THE VOCATIONAL VALUE OF TESTS 183 
training and could be learned in periods varying from one 
hour to one month, the average being ten days. This is 
typical of the modern industrial development in the 
division of labor. Many jobs are dull and monotonous, 
involving the same petty round of activities day after 
day, and hour by hour. They fail to engage the worker’s 
entire mind and they do not stimulate his imagination. 
In fact, they lack nearly all those characteristics which 
give permanency to a vocation and which encourage 
continuity of effort. To be sure, some people are fitted 
hy nature or by temperament to just such work. On the 
other hand, there are many who tolerate it only because 
circumstances have prevented them from doing anything 
better. 
Now, although jobs of this kind can not be called vo 
cations, the vocational value of tests is probably greater 
here than in any other sphere. For vocation must in this 
instance be defined in terms of financial success. The true 
Vocation of these workers consists not of the work which 
they actually do but of the pleasures, over and above 
their work, which their wages at that work enable them to 
gain. In other words, they are interested in work, not 
for its own sake, but as a means to an end. The best 
part of the day to them is the part which comes after work, 
Mien they can be with their wives and children, when 
they can work at their own houses, putter around their 
own gardens, or tinker at their own automobiles. It is 
in the pursuit of the hundred and one activities of this 
kind that the true and only vocation of this numerous 
body of workers exists. Therefore, the vocational value 
°f tests in instances of this kind consists in the selection 
of men and women in such a manner that they shall be 
assigned at once to the kind of work at which they can