chine. The machine operator rolls up the slips of the pile with the
thumb of her left hand and transfers the amount to the proper keys of
the machine. It has been found that the most rapid and accurate girls
at sorting are not seldom useless on the machines. They press the
wrong, keys and make errors in copying the total from the machine
indicators to the file-card. On the other hand, some of the best
machine operators are very slow and inaccurate at the sorting table.
Girls have been found very poor at the work at which they were first
set, and very successful and efficient as soon as they had been
transferred from the one to the other.

Examples of this kind might be heaped up without end. But while the
very large establishments demonstrate by such reports only that they
can find somewhere a fit place for every able workingman if they take
enough trouble to seek for it, after all the essential element of the
reports remains, that successful achievement depends upon personal
mental traits which cannot be acquired by mere good will and training.
In view of this fact it is much more important that by far the
majority of establishments have not such a great manifoldness of
activities under one roof. The workingman who is a failure in the work
which he undertook would usually have no opportunity to show his
strong sides in the same factory, or at least to be protected against
the consequences of his weak points. If his achievement is deficient
in quality or quantity, he generally loses his place and makes a new
trial in another factory under the same accidental conditions, without
any deeper insight into his particular psychical traits and their
relation to special industrial activities. But even in the large
concerns, in which many kinds of labor are needed side by side, it is
not the rule but a rare exception when the individual is
systematically shifted to the psychologically correct place. A whole
combination of conditions is necessary for that. If his mental
unfitness makes him unsuccessful in one place, the position for which
he is fit must happen to be vacant. Moreover, he himself must like
that other kind of work, and above all the foreman must recognize his
particular fitness. In a few model factories in which the apprentice
system is developed in the spirit of advanced sociological ideas, for
instance, in the Lynn factory of the General Electric Company, such
systematic efforts are being carried on and show fair