how ten percent more confidence in a man is
saturation?"

Bolen studied what he was going to say carefully, smiling all the while.
"Some men," he said very slowly, "are different than others, Mr. Cutter.
Some men will react to personality changes as abrupt as this in
different ways than others. You aren't too concerned, are you, with what
those changes might already have done to any of the individuals
affected?"

"Hell, no," Cutter said loudly. "Why should I be? All I'm interested in
is efficiency. Tell me about efficiency, and I'll know what you're
talking about."

"All right," Bolen said. "We have no way of knowing right now which men
have been affected more than others. All we have is an average. The
average right now is eight and nine-tenths percent. But perhaps you have
some workers who do not react, because they really do not suffer the
lacks or compulsions or inhibitions that the Confidet is concerned with.
Perhaps they are working at top efficiency right now, and no amount of
further subjection to the Confidet will change them."

"All right then," Cutter said quickly, "we'll ferret that kind of
deadwood out, and replace them!"

"How will you know which are deadwood?" Bolen asked pleasantly.

"Individual checks, of course!"

Bolen shook his head, looking back at his tapering fingers. "It won't
necessarily work. You see, the work that these men are concerned with is
not particularly demanding work, is it? And that means you want to
strike a balance between capability and demand. It's the unbalance of
these things that creates trouble, and in your case, the demand
outweighed the capability. Now, if you get a total ten-percent increase,
then you're balanced. If you go over that, you'll break the balance all
over again, except that you'll have, in certain cases, capability
outweighing the demand of the work."

"Good," Cutter said. "Any man whose capability outweighs the work he's
doing will simply keep increasing his efficiency."

Bolen shook his head. "No. He'll react quite the other way. He'll lose
interest, because the work will no longer be a challenge, and then the
efficiency will drop."

Cutter's jaw hardened. "All right then. I'll move that man up, and fill
his place with someone else."

Bolen looked at Cutter's eyes, examined them curiously. "Some men have a
great deal of latent talent, Mr. Cutter. This talent released--"

Cutter frowned, studying Bolen carefully. Then he laughed suddenly. "Yo