THE applicant’s POINT OF VIEW 36$ 
mental of all factors which go to make up the applicant’s 
point of view is his self-interest. The very fact that he 
is applying for a position is an indication of this fact. 
The prospective employee is anxious to improve his con 
dition, either economically or socially. In order to deal 
successfully with him, the employer must recognize this 
fact. It is altogether too easy to overlook it, for the em 
ployer has his own interests to conserve, and sometimes 
these interests conflict with those of the applicant. How 
ever, it may be stated as almost axiomatic that the 
employer who can ascertain the interests of applicants 
and identify those interests with his own program is 
making the most profitable arrangement from every con 
ceivable point of view. As a concrete example of the 
application of this attitude the following incident will 
serve. A young musician of great promise was introduced 
to the employment manager of a big corporation. This 
young man was anxious to obtain work and was willing 
to begin at almost any kind of work. At the time the 
greatest demand was for automatic-machine work, and 
the obvious course of the employment manager was to 
hire this applicant for such work, particularly since he 
was capable of doing it and had himself expressed a will 
ingness to do machine work. However, the employment 
manager had, in the course of the interview, discovered 
that the young man was a musician who already depended 
in part for his livelihood upon the use of his hands, and as 
a result he flatly refused to give the applicant such work. 
“It is part of my business,” he remarked, “to protect 
the interests of our employees even when they do not 
recognize those interests themselves. Sooner or later 
they will recognize them, and we shall either be blamed 
or praised. Now, if you were to lose a hand, or a finger,