can execute what he is told to do, that average man will not need to be pushed at all. Neither bonuses nor other incentives are really an essential to the case. The pride of the average man in his craftsmanship and his willingness and ambition to do his share is all the incentive that is necessary. It is not unreasonable to assert that attention to these elements of production could double the individual output of the American workman.

Nor does this express all of the advantages such an analysis might suggest. All industrial workers are entitled to training. Both the employer and the worker need it-the employer because failure to have training is one of the causes of inefficiency. If the employer is to sell in the market, meeting competition both at home and abroad, he must have a larger output and a higher efficiency. He cannot get this unless his people are trained "to the nails." On the other hand the employe is entitled to and wants to have the best possible training. Such training should have a broad outlook-not be narrowed to mere repetition of monotonous and socially inefficacious movements. Both employer and worker are entitled to assistance from the government in obtaining this training,—a matter requiring access to sources of information and the gathering of educational material in a manner and to an extent beyond the reasonable powers of private organizations.

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION A NATIONAL NEED

Training is nearly allied to industrial education but does not quite compass its breadth. The Federal Board for Vocational Education is responsible for assisting industrial education of the vocational type. Its method of operation is through the reimbursement of state boards of education for one-half the sums they expend for the salaries of teachers in vocational schools. The board has no direct connection with manufacturers or with vestibule schools as such. It can reach the vestibule school only when the State Board of Education takes over that school as part of the public school system.

The Department of Labor's training service is concerned with industrial training as carried out by manufacturers at their own expense, for the purpose of making their labor efficient. It advises the manufacturers; it prepares for them plans for training;

it assists them in the carrying out of those plans. In a way, the work of the Department of Labor is a kindergarten service for the higher industrial education being promoted by the Federal Board for Vocational Education. It promotes organization of vestibule departments in industrial establishments, the ultimate development of which may be and very frequently will be a better appreciation of the benefits of comprehensive industrial education. In the thirty-eight states where there are compensation laws, training is of special importance because it has been found that a great majority of injuries to working people are caused by ignorance. Most accidents happen within the first few hours of employment, and these accidents may be greatly reduced by previous training. Both quality and quantity of output is greatly increased in plants where the employes are regularly trained, because during the course of training accuracy is instilled.

The training room of a large airplane factory a few days ago was called upon to aid one of the factory departments which had fallen into difficulties over the reduction of an essential part for an important government order. This training room has a number of machines which could be used for the manufacture of the part. Without in any way increasing the speed of their operations the learners working on the particular machines were put on that special part. They turned it out with practically no spoilage—a much better ratio both of speed and accuracy than the factory department could show-and saved the day for the delivery. Yet the work was merely made a part of the training room's instruction. It is the experience of all manufacturers who have such training that their turnover is greatly reduced. Those who cannot make good in the factory are found out in the training. Those who can make good are conditioned to the need and go into the factory understanding the rules and discipline, ready to produce satisfactory manufactured material. It is a common occurence to obtain a statement from a factory having training that their turnover has been reduced one-half since the training room was introduced.

Well-trained labor is more truly versatile because it has a broader vision of its opportunity and a better understanding of its duties. It is more secure in its employment inasmuch as proper training gives labor an understanding of all the possibili

ties of the machine upon which employed, and workmen thus equipped are certainly much more profitable to an employer because so much more adaptable. If wage levels are to be maintained, high living costs lowered, and foreign markets met and dominated, it can only be by improving the national average output. One of the most essential elements in that improvement must be a deliberate building up of sound industrial training.

The Employment Manager and Applied Voca

E

tional Guidance

By IDA MAY WILSON

MPLOYMENT management has so recently been given professional standing that we have been concerned more with forms and methods than with the manager and his training. Industry's amazing growth has demanded the immediate and material. Shall we now pause to consider the less immediate and immaterial?

It is our belief that the cornerstone of greatest success in understanding people is a broad and liberal education. Lives there an employment manager who has studied, read and experienced sufficiently to be perfectly qualified to interview all classes of help, all individuals? To follow their progress and make adjustments when necessary until every person in the plant has the best job he is able to fill in the interests of himself and of the firm? We reflect with a degree of complacency that education, reading and experience are relative terms, the desirable quantity forever the elusive N.

He has not a liberal education who has not learned to know people, what they think, what they do, their limitations, their possibilities. Sociology, psychology and labor economics the schools teach, but after the principles of these studies have been inculcated, it remains for the student to go to living sources for vocational information if he would stem the tide of aimless drifters. He must learn how the world's work is done in the office, the factory, the field. An increasing fund of knowledge may be gleaned from the vocational texts and current periodicals, but as vocational guidance is only less new than employment management, the chief source of information is the occupations themselves. Each should be studied from two standpoints. The nature of the occupations should be analyzed in order to make specifications; their requirements in workers in way of training, experience and personal qualities come next. New vocations multiply like the loaves and the fishes; old vocations change over night. New values are given working conditions in

these days when the elimination of shadows is considered a serious economic problem. The vocational director can never reach a calm where he may rest his oars, satisfied that he knows all that he should know. The undercurrent of progress will drag him to an unknown sea unless he pulls steadily towards the receding goal of better service.

Real employment management is vocational guidance. It develops the source of labor supply, makes right selections of workers, places them properly, does intelligent follow-up work, transfers and adjusts and promotes until every employe in the plant has the best possible job. And it is more than this. It is social engineering, not only for those selected for the plant, but for all the applicants that for any reason cannot be taken into the organization. To succeed in a large way the employment manager must deal not only with the labor requisitions of the day, but with those of all the days to come. With a keen eye on development of sources of labor supply, he will weigh the possibilities of each rejected candidate for employment, and give that candidate a vision of himself as a trained, efficient worker in an occupation for which he seems fitted. With those who have not passed the formative years the possibilities are numerous, and the vista shown must be wide and long. But with the majority of rejected applicants the formative years have passed, and circumstance has to a large extent shaped the life.

It is pitiful to review the number of applicants who ask vaguely for work of any kind. Many of these are intelligent men and women with latent possibilities. A few months ago a neat young matron of this class came into our office. She had a grammar school education and the common experience of the untrained. She had been a clerk in a retail store, she had served tables in a restaurant, she had mangled in a laundry. Inquiry drew out the fact that she had liked her arithmetic best of her school studies. On our request she did readily a problem in fractions and another in decimals. We advised her to take a course in operating a bookkeeping machine. Our plant was at that time combing the country for a number of such operators, as commercial high school and business schools generally are not even yet alive to the need for these operators. We succeeded in getting the required number only after days of searching and vexing delays. We