HUMAN MACHINERY.

THE late Professor William James was of opinion that American business men did not get through so much work as they supposed. " Hustling " is generally taken to mean an exceptional power of rushing through work, but what if " hustling " becomes a combination of admired pose and admiring introspection which really distracts the atten- tion from work and is the rival of its efficiency? Some Englishmen have been coming to the conclusion that their own obsolete and sleepy methods are not quite so obsolete and sleepy as Americans and British colonists sometimes represent them to be. Suppose, after all, that we Englishmen are slipping in a little effective work which passes almost unsuspected because not much has been said about it. It is a gratifying thought. And we are not sure that the likelihood that such a thing is really happening is reduced in our judgment by a book called "Increasing Human Efficiency in Business," by Professor Walter Dill Scott, Professor of Psychology and Director of Psycho- logical Laboratory, North-Western University, Evanston, Ill. [The Macmillan Co. 5s, lid. net.] Professor William James, even though his brave words are quoted in this book, would probably find that the Professor of Psychology goes in a good deal for what in one passage he deprecates. Certainly if we tried to carry in our heads all the blessed thoughts for increasing human efficiency placed at our disposal by Mr. Scott we should alternate between painful periods of incuba- tion and desperate application of the will-power we had amassed. We should become "convulsive," as Professor James complained so many Americans had become. "We say :that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse," he wrote, "and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude of results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who would do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. . . . It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker."

Mr. Scott, however, is a psychologist, and therefore a serious person. His array of the tables and researches of his labora- tory is one of the most formidable things we have seen. Yet when we come to the application we almost sigh for the benighted days of a quarter of a century ago when psychology existed in a lovely jumble with mental philosophy and meta- physics. We imagine a duologue between a surprised European pupil and the Professor of the North-Western University ea- PUPIL : What do you study in a psychological laboratory ? Paorassoa Great subjects. We deal with memory, with attention, with sensation, with association, with perception. rum,; Those are great subjects indeed. And, pray, -what will the study of them teach me ?

Facentssou : They will teach you to outsell other salesmen. They will teach you to pass oft on customers articles which they really do not want and had not dreamed of buying before they met you.

PUPIL: Will that be an advantage P

PROFESSOR : For you, ■es.

It will mark you down as a sales- man who deserves promotion. Your picture may appear in your House organ with a description of the sales you have effected.

Pram: That will bo fame ?

Paorasson : Yes, and money.

Form: If people go away from their encounters with me feel- ing that they have bought what they do not want, and have not got what they do want, will any one be better off in the long run ? Will the business of the House be increased in this way ?

Pm:muses.: That does not enter into psychology, PUPIL: But it does.

PROFIISSOR : Let me repeat. You will have proved that you can snake good as a salesman by your victory over a customer who is not really suggestible.

Perth : "Suggestible "—that is a, good word ! But it brings in the customer, too, doesn't it ?

PROMISOR: You mustn't stretch the point too far. Anyhow we have not considered the feelings of the customer in our laboratory.

PUPIL: Why not start another laboratory for him P You might work up his power of resistance.

Prtormssoa : Please be serious.

PUPIL: I am. X ask you seriously whether psychology deals chiefly with the methods of selling goods.

PaorEsson: Well, that is the chief use of psychology. It will teach you tho standard approach, the demonstration, the summary of concluding arguments, and ono day you may become a star salesman.

Mr. Scott appears to combine with his professorship of psychology a practice as a writer of advertisements. We gather from the style which he has acquired in these occupa- tions how very elegant and subtle—indeed psychological—a thing is the art of speeding up tho human machine in order to make business more business-like. He tells 1111 that after a, period during which human ingenuity was solely directed to improving machinery we have at length arrived at the point of recognizing that the human being is himself a piece of machinery who can always be speeded up twenty, thirty, or forty per cent. "A first-class man," he says, "can in most cases do from two to four times as much as is done on the average." And this enormous difference, we are told, exists in all the trades and branches of labour inves- tigated. In the laboratory men were set to exert all their efforts on strength - testing machines. When they were apparently quite exhausted they were coached and urged to do still better. And they did do better; in some cases the additional effort amounted to fifty per cent. Such experiments show the possibility of increasing human efficiency. Then Mr. Scott gets on to the various methods of increasing what everywhere potentially exists. There is, for example, the great principle of "Imitation," When this is analysed it does not seem to amount to more than an assertion of the fact that men who do not know their trade should learn it from those who do, and that good models will help workmen to produce what is required. This fact has seldom been stated, we should think, with so much labora- torical research to support it, and yet we think it highly probable that it has been acted on universally without all this almost interminable talk. In the course of his investigations of " Imitation " the Professor asked employers the following questions :— In increasing the efficiency of your employees do you utilise imitation by—

(1) Placing efficient workmen where they may be imitated by the less efficient ?

(2) Having the men visit highly efficient establishments ? (3) Bringing to the attention of your men the lives of successful men and the work of successful houses ? &c., &c.

Poor dears! The persons to whom the questions were directed gave various answers. Some said humbly that they had not consciously made any use of imitation. Yet one ventures to think that they used it all the same. Or can it be that in the interests of successful "Competition" (vide a later part of the book) some houses gave the wrong answers to these too pertinent questions?

Mr. Carnegie's plan of setting his mills into competition with each other, so that each aspired to beat the other's record, has been much imitated in America with the best psychological results. In the ease of some houses the competition of the various departments in outselling one another has become a kind of Cup-tie. There is even a "sporting editor" of the House organ who provides for the proper chronicling of this exhilarating sport. Another kind of competition is "against bogey," "bogey "being the sales of the House in a correspond- ing period of some former year. Again, lists of honours are published and prizes are awarded. The "inspirational effect," as our psychologist says, of these things seems to be highly satisfactory. When we are told that the best operators are often sufficiently rewarded by having their names posted on a. board by their grateful employer we can only reflect sorrow- fully on the fact that the psychology of the American workman is different from that of his British brother. What would a British trade unionist think of his name being posted in honour of his having exceeded the output of his fellows? His emotions would hardly be more painful were he posted as a blackleg. We cannot tell our readers fully of the highly interesting theory of the "plateau" established in Mr. Scott's laboratory. According to his charts of human endeavour, every class of skilled worker passes through an intermediate period between the rapid ascent of the beginner and the eventual slower but still steadily progressive climb to perfect accomplishment. That intermediate period is one of movement along a dead level. Dare we suggest that Mr. Scott is now on his plateau ; that psychology once meant him for a heady rush upwards ; and that later he may climb—who knows ?—to glittering heights above the plateau which now resounds with the wordy warfare of star salesmen ?