As a result of the application of such a uniform method, the principles of human analysis would rapidly become a matter of common knowledge and could be taught in our schools just as we to-day teach the principles of chemical, botanical, or zoological analysis.  In the industries, the scientific selection, assignment and management of men have yielded increases in efficiency from one hundred to one thousand per cent.  The majority of people that were dealt with were mature, with more or less fixity of character and habits.  Many of them were handicapped by iron-clad limitations and restrictions in their affairs and in their environments.  What results may be possible when these methods, improved and developed by a wider use, are applied to young people, with their plastic minds and wonderful latent possibilities, we cannot even venture to forecast.

While we are accustomed to thinking of unfitness for our tasks as the one form of maladjustment due to our ignorance of human nature in general and individual traits in particular, there are other forms which, in their own way, cause much trouble and the remedying of which leads to desirable results.  These are many and varied, but may be grouped, perhaps, most conveniently under two or three general headings.

First, there is the relationship between employers and employees.  The disturbances and inharmony which mark this relationship, and have marked it throughout human history, are due as much, perhaps, to misunderstanding of human nature as to any one other cause.  When employers select men unfitted for their tasks, assign them to work in environments where they are handicapped from the start, and associate them together and with executives in combinations which are inherently inharmonious, it is inevitable that trouble should follow.

The larger aspects of the employment problem are treated in the second part of this book.  Inasmuch, however, as the subject has been more fully discussed in another volume,[1] no attempt is made to go into details.

Adjustment to environment means very largely the ability successfully to associate with, cooperate with, and secure one’s way among one’s fellow men.  In order to be successful in life, we must first live on terms of mutual cooperation with our parents; second, secure the best instruction possible from our teachers; third, make social progress; fourth, secure gainful employment, either from one employer, as in the case of the laborer and the executive, or from several, as in the cases of professional men.  Having secured employment, our progress depends upon our ability to attain promotion, to increase our business or our practice, to add to our patrons.  Salesmen must sell more, and more advantageously.  Attorneys must convince judges and juries, as well as obtain desired testimony from witnesses.  Preachers and other public speakers of all classes must entertain, interest, arouse, and convince their audiences.  Writers must each appeal successfully to his particular public as well as to his publisher.  Engineers must establish and sustain successful relationship with clients, employers, and employees.