various mental types of men could be examined,
the influence of the machine, the attitude toward monotony, the
changes of pleasure and interest in the work with the age of the
laborer, the time at which fatigue becomes noticeable, and so on. Many
psychological elements of industrial life thus come to a sharp focus
and the strong individual differences could not be brought out in a
more characteristic way. Yet, all taken together, even such a careful
investigation on a psychostatistical basis strongly suggests that a
few careful experimental investigations could lead further than such a
heaping-up of material gathered from men who are untrained in
self-observation and in accurate reports, and above all who are
accessible to any kind of suggestion and preconceived idea. The
experimental method is certainly not the only one which can contribute
to reforms in industrial life and the reinforcement of industrial
efficiency, but all signs indicate that the future will find it the
most productive and most reliable.

PART III

THE BEST POSSIBLE EFFECT

XIX

THE SATISFACTION OF ECONOMIC DEMANDS

Every economic function comes in contact with the mental life of man,
first from the fact that the work is produced by the psyche of
personalities. This gave us the material for the first two parts of
our discussion. We asked what mind is best fitted for the particular
kind of work, and how the mind can be led to the best output of work.
But it is evident that the real meaning of the economic process
expresses itself in an entirely different contact between work and
mind. The economic activity is separated from all other processes in
the world, not by the fact that it involves labor and achievement by
personalities, but by the fact that this labor satisfies a certain
group of human desires which we acknowledge as economic. The mere
performance of labor, with all the psychical traits of attention and
fatigue and will-impulses and personal qualities, does not in itself
constitute anything of economic value. For instance, the sportsman
who climbs a glacier also performs such a fatiguing activity which
demands the greatest effort of attention and will; and yet the
psychotechnics of sport do not belong in economic psychology, because
this mountain climbing does not satisfy economic desires. The ultimate
characteristic which designates an activity as economic is accordingly
a certain effect on human souls. The whole whirl