PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY 



placing employees in work most closely in line with their 

 natural aptitudes." 



"Are you not concerned also with questions of wages 

 and profits?" 



"Not at all," he said, emphatically; "those matters 

 are for the economist, not the psychologist." Even when 

 I urged that these economic considerations had a profound 

 effect on workers' feelings and efforts, he still maintained 

 that they were quite beyond his province. 



Two days later I was visiting the laboratory of a dis- 

 tinguished German exponent of industrial psychology, 

 with whom, many years before, I had been a fellow student 

 in Berlin. In those days there was only one book of impor- 

 tance in the library of industrial psychology, namely, 

 Miinsterberg's pioneer work, Grundxiige der Psychotechnik. 

 I asked my German friend the same questions I had put 

 to the Swiss psychologist. "What do you, as an industrial 

 psychologist, actually do? Are you at all interested in the 

 economic aspects of industrial work?" 



"I never touch anything," he said, "which does not 

 mean profit to the employer." 



"That sounds like shrewd business practice," I replied. 

 "But tell me, just what do you do in order to increase 

 profits?" 



"You see these precise recording mechanisms," he said, 

 "which I take into the rolling mills and factories to use 

 in studying the workers at their work, in order to find 

 out how they can accomplish more with less output of 

 energy. I find it necessary then to instruct the foremen, 

 to improve their training methods so that all the workers 

 may be taught the better ways of doing their work. And 

 finally, you see all these psychological tests which I 

 have perfected. They are invaluable as aids to placement 

 of employees in those lines of work which most closely 

 fit their abilities and natural aptitudes." 



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