WHAT PSYCHOLOGY CONTRIBUTED 379 



bar indicates for a given occupation the median intelligence. 

 It is not difficult to discover important relations of these facts 

 to vocational guidance. 



Consideration of army occupations naturally brings us to the 

 second main division of this chapter, which is the classification 

 of personnel in the army with respect especially to occupation 

 or trade and its military usefulness. 



In the summer of 1917 a group known as the Committee on 

 Classification of Personnel in the Army was organized by the 

 War Department to work under the immediate direction of 

 the Adjutant General of the army. For the work of this com- 

 mittee an initial appropriatoin of $25,000 was made and, as the 

 success of its work led to the constant increase of its responsi- 

 bilities, additional appropriations were approved until the total 

 amounted to more than three-quarters of a million. 



The big task of this committee was'the occupational classifi- 

 cation and placement of enlisted men. Officers charged with 

 personnel duties were placed in all army divisions, depots, train- 

 ing camps, and various other stations. A special card system 

 was devised to render available information concerning the 

 educational, occupational, and other military qualifications of 

 every man. With a minimum of clerical work this system was 

 used to select nearly a million soldiers for transfer to such 

 technical units as the engineers, aviation, the ordnance, and 

 other staff corps, and for the transfer of even more men within 

 divisions or camps. Approximately 450 officers and 7000 men 

 were engaged in this work. The number of soldiers inter- 

 viewed by trained members of the personnel staff and classified 

 according to army usefulness approximated three and one-half 

 million. 



The allotment branch or central clearing-house of the com- 

 mittee in Washington received from the camps information 

 about the numbers of skilled tradesmen in each contingent of 

 the draft and assisted in distributing these men among the 

 various camps in accordance with their supply of skilled 

 workers. Up to November n, 1919, requests for about 600,000 



