Measure Your Mind: The Mentimeter and How to Use It

by Marion Rex Trabue; Frank Parker Stockbridge

The skilled worker of long experience, master of his craft or of one or another of the specialized mechanical operations that enter so largely into modern industrial processes, has already found a definite place in the scheme of things and a simple trade or performance test is all that is required to indicate where that place is. For the present, at least, we are concerned with the worker of this class only long enough to point out, in passing, that a generally adopted scheme of intelligence measurement might have disclosed the possession by any individual of this group of abilities that would have given him a broader field and a happier and more useful existence, had he and those responsible for giving him a start in life been made aware of them early enough. Even to-day, when he has been engaged in his narrowly limited field of work for the better part of his active working life, he may have latent or undeveloped mental capacity such as would qualify him for more important, better-paid employment were some means provided for disclosing its existence.

There is, in fact, no degree or kind of employment for which a more intelligent and satisfactory selection of employees cannot be made by means of properly devised mental tests, accurately applied, than by any other method now in use. Under the direction of Dr. Walter Dill Scott the Carnegie School of Scientific Salesmanship of Pittsburgh has demonstrated the usefulness of the scientific method when applied not only in the selection and training of salesmen but for the choosing of men qualified for the most important executive positions in large industrial and business establishments. A large number, possibly as many as a hundred, of the largest industrial corporations of America have already (1919) adopted in whole or in part some system of scientific mental tests for the classification and grading of present employees, the selection of new employees, and the filling of vacancies by promotion. It is the unanimous testimony, whenever a properly devised system of tests has been applied in accordance with scientific methods and without prejudice, that the actual saving in time and expense as well as in the disorganization resulting from a heavy “labour turnover” has in every case been highly profitable from the employer’s viewpoint, while it almost goes without saying that the benefit to the employee in being accurately placed in the position in which he is best fitted by his natural mental endowment and capacity to function makes for individual contentment and satisfaction and for steadier and presumably higher earning power than the old hit-or-miss method could possibly do.

Next to the beginner in industry or business, the boy or girl starting his or her vocational career, the class to which the application of scientific mental tests is of the greatest benefit to employer and worker alike is the large group of unskilled, untrained workers, men and women of no particular trade, the “floaters” and seasonal workers, who turn their hands to whatever employment opportunity offers without developing especial skill at any one recognized trade or occupation.

In our modern industrial system, a very considerable part of the personnel of our factories, shops, and stores consists of this class of untrained workers. They try their hands at many things and fail in most. They constitute the majority of those who respond to “Help Wanted” advertisements and are willing to try any sort of work; their chief occupation in life is hunting for jobs.

This need not remain forever true. Because there is not in general use any intelligent or accurate method of determining whether or not any one of these unskilled, untrained workers possesses the elementary mental capacities requisite for a particular sort of employment, it is not surprising that most of them fail to make good in the jobs into which they are indiscriminately shovelled. Yet the great majority of them do possess mental capacity of a nature and degree which, once it is ascertained, indicates their definite fitness for some particular sort of work no less than it does their definite unfitness for many other kinds of work which they are prone to undertake.

Just as war conditions brought into the Army an enormous mass of young men whose capacity and special abilities had to be determined by scientific tests before they could be assigned to the places where they could most usefully serve in the military scheme of things, so the same exigency of war brought into the industries of the country, largely centred upon the production of munitions of war, millions of women without industrial experience or vocational training but upon whose efforts the nation had mainly to rely for the output of weapons, ammunition, military equipment and accessories without which the Army and Navy could not have functioned. In a large class of plants engaged in munition production the chief demand was for sufficient muscular strength, with a slight modicum of intelligence, for the operation of automatic machinery. But in the vitally important work of inspecting, testing, and sorting the finished product of even the most highly perfected automatic machines and in many of the more delicate operations of assembling and adjusting devices and apparatus made up of a number of more or less complicated parts, intelligence and mental capacity of several different kinds and ranging up to fairly high degrees were called for.

In a number of the larger munitions establishments scientific mental tests were adopted for the selection and assignment to particular tasks of the women workers. Wherever this was done it was found that the output was increased, a higher average of quality maintained, and the labour turnover greatly reduced.

In one of the largest groups of munitions plants at Bridgeport, Conn., there was worked out, under the direction of Dr. Henry C. Link, a system of scientific mental tests which checked up so closely with the actual results obtained by the most skilful workers that their adoption for the examination of all applicants for these positions resulted in very definite time and money savings and increase in plant efficiency.

Two types of work, conducted side by side in the same room, were settled upon as the most fruitful fields for the first experiment. The work chosen was that of inspecting shells before they had been loaded, and of gauging them for head-thickness. This work was being done by 330 girls, two thirds of whom were engaged in inspection and one third in gauging.

The work of inspecting shells was done at a table constructed like an upturned, shallow box. Upon this table was dumped a large box of brass shells, not yet loaded, and all of exactly the same kind. The work of each girl was to inspect these shells and throw out those that were defective. A girl would first gather up a handful of shells, being careful to have them all pointing in the same direction. Then she would put both hands around the shells and turn them up so as to expose their insides. She would then look down into every shell for dents, scratches, stains, and other very minute defects. When any such defect was discovered the shell was extracted from the pile and thrown into one of three or four “scrap” boxes. The entire handful was then turned over and the head of every shell examined for various defects. The shells were then held in a horizontal position on the left hand and allowed to roll from the pile into the right hand. Each shell, in rolling, exposed its lateral surface and was closely scrutinized for scratches, dents, oil stains, and other defects. The good ones were taken in the right hand and dropped into a pocket at the right side of the table, through which they fell into a box below.