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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 perceive
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 intelligence.
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
