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