But, granting all this, the obvious question occurs. What will be its effect upon human nature? Is it conceivable that the perfecting of machinery could leave it unaffected, and will not inevitably this inventive genius be turned upon man himself? Our future man of business who, by improved modes of locomotion, spends his week-ends in Tennessee, Kikuyu, or Zanzibar (according to his religious predilections), will he enjoy only the advantages of mechanical invention? Surely a perfected Pelmanism will enable him to learn three native languages on the Friday’s journey out, and an improved process of repression assist him to forget them on the Sunday evening’s journey home.
This is not entirely idle speculation. Applications of science to the control of the human mind have already begun. They started, perhaps, in the crude and blundering experiments in Scientific Management. They are groping towards more solid foundations in Industrial Psychology—the philosophical significance of which has, up to the present, escaped the attention it deserves.
Consider briefly the course of this movement up to the present date. Sometime in the eighties Taylor introduced his principles of Scientific Management. Some ingenious spirit, indirectly inspired no doubt by him, produced the following invention for organizing the activities of man. A certain American establishment paid its employees on the basis of ‘task work’, i.e. upon piece rates with a time-limit for the performance of the unit-task. The worker was paid a 25% bonus on the ordinary wage for the performance of his task, but the task and time-setter was paid a bonus based upon the number of men who failed to earn their bonuses. The apparent disadvantage to the worker, however, was counterbalanced by providing him with a foreman who also was paid upon the basis of the number of men under him who ‘made their tasks’. As Muscio1 comments, “The situation then was this: The workman was given a bonus as an incentive to expend intense efforts to accomplishing a task in a set time; the foreman was given ‘blood money’ to drive the man if he