of the concern from whom they draw their living—­selection of help is now delegated to specialists and experts.  Employment departments are now established with more or less complete control over the selection and assignment of men and women in the organization.  In some of these departments complete records are kept.  Exact and painstaking care is used in securing data, hunting up applicants, watching the actual performances of those who are put to work, determining whether or not they live up to their opportunities.  In other employment departments this system is very loose and the departments exist principally for the purpose of securing applicants who are then turned over without recommendation to the foreman who still has the power of employing and discharging.

The remedy for which we have been looking is to be found in an employment department, organized with a carefully selected personnel, which will perform the same careful, analytical research and record-keeping functions as a scientific purchasing department.  Perhaps, for the sake of clearness, it would be well for us to describe rather in detail the work of such a department.

ORGANIZATION

The organization of such a department depends entirely upon the number of applicants and employees with which it must deal and the character of the work to be done.  Suppose, for example, we have a factory with two thousand employees, seventy-five per cent of them skilled, fifteen per cent of them unskilled, and ten per cent office employees.  The work of such a department could be very well carried on by one employment supervisor, one assistant supervisor, one clerk and record-keeper, and part of the time of one stenographer.  The employment supervisor is a staff officer.  His position in the company is that of a member of the staff of the general manager or president.  His work should be subject to oversight by the president or general manager alone, and he should not be answerable to any other officer or member of the corporation.  It is the function of the employment supervisor to direct the work of his department, to conduct its relations with all other departments of the business, to interview, analyze, and recommend for employment all executives and employees of more than ordinary importance; to hear and adjudicate all cases of complaint or disagreement between executives or between executives and their employees and also to review cases heard by his assistant in which there is any degree of dissatisfaction with the settlement proposed.

It is the duty of the assistant employment supervisor to interview and analyze, select, and recommend for employment all applicants for minor positions in the factory and office.  It is also his duty, under direction of the supervisor, to number and carefully analyze every position in the organization, determining its requirements, and, having made a careful list of these requirements in a card index, to keep it in