he other demands that half a dozen large machines be
simultaneously supervised, all that is necessary is to find the man
with the right type of attention for each place. It would be utterly
arbitrary to claim that the expansive type of attention is
economically more or less valuable than the concentrated type. Both in
English and in German we have a long popular series of pamphlets with
descriptions of the requirements and conditions for the various
occupations to which a boy or a girl may turn, but I have nowhere
found any reference to the most essential mental functions such as the
particular kind of attention or memory or will. These pamphlets are
always cut after the same pattern. Where the detail refers at all to
the mental side, it points only to particular knowledge which may be
learned in school or trade or work, or to abilities which may be
developed by training. But the individual differences which are set by
the particular conditions and dispositions of the mind are neglected
with surprising uniformity in the vocational literature of all
countries. The time seems ripe for at last filling this blank in the
consciousness of the nation and in the institutions of the land.

PART II

THE BEST POSSIBLE WORK

XIII

LEARNING AND TRAINING

We have placed our psychotechnical interest at the service of economic
tasks. We therefore had to start from the various economic purposes
and had to look backward, asking what ways might lead to these goals.
All our studies so far were in this sense subordinated to the one task
which ought to be the primary one in the economic world, and yet which
has been most ignored. The purpose before us was to find for every
economic occupation the best-fitted personality, both in the interest
of economic success and in the interest of personal development.
Individual traits under this point of view become for us the decisive
psychological factors, and experimental psychology had to show us a
method to determine those personal differences and their relation to
the demands for industrial efficiency. This first goal may be reached
with all the means of science, as we hope it will be in the future, or
everything may be left to unscientific, haphazard methods as in the
past: in any case a second task stands before the community, namely,
the securing of the best possible work from every man in his place.
Indeed, the nation cannot delay the solution of this second problem
until