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 vocations,
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
