
consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as
plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually, because
all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence
our discussion is necessarily devoted to men--to what we can do to make
them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much
responsibility they can assume, to what they are best fitted for doing,
and the like. During the past fifteen years, I have discussed such lowly
functions as clerkships at $85 a month and such exalted positions as
vice-presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4000 and
$10,000 a year.

The judgment of executives is not infallible, and some of the men we
pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them.
We try to analyze these failures even more carefully than we analyze the
successes. Here is what we find: in the majority of instances, men do