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The Physically Handicapped On The Industrial Home Front

Creator: William B. Townsend (authors)
Date: June 1942
Publication: Crippled Child Magazine
Publisher: National Society for Crippled Children of the United States of America
Source: National Library of Medicine, General Collection

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Recently we were given the opportunity to use the Wage Earner Tests, developed by Professor Joseph Kopas, of Fenn College. These tests validated by a three-year experimental period are routinely given to all persons seeking work at fifteen large concerns in Greater Cleveland with a total personnel of more than 60,000 employees. These concerns are using these tests in a creative personnel program to analyze, develop and use human potentialities in an efficient manner. One of these tests is used to determine mental alertness, to find out if an individul is acquainted with mechanical terms and is capable of learning how to operate a machine easily aand quickly. A second test is a measure of the background of the job seeker in mathematics and science. This helps to determine his ability for reading routine tickets, setting instruments, and making simple arithmetic calculations. Other tests discover interest in routine work, emotional stability, ambition and drive, and the ability to get along with other workers. Personnel Test X of the Wage Earner series is in the form of an upright wooden stand which has three rows of different size nuts and bolts. The person being tested is given a pair of wrenches and a screw-driver and instructed bow to loosen the the nuts and to reverse the bolts on the stand. Persons completing this test in less than five minutes can be regarded as excellent prospects for some type of mechanical work. The adoption of the WageEarner Tests by the Society for Crippled Children is another step in developing our services in line with recognized employment department practices. These yardstick tests provide an unusual opportunity of matching the abilities of handicapped registrants against the norms set up by the hiring concerns, permit the quick screening of our registrants, and the immediate forwarding of favorable test results to interested employers.

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The Future program of the Society for Crippled Children will be based on the continuance of this working relationship with industry in developing job opportunities for the handicapped. The Society has completed plans for sponsoring a series of employer conferences to which representatives of all services for the handicapped will participate. These will be patterned in part after the Man Salvage Clinics which have been conducted in Connecticut. The work testing program is now being extended to the school systems of the country, together with current job information for all types of disabled youth. Educators will be aided in working with young people through individual counselling and work testing as well as by career conferences sponsored by a group of successful industrial leaders.

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Those of us interested in work with the physically handicapped youth and adult realize the responsibilities created by this War. With employment opportunities becoming more numerous we have still greater challenge to afford effective guidance to the disabled, to carefully study their potentialities, and to fit their energies into such work as may contribute most to the War Effort.

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