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A recent song on record and radio tells of the plight of a miner who owes his soul to the company store. The theme of man in bondage to his boss, machine, or company has always moved people to identify themselves with the employee or slave, whichever term is more appropriate personally.
Geraldine Pederson-Krag has successfully elaborated this theme into a stimulating and penetrating analysis of men and their jobs. The setting is a hypothetical industrial plant, and she examines the conscious attitudes and the unconscious motivations of typical employees, from plant guard to executive. The importance of unconscious determinants for choice of job, health of the worker, failing production, absenteeism, accidents, and strife between labor and management, is skilfully demonstrated. Technical terms and explanations are avoided since the book is written for the layman. Herein may lie the chief weakness of the book.
I tested the book on a neighbor, one who has been both employee and employer. He enjoyed it, but maintained an understandable scepticism of the author's interpretations of certain factors in the personality. Only in those instances where he could consciously identify