majority of people that were dealt with were mature, with more or less
fixity of character and habits. Many of them were handicapped by iron-clad
limitations and restrictions in their affairs and in their environments.
What results may be possible when these methods, improved and developed by
a wider use, are applied to young people, with their plastic minds and
wonderful latent possibilities, we cannot even venture to forecast.

While we are accustomed to thinking of unfitness for our tasks as the one
form of maladjustment due to our ignorance of human nature in general and
individual traits in particular, there are other forms which, in their own
way, cause much trouble and the remedying of which leads to desirable
results. These are many and varied, but may be grouped, perhaps, most
conveniently under two or three general headings.

First, there is the relationship between employers and employees. The
disturbances and inharmony which mark this relationship, and have marked
it throughout human history, are due as much, perhaps, to misunderstanding
of human nature as to any one other cause. When employers select men
unfitted for their tasks, assign them to work in environments where they
are handicapped from the start, and associate them together and with
executives in combinations which are inherently inharmonious, it is
inevitable that trouble should follow.

The larger aspects of the employment problem are treated in the second
part of this book. Inasmuch, however, as the subject has been more fully
discussed in another volume,[1] no attempt is made to go into details.

Adjustment to environment means very largely the ability successfully to
associate with, cooperate with, and secure one's way among one's fellow
men. In order to be successful in life, we must first live on terms of