2/ (^2) THE MIS MEASURE OF MAN
that "substantial success" probably required an IQ above 115 or
- But he was more interested in establishing ranks at the low
end of the scale, among those he had deemed "merely inferior."
Modern industrial society needs its technological equivalent of the
Biblical metaphor for more bucolic times—the hewers of wood and
drawers of water. And there are so many of them:
The evolution of modern industrial organization together with the
mechanization of processes by machinery is making possible the larger and
larger utilization of inferior mentality. One man with ability to think and
plan guides the labor of ten or twenty laborers, who do what they are told
to do and have little need for resourcefulness or initiative (1919, p. 276).
IQ of 75 or below should be the realm of unskilled labor, 75 to
85 "preeminently the range for semi-skilled labor." More specific
judgments could also be made. "Anything above 85 IQ in the case
of a barber probably represents so much dead waste" (1919, p.
288). IQ 75 is an "unsafe risk in a motorman or conductor, and it
conduces to discontent" (Terman, 1919). Proper vocational train-
ing and placement is essential for those "of the 70 to 85 class."
Without it, they tend to leave school "and drift easily into the ranks
of the anti-social or join the army of Bolshevik discontents" (1919,
p. 285).
Terman investigated IQ among professions and concluded
with satisfaction that an imperfect allocation by intelligence had
already occurred naturally. The embarrassing exceptions he
explained away. He studied 47 express company employees, for
example, men engaged in rote, repetitive work "offering exceed-
ingly limited opportunity for the exercise of ingenuity or even per-
sonal judgment" (1919, p. 275). Yet their median IQ stood at 95,
and fully 25 percent measured above 104, thus winning a place
among the ranks of the intelligent. Terman was puzzled, but attrib-
uted such low achievement primarily to a lack of "certain emo-
tional, moral, or other desirable qualities," though he admitted that
"economic pressures" might have forced some "out of school
before they were able to prepare for more exacting service" (1919,
p. 275). In another study, Terman amassed a sample of 256
"hoboes and unemployed," largely from a "hobo hotel" in Palo
Alto. He expected to find their average IQ at the bottom of his list;
yet, while the hobo mean of 89 did not suggest enormous endow-
ment, they still ranked above motormen, salesgirls, firemen, and