THE BEST MINDS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 13 February 1929, Page 8

THE BEST MINDS

“The whole modern trend in industrialism is toward higher and more efficient organisation in which the relative number of superior intelligences must steadily dwindle,” says Professor W. B. Pitkin, of Columbia University, New York, in a book entitled “The Twilight of the American Mind.” He states that in the Ford organisation 95 per cent, of all workers are taught in a how to run their machines and handle tools; aboiit 5 per cent, are skilled craftsmen; and there are a dozen or fifteen “best minds” to manage 150,000 workers. “This' is the inevitable'trend in-business and industry. For what organisation of man-power can do in one field it can do', with minor variations, in most -other fields. Genius may devise the first organisation that accomplishes these miracles; but any mediocre mind with plenty of energy and cash at its disposal can copy the structure and procedure of the original scheme and, with considerable success, apply it to almost anything. . . . As education -becomes, more scientific and teachers' more competent, a steadily increasing number of people will be trained up to the limit of their native capacities. They will be able to perform mental tasks which now, under an imperfect educational technique, have to oe handled by people of much higher native intelligence who rely on their own wits rather than on special training. In the long,run, then, the range of opportunities for the ‘best minds’ will be narrowed still further by the upward training of the secohd, third, fourth and fifth best minds.”