the Committee on Classification and Personnel,
which during the Great War, through its trade tests and other
machinery of differentiation, utilized for the national welfare
the specific abilities of thousands of drafted men.]

It has latterly been recognized that industry offers the
crucial opportunity to utilize to the fullest individual differences.
By "getting the right man in the right place," we at
once get the work done better and make the man better satisfied.
If adequate attention is given to "placement," to the
specific demands put upon men by specific types of work, and
to the specific capacities of individuals for fulfilling those
demands, we will be capitalizing variations among men instead
of being handicapped by them. As it is, specific differences
do exist, and men enter occupations and professions ignoring
them. As a result both the job and the man suffer; the
former is done poorly, and the latter is unsuccessful and unhappy.

It must be noted that the existence of specific differences
between individuals does not altogether, or often even in part,
imply superiority or inferiority. It implies in each case
inferiority or superiority with respect to the performance of a
particular type of work. Whether scientific insight and
accuracy is better than musical skill, whether a gift for
salesmanship surpasses a gift for mathematics, depends on the
social situation and the standards that happen to be current
among the group. An intensely disagreeable person may be
the best man for a particular job. All scientific observation
can do is to note individual differences, to note what work
makes demands upon what capacities, and try to bring the
man and the job together.

It must be emphasized that, while individual capacities
determine what an individual can do, social ideals and
traditions determine what he will do, because they determine what
he will be rewarded and encouraged to do. There is no
question but that in our industrial civilization certain types
of ability, that of the organizer, for example, have a high
social value. There is no question but that there are other
abilities, which under our present customs and ideals we
reward possibly beyond their merit, as, to take an extreme
case, that of a championship prize fighter. We can through
education and vocational guidance utilize all native capacities.
To make provision for the utilization of all native
capacities is to have an efficient social life.