STRUCTION AND PLANNING ; OFFICE MANAGEMENT.) At an early stage the young science of industrial psychology had to encounter the previous application of quasi-scientific methods to industry, initiated in America by Taylor and Gil breth. Their general object was to study the nature and rate of the movements made by a worker, in order to eliminate the un necessary ones. This is technically known as motion and time study. Unfortunately this study had resulted in imposing on all the so-called "one best way," obtained by analysing the move ments of the quickest workers. So unnatural a procedure awak ened much criticism and no little resentment. It is not irrelevant to note that the movement originated with engineers, not with psychologists.
Properly conducted, motion and time study are hut special applications to industrial processes of the laws of habit formation. Young learners pick up, by watching proficients, many actions of industry ; with practice they evolve a commendable copy but uncritically they may adopt some unnecessary movements which, while apparently not interfering with the work, may become fixed; the result is that the worker develops muscular habits • harmful to himself, or fails toattain a speed commensurate with his real ability. Just as the skater, swimmer or golfer im proves by expert teaching, itself the resultant of careful study, so does the industrial worker. In such varying trades as silk weav ing, metal-polishing, chocolate covering, it has been found that by systematising movements and by training novices in the relevant motions, a saving of energy results, which is an ad vantage to all concerned. Faulty methods of learning are not only a hindrance during the learning period, but there is also an invariable tendency for the worker to regress to them under certain conditions, even when they are apparently overcome. ( The Medical Problems of Flying, Medical Research Council Report No. 53 [ 192o] and A Study of Telegraphists' Cramp, Industrial Fatigue Research Board, Report No. 43.) The aim of Taylor and Gilbreth, in standardising the time and method taken to perform a task, was primarily to reduce the cost of production, and they also had in mind the welfare of the worker and higher wages. From the worker's point of view how ever, the drawback of their system was that it produced a feeling of being always keyed-up. From the psycho-physiological point of view it was based on the fallacy that the shortest and speediest movements were necessarily the least tiring, and that the best style of movement could be obtained from combining a num ber of best movements adopted by different workers. If the study of industrial processes in relation to the worker is to be scientific, it must consider the whole of the conditions, not a part ; it must regard the worker as a human being, not as the per former of a limited set of movements.
Important though the material environment undoubtedly is, no workers can do their best unless the general mental environ ment is right. Not even the very best material conditions will result mechanically in good work, and sometimes even poor ma terial conditions can be nullified by good mental conditions. By this is understood the conditions governing the group as a whole, dependent primarily on the effi ciency or otherwise of its leader ship. Industrial life is often criti cised for failing to supply that effective stimulus of working for a common end, which is more obviously evident in the army. Factories where there is this sense of working for a common end as well as for individual wages are more common than those not familiar with the inside working of factories realise.
If, as McDougall asserts (The Group Mind, p. 135 [1920]), "the personalities of its leaders more effectively than any other factor engender national unity and bring it to a high pitch," it is no less true that a factory owes its corporate unity to the per sonality of its leader and his deputies. The time may come when it will be possible to test for leadership as it now is for intelli gence ; at the moment the problem has only been formulated. The qualities of leadership are required by all those in charge of others, and there is no correlation between ability to do a job and ability to superintend others doing it. To the psychologist there standing as to justify their position, then they need as emotional interpreter someone of different temperament to neutralise their more harmful effects.
A good leader should possess vitality, sympathy, justice and humour, as well as knowledge of the work. The emotional, and as a corollary, the physical effect on subordinates of different types of leaders is patent throughout industry. Where the com mands of one are cheerfully obeyed, those of another arouse truculent antagonism or sullen acquiescence. Can anyone doubt the effect on the health, happiness and efficiency of the workers? Many authorities are unwittingly the cause of the sick leave they deplore among their subordinates.
The worker on one process often stigmatises some other process as monotonous, when to the observer there is nothing to choose between them. There are compensations too in many processes if one studies the worker as a human being and not merely as the performer of a repetition process; e.g., some workers ex perience a sense of power in operating a large or a delicate ma chine. It is not suggested that repetition work is good in itself ; but merely to describe the repetition work as monotonous and to imply that such description embraces the whole psychological situation, is misleading.
Observation of workers shows that in particular posts some are much more successful both subjectively and objectively than others. Hence arises the question of vocational guidance, which are certain types, almost neurotic, whose symptoms find expres sion chiefly in their relations with others. The person who reacts always to the emotion aroused in himself by a situation and not to the situation itself, the inevitable "nagger" who can never govern easily because he is always at war with himself, the "ob sessional" whose obsession can be readily touched up by the work—these represent a few whose emotional development makes life much harder for some of their subordinates and unbearable for others. (See M. Culpin, The Nervous Patient, p. If their other qualities, e.g., their business acumen, are so out must be distinguished from vocational selection, a simpler prob lem. The latter problem sets out to select a worker to fit the job, the former to select for a given person (usually an adoles cent) that job most suited to his capacities. This theoretically presupposes a knowledge of the person, a knowledge of all possi ble occupations, and a power of relating one to the other. Those who have done most work in this field are convinced that the most useful measure of a person is his general intelligence.
Such people, in the interests of themselves, their fellow workers and the work, ought to be diverted from occupations where their mental make-up cannot fail to be expressed in the work. If they enter such occupations as telegraphy or dispensing or even coal-mining they will almost certainly break down : the breakdown will be attributed to overwork, although actually the overwork may have subjective rather than objective reality. If there is an occupational disease recognised as such, the problem is still further complicated. (Reports of the Miners' Nystagmus Committee [Medical Research Council Reports Nos. 65 and 8o] ; "Psycho-neurotic Aspects of Miners' Nystagmus" [Brit. J. Med. Psy. vol. iii. 1923] .) When the qualities of the applicant for a job have been assessed and the requirements of various trades are known, it is possible to advise a child as to what he may most advantageously take up.