EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
298 
bureau claims that its choice was a good one but that the 
man selected was not properly handled. The foreman or 
superintendent maintains that the choice was a poor one. 
Each side claims to be in the right, but since there is no defi 
nite basis or standard upon which to rest a decision, the 
matter remains indefinitely unsettled. Moreover, in the 
very nature of the case it must remain unsettled, because 
the personal opinion of one man is balanced against the 
personal opinion of another. In the long run, however, the 
employment bureau is usually found at fault, not because 
the final fault necessarily rests there but because the 
weight of numbers is against it. The employment bureau 
is like a man surrounded by accusers on all sides, and for 
the lack of any reliable criterion, the majority rules. 
In order to illustrate roughly the intricacies of this prob 
lem, the following series of typical situations is given: 
1. The employment manager may select an applicant 
whom he considers the right man for a place, but the fore 
man, for any number of reasons, may object to the selec 
tion. 
2. The foreman may accept the man, but discharge him 
at the end of a week or a month as unfit or undesirable. 
3. The foreman and employment manager may both 
agree on the value of a man, but the man himself may 
leave because of dissatisfaction with his work or salary, 
or for some other personal reason. 
4. The employment manager may hire a man for one 
kind of work and the foreman may put him on a different 
kind of work, causing him to leave. 
5. The employment manager may refuse to hire a man 
because he judges him to be unfit. In this case all trace 
is usually lost. 
6. The employment manager, the foreman, and the