The Making of a Moron

There was a wartime experiment in which a number of mentally defective people were drafted into industry, and proved themselves not only more easily disciplined, and more content with their mechanized tasks, but on the whole more efficient than the normal men and women they had replaced. The author decided to run his own experiment to find out what the effect must be on normal people of doing the same work that had been done so well by the mentally challenged. From 1946 to 1951 he took a succession of jobs in factories and mills and two large stores. His findings seemed to lead to the conclusion that work which makes sub-human demands results cumulatively in the narrowing, and finally the mutilation, of the human personality, and that the continuous sense of frustration avenges itself by strange and disturbing means.