Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/49

 How 1 Judge Men

By Harrington Emerson

Illustrated with Photographs Copyrighted by Harris and Ewing

Mr, Emerson is a pioneer in efficiency engineering, an apostle of what has come to be known as "scientific management." Long ago he came to the conclusion that although the best cost-accounting system had been installed in a factory, the best machines bought, the best arrangement of the machines devised, the best method of feeding raw material to the machines worked out, efficiency had not been truly attained unless the right man was given the right job. But how can you tell the right man when you see him? While Mr. Emerson does not attempt to answer the question fully in this article, which he prepared for us, he tells very clearly how humanity may be appraised by well-defined standards. — Editor.

��ANY food is better than none. But if

/-\ there is possibility' of choice why

not select the best which it is

possible to obtain for health and purse?

The difference be- tween the fine, large, perfect apples obtain- able every-where now by the box or piece, and the rusty, shriveled, wormy and rotten ap- ples I used to find in the bushel basket is very- great. I like good ap- ples, and not being in a star\'ed condition take no other kind.

How is a good apple created?

By selection.

The prospective ap- ple-grower rejects all stocks except the one he intends to market. He next rejects the en- tire surface of the globe except the one field he thinks best suited for his orchard, best suited as to climate, soil, exposure, so that the good stock will have best opportunity.

The grower cultivates and fertilizes the

il. He favors useful and drives away

oxious insects. During growth he may

ruthlessly pinch off all undesirable buds,

but in any case when the crop is gathered

he sorts and selects.

If Cattle Are Carefully Selected, Why Not Men?

How can we expect to secure anything

���Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Strongly motive; determined and inflexible; very practical, hard and intolerant; great physical strength, power and endurance; a rugged, coarse- skinned man; stubborn; bulldog type ; immovable character

��good, a good apple, a good bee, a good dog, a good cow, a good horse, a good man, or a good woman, except from good stock, de- veloped under favorable opportunity and care, and strictly se- lected as to individuals? I do not expect it. Therefore I apply selec- tion.

Before going any fur- ther it is to be noted that the family to which apples, pears, quinces, strawberries, blackber- ries, and hawthorns be- long is the rose family. All these roses are noble and respond rapidly and greatly to opportunity and care.

Unfortunately there are on earth genera as vile as the roses are noble. A Luther Bur- bank could not develop an ignoble rose, nor could a Mendel elevate a cimex — in plain Eng- lish, a bedbug. But there are living creatures in which the good or the bad is not so overwhelming- ly in evidence as in the rose or the cimex — species in which it is possible by successive selection to retain the good and breed out the bad. By following the laws of heredity, the thoroughbreds in domestic animals have been established. The racehorse man will enter an unfoaled thoroughbred colt in a future race and bet more money on him than he would dare risk on the most promising-looking and acting colt whose

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