HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR EYE GRASP

Warning! Do Not Look at the Following Pages Except under Test Conditions. If You Do Look at Them Accidentally, You Will Have to Ask Somebody to Prepare Another Set of Phrases to Be Used in Testing Your Skill of Perception.

EXERCISES IN HIGH-SPEED READING OF PHRASES

The purpose of these exercises is to show you how many words your eye takes in at a single glance.

The success of the test depends entirely upon your own skill in reducing your look to a single glance. You will get the best results if you will let somebody else operate the cardboard for you.

The method of the test is as follows:
Your assistant is to procure a piece of stiff cardboard about as large as a page of this book. When you are ready for the test, he is to make three or four practice trials on you, using the first exercises. This is merely to enable both of you to become accustomed to the procedure.

The book is to be set up on a desk in some convenient position. Your assistant is to cover the page on which the exercise is printed with the cardboard. You are to look steadily at a point close to the middle of the page thus covered. Your assistant is to ask you when you are ready to look at the printed matter. When you say " Ready," he is to expose the printed matter for the shortest possible period. He ought to be able to slip the card-board aside and replace it in a fraction of a second. If he cannot do this, the experiment is a failure.

Perhaps the easiest way for him to make a rapid exposure is to hold the cardboard so that one edge of it barely covers the printed matter. He will then move the cardboard a very short distance back and forth.

Repeat to your assistant what your eye takes in. He will then keep any convenient record of your accuracies.
ON THE GREEN BOUGH
WHILE THE SNOW IS FLYING
ON THE ROAD TO WICKHAMSHIRE
ON THE VERGE OF BLOODY REVOLUTION
AS THE GREEK CONFERENCE CLOSED
NEAR THE WINDMILL IN THE COUNTRY
WHOSE TAIL WAS SECURELY AND PAINLESSLY TIED
SUCH A CURIOUS INTEREST IN CRIMSON TIES
AMONG WHICH THE MUMPS WAS MOST EMBARRASSING
FINDING THIS INCREASE OF INTEREST TO BE HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT
AT THE END OF WHICH WAS NARY A RAINBOW
ON THE BACK AND NOSE OF THE SPOTTED CAT
OF WHICH NO MENTION NEED BE MADE AT THIS TIME
IN SPITE OF THE LACK OF A LARGE MAJORITY VOTE
TO BE HAD FROM WHOSE LONG PAGES MUCH CONCENTRATED EFFORT
CUSTOMS DECLARATIONS CAUSE UNAVOIDABLE
MISUNDERSTANDINGS AMONG DISTRESSING
CONTROVERSIES ALL OF WHICH LEAD TO MORE TROUBLE THAN THE COLLECTED TARIFFS ARE EVER WORTH
REVERSAL OF BIOLOGICAL TYPE IS ASSERTED TO HAVE OCCURRED DURING SEVERAL GEO­LOGICAL ERAS, PRODUCING ODD MIXTURES OF MARSUPIALS WITH OTHER HITHERTO DISTINCT GENERA
                                              
HOW MUCH DO YOU GRASP AND RETAIN?

Could we get you in a laboratory, it would be easy enough to measure your span of comprehension. But as things are, you will find this an exceedingly difficult problem.

So much depends upon your knowledge of the content. And nearly as much depends upon your habits of skimming.

In a test I gave recently, the material used was a clearly written, straightforward, and untechnical description of the developing of a banana plantation. I chose this because the subject was strange to all readers tested.

A seasoned newspaper editor read this at the rate of 7.2 words per second—which is very fast. A young engineer of exceptional thoroughness read it at the rate of only 3.3 words per second. And a cub reporter read it at the rate of 4.7 words per second. The engineer, reading slowly, retained and grasped more facts per hundred words than anybody else. But because he read so little per minute, his total score of facts reported afterward was low. On the other hand, he comprehended the important facts best and paid little heed to petty details. But the cub reporter retained so many of the latter that he missed some of the broader, more significant aspects of banana plantations. The editor's record was intermediate.

Here you see the two extremes of reading—the slow, but thoroughly comprehending, and the fast, well memo­rized, but poorly organized.

Certainly the business man and the professional man must take the engineer as their model. Better slow and sure, if the price of speed is superficiality.

HOW TO ESTIMATE YOUR GRASP

Here are four samples. Light, average, solid, and heavy. Read each at your ordinary natural rate. Put the book aside and write (or dictate) the facts you have read, stating the most important first. Cast every fact into the form of a declarative sentence. And do not score any one which you cannot so report.

In appraising your reading ability, keep in mind that a ten-year-old boy of average intelligence can recall eight items in an easy newspaper paragraph which he has read only once. This does not mean that he recalls eight com­plete statements. It means that he recalls eight items in whatever is reported in the news item. One item may be a name, another may be a date, a third may be a remark made by somebody, and so on. His eight items may fail to convey the essential meaning of the paragraph, but as items they are correct.

To measure yourself against him, you ought to count the items in each statement which you remember. For example, if you recall, from one passage, that " President Coolidge returned to the White House yesterday morning," you should score it as three items, namely: (1) President Coolidge, (2) returned to the White House; and (3) yester­day morning.

For convenience, you may reckon such a newspaper paragraph as 75 words long.

Exercise I1

One fine morning in the fall London season, Major Arthur Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, to breakfast at a certain club in Pall Mall, of which he was a chief ornament. As he was one of the finest judges of wine in England, and a man of active, dominating, and inquiring spirit, he had been very properly chosen to be a member of the com­mittee of this club and indeed was almost the manager of the institution; and the stewards and waiters bowed before him as reverentially as to a duke or a field-marshal.

At a quarter past ten the major invariably made his appearance in the best blacked boots in all London, with a checked morning cravat that never was crumpled until dinner time, a buff waist­coat which bore the crown of his sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr. Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would probably have employed her, had not misfortunes compelled that great man to fly the country. Pendennis coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, were perfect of their kind, as specimens of the costume of a military man en retraite. At a distance, or seeing his back merely, you would have taken him to be not more than thirty years old: it was only by a nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his rich brown hair, and that there were a few crows'-feet round about the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His nose was of the Wellington pattern. His hands and wristbands were beautifully long and white. On the latter he wore handsome gold buttons given to him by his Royal Highness the Duke of York, and on the others more than one elegant ring, the chief and largest of them being embla­zoned with the famous arms of Pendennis.

He always took possession of the same table in the same corner of the room, from which nobody ever now thought of ousting him. One or two mad wags and wild fellows had in former days, and in freak or bravado, endeavored twice or thrice to deprive him of this place; but there was a quiet dignity in the major's manner as he took his seat at the next table, and surveyed the interlopers, which rendered it impossible for any man to sit and breakfast under his eye; and that table—by the fire and yet near the window—became his own. His letters were laid out there in expectation of his arrival, and many was the young fellow about town who looked with wonder at the number of those notes, and at the seals and franks which they bore. If there was any question about etiquette, society, who was married to whom, of what age such and such a duke was, Pendennis was the man to whom every one appealed. Marchionesses used to drive up to the club, and leave notes for him or fetch him out. He was perfectly affable. The young men liked to walk with him in the Park or down Pall Mall; for he touched his hat to every body, and every other man he met was a lord.

The major sate down at his accustomed table then, and while the waiters went to bring him his hot toast and his newspaper, he surveyed his letters through his gold double eye-glass. He carried it so gayly, you would hardly have known it was specta­cles in disguise, and examined one pretty note after another, and laid them by in order. There were large solemn dinner cards, suggestive of three courses and heavy conversation; there were neat little confidential notes, conveying female entreaties; there was a note on thick official paper from the Marquis of Steyne, telling him to come to Richmond to a little party at the Star and Garter, and speak French, which language the major possessed very perfectly; and another from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. Trail, requesting the honor of Major Pendennis's company at Ealing House, all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, and with the more satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch surgeon, breakfasting opposite to him, was looking on, and hating him for having so many invitations, which nobody ever sent to Glowry.

These perused, the major took out his pocket-book to see on what days he was disengaged, and which of these many hospitable calls he could afford to accept or decline.

He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker-street, in order to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French party at the Star and Garter—the bishop he accepted, because, though the dinner was slow he liked to dine with bishops—and so went through his list and disposed of them according to his fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast and looked over the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests at my Lord So-and-So's fete, and in the intervals of these occupa­tions carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room.

Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis's budget for that morning there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal. The superscription was in a pretty, delicate female hand, and though marked "Immedi­ate" by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety under the word, yet the major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother's acquaintance were received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the ante-chamber under the slop-basin.

At last it came to be this letter's turn, and the major broke a seal with "Fairoaks" engraved upon it, and "Clavering St. Mary's" for a post-mark. It was a double letter, and the major commenced perusing the envelope before he attacked the inner epistle.

"Is it a letter from another Jook?" growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly, "Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I'm thinking."

"My dear Major Pendennis," the letter ran, "I beg and implore you to come to me immediately,"—very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne's dinner to-day—"I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My dearest boy, who has been hitherto every thing the fondest mother could wish, is grieving me dreadfully. He has formed—I can hardly write it—a passion, an infatuation,"—the major grinned—"for an actress who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than Arthur—who will not be eighteen till next February—and the wretched boy insists upon marrying her."

"Hay! What's making Pendennis swear now?"—Mr. Glowry asked of himself, for rage and wonder were concentrated in the major's open mouth, as he read this astounding announcement.

"Do, my dear friend," the grief-stricken lady went on, "come to me instantly on the receipt of this; and as Arthur's guardian, entreat, command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable resolution." And, after more entreaties to the above effect, the writer concluded by signing herself the major's "unhappy affectionate sister, Helen Pendennis."

"Fairoaks, Tuesday"—the major concluded, reading the last words of the letter—"A d—d pretty business at Fairoaks, Tuesday; now let us see what the boy has to say;" and he took the other letter, which was written in a great floundering boy's hand, and sealed with the large signet of the Pendennises, even larger than the major's own, and with supplementary wax sputtered all round the seal, in token of the writer's tremulousness and agitation.

The epistle ran thus—
"Fairoaks,
" Monday, Midnight. "My Dear Uncle,
"In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of J. Chesterfield Costigan Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better known to you under her professional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the Theaters Royal Drury Lane and Crow-Street, and of the Norwich and Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which cannot, according to the present prejudices of society, at least, be welcome to my family. My dearest mother, on whom, God knows, I would wish to inflict no needless pain, is deeply moved and grieved, I am sorry to say, by the intelligence which I have this night conveyed to her. I beseech you, my dear sir, to come down and reason with her, and console her. Although obliged by poverty to earn an honorable maintenance by the exercise of her splendid talents, Miss Costigan's family is as ancient and noble as our own. When our ancestor, Ralph Pendennis, landed with Richard II, in Ireland, my Emily's forefathers were kings of that country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan, who, like your­self, is a country man.

"It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and prove to her that a young lady of irreproachable character and lineage, endowed with the most splendid gifts of beauty and genius, who devotes herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions, for the sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we should all love and reverence, rather than avoid; — my poor mother has prejudices which it is impossible for my logic to overcome, and refuses to welcome to her arms one who is disposed to be her most affectionate daughter through life.

"Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, sir, I feel, is con­tracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until I saw her—I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another passion. It is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.'s own delicacy which suggested that the difference of age, which I never felt, might operate as a bar to our union. But having loved once, I should despise myself, and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by my passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and endow the woman who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune.

"I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily—for why, in truth, should it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change toward Emily—that at any age she can be anything but the sole object of my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear uncle, to come down and reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of the world, qui mores homìnum multorum vìdü et urbes, who will not feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever left her village.

"Pray come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that— apart from considerations of fortune—you will admire and approve of my Emily.
"Your affectionate Nephew.
"Arthur Pendennis, Jr."

When the major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that Glowry the surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he always carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was going into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate Pendennis. The head of the Pen-dennises going to marry an actress ten years his senior—a head­strong boy going to plunge into matrimony. "The mother has spoiled the young rascal," groaned the major inwardly, "with her cursed sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a tragedy queen! Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that I shall not dare show my head!" And he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give up Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and most lose his rest and pass the night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure, as he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select society in England.

And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some time to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there ruefully wrote off refusals to the marquis, the earl, the bishop, and all his entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in the mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young scape-grace of whom he was guardian.

Exercise 21

The special training of the public speaker must rest upon the broad foundation of a liberal education. How often the expert engineer, chemist, manufacturer or retailer gives a dry-as-dust speech. He has dug deep into his subject, but has little knowl­edge of his audience, of human nature. He lacks the warmth, the expansiveness, the intimate and enjoyable contact with men and women, that comes from interest in subjects and ideas comparatively remote from his bread-and-butter occupation. The specialist frequently seems a vacuum when in the company of those not engaged in his kind of study. He has not learned how to be interested in persons and how to interest them. The experienced traveler is usually a good companion. Travel in the world of ideas, in the experiences of men of genius, of humor, of charm and sympathy, of good sense and sober learning, makes one still more adaptable and understanding, more at home, and more welcome in every company. Flexibility and growth are the distinguishing traits of a soundly trained mind.

Human Interest.—Huxley was a great scientist and a fine public speaker. He gave fascinating descriptions and explana­tions of the doctrine of evolution to enthusiastic audiences of workmen. His printed speeches are widely read today. They have a simplicity, directness and energy that make them models of style. Huxley knew how to tell, how to teach and inspire, because his scientific curiosity touched eagerly everything that is of interest to man. That is what Cicero meant when he said that the orator must be acquainted with all the arts and sciences. Among business men today we have many good speakers, and you will note that almost without exception they have, besides their business, many other resources of stimulating talk.

The Force of Habit.—But whether we intend to be speakers or not, this active, widely ranging attention to the world in which we all live, is necessary for the exercise of our more intelligent thinking. The psychologist tells us that man's mind, like that of the animals, is naturally indolent. Thinking is hard work. The employer corroborates this in his assertion that most employees stop growing after two or three years' familiarity with the job. The mind is simply a collection of habits. Habit is repetition that has become mechanical. One operates a typewriter or a sewing machine automatically. And this is the most economical, efficient way. But this habit-forming tendency invades the upper reaches of thought as well. Teachers fail to grow, says Thorndike, after five or six years of experience. Familiarity makes less and less demand upon our conscious attention, and the grooves of habit are dug deeper and deeper. All of us are in greater or less degree victims of our habits. We need to form the best habit of breaking through the crusts of unintelligent, habitualized thinking. So get interested in something different or get a fresh grip on the old, examine it more consciously. Open the mind, renovate it and don't seal it again. Nothing is final. Keep your senses pleasurably alert and receptive to new impressions, new truth. Life is an adventure, not a story that is told.

Sources of Ideas.—We get our ideas from our environment— our companions, books, neighborhood, and occupation. They make us what we are. They give us our "set" of mind, our atti­tudes and prejudices. The criminal can with considerable justice blame society for what he is. So can the judge, the lawyer, and everybody else. But we can often modify our environment or leave it for a better one. Education is the greatest force in bringing this about.

What to Read.—Books are wonderful in making a magic and yet a very real environment. Those who speak to us through them are more intimate and have more influence over us than our living companions. "Tell me what you read," observed Goethe, "and I will tell you what you are." Because our experience is so limited and because books interpret the experiences of thousands of years, we naturally learn most from them. Carlyle says, "The true university of these days is a collection of books, and all education is to teach us how to read."

Centuries ago Bacon complained that of the making of books there is no end. Today the condition is immeasurably more appalling and bewildering. Yet we must choose rightly the books needed for our nourishment and learn to use them skilfully.

Do not plod through one book or a collection of books just because they have been highly recommended to you or have deservedly world-wide reputation. Many ambitious readers have suffered mental indigestion and permanent discouragement from books unsuited to their nature or stage of development. The first requirement of profitable reading is interest—as it is of all education. If the words fail to hold your active attention, if they bore you, the book is not for you. Of course you must give a book a reasonable trial. Even if the first chapter is a little painful, the second may strike a spark that may generate a lasting fire of enthusiasm." But in the high schools and colleges many students have acquired an everlasting dislike for the finer types of drama, essay, poetry, and fiction simply because their immature minds were not ready to grapple with the humor, the irony, the philosophy, the reflections of maturity. Years of experience, of disillusion, of suffering and renewed faith are sometimes necessary for the comprehension and realization of the commonplace truths of the copybook. But even trained, educated readers differ widely in tastes and prejudices. To one, Dostoiefsky is a neurotic, a diseased, hopeless subject for the pathologist; to another, a torch of light and warmth. Just as our natures differ, they demand different nourishment, and you your­self must be the one to prescribe. Only sympathetic communion with great minds as revealed in their best books can give you the larger understanding, the perspective, that is a part of culture.

Two Kinds of Books.—Books are readily separated into two classes, those of information and those of inspiration. De Quincey has put this distinction most effectively in a famous passage. He says:

There is the literature of knowledge and there is the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move. The first is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks, ultimately it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.

What do you learn from " Paradise Lost" ? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new—something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power, that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards—a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth: whereas the very first step in power is a flight—is an ascending movement into another element where earth is forgotten.

Ruskin may help you to realize this passage a little more fully. In an address to an audience of mechanics and other practical workers (see "Sesame and Lilies") he said:

Books are divisible into two classes,—the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

The good book of the hour, then,—I do not speak of the bad ones—is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humored and witty discussions of questions; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of a novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history;—all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age. We ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books; for strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print.

The book of talk is printed. Why? Because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could he would—the volume is mere multiplication of his voice . . . But a book is written not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful . . .

Whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is mixed always with evil fragments,—ill done, affected, redundant work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those are the book.

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men, by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possi­bilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that; that what you lose today you cannot gain tomorrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable-boy when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days—the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?

Get Acquainted.—Read to get acquainted with the world about you. The newspapers and magazines can give you only a superficial view, usually distorted and often incorrect. Read the men and women who are thoughtfully studying and grappling with the profound problems left by the World War. These are perhaps the most critical days in the world's history. Other great wars affected only limited areas. Even the quarter of a century struggle of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars affected only Europe. America, Asia, and Africa looked upon it with the interest of spectators at a play. Today these continents are only a little less profoundly disturbed than Europe. We cannot escape the influence of thought and action thousands of miles away. Isolation for country or for individual is no longer possible. Do not confine yourself to American and English authors.

Reading Lists.—The book review sections of the Sunday New York Times, the Saturday New York Evening Post, and other well-known newspapers often will give you valuable suggestions for reading. Reading about books is sometimes characterized as a waste of time, but the famous critics and essayists often introduce books to us so attractively that we are tempted to read them. Make reading lists for yourself. Promise to read certain books in the next three months or six months or year. History, science, fiction, philosophy, and poetry mean much to you in a practical way. Napoleon said historians are liars, and Henry Ford characterizes history as "bunk," but if the world had only studied its history as intelligently, as practically, as it studies business, it might have been spared the calamities in which it wallows today. If you wish to see a panorama of the ages, to hear the story of man who slowly evolved from the fish—not another fish story—and now aspires to the stars, read the fascinating narrative of H. G. Wells in "The Outline of History." It will help you to get your bearings in the world. The best of our present-day writers will show you the way to the delightful reading of the masters of the past. You will be struck by the fact that our life has its roots deep down in the generations forgotten as "bunk." Abraham, Confucius, Socrates, Shake­speare, and Lincoln were gentlemen, who would have had no difficulty, as Samuel Crothers has said, in understanding one another.

Biography.—Biography is one of the most practical fields of study for the public speaker. Nothing is of keener interest to audiences than the stories of how great men met the difficulties of living. We are always more interested in people than in things. Biography throws a warmer and more penetrating light upon history. Its gossip makes the past real and near.

Vocational Reading.—The broad-minded man must be sharp­ened to the point required for scratching a living. Whether he is a teacher, lawyer, doctor, or business man he must be abreast of the theory and practice of his occupation. He must have not only skill in living, but in getting his living. He will have a library of his business, he will be familiar with the trade journals, house organs, and other papers of his craft or profession. This paragraph might be taken for granted were it not for the fact that probably the majority of professional men do little reading about the theory, philosophy, or practice of their vocations after they have graduated from the schools. Their own experi­ence and contact with others in the same work become their only guides. These are most important, to be sure, but they are so close to everyone that it is sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees. At the end of this chapter are short lists of books and magazines which will yield excellent material for talks with friends or to clubs or classes.

How to Read.—This brings us to the question, How to read? Francis Bacon in his essay "Of Studies" says: "Read not to contra­dict, nor believe, but to weigh and consider." Most readers, if they understand at all, give themselves up completely to the author. One should, of course, give him a sympathetic reading, try to understand his point of view, but not believe him until the thought has been examined in the light of one's own experi­ence. Almost everybody is in awe of print. The use of the word "propaganda" during the War and since has done much to mitigate this tyranny of books and papers. What one reads is not necessarily so.

Challenging "Facts." — This is especially true of chains of reasoning. In such instances the reader owes it to his self-respect to challenge, refute or approve the logic—to be reason­ably sure the writer has established his case. Even facts, for which we have to depend upon observers and students from all over the world, can be reported to prove contradictory ideas. "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure." Many "facts" are not facts at all. Many arguments, many speeches, are based upon such facts—upon unsound premises, upon things taken for granted that need close examination. The reader or listener is seldom attentive enough to introductory paragraphs or remarks. If these are accepted without thought, the whole of a false plea or doctrine or argument will often be accepted. G. K. Chesterton in his lecture, "The Ignorance of the Educated," quotes Artemus Ward, who said, "The trouble with people is they know too many things that ain't so." We talk of "half-baked ideas." They are usually the other fellow's.

Newspaper Editorials.—The easiest exercise on discovering fallacies may be had with newspaper editorials. These are often written to be consistent with a known attitude or policy in regard to public questions. Some newspapers have a con­sistent prejudice against England or Japan, against the Repub­lican party or the Democratic party, against the League of Nations, or they may be consistently conservative, liberal or radical. Special pleaders seek to justify themselves, not neces­sarily to discover the truth. That is the trouble with consistency or dogma. It does not allow one to change one's mind, to face squarely and with easy conscience changing conditions or important additions to knowledge that may demand amendment to preconceived opinions. We believe those things we wish to be true and we read what confirms our beliefs. Read the papers and the editorials opposed to your views and try to find the fallacies in their reasoning.

Informal, good-natured discussion is excellent for clarifying and testing one's opinions. Formal debate is even better for compelling a close scrutiny of the other side. Controversy, when it is not acrimonious, makes the mind more elastic, and is fine practice in quick and accurate thinking.

Saving Time.—One of the chief problems in study is to learn to economize time. Obviously, one should not spend as much time upon a detective story as upon a classic novel. Nobody has put this thought more compactly or completely than Bacon. He says:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Skill, then, in the use of books is a prime factor in education, and surprisingly rare. Boswell was astonished at the way Johnson "tore the heart out of a book." Others have been born with the art, or have acquired it, of reading the most in the shortest time. Lyman Abbott in " Silhouettes of My Contem­poraries " has this to say of Henry Ward Beecher:

As a student he had extraordinary facility in the use of books. " One does not read a book through/' he once said to me. "You read a book as you eat a fish; cut off the tail, cut off the head, cut off the fins, take out the backbone, and there is a little meat left which you eat because it nourishes you." ... I took over to him one day a new volume in philosophy. ... I wanted to get his estimate upon it. He took the book with him to the dinner table and read while he ate, turning over the leaves with remarks such as: "Nonsense! Of course . . . Every­body knows that . . .

Borrowed from Spurzheim . . . That's new and well worth thinking about 1" At the end of the meal he had finished the book and handed it back to me with a ten-minute comment which made the basis of my editorial review.

Skilful Selection.—Psychologists have been recently experi­menting with students in order to find out something practical about the rate of speed in reading. Interesting comparisons can no doubt be made to show how much faster than others some read a given passage and express accurately the content, but it is doubtful whether any method or device can help the individual more than the usual practice and experience. Expert readers are those who show common sense in the matter of experience. If they are looking for specific facts they take the short cuts to the information. They are not like so many young debaters who waste hours in floundering through discouraging masses of material. Efficient reading is often only a matter of examining the table of contents or the index for a clue, of reading the pre­face for the author's purpose or point of view, of noting the chapter headings, of looking for summaries at the ends of chap­ters. Opening or closing sentences of paragraphs often contain the gist of the matter. Training the eye in looking for key nouns and verbs as one glances down the page is helpful. Even good books contain much material irrelevant to the purpose of the reader and many are padded with material that is of interest to but few. Other chapters are useful, but the student has perhaps read fully on the subject in other books.

Accuracy.—In this business of stripping a book, the reader must not, of course, overlook its kernel. He must make haste carefully. All this strategy is preliminary to the study which must be unhurried and concentrated. No indifferent dawdling or cramming will serve here. Ruskin is our most eloquent preacher on this text. Listen to him:

First of all I tell you earnestly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this) you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter.

If you read ten pages of a good book letter by letter, that is to say, with real accuracy, you are forevermore, in some measure, an educated person. The entire difference between education and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy.

And this is just what the schools and colleges are apparently not able to teach. They are too crowded to search the individual mind sufficiently. Time and teachers are not available. Garfield's ideal education, "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and I on the other," is no mere flourish of enthusiasm for the Williams professor.

Reading Not Enough.—Books alone will not make the trained thinker and speaker. Even if the student does not need the interpretation given by another's voice, he may be steeped too much in books. He must have considerable contact with men and affairs if he would have confidence, fluency, and precision of speech. Here again Bacon's sententious wisdom is enlighten­ing: "Reading maketh a full man, conference (conversation) a ready man, and writing an exact man."

Conversation.—Conversation is not generally thought of as educational. It implies idle chatter, or, at best, recreation. And yet that earnest scholar and man of the world, Mahaffy, writes:

Many men and many women owe the whole of a great success in life to this and nothing else . . .
And though men are supposed to succeed in life by dead knowledge, or by acquaintance with business, it is often by their social qualities, by their agreeable way of putting things, and not by their more ponderous merits that they prevail.

Conversation gives us opportunity to test the ideas gained from books. It is often humiliating but salutary to try to tell or explain our thought. We find it is vague or confused or incomplete. Making it clear to another clarifies it for us. "Teaching teaches teachers." Better still if the listener dis­agrees. He compels us to bring forth illustrations, analogies, proof, colorful and forceful speech. Benjamin Franklin, in his "Autobiography," speaks of the valuable training he got in his conversation with his young friend Collins. They used to walk in the woods on Sundays and talk for hours of their reading and their opinions on current events. They disagreed on their most interesting topics and so had delightful tussles which exhilarated both their minds and bodies. Many college students have testified to getting more of permanent value in conversation with their instructors or their fellow-students about their work than in the formal courses of study. This was indeed the method of the ancient Greeks. Socrates, the father of dialectics, ques­tioned his small group of pupils, made them confess their lack of logic, and in informal discussion led them to sound thinking. The great Teacher exalted conversation as education. Jesus trained his ignorant fishermen and artisans to direct the greatest educational movement in history.

Leaders in modern history have given eloquent testimony to the value of conversation with all classes of people. Gladstone, Palmerston, Fox, Patrick Henry, Clay, Lincoln were always practical and had a cosmopolitan interest in men and women. They learned from the farmer, the laborer, the storekeeper, from the traveler, the diplomat and the scientist. Webster said, "Converse, converse, CONVERSE, with living men, face to face, mind to mind—that is one of the best sources of knowledge."

Lloyd George is often referred to as a man who keeps abreast of the world's thought not only in politics, but in science, philoso­phy, and art, through his skill in conversation. He has naturally little time for reading, and no doubt is alert to make up for it in talk with the many exceptionally well-informed men that he meets. This does not mean that he is often a silent sponge. He in turn speaks interestingly and instructively out of his vast experience, and so the benefits are mutual. Lloyd George is probably the best debater in England and his close attention to conversation is largely responsible for this talent.

"Talking Shop."—Although talking business at lunch is often condemned, it is much more stimulating and beneficial than the trivial chatter that usually takes its place. We all talk "shop" because it is most interesting to us. No group is much superior to any other in this respect. The "shop talk" of the actor, the professor, the student, the business man may be equally inform­ing and inspiring, or profitless and dull. It is all a matter of the persons conversing. If they refrain from heated or long-winded argument, if they are good-humored, spontaneous, and yet considerate of each one's desire to be heard, wit, philosophy, and sound business sense and often specific suggestions of immedi­ate cash value may result. Many a congenial party makes the lunch hour yield splendid returns in recreation and business.

That fine talker, Robert Louis Stevenson, did not exaggerate the value of conversation, in these words:
The first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in the world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing; it is all profit; it completes our education; it founds and fosters our friendships; and it is by talk alone that we learn our period and ourselves.

Exercise 31

The past two centuries have witnessed a complete change in the attitude toward the human factor in industry. Before the development of machinery, human labor was the most important factor in all productive effort. Man's place in the industrial system was taken for granted, and since there was no substitute for human labor in production, attention was concentrated upon the development and utilization of that factor. The introduction of machinery and the development of the factory system brought about a complete change of emphasis. Perfection of machinery became the objective of the period, and the entire battery of scientific research was for the time being trained upon it. New inventions in the field of engineering, significant discoveries along chemical lines, and wonderful accomplishments in the improvement of industrial technique gave a tremendous impetus to this work of scientific research and to the utilization of its discoveries in industry. Each new advance forced the human factor farther into the background. There developed, as a result, a conspicuous lack of balance between the skill of the worker and the complexity of the machine, which finally forced a gradual reorganization. But this reorganization was little more than a negative move, since its basic idea was merely to simplify the mechanical devices so that they could be profitably utilized. Their adaptation to the physical and mental character­istics of the worker was given no more consideration than was essential to that purpose. The machine was still the center of interest; the controlling element of human ability remained in the background and was but unwillingly recognized.

But a change gradually took place as monopolies were des­troyed through the expiration of basic patents, and as markets began to overlap and become highly competitive. This change manifested itself in the attempt to reduce costs and to improve efficiency through other than purely mechanical means. The first attack was made upon the wholly disorganized character of industry. Concentration of all scientific attention upon machin­ery alone, to the almost total neglect of methods and organiza­tion of work, had resulted in extremely low operating efficiency. Taylor, Gantt, Emerson, and other early exponents of scientific organization and management, attributed this condition to the absolute lack of system in operation. They made the first positive move toward remedying the situation by introducing the scientific method into industry. Scientific direction and super­vision effected tremendous savings in time, materials, and labor. Effort was directed mainly toward the discovery of the best methods; the workers who were to use these methods were still considered only as a means to an end.

When the World War came, the demands for increased production which accompanied it brought about the development of a new and general feeling of unbalance. For the first time it became very evident that highly developed technique of production, scientifically determined processes, and complicated equipment and machinery were useless without the motivating force of human brain and muscle concentrated in equally efficient and carefully chosen individuals. The conception became widespread that the worker was an end in himself, that his personal welfare and development were of equal or of even greater importance than the products of his labor (greater, because without an efficient worker satisfactory production was impossible). As a result significant changes took place in the industrial field. The most outstanding development was the attempt to secure a closer correlation between the ability of the individual and the work which he was performing; that is, the attempt to fit every man, whether executive or operator, to his job in the organization. But before this could be done the business had to be more or less functionalized, since it is only through functionalization that the various types of jobs can be definitely segregated. Furthermore, it is only with the comparatively recent extension of scientific analysis into the realm of human beings that sufficient knowledge has become available in this field to enable intelligent coordination of the man and the job.

The present emphasis upon the human factor in industry is of great significance. It benefits not only industry but also the whole social system, of which those engaged in industrial pursuits form so large and so important a part. The individual who is contented and efficient in his work is the one who contributes the most to society, who makes the most desirable citizen. Although few of the attempts at scientific analysis, of either the human or the non-human elements in industry, have as yet succeeded in securing absolute results, there is no reason, given sufficient time, why physiology, psychology, and the allied human sciences should not work an improvement in the use of man-power approximate to that already secured in the use of inorganic elements. These sciences may yet be numbered among the most effective tools of industry.

Personnel as an Organization Factor.—This discussion makes no attempt at exhaustive treatment of the field of personnel manage­ment. Such an attempt would entail a critical analysis and evalua­tion of the great mass of data on the subject which has accumulated within recent years. Under the impetus of the war this field was extensively investigated by scientists, personnel specialists, and practical business men. The importance of the personnel problem was established beyond question. Psychologists, physiologists, psycho-pathologists, psychiatrists, industrial engineers, personnel specialists, and business executives, through their studies of the human element in industry and in the army, gathered together a wealth of data which progressive management may draw on for guidance in the task of handling its men. Although in many cases no definite conclusions have been reached and many findings have yet to be established as facts, the work of these men is becoming institutionalized and is constantly gaining a firmer hold in industry. The chief danger is that a false feeling of completion may arise, arresting further progress of the work and making that which has already been accomplished undesirably rigid. The scope of the personnel field is so far-reaching, and the possibilities for the development of organized knowledge concerning it are so great, that it is replete with opportunities for further invention, experimentation, and control. In its present unfinished state, to attempt to criticize or evaluate the accumulated data concerning personnel would be futile. This must be left to the scientists and specialists who have already done such admirable work in the field.
This discussion is considering personnel not as a problem of management, but as an organization factor for which adequate provision must be made before good management is possible. It will therefore take account of the tools of personnel research only so far as they relate to, and clarify, the problem of matching the job and the man. This problem is only one phase of the whole person­nel question; but it is undoubtedly the most difficult, and its proper solution the most vital.

Getting the Right Man in the Right Place—A Fundamental of Organization.—In organization analysis, the necessity for matching the man and the job—getting the right man in the right place—is recognized as a fundamental of organization. When there is a given group of functions to be performed and a given group of men to perform them, great care should be exercised in matching each man, as nearly as possible, to the function which he is to carry out. This statement seems axiomatic. Yet experience has shown that this problem rarely receives adequate consideration. The negligence of those in authority may be attributed to any or all of three reasons: first, they do not know what is meant by matching the man and the job; second, they fail to appreciate its necessity; third, they do not know how to do it. The purpose of this discussion is to analyze, in so far as limited space and the present development of technique will permit, these phases of the third fundamental of organization. Getting the right man in the right place, as a fundamental of organ­ization, is practically incontestable—the only question concerns the tools and the methods to be used in its accomplishment.

Individual and Job Differences.—There are innumerable differ­ences in people, and an almost equal variation in the character of jobs. Unless these differences and variations are taken into consid­eration in placing men, business will neither secure the full value of the abilities of its executives and workers, nor allow the individuals to use them to their own best advantage. Considering the matter from a purely practical standpoint, the study of these differences in people and the differences in jobs is the only method which will enable managers to find men who can actually do the work and successfully fill the positions in their organizations.

Individual Differences.—Individuals differ widely. It is unu­sual to find two men who, even in appearance, resemble each other to a marked degree; and it is still more exceptional to find two who react in the same manner under identical circumstances. Variations in appearance and action, however, are but outer and easily seen differences in fundamental qualities. Scientists have proved that men are, from birth, unequal in mental and physical capacities—that even the possibility of developing particular capacities varies to a remarkable extent in each individual. These inherent or natural differences may be modi­fied or enhanced, but almost never, save in exceptional cases, completely overcome by subsequent training and experience. To determine exactly what these differences between individuals are, and what their consequent effect upon future development and action will be, is the most difficult task in the whole range of personnel work. But this task must be performed if personal abilities and characteristics are to be given intelligent considera­tion in the organization of a business.

Physical Variations in Individuals.—The major physical variations in individuals are easily detectable. The chief danger in determining these differences is that too great attention will be given to the outstanding physical traits, while the subtler differentiations are overlooked. It is not difficult to decide that a man's strength is below average; neither does it require any lengthy deliberation to determine that his muscular control is defective in certain respects. These are more or less obvious limitations.

Differences in height, weight, muscular strength, and general bodily development can be recognized almost immediately, and the degree of their variation from the average, or from the desired standard, determined with but little difficulty.

The consideration of what may be called the general "motor capacity" of individuals reveals further physical diversity in human beings. A man may have unusual strength and yet be unable to utilize that strength except in the performance of the simplest tasks, through lack of precision and control of movement which another man may have to a marked degree. The motions of certain individuals may be characterized by steadiness and deliberation, while those of other persons may be very rapid but equally accurate. The skill of one man may lie in his ability to perform a simple motion with unusual speed, while that of another may consist of being able to secure coordinated action in the performance of several complicated motions. These varying, more or less hidden, characteristics are fully as signifi­cant as the more obvious ones.

Still less apparent, and consequently less easily determinable, are the physical differences resulting from variations in the keenness of the sense perceptions. The same food may not have the same flavor to two individuals, simply because the sense of taste may be more highly developed in one than in the other. Range and length of vision, as well as rapidity and keenness of visual perception, are possessed by various individuals in markedly varying degrees. The difference in the amount and accuracy of the visual images which can be recorded by different people in the same length of time is found to be considerable. Although some people are very sensitive to shades of color, color-blindness, especially among men, is a fairly common visual defect. Differences in the sense of touch and in auditory per­ception are equally great. Certain people, for example, are highly sensitive to tactual impressions, while others find diffi­culty in distinguishing between various kinds of material without the aid of senses other than touch. Differences in the ability to hear distinctly, and to retain oral impressions, are so common as to need no explanation. The difficulty lies in determining accurately the keenness or the dullness of the auditory perception of any particular individual. All of these factors have a distinct bearing upon the individual's fitness to perform certain types of work within the organization, since each type usually requires the possession of one or more of these senses in a more or less highly developed state.

Mental Differences in Individuals.—Physical variations are no more important than mental ones. The physical and mental characteristics of an individual are so closely connected that an analysis of one without the other is of but uncertain value in fitting the man to the job. A man's mental make-up may have an overwhelming influence upon his capacity to utilize his physical abilities, and his physical make-up may be a help or a hindrance in the fulfillment of his intellectual possibilities.

There are, in general, three phases of mental make-up through which individual differences are manifested—temperament, intellect, and moral character. In temperament and emotional characteristics lie those differences which are commonly referred to as differences in "human nature." Some men are nervous and easily excitable, prone to hasty and thoughtless action; while others are calm and not easily aroused, given to deliberate and meditated procedure. The former might be adversely affected by being compelled to perform monotonous work or to carry on the work in noisy surroundings, while the latter would feel no injurious effects under such circumstances. This is primarily a matter of temperament.

Just as there seems to be an inherent difference in individual temperament, so there is an inherent difference in individual intellectual ability, commonly referred to as intelligence. There is a marked variation in ability to absorb knowledge, to respond to training. There is, moreover, a peculiar characteristic of this variation which is particularly significant in fitting the man to the job. People differ not only in general intellectual ability, but also, and more widely, in intellectual ability along relatively specialized lines. Even within the same trade, occupation, or business, intellectual variations are noticeable. For example, the man who is a remarkably good accountant might fail utterly in the sales department, simply because his special aptitude did not lie in that direction. In some cases, the spread of intellectual ability is so great, the intellectual balance of the individual so fine, that it is difficult to determine the particular lines along which his intellect functions with greatest keenness. But these cases are not common, and there is usually a determinable tendency toward some one field of activity. This by no means implies that, were every individual placed in the work for which he has been best fitted by his intellectual inheritance, he would imme­diately accomplish extraordinary results. Geniuses are rare, and their ability is concentrated to an unusual and often unde­sirable degree upon a single phase of mental activity. It does imply, however, that a person of so-called normal general intelli­gence, if given proper education and training in the field to which his individual type of intellect is particularly adapted and in which he is most interested, will be more susceptible to this training and will reach a higher level of efficiency as a result of it, than if he were being instructed along some other line. Further­more, no amount of training can give the "knack" of the work to the person who lacks the fundamental aptitude for it, and he is therefore at a disadvantage when competing with the man who is primarily suited to it. These fundamental differences in intellectual capacity are additional forces contributing to the variation in individual adaptability to the many dissimilar types of activities performed in the business organization.

People differ in still another phase of their mental make-up; that is, in moral character. In the study of this phase, science has made but little progress. Psychologists admit its importance, recognize the influence of direction and training on its develop­ment, and grant its existence in varying degrees in different individuals. But they make no claim to ability to ascertain, by any scientific method of measurement, the strength or weak­ness of a person's moral character. Certain individuals are of unquestionable honesty and integrity; others are honest and reliable only to a degree which suits their own purposes and enables them to evade actual punishment by society; still others cannot be trusted in any circumstances. The problem is to determine in which category an individual should be placed, without the necessity of finding out perhaps by unfortunate experience. The necessity of determining these moral character­istics before employing or placing a man depends, of course, upon the type of work which he is to do. Provided that he is not a criminal, the moral character of a laborer is of compara­tively little import. But the honesty and reliability of the bank cashier is a matter of extreme consequence. There is as yet no satisfactory method of determining moral character. It is known only that individuals vary in its possession.

Influence of Education, Training, and Experience.—Educa­tion, training, and experience play an important part in develop­ing and fixing personal characteristics. Two men, whose physical endowments were originally almost equal, may vary widely in their ability to perform certain kinds of work involving muscular activity, because one has benefited by physical training which has been denied to the other. Of two men, both with a native intellectual tendency toward mechanics, one may be fitted only for work in a machine shop, while the other, owing to addi­tional advantages of education and training, is capable of design­ing machinery. Temperamental and moral differences may also be created by education and training.

In almost any field, and particularly in business, people differ owing to the influence of the individuals under whom they have received their training. In selecting men for executive positions, it will often be found that those who have been under the direction of a man with real executive ability will have so thoroughly absorbed his viewpoint that they too are fitted for the higher executive positions. The viewpoint of the men who have been trained by a "detail" executive, however, is liable to be so circumscribed that they are suited only for minor positions in the organization. Investigation has shown that a man's viewpoint in business is almost entirely determined by the training and experience which he has received and by the personal influences to which he has been subject.

Job Differences.—Within industry as a whole, and even within the structure of a single organization, there is a wide range of jobs whose differences are almost as great as those to be found existing among individuals. In practically any business, the variation between the characteristics of the administrative, the executive, and the supervisory positions, and the workers' jobs is so wide that they demand totally different qualities and capacities, while the latter jobs run the whole gamut of differences in the abilities they require. There are three general classes of positions in almost any business; those which require mainly mental effort; those which demand primarily physical exertion; and those which necessitate a combination of both types of activity.

The differences between the jobs included in these categories are best illustrated by citing a few general examples of the individual characteristics, or the types of individuals, which they require. The administrative position at the head of the business has a broader outlook and a wider scope of activity than any other in the organization. It demands, consequently, an especially strong imaginative tendency, the ability to think in large terms and to visualize as a whole not only the nature of the present trend both within and without the business, but also the probable future trend. This position makes almost no demand upon physical or motor capacity, but usually requires, for its attainment, a comparatively long period of training and experience.

This is also largely true of all executive positions which demand, primarily, sound and rapid judgment, the ability to select and lead men, the ability to delegate detail, and sound training in technique. Positions as department heads vary in character and requirements with the type of work being done in the depart­ment. The sales manager's job, like that of the head of the business, requires an abundance of imagination; the chief account­ant's position necessitates a mechanical turn of mind; while the job as head of the production department calls for technical knowledge of materials, methods, machinery, and general operation. While all of these executive positions demand a certain knowledge of detail, in order that affairs within the department may be efficiently directed and controlled, they also require the ability to subordinate that detail to consideration of the department as a whole; that is, the ability to make detail routine and automatic, so that it will not draw attention from larger problems. Supervisory positions require detailed knowl­edge of the work being done and constant and intimate contact with it, through the performance of supervision and instruction. These jobs also demand a certain amount of physical ability and skill along with mental requirements.

By far the widest range of variation in requirements is found in that class of jobs concerned with the actual operation of the business, in which the work of the organization is finally executed. At the top of the scale are jobs such as those of the skilled mechanic, the production clerk, the inspector, the draughtsman, and similar operators. In all of these jobs something more than average intelligence and a special aptitude along one line are necessary to supplement a certain amount of physical skill. Requiring less mental ability and more physical dexterity are jobs which involve the sorting or assembling of machine parts, the packing of goods for shipment, and similar activities. As the scale is descended, the amount of mental ability required becomes constantly less, until those jobs such as automatic machine tender or ordinary laborer are reached. These demand almost no mental ability, but largely average physical strength or dexterity. In fact, for automatic machine tending it has been found that individuals even mentally defective are satisfactory and valuable workers, and for extremely monotonous work they are often actually preferable, since the mind of the defective is not subject to the strain which might seriously affect the worker of normal intelligence.

Obstacles to Perfect Coordination of Job Requirements with Personal Qualifications.—The ideal state of affairs within a business would be that in which every position was filled by a man whose physical and mental characteristics were better suited to the position which he occupied than to any other. Under existing conditions, the attainment of such a state is impossible. Neither the material nor the human sciences have progressed far enough in their study of industry to enable accurate determination of the exact qualities and capacities which are required for efficient performance of a particular job, or of the specific characteristics which are possessed by the individual to make him fit or unfit for the job in question. Even though it were possible to determine these factors with absolute exactitude, there would still be an obstacle to the perfect coordination of personal qualifications with job requirements. The limitations in individual ability, and the limitation in the sources from which men can be drawn to fill the various positions in the organization, make it impossible, in a majority of cases, to find just the type of man desired.

But in the carefully functionalized organization, a majority of the positions have well-defined requirements which remain virtually the same during the operation of the business. Success in placement depends upon the ability to find men who can meet these requirements satisfactorily. The scope of the position itself usually cannot be altered without undesirable disarrangement of the functional structure. Since it is rarely possible to secure the ideal man, it is frequently necessary to take the best available man. Especially in the case of executive positions, the individual selected will often possess not all, but only the most important qualifications and characteristics essential or desirable. Some provision must consequently be made for supplying those qualities in which he is deficient, or for offsetting those tendencies which are too highly developed. This can best be done by "balancing" the individuals in the organization; that is, by so combining the efforts of two or three that their concerted action will ultimately produce the type of results desired in the position. The executive with a tendency to generalize, for example, should be provided with an assistant who will give proper attention to detail; and the hasty, impetuous executive should be offset by the restraining influence of an assistant whose actions are calm and deliberate. This combination of opposite or complementary temperaments and capacities is possible only when the executive himself recognizes his special ability, and the necessity of balancing or supple­menting it by other qualities. The combinations should be made with extreme caution, since not all types of men will cooperate with each other, and harmony is essential to the success of these relations.

Exercise 41

Business forecasts and scientific planning have increased rapidly in importance for a number for reasons, the chief of which are:

1. Predictions and plans based on statistical forecasts have proved of dollars-and-cents value under actual trial. They have served to avoid loss and have allowed correlation of activities through planning to a degree hitherto unknown.
2. The steady growth in size of business concerns has gradually changed the control of activities from a personal basis to a statistical basis. One man no longer governs the destinies of his business, as formerly. He must have lieutenants, and his survey of his business activities must be done through a study of graphs and statistics rather than through his own personal observations.
3. There has been a constant increase in the number of processes which intervene between the raw material and the final sale to the consumer. This has brought about great interrelation between various industries, so that the fortunes of one invariably react in some measure upon another. The approximate effect is often statistically calculable.
4. The lack of balance between supply and demand, most noticeable in the so-called business cycle, and present in practically every business in the form of seasonal fluctuations, has brought attention to the various devices for foretelling such radical changes and making advance preparations.
5. The incessant publicity given to business forecasting has brought about a general interest in its possibilities. The various forecasting services have spent much money in advertising their accomplishments, and business schools have inaugurated courses which teach the principles of statistical prediction.
6. The force of competition is constantly compelling the abandonment of guesswork methods in favor of those founded on facts. Intuitive planning, or even planning based on experience, cannot compete with planning based on facts.

Definition.—Every approach to a scientific problem presup­poses definitions. A prediction is a present estimate of circumstances and tendencies as they will exist at a specified time in the future. Its value will depend in great measure upon the accuracy and sufficiency of the data upon which it is based.

A scientific prediction is one that, in attempting to lay out the course of a future event, endeavors to take cognizance of all the facts and factors affecting the future of the prediction.

It is essential to understand the relation of prediction to planning. Prediction is an envisagement of a future result that may be due to a combination of a number of discernible causes, possibly under the control of the predictor and possibly not. To plan is simply to schedule the measures which it is desired to take with the forces and material available. Pre­diction is a guide to planning.

For example, a storm may be predicted within three hours. Nothing can avert the storm or influence it, but the individual can plan to stay indoors, or to carry an umbrella, or to catch some of the rainwater to put in the battery of his automobile. Having the basic prediction of a storm, he can predict what would happen if he should go out with an umbrella but no rubbers, if he should go out with rubbers and no umbrella, if he should stay at home,.and any other number of other results if he should follow various courses of action. Taking some secondary prediction as a guide, he can plan to conduct himself and to use his resources so that these factors, coupled with the uncontrollable but predictable factor of the storm, will leave him in the best position.

So also, where the factors of a given causal sequence may be varied at will so as to make various results predictable, as in the case of some factory management problems, that combination is selected which warrants the most desirable prediction, and then the plan is made to realize the combination. Prediction is a guide to conduct; planning is the scheduling of that conduct.

The architect who designs a railroad terminal must predict, or have someone predict for him, traffic conditions for many years ahead, possible lines of development, and many other things. He predicts the kind of results that he can get from certain materials arranged in certain designs. Then he plans to bring about the combination of results that give promise of greatest service in the light of the original traffic predictions.

Business Planning and Prediction.—Planning, as has been said, is applied prediction. Almost every business prediction suggests the necessity for a plan. Business planning takes into consideration the past, the present, and the future. While using the prediction, which is based upon statistics, it adds also the human factor of interpretation and judgment. Every great business man has been a great predictor. While in the past his predictions have often been intuitive, in the future, methods of prevision will be those of the laboratory man rather than those of the clairvoyant.

Prediction and planning presuppose a distinction between past, present, and future. This difference can be brought out more clearly by comparing these three states of time with the adjoining territories through which a railroad line runs, travel­ing from the past, through the present, toward the future. The present is that little region which surrounds the railroad train and which is illuminated by its lights. Beyond, in both directions, there is darkness. The fields which have been passed through are remembered but cannot be seen, while those the train is about to enter show up but dimly ahead.

Hard as it is to peer into the future, it is essential to do so. For this purpose, the locomotive is provided with a headlight which illuminates the rails, and allows the engineer to see any dangers or obstacles ahead. By avoiding accidents, he can drive more safely at a higher speed.

The beams from the headlight illuminate the nearer objects more sharply than those which lie farther off. The brighter and better focused it is, the farther it is possible to see. This implies the need for installing the best headlamp which can be found, computing its projective power most scientifically, fashioning its parabolic surface with the most exacting care, and keeping it always highly burnished. In business, predictions and plans are used as headlights to illuminate the future.

Every business depends in some degree upon prediction. The speculative business, so called, is merely that one which is most difficult to forecast. Ordinarily speaking, the difference between a safe and an unsafe business is largely a matter of ability to predict. In other words, the more predictable a business becomes, the more likely it is to be successful. If the future of a business can be known, it can be provided for, and, there­fore, the business becomes safe.

The Bases of Prediction.—Every prediction and every plan are made up of the following components:

1. Sources.—These may be statistical compilations, the consensus of many opinions, the tabulation of observations or experiments, or other data worthy of serving as the basis of a prediction and a plan.
2. Interpretation.—Statistics alone are not sufficient. They must be interpreted by someone cognizant of the situation and able to correlate the various factors, and to gather their true meaning.
3. Presentation.—The methods of presenting the facts statis­tically, graphically, and personally are of the greatest importance. A prediction report and a written plan are advisable.
4. Application.—After the statistics of the past have been gathered, interpreted, and presented, it remains to apply them to practical account in the major fields of purchasing, production, and marketing.

The technique of making predictions and turning them into business plans, carefully correlated with national and industrial plans, is a comparatively new science. Like all similar endeavors it is still in an experimental stage. Yet the mere fact that it is possible to predict in many lines, and the short period of time over which statistics have been kept, show in some degree what may be expected in the future along the lines of scientific planning.

Sources of Prediction.—Predictions are founded upon facts. If these facts are inaccurate, if the number gathered is insufficient, or if the interpretation is faulty, the prediction will be nullified to a great degree.
Only the largest organizations, however, can afford to hire their own staff specialists to collect and to compile all the statistics necessary for purposes of prediction. The smaller concerns, which in many ways are in much greater need of scientific methods of planning, have neither the funds nor the resources to collect many of the necessary facts external to the organization but vital in their effect upon its activities. It will be necessary, therefore, for such concerns either to subscribe to the forecasting services available, or to accept the statistics of the various trade journals and reporting services, and from them to make up their own predictions.

The average concern will, therefore, take its facts from three series of sources:

1. External statistics (those having to do with general business conditions) will be taken in digested form from one of the fore­casting services.
2. Industrial statistics (those having to do with the industry of which the company is a member, or perhaps with other indus­tries which are closely related in cause and effect) will be taken from reporting services, such as Dun's, Bradstreet's, trade journals, and similar organizations.
3. Internal statistics (those having to do with the activities of the company itself) will be secured from purchasing, production, sales, and accounting records, or any other sets of company statistics which may prove suitable for purposes of prevision.

Interpretation.—The analysis of statistics prior to drawing up the prediction is one of the most important tasks in making a forecast. The person who makes this forecast must, therefore, possess in high degree the ability to correlate the various facts without bias and with due regard to the proper weight to ascribe to each. He must also be able to see ahead and take into con­sideration the various external forces which are at work and which may make the ultimate prediction deviate from its normal procedure.

The person who interprets the statistics should not necessarily make up the primary records. Indeed, the preliminary routine work is usually done by subordinates. But the interpreter should begin his task with the sorting out of the essential facts from the unessential ones.

The ultimate prediction is a resultant of forces. A great deal of its accuracy will depend upon the skill of the interpreter in assigning to each set of facts the weight or force which it will exert in determining the final result. Steps can then be taken to cope with the adverse factors. Indeed, prediction and forecasting have been defined as foresight of consequences and provision against them.

Presentation.—The value of the prediction is greatly lessened unless it is presented to the management in a usable and practi­cable form. This ordinarily implies graphic analysis, because the average executive has neither the time nor the technical training to digest a mass of statistics. Numerical relationships must be translated into diagrams before they can be judged accurately.

Predictions are usually submitted in the form of reports. The construction and the wording of these reports should be of the simplest, so that they may be readily understood by everyone concerned.

It is often of the greatest importance to have predictions and conclusions explained personally to the heads of the business. The forecaster should be able to participate in the discussions, and to show how he has arrived at his results.

Application.—The gathering of statistics and the making of predictions are practically useless unless they are to be put to work in the making of plans. The first place where they prove of utility is in the layout of long-range policies. Each company wants to look ahead for a number of years so that it can provide for expansion and development of the business. It often happens, for example, that a manufacturer can see ahead to the time when he will have filled the demand for his product through present channels. If he is to continue expanding his business, he must find new uses for the product or provide new markets before the saturation point in the original market has been reached. Through correlation of statistics, he knows approximately what his present market is and how long it will be before he has satisfied it. He also knows that he must be prepared for the future increase in output of his factory. In some industries, this question is particularly acute. In the case of rubber, for example, experts are constantly devising new methods of disposing of the output.

Types of Predictions.—Scientific prediction falls into two main classes:
1. Predictions of effects in which the predictor can control the causes.
2. Predictions in which the predictor can observe but is power­less to control the result.

The first class of prediction is that of scientific method, pure and simple. For example, by laboratory tests it is proved that a drill of a certain standard specification will go through a steel plate of known grade and thickness in 30 seconds if operated at the rate of 200 revolutions a minute. The test has been made on a great number of plates, a table of results has been drawn up, and all errors corrected. As far as tools and machinery are con­cerned, the shop foreman can be told that two plates a minute should be punctured.

At this point, however, the second type of prediction enters, because it is not possible to predict with scientific accuracy how fast the individual operator of the machine will work. The pre­diction can be made, but it will now be based on statistics and averages of various sorts, and predictions will be more and more accurate as the number of operators involved increases. The second method, therefore, must be used where an essential factor cannot be controlled.

Life insurance is an excellent example of prediction where probabilities and chances are accounted for. Like the causes of variation in individual character, the causes of death at various ages are almost endless. Nevertheless, if enough cases of death are enumerated, a table can be constructed to show for each age what the predictable number of remaining years of life will be. This is known as a mortality table. By its use, insurance companies know how much money to charge as a premium during a period of years to enable them to pay death benefits when death does occur. Actuarial science has a low margin of error, even though based entirely on observation.

Business Plans.—Both types of predictions are used in the formation of business plans. The application of forecasting to the financial management of the company's affairs is particularly important. More and more attention is being paid to the question of budgets and budgetary control—a matter which lies almost entirely in the field of prediction.

Applied predictions, or plans, are also of the greatest value in purchasing, production, and marketing. By careful analysis of statistics and by correlation with the general trend of business, it is possible for the purchasing agent of a manufacturing concern, or the buyer for a retail store, not only to regulate his purchases according to size, but also to predict with a fair degree of certainty the price he should pay.

In the field of production, prediction is used to correlate volume of production with the volume of finished article which can be sold. Periods of over- and under-production are being reduced by the use of prevision based on facts. Time and motion studies, scheduling, estimating, and a variety of other special phases of prediction, are also used in production.
The analysis of markets, the setting of sales quotas, the for­mation of advertising budgets according to planned sales are also matters pertaining to prediction.

From the point of view of forecasting, purchasing, production, and sales are all part of the same process and should be carefully correlated so that activity in one department will be accompanied by activity in another, and so that advance preparations for increased production will be attended by adequate purchases and a suitable sales campaign. Since selling is the final and controlling process, the other two steps should be regulated by the planned volume of sales, and also by the seasonal fluctuation in sales.

The first step in studying practical prediction is an under­standing of the various factors involved in making a forecast. These are treated in the following chapter.
FACTORS IN FORECASTING

The factors entering into predictions or plans can be roughly divided into two classifications: first, those which are foreseeable and which, therefore, can be insured against; second, those which are unforeseeable. No exact boundary line can be established between the foreseeable and the unforeseeable, since, as knowledge increases and as records accumulate, there is a tendency for factors originally placed in the latter class to move into the first.

A second group of factors is concerned with the manner of occurrence. The time at which an event will occur, or at which a plan will be fulfilled, is important because of the difficulty of seeing far ahead. The regularity of occurrence will have much to do in determining the distance which can be seen ahead. The number of factors which concur to bring about a certain event are also of great importance, because the more there are of them, the greater difficulty is experienced in planning with accuracy.

A final group of factors is concerned with the interpretation of the statistical components into the finished plan. Here the personal element of judgment plays a leading role, and the ability to interpret accurately according to the facts without influence or bias.

Foreseeable Factors.—Foreseeable factors are those which it is in the power of the individual to control, or which he can insure against because of his knowledge of the frequency of their occurrence. These events may occur naturally, or may be set in motion through some human agency.

In the case of accidents in factories, fires in buildings, and other such occurrences, it is usually possible to predict the frequency of occurrence in industry at large, and even to classify the causes of them numerically. That is, so many painters will die of lead poisoning; so many miners will die through explosions in mines; so many railroad employees will be killed, and the like. Although the individual accident cannot be pointed out, yet the general prediction may be made. This has allowed the formation of employers' liability insurance companies, the success of which is founded on the accurate prevision of the elements of risk in different businesses.

It is the object of every business to obtain the utmost possible control over all the conditions surrounding it. Accordingly, the growth of a progressive concern shows a steady conversion of unforeseeable factors into the class of foreseeable factors. For example, a manufacturing concern starts by selling all its goods through a commission house, and has virtually nothing to say about retail distribution. But it finds it cannot make its plans with any accuracy under such conditions, and, consequently, it gradually assumes the function of retail distribution itself.

Although the successful business shows a gain in control, yet it must always reckon with the possibility of some elements fall­ing back again into the class of unforeseeable factors. A well-organized and law-abiding group of workmen may, within a week, become a band of law-breaking strikers, thereby upsetting every arrangement upon which the firm had banked. It is such emergencies which are the hardest to provide for in any business prediction or plan. The predictor can take care of the external and even the entirely uncontrollable matters by insurance, or he can otherwise protect himself against catastrophes. But it is those matters which are on the border line between the fore­seeable and the unforeseeable which present the greatest element of uncertainty.

Unforeseeable Factors.—The first class of those indeterminate factors which upset the equilibrium of events consists of influences beyond the control of human action. No one, for instance, can as yet predict the spot where the lightning will strike. A farmer may have every reason to expect large profits from the crops stored in his barn, but this sudden bolt may in one moment annihilate his prospects. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods may be classed in the category of those continually recurring phenomena which cannot be foreseen.

"Foreseen," of course, is a word which is constantly shifting in application. Ten years from now, factors which appeared totally unpredictable may be brought within the range of accurate prediction.

The business man may, by insurance or by some other means, shift the element of risk; but this in no manner does away with the risk itself, nor does it bring it any more under his control. He merely pays money to shift the responsibility. That is, he takes on a small but immediate burden in order to avoid shoulder­ing a far greater burden if a certain remote but possible event should take place.

It is the unforeseeable events which most completely nullify predictions. A company may have every prospect of success until some revolutionary invention, protected by patent, develops its prospects almost over night. There are other examples. Infidelity of a trusted employee may seriously inconvenience a business. The bankruptcy of some large customer or creditor may bring on a financial crisis. Well-managed companies recognize that the risk exists and accordingly accumulate reserve funds to guard against sudden and unlooked-for disaster.

Time.—Time is invariably a factor in every problem of busi­ness planning. Generally speaking, the more immediate events are easier to predict in detail, while so many intermediate events are interposed between those which are remote that it is much more difficult to give a detailed prognosis, but much easier to make a general prediction. The exceptions to this statement are mostly astronomical, where the laws are sufficiently well known to permit of accurate prediction far ahead of the actual occurrence.

When the occurrence of an event is to take place at some dis­tance in the future, factors once negligible may grow to much greater proportions. It is possible to give to each factor only the weight which it appears to possess at the time. Long-range weather forecasting, for example, is as yet in the embryo stage. Weather forecasts for the ensuing 24 hours are all that the weather bureau cares to be judged upon, although it does attempt to forecast the weather for a week. But there are so many small exceptions unnoticed at the time, which may develop in impor­tance, that the results, even for the shorter period, are often inaccurate.

In certain conditions, the element of time is controlling, as in the case of seasonal depressions. Under certain other con­ditions, the will of a single individual or group of individuals may delay or precipitate an event. The failure of a business, for example, may be delayed by the efforts of one individual to defer the inevitable moment.

As a rule, general tendencies are much easier to predict than particular events, and the more remote the period to which the prediction applies, the more forcibly is this rule in operation. It is like the observer on a vessel approaching a harbor, who makes out the city as a whole before he can distinguish individual buildings.

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