3^2 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
answered. Undoubtedly, both were contributing factors. 
The lack of experts made it necessary to divide the work, 
while, in turn, the division of labor made expert workers 
unnecessary. The grand result, however, has been the 
breaking down of operations and simplifying of processes 
until less and less skill is required to perform any one of 
them, and until more and more workers are eligible for 
the task. This trend was still more accentuated by the 
exigencies of the war. And now it is possible for almost 
any man or woman to go into a factory and in a day or 
a week become an acceptable operator, and earn a desir 
able week’s pay. In fact, the entire tendency in industry 
has been to place a premium upon the uneducated worker. 
The high labor turnover, the unhealthy state of employ 
ment, which prevailed even in the face of a most dire 
need for labor, was the logical and inevitable result 
of this great development. An operation which can be 
learned in an hour, a day, or a week, possesses none of 
the elements which make for stability. The simpler the 
operation and the less time required to learn it, the less 
interest and mental effort it demands. Once such an 
operation or task is acquired, nothing more remains for 
the worker to do except to watch his fellow men, to brood 
probably upon his own hopeless condition, the more favor 
able condition of some of his neighbors, the inadequacy 
of the wage he receives, the pettiness of his bosses, and 
an infinite number of other details which may come into his 
mind. The unhealthy results arising from an unoccupied 
mind are proverbial. The worker whose work is so highly 
standardized as to allow him to become a mere automaton 
with a mind which may be anywhere but at work, is a 
fruitful field for all kinds of unrest. He is bound to be 
assailed by the desire for a change, the desire for larger