186 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
repeated in exactly the same way and which, when once 
acquired, can be performed without the aid of attention. 
For such work, mental defectives are often well adapted. 
Indeed, they are often better fitted for it than individuals 
of a higher intelligence because, having very few ideas 
and very little mental activity, they are unable to per 
ceive the monotony and dullness of their work. They 
are themselves quite automatic, and can almost wholly 
lose themselves in the work which they are doing. What 
better solution of the problem of idiocy and undeveloped 
mentality can there be, from both an economic and a social 
standpoint, than to detect such applicants and assign 
them to work for which they are peculiarly adapted? 
There is, however, a strong tendency to confuse lack of 
education with lack of intelligence, a tendency which has 
promoted much trouble. Foremen and employment 
managers are too prone to think that an illiterate Pole 
or Russian or Italian is far down in the scale of intelli 
gence. Consequently, they can not understand why these 
stupid foreigners should object vigorously when they are 
put at some low grade of work, work which requires no 
manual or mental ingenuity and which is often merely 
dirty and monotonous. One of the problems of the 
psychologist is to find tests which will enable him to 
divorce intelligence from education, or rather intelligence 
from a particular language. This difficulty will not be so 
acute when immigration decreases or when the learning 
of English is compulsory. In the meanwhile, however, it 
is a genuine difficulty which must be dealt with. The form 
boards which have been described in the course of these 
experiments are especially valuable for this purpose, 
for they can be given to subjects regardless of education, 
race, or language. Their meaning is so obvious that