THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 Cilirarji of 
 Jaufcnn Ball
 
 The Personnel System of 
 the United States Army 
 
 Vol. I 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PERSONNEL 
 SYSTEM 
 
 developed by the 
 
 Committee on Classification of Personnel 
 in the Army 
 
 (subsequently The Classification Division, 
 Adjutant General's Department) 
 
 C. C. P. 399 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 1919
 
 lust 
 JUL 
 
 t/S'tfu, 
 
 v-l 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 T""*HE great world war differs from all other wars not 
 1 merely in the number of individuals involved but even 
 more in the number of technicians demanded. Because of 
 the haste in creating the Army it was impossible to develop 
 the experts and accordingly those already possessing such 
 technical skill were, when properly assigned, of the greatest 
 value to the new Army. 
 
 The importance of personnel work was early recognized 
 and the development of an adequate personnel system for 
 the United States Army entrusted to a group of specialists 
 who were called by the Secretary of War, "The Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel in the Army" but who worked 
 in the early days directly under my jurisdiction. The sys- 
 tem worked out by this group is probably the most effective 
 now in existence. Its purpose is (1) to secure a contented 
 and efficient army by placing each enlisted man where he has 
 the opportunity to make the most of his talent and skill; 
 
 (2) to commission, assign and promote officers on merit and 
 
 (3) to simplify the procedure of discovering talent and 
 assigning it where most needed. 
 
 In carrying out these purposes various tools were con- 
 structed. Among such the following are noteworthy: En- 
 listed Men's Qualification Card; Commissioned Officers' Quali- 
 fication Card ; Trade Specifications ; Oral Trade Tests ; Pic- 
 ture Trade Tests : Performance Trade Tests ; Personnel Speci- 
 fications (Enlisted Personnel); and Personnel Specifications 
 (Commissioned Personnel). 
 
 The army is appreciative of this service and is pleased to 
 record in the following chapters a history of the introduction 
 of personnel work in the United States Army. 
 
 H. P. MCCAIN, 
 Major General, U. S. A., 
 Formerly, The Adjutant General. 
 
 840750
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SECTION I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Chapter 1. Some Principles of Personnel Adminis- 
 tration 3 
 
 Chapter 2. The Army Personnel Task in 1917 27 
 
 SECTION II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 Chapter 3. Forerunners of the Army Personnel 
 
 System 39 
 
 Chapter 4. Early Efforts to Introduce Scientific 
 
 Methods of Rating Officers 44 
 
 Chapter 5. The Establishmment of the Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel in the 
 Army 53 
 
 Chapter 6. Introduction of Personnel Work Into 
 
 the Camps 63 
 
 Chapter 7. The Period of Development 78 
 
 Chapter 8. Committee on Classification of Personnel 
 Transferred to Jurisdiction of the 
 General Staff 95 
 
 Chapter 9. Status of Personnel Organization at Con- 
 clusion of Armistice 104 
 
 SECTION III. MAN ANALYSIS. 
 
 Chapter 10. Sources of Information as to a Man's 
 
 Qualifications 115 
 
 Chapter 11. The Soldiers' Qualification Card 148 
 
 Chapter 12. The Actual Operation of the Classifi- 
 cation System 153 
 
 v
 
 vi HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SECTION IV. JOB ANALYSIS. 
 
 Chapter 13. Classification of Occupations and 
 
 Standard Terminology 165 
 
 Chapter 14. Personnel Specifications 178 
 
 Chapter 15. Determination of Army's Needs for 
 
 Occupational Specialists 202 
 
 Chapter 16. Job Analysis Applied to Duties of 
 
 Officers 217 
 
 Chapter 17. Commissioned Personnel Specifications 223 
 
 SECTION V. THE PERSONNEL OFFICE. 
 
 Chapter 18. Early Beginnings of Personnel Work 
 
 in the Camps 235 
 
 Chapter 19. Rise of Paper Work in the Personnel 
 
 Office 244 
 
 Chapter 20. Receiving the Draft 253 
 
 Chapter 21. Personnel Work in the Staff Corps 
 
 Camps 268 
 
 Chapter 22. Plans for Separation of Personnel 
 
 Work and Adjutant's Work 274 
 
 SECTION VI. PLACEMENT. 
 
 Chapter 23. Filling Requisitions 283 
 
 Chapter 24. Balancing a Unit 292 
 
 Chapter 25. Methods Employed to Interest Officers 
 
 in the Proper Placement of Men. . 308 
 Chapter 26. Selection of Men for Officers' Training 
 
 Schools 318 
 
 Chapter 27. Use of Limited Service Men 330 
 
 SECTION VII. TRADE TESTS. 
 
 Chapter 28. Forerunners of Trade Tests 347 
 
 Chapter 29. Standardized Trade Tests 357 
 
 Chapter 30. Trade Tests in Operation 371
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SECTION VIII. THE CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE. 
 
 Chapter 31. The. Development of the Central Dis- 
 tributing Office 389 
 
 Chapter 32. The Distribution of Occupational 
 
 Specialists 398 
 
 Chapter 33. Draft Statistics and Their Relation to 
 
 the Army Program 409 
 
 Chapter 34. Special Tasks of the Central Dis- 
 tributing Office 420 
 
 SECTION IX. SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL WORK. 
 
 Chapter 35. Supervision of Personnel Work in the 
 
 Camps 433 
 
 Chapter 36. "Personnel" 444 
 
 Chapter 37. Work at the Ports 454 
 
 SECTION X. SPECIAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 Chapter 38. Training Schools for Personnel Officers 469 
 Chapter 39. History of the War Service Exchange 491 
 
 Chapter 40. Development Battalions 512 
 
 Chapter 41. The Committee on Education and 
 Special Training and the Students' 
 Army Training Corps 528 
 
 SECTION XI. PERSONNEL WORK WITH COMMISSIONED 
 OFFICERS. 
 
 Chapter 42. The Officers' Qualification Card 543 
 
 Chapter 43. The Development and Use of the 
 
 Rating Scale 559 
 
 SECTION XII. COOPERATION WITH OTHER DEPART- 
 MENTS. 
 
 Chapter 44. The Adjutant General's Office 583
 
 viii HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter 45. Cooperation With the Provost Marshal 
 
 General's Office 594 
 
 Chapter 46. Cooperation With the Medical Depart- 
 ment 599 
 
 Chapter 47. Cooperation With the Aviation Sec- 
 tion, Signal Corps and Department 
 of Military Aeronautics 604 
 
 Chapter 48. Cooperation With the Quartermaster 
 
 Corps 634 
 
 Chapter 49. Personnel Work in the Navy and 
 
 Marine Corps 650 
 
 SECTION XIII. DEMOBILIZATION. 
 
 Chapter 50. Demobilization 665 
 
 APPENDIX I. PERSONNEL OF THE COMMITTEE ON 
 CLASSIFICATION OF PERSONNEL IN 
 THE ARMY AND ASSOCIATES 671 
 
 APPENDIX II. ADDRESS BY NEWTON D. BAKER, SECRE- 
 TARY OF WAR, AT EIGHTH SCHOOL 
 FOR PERSONNEL ADJUTANTS, AUGUST, 
 1918 678 
 
 APPENDIX III. ADDRESS BY MAJOR-GENERAL R. 
 HUTCHISON, C.B., D.S.O., DIRECTOR 
 OF ORGANIZATION, BRITISH ARMY. . 684
 
 SECTION I. 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 This introductory section sets forth in Chapter 1 
 a general statement of what constitutes personnel 
 work as the originators of this work in the Army 
 finally came to see it. In Chapter 2 is set forth in 
 contrast the actual situation that confronted the 
 Army as regards personnel. The chapters that fol- 
 low trace the development of the work as it steadily 
 solved the problems confronting the Army and fin- 
 ally ripened into an organized system.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES OF PERSONNEL 
 ADMINISTRATION 
 
 It is not the purpose of this chapter to summarize the rules 
 of personnel procedure or to describe the practices which were 
 evolved to meet the emergencies of speedy mobilization and 
 effective organization. This is done in detail in later chapters 
 and in the Personnel Manual (Volume II of the Personnel 
 System of the U. S. Army). Instead it is the present intention 
 to dwell on certain general principles of personnel adminstra- 
 tion, principles which find broad application in industry and 
 commerce no less than in the Army. 
 
 The rules and practices of personnel work are numerous, 
 complex, and varied as the conditions under which the work 
 must be accomplished. They are not to be mastered in a day. 
 Yet the general principles which underlie them and which 
 guide in the successful development and utilization of these 
 more complicated procedures are relatively simple and few in 
 number. We shall see that six of these "laws" or cardinal prin- 
 ciples, together with a few corollaries or minor principles 
 which they imply, are adequate to guide our thought and 
 practice amidst a wide diversity of practical problems that 
 emerge within the range of personnel administration. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF FUNCTIONALIZATION 
 
 The control and administration of personnel must be made 
 the first duty of an official who gives it his undivided thought 
 and his best energies. In the phraseology of industrial orga- 
 nization, it must be functionalized. Responsibility in the 
 sr*rch for talent, in personnel classification, in assigning men 
 to the duties where their special abilities will count for most, 
 
 3
 
 cannot safely be left as an incidental task to officers who are 
 also charged with a multitude of other pressing duties. 
 
 In small organizations where changes in personnel are 
 infrequent or unimportant, functionalization is not necessary. 
 The same man who looks after the records, the purchases, 
 the arrangements for training and for operations, may also be 
 able to select, assign and promote his personnel. But expan- 
 sion in size of the organization soon brings the necessity for 
 specialization in responsibility. The head of the business or 
 the officer in command of troops delegates the function of keep- 
 ing records to some one else. In the military machine this 
 function rests with the Adjutant. The function of supply, 
 of the supervision of purchase, storage and transportation, is 
 delegated to the Quartermaster. The Medical Officer looks 
 after health and sanitation. The Intelligence Officer is charged 
 with the accumulation and systematization of knowledge about 
 the enemy's forces and movements, and about the enemy at 
 home. The Chief of Staff oversees the training and discipline 
 of the men and makes plans for military operations. Legal 
 functions connected with courts martial and the like are 
 assigned to the Judge Advocate. Ultimate responsibility in 
 all these varied branches of organization reposes with the 
 commanding officer; but he secures the best results by dividing 
 up the duties among his subordinates, and placing on each one 
 a definite responsibility for his particular phase of the complex 
 task. 
 
 It has not always been recognzed in the Army or in busi- 
 ness, that this principle of functionalization should be extended 
 to cover also the control of personnel. In the early summer 
 of 1917, when the preparations for mobilization of the Na- 
 tional Army were being crystallized in the War Department, 
 no provision had been made for any such specialized responsi- 
 bility for the wise assignment of the recruits according to 
 their value to the different branches of the service. To be 
 sure, the Quartermaster Corps, the Signal Corps, the Ord- 
 nance, and several other staff departments had their Enlisted
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 5 
 
 Personnel Officers and their Commissioned Personnel Officers, 
 with rapidly expanding organizations to oversee the strenuous 
 activities of personnel procurement, recruiting campaigns, 
 classification and assignment. Some of these corps were bet- 
 ter prepared than others to face the personnel problem. The 
 competition which inevitably arose between them at this time, 
 in the absence of a completely centralized Army personnel 
 administration with ample authority, continued almost until 
 the time of the armistice. 
 
 The new "Staff Manual" which appeared in 1917, described 
 with a good deal of explicitness the functions of all the staff 
 officers of a division, but said not one word about classification 
 and assignment of personnel. A Plattsburg graduate, poring 
 religiously over these pages, was left quite at sea as to whether 
 this function was everybody's business or nobody's business. 
 As a matter of fact it was both, until the order was issued early 
 in September just before the first draft call, creating in each 
 cantonment a Division Personnel Officer, and placing on him 
 and his assistants the responsibility for classifying the recruits 
 and seeing that each of them found his niche of greatest use- 
 fulness. 
 
 Before the National Army was many weeks old it was found 
 necessary to carry this principle of functionalization much 
 farther than had at first been attempted. For instance, the 
 Division Personnel Officers were originally instructed to have 
 the soldiers' qualification cards prepared by the company com- 
 manders. The results were sometimes disconcerting. The 
 information on the cards was occasionally inadequate or mis- 
 leading, due to lack of skill in eliciting full and exact informa- 
 tion from the soldier and all too frequent instances came to 
 light where the company commander had deliberately hidden 
 the good men by reporting them as laborers or farm hands 
 instead of as the engineers, accountants and telegraphers 
 which they were, thus reducing the likelihood of losing them 
 by transfer to other companies. However strong the plea 
 for justification of such camouflage might have been in a well
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 organized unit about to move toward the zone of combat, little 
 extenuation for this blindness to the paramount needs of the 
 Army as a whole could be advanced during those early weeks 
 of preliminary training. For these reasons and also for rea- 
 sons of economy in administration, the procedure of classifica- 
 tion was soon modified. The plan of entrusting the prepara- 
 tion of the qualification records to- a board of specially trained 
 interviewers, first tried when the National Guard Divisions 
 were classified in November, soon became universal. The over- 
 burdened company commanders were relieved of an irksome 
 duty, and the interviewing was done on the whole much more 
 thoroughly and reliably. 
 
 Within the personnel office functionalization spread also. 
 Some of the men became skilled interviewers ; others special- 
 ized on classification and became expert in determining and 
 designating the recruit's best army usefulness. Still others 
 had the more mechanical work of affixing tabs or maintaining 
 the files, or typing duplicates of the requisitions and orders. 
 Officers of the soundest judgment were trained in selecting 
 the recruits to fill requisitions for men of special ability. 
 Specialization of duties to correspond with the different func- 
 tions within the Personnel Office became the rule. 
 
 Not only in the busy cantonments where recruits were pour- 
 ing in by the thousands, but in the central office in Washington 
 also, the principle of functionalization spread. Most impor- 
 tant was the differentiation within the Personnel Committee 
 between the planning group and the operating group. While 
 one section was working days, nights, and Sundays perfecting 
 the hst of army occupations, tabulating the anticipated needs 
 for men of special skill, or devising improved forms of record 
 and report, another portion of the force was equally engrossed 
 in the immediate direction and operation of the personnel 
 system. One member was charged with the responsibility of 
 directing the field supervisors. Another handled the requisi- 
 tions for specialists as they came from the staff corps, and 
 determined their priority. A third prepared a table of allot-
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 7 
 
 ments of men from the current draft, matching demand and 
 supply. A fourth supervised the periodic rating of officers, 
 etc. The vitally important subdivision of functions, however, 
 was the one first mentioned, which set aside, distinct from the 
 administrative or operating group, a planning group whose 
 duty it was to anticipate the future, to study conditions, to 
 initiate changes and improvements of method, and to develop 
 the best possible procedures for the use of the operating 
 group and of the personnel forces in the camps. Here was 
 personnel research in the immediate service of personnel 
 administration. Each was more effective through being dis- 
 tinct and separate from the other, while maintaining the closest 
 proximity and interrelationship. 
 
 Large commercial and industrial organizations have quite 
 generally recognized the principle of functionalization of per- 
 sonnel administration by establishing departments of employ- 
 ment management. But not many have as yet carried this 
 principle to its logical conclusion by making these departments 
 fully responsible, not only for the initial hiring and assigning 
 of employees, but also for the supervision of their transfers 
 and promotions, for the selection of employees to be trained 
 for posts of responsibility, and for policies affecting all the 
 personnel from the scrub women and errand boys up to the 
 executives. Yet the success of these great enterprises is 
 bound up in their personnel. Concerns which are fully alive 
 to this fact have recognized it by creating a division of person- 
 nel co-ordinate with the divisions of finance, production, engi- 
 neering, or sales, and by placing in charge of personnel a 
 vice-president or an assistant to the president, equal in calibre 
 and in authority to the sales manager or the vice-president 
 in charge of finance. 
 
 The main functional divisions in army administration are 
 clearly seen in the form of organization that was finally 
 assumed in 1918 by the General Staff, with its Executive 
 Division, including the sections of Intelligence, Statistics and 
 Morale, its Purchase and Supply Division, its Storage and
 
 8 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Traffic Division, its War Plans Division and its Army Opera- 
 tions Division. Within the Operations Division there was 
 finally created a Personnel Branch, with Brigadier General 
 P. P. Bishop in charge, and this Personnel Branch was given 
 authority to control the procurement, appointment, assign- 
 ment, promotion, demotion and discharge of officers for the en- 
 tire Army. Thus functions which had been scattered among 
 the staff corps, well administered in some and neglected in 
 others, were gathered together and the responsibility for their 
 administration placed in the hands of specialists whose sole 
 duty it was to utilize all the available officer personnel to the 
 greatest advantage of the Army as a whole, and not of any one 
 corps or arm of the service. Thus was effected for the commis- 
 sioned personnel of the Army, a centralized control and a 
 functionalized administration comparable with that which had 
 already proved its worth in the classification and placement of 
 the soldiers. No better illustration is needed of the application 
 of the principle of functionalization, the principle that person- 
 nel control is best administered when it is made the sole busi- 
 ness of specialists instead of being left to chance or to the in- 
 cidental attention of officials whose primary interest is focussed 
 on other responsibilities. . 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN DIFFERENCES 
 
 The personnel executive needs full, explicit and accurate 
 information as to the men's qualifications. It is important 
 to recognize the great variety of human traits that go to make 
 up these qualifications, and to know how wide is the range of 
 excellence in each trait in any considerable aggregate cf 
 human beings. 
 
 However profoundly one may be committed to the social 
 theory of Rousseau and Jefferson that all men are created 
 equal, every employer and every officer in command of troops 
 knows that there are enormous inequalities of skill and talent. 
 
 The personnel officer knows that his office exists precisely 
 because these inequalities are extremely important to the
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION . 9 
 
 Army. It matters not to him whether the differences between 
 people are chargeable to differences in their native inheritance, 
 which might account for certain variations in physical endur- 
 ance or brain power or leadership; or to differences in oppor- 
 tunity, which might explain superiorities in speaking French 
 or in driving a six-mule team. The practical consideration is 
 that these varieties of ability do exist and must be reckoned 
 with. 
 
 Ninety-eight per cent of the recruits sent to Camp Taylor 
 from a certain district in Gary, Indiana, could not understand 
 the English language. Six per cent of all recruits claiming 
 trade skill actually have the proficiency of experts in their 
 trade. Among three and a half million American soldiers 
 there are plenty of barbers, tailors, and lawyers for all mili- 
 tary needs, but there are not anywhere near enough experi- 
 enced men to meet the demands of the Army for soldiers who 
 can drive a truck, send a wireless message, or supervise the 
 training of a dispatch dog. About half of one per cent of all 
 the recruits are so stupid, so near the lower borderline of 
 intelligence, that they cannot learn soldiering at all and have 
 to be returned to their homes. Fifty-five different kinds of 
 chemists and chemical workers, and forty-two distinct kinds of 
 machinists required by the Army were found among the men 
 in the receiving camps. Some recruits were cowardly shirkers, 
 posing as conscientious objectors; others really were conscien- 
 tious objectors, sane and sincere but determined; still others 
 were equally sincere perhaps, but so cranky and ego-centric 
 and unstable that they needed to be treated like borderline 
 cases of insanity. At Camp Devens, Massachusetts, and 
 Camp Lewis, Washington, more than twenty per cent -of the 
 soldiers, a surprisingly high fraction of the total, hnd the 
 native ability and high intelligence required in army officers. 
 Thousands of the new soldiers were physically unfit to take 
 the training in combat units until they had first spent some 
 weeks in the Development Battalions. It is unnecessary to 
 continue further with illustrations of individual differences
 
 10 HISTORY OF PERSOXXEL 
 
 or variations of physique, temperament, mental alertness, 
 knowledge, previous training, integrity, interest, skill, stamina 
 and similar traits, every one of which contributes toward the 
 determination of a soldier's place of greatest usefulness. The 
 conclusion follows inevitably that the personnel officer must 
 have adequate, dependable information of the qualifications 
 of the men. 
 
 Perhaps this accounts in part for the otherwise surprising 
 fact that the army personnel organization, the Committee on 
 Classification of Personnel, was headed by a psychologist. 
 Colonel Walter Dill Scott, and that three-fourths of the origi- 
 nal members of that Committee were university psychologists, 
 men trained for years in the observation and scientific study 
 of human nature in its varied aspects. These scientists, like 
 most Americans, knew next to nothing about war. But they 
 did know men. They had concentrated their attention for 
 years on the measurement of human traits and the determina- 
 tion of capacities. They realized more acutely than others, 
 the magnitude and range of the differences between people; 
 and they had certain elements of technique in the determina- 
 tion of abilities which they knew could be adapted to military 
 requirements. Eager to do whatever they could do best toward 
 helping in the prosecution of the war, it is natural that they 
 found their own places of usefulness on the research and plan- 
 ning staff of the functionalized personnel Organization. Here 
 they initiated many undertakings directed toward an improve- 
 ment in the accuracy and value of the available information 
 regarding the qualifications of both officers and men. In co- 
 operation with experienced army officers and leading employ- 
 ment executives, they prepared the first qualification card and 
 continued to revise and improve it as the results of its use 
 showed how it could be made a better means of recording 
 significant facts. They adapted the rating scale to military 
 requirements, as an instrument for focussing attention on the 
 really essential traits in an officer and for enabling these 
 traits to be judged and recorded with greater accuracy through
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 11 
 
 systematic comparison between the officer being rated and 
 other officers who served as concrete standards of measure- 
 ment. They cooperated with the Surgeon General's Office in 
 its highly important enterprise of developing workable 
 methods of measuring a soldier's general intelligence ; and 
 with the psychologists of the Aviation Service in finding the 
 best tests of a man's capacity to become a flier. They inau- 
 gurated brief personnel schools in the course of which officers 
 received training in the technique of interviewing, for it is 
 no easy matter to get the full truth about a recruit's experi- 
 ence, schooling, facility in French, or demonstrated leader- 
 ship ability. They prepared a procedure for getting explicit 
 reports from the former employers of tool-makers, ship-fitters, 
 and other relatively rare specialists, regarding whose profi- 
 ciency it was peculiarly important to have dependable informa- 
 tion. And they initiated the preparation and standardization 
 of the army trade tests, which came to be a most useful aid 
 to the personnel office in ascertaining what degree of skill and 
 technical knowledge was actually possessed by a recruit claim- 
 ing trade ability. In all these directions it was the constant 
 endeavor to refine the available information about officers and 
 men, to make it a more reliable statement of qualifications, and 
 so to diminish in a measure the tremendous waste of precious 
 human material through misplacement. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF DEFINITE PERSONNEL 
 REQUIREMENTS 
 
 No degree of excellence and completeness in the inventory 
 of a man's qualifications will lead to his placement in the right 
 job unless the requirements of the job are known. Conse- 
 quently a third principle underlying successful personnel 
 administration calls for definiteness in the description* of 
 duties and in the statements of the qualifications sought in the 
 men who are to discharge those duties. 
 
 This principle of definite requirements was frequently vio- 
 lated, at heavy cost, particularly during the confusion of the
 
 12 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 earlier months. Sometimes ambiguities of terminology led 
 new civilian officers astray, as when they assumed that the 
 army term "Wagoner," which appeared frequently in the 
 Tables of Organization, always meant a man capable of mak- 
 ing wagon repairs. In some units those were the requirements, 
 while elsewhere the term was used to mean merely "wagon 
 driver," and even "truck driver." Similarly a "Horseshoer" 
 is a man who shoes horses, except in motorized regiments. In 
 some outfits the duties of the "Master Signal Electrician" re- 
 quire him to be an experienced telephone lineman, while in 
 others he need know no electricity but must be a tailor or an 
 experienced pigeoneer. The personnel officers soon discovered 
 that while these army names sometimes have a clear-cut occu- 
 pational significance, more frequently they mean merely a 
 certain grade and rate of pay, so that an explicit statement 
 of duties was indispensable before a wise selection could be 
 made of the men to be trained for those posts. 
 
 Another frequent source of uncertainty was the ignorance 
 in which some commanding officers found themselves as to the 
 precise equipment their outfits were to have when they reached 
 France. A certain colonel of artillery knew, for instance, that 
 he was to organize and train a regiment of "light artillery, 
 motor transported." He knew that when he got his guns 
 they would be of a new type, to be moved rapidly where 
 emergency demanded by running them up on light speedy 
 motor trucks. But he found it difficult to estimate just how 
 many men qualified to drive and repair those trucks he was 
 going to require in addition to his gunners. Infantry cap- 
 tains of rifle companies were in doubt as to just how much of 
 the minor repairs on rifles, clothing and shoes would be 
 handled for them by the supply company. The question 
 whether a rare acetylene welder was wasted when assigned 
 to a six-inch howitzer battery could not be answered until it 
 was known whether the battery equipment was to include an 
 acetylene torch. Similarly the question was raised whether 
 the lithographic equipment for reproducing the maps pre-
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 13 
 
 pared daily by the Intelligence Service was to be operated 
 by that service at division headquarters or by the engineer 
 regiment. Not until the answer to these and a thousand simi- 
 lar questions of equipment and organization had been found, 
 could the assignment of skilled personnel proceed without 
 grave danger of error and waste. 
 
 It was not sufficient to know merely the civilian occupa- 
 tion which would nearest approximate the requirements of 
 the army job and so shorten the time required to make the 
 recruit competent in his special army duties. The first require- 
 ments for a good machine-gunner, for example, are not occu- 
 pational but physical. He has a much heavier load to carry 
 than the infantryman, which is heavy enough ; hence the re- 
 quest of the commanders of the machine-gun battalions for 
 short, stocky, strong-backed soldiers. They had no need for 
 skilled machinists, turret-lathe operators, tool makers and 
 similar masters of the machine trades. Every expert of that 
 sort was more needed in the Ordnance, the Motor Transport 
 or the Air Service. But they did want a suitable pro- 
 portion of men who had some native mechanical aptitude, and 
 they did insist upon the importance of securing substantial, 
 able-bodied, husky specimens. Imagine the despair of the 
 commander of the Machine Gun Replacement Center at 
 Camp Hancock, when in the haste of the over-crowded spring 
 mobilization, the War Department sent him a few thousand 
 raw recruits who on arrival were found to be for the most part, 
 small, frail garment-makers just drafted from the lower East 
 Side of New York City. 
 
 It was the need for definiteness in personnel specifications 
 that led first to the preparation and refinement of the Index 
 of Occupations, and the distribution of this Index not alone 
 among the personnel offices, but wherever officers were prepar- 
 ing lists of needed personnel. It gave them a common lan- 
 guage, a working basis of standard terminology. 
 
 A much more vital step toward precision in the specification 
 of personnel requirements was taken when the volume of
 
 14 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Trade Specifications was published, containing statements of 
 duties and qualifications in each of the 714 civilian trades and 
 occupations which the Army utilized. 
 
 Improved requisition forms, supplied especially to the Staff 
 Corps officers, helped to make the statements of their require- 
 ments more precise. These blanks called for a listing of 
 the number of soldiers of each occupational designation 
 needed, and provided space for giving the occupational sym- 
 bol, or key number to correspond with the corresponding defi- 
 nition in the Trade Specifications, and for indicating whether 
 skilled "journeymen" or partly skilled "apprentices" and 
 helpers were required. Space was also set aside for use in 
 making supplementary stipulations as to intellectual, educa- 
 tional or personal qualifications. The blank proved to be a 
 help to both the makers of the requisitions and the officers 
 who were called upon to fill them. 
 
 Tables of Occupational Needs were also prepared, showing 
 how many men of a particular occupational designation are 
 required for each of the many sorts of platoons, companies, 
 batteries, squadrons, trains, battalions, regiments and brigades, 
 and these tables greatly facilitated both the original assign- 
 ment of troops and the final "balancing" or readjustment of 
 personnel to insure that every outfit had its proper quota 
 of the available skill and talent. 
 
 Many experienced officers cooperated in compiling these 
 Tables of Occupational Needs. They were officers who had 
 commanded troops on the Border or who had had the chance 
 to observe British and French troops in action, and who could 
 answer the question, "Just what does he have to do" ? when 
 interrogated regarding each Serjeant Major or Corporal or 
 Mechanic or Instrument Man in their commands. It is gratify- 
 ing to know that when the first tentative mimeographed edition 
 of the Tables of Occupational Needs of an Infantry Division 
 was submitted for examination and criticism to the officers 
 commanding two American divisions then on the firing line 
 in France, it stood the test unexpectedly well.
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 15 
 
 These tables were, however, only a step toward a more ade- 
 quate instrument for accurate placement, the volumes of "Per- 
 sonnel Specifications." The preparation of these brief state- 
 ments of duties and qualifications for all of the many thous- 
 ands of posts to which soldiers and officers are assigned in our 
 Army, was a monumental undertaking which was only par- 
 tially completed when on the memorable day of the armistice 
 mobilization abruptly ceased. But the permanent value of 
 these volumes was so apparent that their printing was con- 
 tinued. A portion of the Officers' Personnel Specifications 
 have been issued; and for the enlisted personnel the specifica- 
 tions are available for practically all units of all branches of 
 the military organization. 
 
 If by some miracle these descriptions of duties and qualifi- 
 cations could have been placed in the hands of assignment 
 officers at the beginning of mobilization, they would have 
 saved much time and forestalled many mistakes. Lacking 
 them, it devolved upon the personnel officers to insist as far as 
 practicable that each requisition for men should be explicit in 
 its statement of requirements ; that precious "stenographers" 
 were not specified when mere "typists" would do; that appren- 
 tices and helpers were sprinkled through the list in suitable 
 proportion, along with the rarer journeymen, experts, and 
 foremen ; that coppersmiths were not requisitioned to do a 
 tinsmith's work, and that when the General wanted a secretary 
 who could meet strangers, handle personal accounts, work 
 fourteen hours at a stretch, and manage a skittish horse, he 
 should say so in the first instance instead of merely asking for 
 a good stenographer and then placing the blame on the person- 
 nel office when the recruit sent him failed to qualify. All too 
 frequently the investigation of instances of dissatisfaction 
 with drafted men supplied from the Depot Brigades disclosed 
 that the officers had gotten just what they had requistioned, 
 but they had not asked for what they really required. In the 
 Army, as in business and industry, the first move toward 
 securing the right personnel is to determine precisely what
 
 16 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the duties are to be, and to state explicitly, in writing, just 
 what are the minimum qualifications which the adequate per- 
 formance of those duties demands. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF ORGANIZATION 
 
 To effect a speedy adjustment between the personnel 
 requirements and the available supply, a suitable organization 
 is essential. Usually when men are wanted they are wanted 
 at once. The camp Quartermaster Supply Department finds 
 itself behind the game in issuing shoes to new recruits, and 
 appeals to the Personnel Office for an additional stockkeeper 
 and six experienced shoe salesmen. A cable signed "Persh- 
 ing" requests the early shipment of an additional hundred 
 railway car erectors, or electric crane operators, or refrigera- 
 tion experts, or troops for the mobile ordnance repair shops. 
 The commander of a division which is suffering serious cas- 
 ualties in the Argonne Forest calls on the great Replacement 
 Depot at St. Aignon to forward a thousand infantrymen 
 and specifies the proportions that should be qualified signal- 
 men, truck-drivers, photographers, cooks, scissors-instrument 
 operators, bridge carpenters and telegraphers. No matter how 
 clearly these requirements are formulated, and no matter how 
 adequately the men in the depots have been examined and 
 classified, the results are disappointing unless there is a 
 smooth-running personnel machine to match up promptly the 
 supply with the demand. 
 
 It is the pride of many an officer that his personnel organi- 
 zation was able to meet just such emergencies as these. His 
 qualification cards were well classified, tabbed, and filed so 
 that they could be consulted readily. His assistants were 
 thoroughly familiar with his system and knew each what was 
 expected of him. He had instant telephonic connection with 
 the various company headquarters, with the headquarters of 
 the depot brigade, with the division adjutant, with the camp 
 surgeon and with the transportation officer. Someone was on 
 duty nights and Sundays. Everyone in the organization knew
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 17 
 
 that whatever he had to do in interviewing, trade-testing, 
 transcribing intelligence scores, or preparing tedious tabula- 
 tions for Washington, it was all merely preliminary to the 
 real test of whether the organization could, on demand, deliver 
 the goods as wanted. 
 
 This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the varied 
 aspects of the personnel machinery which experience proved 
 to be best suited to the military exigencies. Its broader out- 
 lines called for an adequate staff, including at least a stable 
 nucleus of thoroughly trained assistants, and for attention to 
 the elementary principles of effective office organization, such 
 as clear-cut assignment of responsibilities, provision for the 
 simplest workable system of adequate records, economical 
 routing of work, careful planning ahead to reduce the strain 
 at the time of the peak load, etc. 
 
 Such a machine accomplished its purpose partly because it 
 was rightly set up, and partly because the intelligent human 
 gears and levers in it realized that they were part of a system 
 that had a direct and vital though unspectacular share in the 
 prosecution of the war. Sergeants, typists, interviewers and 
 orderlies knew that the better their work was done, the more 
 rapidly would proceed the training of our forces, and the 
 sooner would they be ready to meet the approaching crisis on 
 the Western Front. 
 
 Thus application of the principles of organization in per- 
 sonnel administration, introduced in large part by officers and 
 civilian experts who in the days before the war had been 
 executives in large business or manufacturing concerns, contri- 
 buted toward the realization of the army personnel idea, 
 namely, the speedy placement of the varied elements of 
 America's man-power each in his place of greatest military 
 usefulness. 
 
 Records of Performance. One essential feature of any ideal 
 personnel system is a provision for adequate records. Periodic 
 reports must be secured on the actual performance of the men 
 who have been placed, so that the information on the qualifi-
 
 18 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 cation records will be constantly brought up to date. When a 
 man is exhibiting unusual ability in his work, that fact should 
 be known, and when he is not making good, that fact too 
 should be recorded, so that plans can be made for shifting 
 him to an assignment better suited to his capacities. 
 
 Little was done by the personnel office to secure such sys- 
 tematic information regarding the soldiers, other than to keep 
 the records of their changes of status and successive assign- 
 ment posted. But each officer's card had also the record of 
 his rating made quarterly by two of his superior officers; so 
 that the foundations were laid for a sound system of promo- 
 tion by merit as contrasted with promotion by seniority or 
 acquaintance or favoritism or alphabetical order. In an 
 effective personnel organization, such systematized judgments 
 on the man's proven qualifications for their posts are not 
 merely secured and recorded, but used, in a constant endeavor 
 the better to adjust the supply of available talent to the 
 ever-changing needs. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF ECONOMY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Any decision regarding the most judicious disposition to be 
 made of available personnel involves a multitude of consider- 
 ations. It is not sufficient to ask, "What are the duties of 
 this position?" and "Can this applicant or this officer or this 
 recruit meet its requirements ?" After the personnel executive 
 has assured himself that he has a man who can fully qualify 
 for the post the question arises, "Would this man be still 
 more useful somewhere else?" An officer who has spent 
 several years in stock breeding and marketing in the West 
 may be thoroughly competent for an assignment in the Quar- 
 termaster's Department as a purchaser of artillery draft 
 horses. His expert knowledge there might save the Govern- 
 ment thousands of dollars; yet if this officer has already 
 demonstrated his ability as a commander of a company of 
 infantry, and if infantry officers who can be absolutely 
 depended upon are pressingly needed in the combat zone, there
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 19 
 
 is little doubt but that his place is in the line instead of the 
 service of supply. One recalls the old pleasantry about the 
 perfectly good chef assigned as a railway worker, and a gradu- 
 ate in transportation engineering doing the cooking. Clearly 
 the principles of good personnel administration were over- 
 looked even though each soldier was performing his tasks 
 satisfactorily. 
 
 Determining the Man's Best Usefulness. The first step 
 toward economy of personnel involves a decision as to the 
 man's greatest value to the service. To this end, it was 
 early recognized that the qualification record must provide 
 information, not only regarding a recruit's main vocation, 
 but also as to other occupations he has followed and 
 as to his avocations and hobbies. One business man of twenty- 
 eight, experienced in accounting and office management, was 
 considered as an assistant to the Ordnance Officer until the 
 fact emerged that he had indulged in ballooning as a pastime. 
 Many of our regiments have been hard put to find com- 
 petent musicians, particularly bandmasters, and every general, 
 especially after he arrived on the other side and heard the 
 magnificent bands of our French comrades in arms, felt keenly 
 the military value of really inspiring band music. But of 
 course there were very few soldiers who had ever earned their 
 livelihood as professional band musicians, and so it was neces- 
 sary to seek out those who had become proficient on the tuba 
 or the clarinet "on the side." and set them 'to coaching their 
 less skilful mates. Yet it would never do to make even a 
 regimental band leader out of a draftee who was a capable 
 meteorologist, competent to serve the Artillery and the Air 
 Squadrons in their hourly weather predictions. As Emerson 
 wrote, "That man is idle who can do something better." 
 
 The personnel officer's assistant whose duty it was to study 
 the newly made qualification cards and indicate on each his 
 decision as to the soldier's main army classification, was often 
 confronted with a pu/zling problem. Should a foreman in a 
 knitting factory who had never finished high school but who
 
 20 PI I STORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 spoke English, French, Czech, and Norwegian, who under- 
 stood all about woolens, sox and sweaters, who drove and 
 repaired his own automobile, and who because of some youth- 
 ful experience in Bohemia was able to pass an examination 
 for optical glass makers with the rating of an apprentice, be 
 checked for army purposes as first of all an interpreter, a 
 chauffeur, a woolen expert, or a glass maker? Or should he 
 because of his fine physique, good intelligence and demon- 
 strated leadership ability be considered for assignment to an 
 infantry unit with the expectation that he might eventually 
 make good as a non-commissioned officer? Obviously an 
 answer is possible only in the light of the relative need at the 
 time for men of those different abilities. There were exigen- 
 cies during the winter of 1918 that might have warranted 
 evaluating even a partly skilled optical glass maker as worth 
 as much to the Army as three woolen experts or a dozen ama- 
 teur automobilists. And always the question was a pertinent 
 one whether trade skill of any sort outweighed real leader- 
 ship and fighting quality. It is clear that judicious classifi- 
 cation and placement could be made only by one who had 
 knowledge of the various army requirements and who appre- 
 ciated the relative ease or difficulty of satisfying those 
 different demands. 
 
 The Hierarchy of Requirements. What was needed in 
 the personnel office was a scale of military values, a priority 
 list, a pyramidal chart at the top of which would be listed 
 the optical instrument repairmen, chemists, lead burners, die 
 sinkers, topographical draftsmen and other "rare birds" 
 which, at least for the time being, were sorely needed and 
 extremely difficult to find. Below them would appear a larger 
 list of highly useful specialists such as surveyors, crane opera- 
 tors, ventilation experts, railway engineers, sailmakers and 
 farriers, men whose occupational skill placed them in a group 
 where the Army demand, while not so pressing, yet clearly 
 exceeded the supply. Next would be found the great bulk of 
 skilled occupations needed in the Army. Here would be those,
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 21 
 
 like truck-drivers, who were very essential, and numerically 
 in great demand, but who could be trained in a relatively brief 
 time. Here also would be certain of the more highly" skilled 
 trades and occupations such as engraving or accounting, 
 difficult to acquire but relatively less in demand. Another 
 stratum would include the barbers, carpenters, garment 
 workers and the like, some of whom are needed in every 
 regiment, but who are numerous enough and need only 
 to be properly distributed. Finally at the base of the 
 pyramid would come the unskilled workers and also the 
 teachers, lawyers and others whose vocational proficiency as 
 such is not much of a military asset and whose superior use- 
 fulness must emerge if at all from their superior general 
 ability and personal qualities. Such a schedule of priorities or 
 hierarchy of requirements, with the most rare and precious 
 names at the top, and the others grouped according to their 
 relative army value, would have proved a boon to classifiers 
 whose work was to designate each soldier's best army useful- 
 ness. In the absence of such a complete tabulation, they were 
 compelled to use their best judgment in each separate instance, 
 aiming to give due consideration to all the evidence, including 
 the facts about the man's schooling, his weekly earnings, his 
 age, his intelligence and his physique, as well as his vocational 
 experience, and the relative demand at the time for men in 
 the posts for which he seemed able to qualify. 
 
 Use As Assigned. This determination of a man's usefulness 
 fails of its purpose unless precautions are taken to insure that, 
 after placement, he is actually employed in the capacity for 
 which he has been selected. A statement must go with each 
 specialist when he is transferred to his new post, indicating 
 precisely whether he is sent in response to the request for a 
 leather worker or a veterinarian or a demolition man. Other- 
 wise the company commander in the course of his multifarious 
 responsibilities may mistake the new arrival for one of the 
 many non-specialists he is receiving, and may later duplicate 
 his original request. In the winter of 1917-18, literally hun-
 
 22 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 dreds of valuable technical troops, procured after the most 
 painstaking search in response to cabled requests of the Ex- 
 peditionary Forces for men of unusual qualifications, were lost, 
 wasted, simply because on their arrival at the Base Depot of 
 the Service of Supply at Blois, nothing on their papers showed 
 clearly just which special requisition they were intended to fill. 
 Consequently some of them were put to work as stevadores, 
 while the parts of the locomotives or the refrigeration plants 
 they had been sent over to assist in assembling continued to 
 congest the over-crowded wharves. Of course as soon as this 
 dangerous leak was brought to the attention of The Adjutant 
 General in Washington, the necessary steps were taken to 
 insure that a suitable "bill of lading" went with the men, to 
 identify them fully, and to insure their utilization in the posts 
 for which they had been specially chosen. 
 
 Dilution. Extravagance in personnel distribution no less 
 than in automobile driving is often traceable to the use of too 
 rich a mixture. The Sanitary Train of a certain Guard Division 
 had been recruited from a university and was made up almost 
 exclusively of college men. Here was an organization of nine 
 hundred soldiers with an inordinate proportion of excellent 
 leadership material, much needed elsewhere. And about half 
 of them were devoting their energies to the most menial of 
 routine duties which could have been done as well or better by 
 others. Some Engineer Regiments of sappers were made up 
 so largely of trade specialists and high grade men that they 
 were hard put to find enough strong-backed laborers to do 
 the vitally essential pick-and-shovel work. Such organiza- 
 tions needed to be diluted with non-specialists, if economy of 
 personnel was to be effected. 
 
 Avoid Unnecessary Transfer of Personnel. It is obvi- 
 ously good personnel economy when seeking for any needed 
 specialist to look first -within the ranks of the organiza- 
 tion which needs him. Like charity, the search for talent 
 should begin at home. Such a policy not only saves time, 
 trouble and the money post qf transportation in effecting a
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 23 
 
 transfer. It also encourages loyalty to the organization when 
 men see that superior ability is recognized with promotion. 
 
 When the question first arose in October, 1917, whether the 
 classification should be extended to the National Guard Divi- 
 sions also, the point was raised that the officers in the Guard 
 Divisions already knew their men so well that a systematic 
 inventory of their qualifications would be superfluous ; but 
 many rapid changes and consolidations were in progress, and 
 the decision was made to undertake the classification immedi- 
 ately. While this work was in progress at Camp Shelby, the 
 Colonel of Engineers came to the personnel office with a 
 request for help in finding a man whom he could make his 
 regimental serjeant major, the most responsible assignment 
 to which a non-commissioned officer can aspire. The person- 
 nel officer asked just what kind of a man the colonel wanted. 
 "He ought to be mature enough and with physical presence 
 enough to command the respect of the men of the regiment. 
 He should have had military experience and be able to exer- 
 cise authority. I want a man who has done clerical work, 
 preferably bookkeeping or accounting, because he will be 
 responsible for many of the regimental records. And it would 
 be well," the colonel added, "if he has also had engi- 
 neering training." The personnel officer searched the qualifi- 
 cation records of the entire division and selected three soldiers 
 for the colonel's consideration. The one who was finally 
 chosen had as a lad enlisted in the Navy and risen to the 
 rank of machinist's mate, demonstrating his capacity to com- 
 mand. He had then left the Navy and worked for about 
 three years as a bookkeeper. He was 26 years old, had the 
 desired physique and presence, and at the time of his enlist- 
 ment in the National Guard two months previously he was 
 Junior in the Engineering School of Tulane University. More- 
 over he was a private in that colonel's own regiment ! 
 
 Principles of economy that apply within the camp have 
 also governed the administration of the central assignment 
 office in Washington, Millions of dollars in the cost of rail-
 
 24 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 way transportation alone were saved to the taxpayers through 
 the pains taken to select specialists for transfer from these 
 camps and depots geographically nearest the places where 
 the technical units were to be organized. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF MORALE 
 
 Any shifts of personnel, including assignments, transfers, 
 promotions and demotions, should always be made with due 
 consideration for their effect on the spirit of the men and the 
 organizations concerned. 
 
 Men accept new assignments with better grace if pains is 
 taken to make it clear to them why the transfer is made. Bri- 
 tish practice, as observed in the Transfers Centers and Army 
 Posting Stations of England during the summer of 1918, was 
 in this respect superior to the typical American procedure. 
 The officer took the time necessary to assure himself of the 
 soldier's qualifications and physical limitations, and also of 
 his personal preferences. When the current needs of the Army 
 coincided with the preferences of the soldier he was assigned 
 accordingly; and when they did not, the posting officer ex- 
 plained to the soldier very frankly why he was being sent 
 elsewhere, so that he went away feeling that he had had a 
 square deal and that he was going where he could do the 
 most for his country's cause. 
 
 Frequent changes are subversive of good team work. Noth- 
 ing is more disheartening to officers or soldiers than to see 
 some of their best personnel suddenly removed, just at the 
 time when strenuous enthusiastic training has brought about 
 a measure of group competence. Extensive transplanting 
 while intensive training is in progress usually proves to be an 
 extravagance. It should be avoided just as far as possible 
 through correct initial assignment. 
 
 Local pride is a tremendous stimulator of group loyalty in 
 a company, a regiment or a division. It was a wise provision 
 in the original National Army mobilization order which 
 directed that drafted men from each locality should, as far as
 
 PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION 25 
 
 practicable, be kept together. To be sure this injunction was 
 by some commanders interpreted too literally and carried to 
 absurd extremes, as in the case of the division in which all 
 the men from one local board were put in the ammunition 
 train, from another into the machine gun battalion, and so on, 
 quite without reference either to the differing needs of the 
 units or to the widely varying average qualifications of the 
 recruits from city wards, mining towns, and rural localities. 
 When original assignments were made according to such a 
 purely geographical scheme, later shifts and readjustments 
 were necessarily numerous or else training was unnecessarily 
 slow. 
 
 During the early months, the men transferred out of com- 
 panies in training were frequently tradesmen and technicians. 
 Naturally these were also the very men of superior native 
 ability whom the company commander had selected as promis- 
 ing material for his non-commissioned officers and whom he 
 was loath to lose. It was to diminish this demoralizing effect 
 of transfers that the practice then grew up in personnel offices 
 of placing a check mark on the qualification cards of soldiers 
 designated by their commanders as pivotal men, and this "pre- 
 ferred stock" was not requisitioned so long as other men of the 
 required occupational designation could be found. 
 
 At the same time it had to be borne in mind that morale is 
 dampened unless it is clear that the line of promotion on merit 
 is open. An officer loses his grip on his men if they come to 
 suspect that he is holding back his best sergeant from a 
 chance to go to Officers' Training School because he seems 
 indispensable to his company. The officer himself cannot put 
 forth his best efforts if he has reason to imagine that his 
 own promotion hinges partly on the caprices of favoritism, or 
 if he knows that it depends solely on the mechanical operation 
 of the seniority rule. In the Army as in business, morale is 
 definitely strengthened if it is obvious that changes in status 
 are direct and adequate measures of individual worth.
 
 26 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 The rule of economy of personnel resources is perhaps the 
 most comprehensive of all the principles of personnel adminis- 
 tration. It necessarily implies each of the other cardinal prin- 
 ciples. An executive who strives to give every man a chance 
 at the work where lies his greatest usefulness, will find himself 
 compelled to set up a simple but adequate machinery of 
 records and a smooth running organization for adjusting the 
 supply to the demand. He must aim to use this organization 
 so as to stimulate and maintain rather than shatter individual 
 and group morale. He must know with precision the require- 
 ments of each of the places to be filled. He must secure an 
 accurate inventory of the qualifications of the men to be 
 placed. And to accomplish all this he must be a real personnel 
 executive, devoting his best thought and energies to the multi- 
 form problems that constantly emerge, rather than trying to 
 supervise the control of personnel incidentally, amidst the 
 pressure of other crowding duties. His work must be func- 
 tionalized as it had to be in the Army, and as it is bound to be 
 in any great industrial, commercial or governmental enterprise. 
 
 In the following pages is recorded the story of how these 
 cardinal principles operated to shape the policies and pro- 
 cedures of the Army, in its effort to absorb the youth and 
 talent of the nation and to make of it most speedily an offen- 
 sive engine of overwhelming power.
 
 CHAPTER 2 
 THE ARMY PERSONNEL TASK IN 1917 
 
 When Congress declared on April 6, 1917, "that the state 
 of war between the United States and the Imperial German 
 Government which has been thrust upon the United States 
 is hereby formally declared," the nation was committed to a 
 most radical reversal of policy and interest. Overnight, we 
 changed from a nation desiring peace and no foreign relations, 
 with an army that was scarcely more than a national constabu- 
 lary, and with reserve munitions that totalled almost nothing, 
 to a nation determined to send soldiers and arms without limit 
 to a front on French soil 3,000 miles away. 
 
 The appreciation of what this determination actually meant 
 in numbers grew as the months went by, but the spirit of 
 "spend all that is necessary in men and in money" was present 
 at the beginning and remained constant. To conceive what 
 this determination accomplished, one must see a Combat Divi- 
 sion on review, or witness the hoisting of a complete loco- 
 motive from the hatch of a cargo ship, or visit the Bethlehem 
 Steel works at night, but some notion of what was done in 
 mobilizing our man-power, and through it our supplies, can be 
 gained from the tables on the following pages. 
 
 The accomplishment which these tables represent was the 
 result of the labors of Americans working under a pressure 
 and with an intensity, enthusiasm and interest never before 
 experienced in this generation. 
 
 The nation's fund of energy thus released had to be 
 directed. Men had to be brought into the army service and 
 men and women had to enter and speed up industry, trans- 
 portation and agriculture. 
 
 The first great step was taken on May 18, 1917, when with 
 
 27
 
 28 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Comparative strength of service March, 1917, and November, 19 18 1 
 
 Old Army, New Army, 
 
 March, November, 
 
 1917. 1918. 
 
 Infantry and machine gun 
 
 85,000 974,000 
 
 Engineer . 
 
 3,000 394,000 
 
 Field Artillery and ammunition train , 
 
 , 9,000 389,000 
 
 Medical 
 
 7,000 300,000 
 
 Quartermaster 
 
 8,000 228,000 
 
 Coast Artillery 
 
 21,000 137,000 
 
 Ordnance 
 
 . . . 1,000 64,000 
 
 Signal . 
 
 . . . 3,000 52,000 
 
 Cavalry . 
 
 22,000 29,000 
 
 Air Service 
 
 .... 202,000 
 
 Motor Transport 
 
 103,000 
 
 Militia Bureau 
 
 ... 27,000 
 
 Chemical Warfare 
 
 18,000 
 
 Tank 
 
 14000 
 
 In training 
 
 549 000 
 
 All other 
 
 31,000 185 000 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 190 000 3 665 000 
 
 
 
 Comparative figures on Supplies, June 
 
 1917 and November, 1918 1 
 
 Cargo shipped June, 1917, 
 16,000 tons 
 
 October, 1918, 750,- 
 000 tons 
 
 Army fleet 
 
 June, 1917, 
 
 13 ships, 94,000 tons 
 
 Nbvember, 1918, 
 431 ships, 3,004,445 
 tons 
 
 Rifles, 1917 models Accepted, Aug., 1917 
 2,000 
 
 Accepted, October, 
 1918, 207,247 
 
 Browning Machine Accepted, April, 
 Gun, heavy 1918, 12 
 
 Accepted, October, 
 1918, 13,747 
 
 Ball Cartridges, 
 Caliber 30 
 
 Rounds produced, 
 September, 1917, 
 12,000,000 
 
 Rounds produced 
 October, 1918, 254,- 
 000,000 
 
 1 From Annual Report of the Secretary of War. 1918.
 
 PERSONNEL TASK IN 1917 29 
 
 the support of the country, Congress decided what age-groups 
 would be called on for military service and made their decision 
 binding in the "Act to increase temporarily the military estab- 
 lishment of the United States." 
 
 The next step was the placing of war contracts which gave 
 to manufacturers the power to bring an army of workers into 
 industry. This led later to the creation of the Federal Em- 
 ployment Service, intended to regulate the supply of labor 
 much as the draft machinery regulated the supply of men for 
 the army. 
 
 Then came federal control of transportation, coal and trade 
 and the stimulation of agriculture and the control of food. 
 
 Expansion in artillery equipment 1 
 
 Total con- On hand On hand 
 
 Artillery (complete units). tracted for. Apr. 6, Nov. 1, 
 
 1917 1918 
 
 Trench 
 
 11,700 
 
 
 5,000 
 
 Light . 
 
 10,113 
 
 779 
 
 3,850 
 
 
 , 5,385 
 
 114 
 
 1,070 
 
 Heavy . < 
 
 3,472 
 
 
 695 
 
 Railway . . . 
 
 211 
 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total 30,881 893 10,634 
 
 In each of these administrative expressions of the Nation's 
 determination to win the war there was a common feature 
 human beings of many kinds of ability were needed in stag- 
 gering numbers. For the army alone 9,587,000 men were 
 registered on June 5, 1917, and later 14,122,000 more added. 
 
 The numbers are large; but one is even more bewildered 
 by the detail involved in handling each man as an individual, 
 from his registration at a Local Board, through his mustering 
 into the Army, placement in a unit, training, shipment over- 
 seas, return and ultimate discharge. 
 
 1 From Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1918.
 
 30 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Each officer and soldier had to be treated individually, how- 
 ever, not merely because records must be kept for each, but 
 because each had some special ability which had to be dis- 
 covered and used where it would contribute most to the Army. 
 
 To describe the growth of the personnel methods by which 
 men were handled as individuals from the day they reached 
 the camp until the day of their discharge is the purpose of 
 the present volume. In a second volume (The Personnel 
 Manual, published in May, 1919), the detailed directions for 
 use by the various parts of the organization are printed as a 
 manual of operation. 
 
 THE ENLISTED PERSONNEL 
 
 The machinery which existed in April, 1917, for handling 
 the army personnel problem was adequate for our small 
 Regular Army as then organized. It was never intended for 
 war conditions, and the changes which it underwent were indi- 
 cations of competence to meet new conditions. 
 
 The Man-Power Supply. In the year before the war men 
 were recruited at 189 Central Recruit Stations, each responsi- 
 ble for specified areas. In the fiscal year of 1917, the total 
 number of stations, including auxiliary and temporary sta- 
 tions, reached as its maximum 724. Here men were recruited 
 for different arms of the service, mainly for the line, Medical 
 Department and Quartermaster Corps. Normally recruits 
 were sent to Recruit Depots for examination and enlistment, 
 and assignments were made semi-annually. After April, 1917, 
 recruits were also sent direct to camps where new regiments 
 were forming and in addition the assignments from Depots 
 were made as speedily as possible. 
 
 After December 15, 1917, no voluntary enlistments of draft 
 registrants was permitted, but Recruit stations for men not 
 registered were continued. The recruitment from July, 1917, 
 to April, 1918, was 250,058. From May 1, 1918, the enlist- 
 ments into the Regular Army were discontinued, but the 
 Recruit Stations handled special inductions for registrants 
 amounting to 58,411 by July, 1918.
 
 PERSONNEL TASK IN 1917 31 
 
 Under Section 55 of the National Defense Act of June 8, 
 1916, men could be obtained for the army by enlisting them 
 in the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the Engineer, Signal, and 
 Quartermaster Corps and the Ordnance and Medical Depart- 
 ments, and subsequently calling them to active duty. To 
 June 30, 1918, approximately 80,000 members of the Enlisted 
 Reserve Corps had been ordered to active duty. The Enlisted 
 Reserve Corps was a device to provide a reserve during peace 
 time, and it naturally was not adapted to expansion during 
 the period of the war. 
 
 The official recruiting "service was supplemented throughout 
 the war by the work of special recruiting missions authorized 
 to induct for special army duties registrants who were outside 
 a current call. The Engineers, Ordnance, Air Service, Signal 
 Corps, Medical Corps, Motor Transport and other corps all 
 independently sought men specially qualified for their own 
 services. These campaigns, while they did yield specialists, 
 were harmfully competitive, since they frequently sought the 
 same kind of personnel, and the most active, rather than the 
 most needy corps got the recruits. Undoubtedly, had the war 
 continued, arrangements would have been completed for sup- 
 plying all specialists through one central agency. 
 
 The Operation of the Draft. From September, 1917, the 
 main source of supply of men for the Army was the selective 
 service induction carried on by the 4,648 Local Boards of the 
 country. The dates and numbers of these inductions appear 
 in the table on the following page. 
 
 The administration of the draft had to do something more 
 than supply men to the army. It had to classify the regis- 
 trants, select those who could serve in the army with the 
 least national social and economic loss, and reserve for the 
 industrial and agricultural service of supply the men 
 competent to fill key positions requiring years of previous 
 training. 
 
 There took place, consequently, in the Local and District 
 Boards, the first rough classification and placement of men.
 
 32 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Men inducted into the Army under Selective Service Law, by months 1 
 
 Month. 
 
 Men in- 
 ducted. 
 
 Month. 
 
 Men in- 
 ducted. 
 
 1917 
 
 September 296,678 
 
 October 163,644 
 
 November 35,721 
 
 December 20,320 
 
 1918 
 
 January 23,288 
 
 February 83,779 
 
 March 132,484 
 
 April 174,377 
 
 1918 
 
 May 373,063 
 
 June 301,941 
 
 July 401,147 
 
 August 282,898 
 
 September 252,295 
 
 October 250,000 
 
 November 10,000 
 
 Total 2,801,635 
 
 Each registrant indicated his occupational ability in the ques- 
 tionnaire, using the standard army table of occupations as 
 his guide. This information, supplemented by other evidence, 
 aided the draft authorities in determining where the men 
 should serve in civil life, in war industry, or in the Army. 
 
 The prompt acceptance by the nation of the principle of 
 selective service won the admiration of our Allies. The wis- 
 dom with which the principle was applied and administered 
 commanded the increasing confidence of the country. No 
 other nation has ever raised a great national army so rapidly 
 and with so little resulting popular irritation and hostility. 
 
 Administration of Enlisted Personnel. In peace times the 
 control of personnel within the Army was a comparatively 
 simple matter. For the line, the Field Headquarters, the 
 Department and The Adjutant General kept the records 
 and issued the orders for troop movements. For the var- 
 ious staff corps, the Office of the Chief of the Bureau 
 kept records and made allotments and assignments of 
 the very limited personnel, frequently as the result of first 
 hand personal knowledge of the men available. An officer 
 long in the service might easily know the needs of the various 
 
 1 From Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1918.
 
 PERSONNEL TASK IN 1917 33 
 
 stations and be acquainted with the best sources of supply 
 for men of a given kind. Recruits were, in general, assigned 
 to units twice a year, and there was plenty of time to muster 
 them in and prepare their records. There was also time to 
 train green men for the duties in the Army requiring trade 
 skill, and as compared with the great number of technical 
 jobs in the war army, the need for trade skill was small. 
 
 Under war conditions, men were received by the hundred 
 thousand, and technical units had to be formed with the 
 utmost speed from a personnel already possessing trade 
 ability. The old system resembled a craftsman's shop where 
 each article is made by hand and finished by one individual. 
 
 The new system had to be like a great factory where each 
 process is separated and volume production is assured through 
 rigid functionalization and organization. Men had to be 
 sorted, recorded and assigned as goods in some great ware- 
 house are received, checked, sorted, stored and shipped on 
 order. And not one but sixteen great personnel establish- 
 ments and twenty smaller ones had to be created and the 
 necessary administrative overhead in Washington called into 
 existence. 
 
 In this emergency the Army availed itself of the abilities 
 of men already expert in personnel work. It established on 
 August 5, the Committee on Classification of Personnel in the 
 Army, under the direction of The Adjutant General. The 
 Committee in turn, called in experienced employment mana- 
 gers from great commercial enterprises and placed them in 
 the field. There they aided the officers of the Regular Army in 
 setting up a system capable of receiving, examining, classify- 
 ing, clothing and reporting to Washington, 1,500 men a day 
 from each of the great receiving camps. 
 
 The central office directed the work. It listed the trades 
 and compiled the numbers the Army needed. The organiza- 
 tions in the field classified the soldiers by these trades and 
 occupations and reported them to The Adjutant General. 
 Then on order of the Operations Division of the General
 
 34 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Staff, the men whose trade experience qualified them for 
 special duty in the Army were assigned to the units whose 
 requisitions for these specialists had priority. 
 
 The chapters that follow describe the development of the 
 personnel organization and the way in which each step of 
 the process was evolved. The principles of organization and 
 the statement of the process are simple. The details of 
 development and operation are more complicated. The results 
 represent the achievement of Army officers and civilian spe- 
 cialists working together to make possible the speedy fulfill- 
 ment of the nation's determination to win the war. 
 
 COMMISSIONED PERSONNEL 
 
 In many ways, the Army faced a more difficult problem in 
 securing officers than in securing men, even technical enlisted 
 specialists. Many thousands of men knew trades which, with 
 slight adjustment could be used in the Army work, but very 
 few indeed knew the details of military procedure or field 
 operation. Yet when the war closed there were 194,228 offi- 
 cers, a number larger than the whole of our Army in 1917. 
 
 The National Defense Act of June 3, 1916, had established 
 the Officers' Reserve Corps, and by July 1, 1917, 21,543 offi- 
 cers had been commissioned in this corps. Officer training had 
 received a great stimulus in 1916 through the Plattsburg idea, 
 for which Major General Leonard Wood was largely 
 responsible. 
 
 Camps, somewhat after the Plattsburg model, for testing 
 and training reserve officers and candidates were conducted in 
 four series, beginning May and September, 1917, and January 
 and May, 1918. Thereafter, continuous schools for officers 
 were maintained at five permanent replacement camps. The 
 table on the following page indicates the result of the earlier 
 phases of this program. 
 
 In addition officers were obtained from a camp for colored 
 officers, from Staff Corps Schools, from Reserve Officers' 
 Training Corps Units at educational institutions (later the
 
 PERSONNEL TASK IN 1917 
 
 35 
 
 Commissions granted through first three series of Officers' Training 
 
 Camps* 
 
 Rank. 
 
 Inf. 
 
 Cav. 
 
 F. A. 
 
 C.A.C. 
 
 Eng. 
 
 Q. M. 
 
 Statis- 
 tics. 
 
 Ord. 
 
 Sig. 
 
 Total. 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 185 
 
 18 
 
 37 
 
 1 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 i 
 
 294 
 
 
 3,379 
 
 251 
 
 849 
 
 329 
 
 419 
 
 
 
 147 
 
 55 
 
 5 429 
 
 
 7,665 
 
 258 
 
 2,128 
 
 575 
 
 747 
 
 
 75 
 
 407 
 
 519 
 
 12,374 
 
 Second lieutenant. 
 
 23,346 
 
 1,371 
 
 8,540 
 
 1,158 
 
 750 
 
 3,067 
 
 77 
 
 211 
 
 687 
 
 39,207 
 
 Total 
 
 34,578 
 
 1,898 
 
 11,554 
 
 2,063 
 
 1,966 
 
 3,067 
 
 152 
 
 767 
 
 1,262 
 
 57,307 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Students' Army Training Corps) from promotion within the 
 Regular Army, and from commissioning specialists direct from 
 civil life. 
 
 For officers as for men, methods of selection, classification, 
 and promotion had to be devised. For the selection of the 
 successful candidates in the Officers' Training Camps, and for 
 estimating and recording the efficiency of officers, the Officers' 
 Rating Scale was prepared and introduced. In addition, the 
 Officers' Qualification Cards were prepared and ultimately 
 used for all officers at home and abroad. 
 
 The competition present in recruiting enlisted personnel 
 was also an unfortunate feature in obtaining officers. Not 
 until the establishment of the Personnel Branch of the General 
 Staff shortly before the cessation of hostilities, was this waste- 
 ful duplication of effort eliminated and central control of 
 commissioned personnel established. 
 
 The entire personnel task of the Army in 1917 and there- 
 after was complicated by frequent revisions of plans for the 
 size of the force needed, and by the distance of the organizing 
 centers from the front. An accurate forecast of needs for 
 officers and men, with a statement of numbers and grades for 
 each kind of ability, could not be made. Operations had to 
 provide a safe estimated margin. This complicated the train- 
 ing as well as the procurement program. 
 
 'Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1918, p. 16.
 
 36 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 In spite of difficulties, however, the task of forming the 
 Army at maximum speed was pushed night and day, and the 
 German request for an armistice on November 11 must be 
 attributed in part to their certain knowledge that a successful 
 national mobilization military and industrial had been 
 accomplished in the United States.
 
 SECTION II. 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMITTEE 
 
 This section describes the origin and development 
 of the organization created by the Secretary of 
 War to build a personnel system in the Army and 
 outlines its sources and antecedents. In consider- 
 ing this subject, a brief outline (in Chapter 3) of 
 the sources of Personnel Work traditional Army 
 practice, the employment management movement, 
 and applied psychology is followed (in Chapter 4) 
 by an historical review of the circumstances sur- 
 rounding the early efforts to introduce a scientific 
 method of rating officers. Chapter 5 deals with the 
 establishment and first work of a personnel commit- 
 tee designated by the Secretary of War as the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel in the Army. 
 How Personnel Work was first introduced in the 
 divisional camps of the country is described in 
 Chapter 6. The last three chapters of the section 
 carry on the history of development, through the 
 period of expansion (Chapter 7), the transfer of 
 functions to the General Staff (Chapter 8) and the 
 status of the personnel organization at the time 
 when mobilization ceased with the consequent 
 transition of personnel duties to conform with the 
 processes of demobilization (Chapter 9) . 
 
 37
 
 CHAPTER 3 
 
 
 
 FORERUNNERS OF THE ARMY PERSONNEL 
 SYSTEM 
 
 The history of the Army personnel organization during 
 the war exhibits a development that is traceable to three dis- 
 tinct sources. The first source is found in traditional Army 
 practice. The second is a contribution of business and indus- 
 try, namely the employment management movement. The 
 third source of ideas and methods which merged with the 
 others to develop a practicable Army personnel system, is 
 found in the scientific approach to the study of human abili- 
 ties which has been fostered in university laboratories of 
 psychology for a generation, and which more recently has been 
 applied by certain large business concerns to the practical 
 problem of discovering talent and selecting the right man for 
 the right place. The classification and placement of officers 
 and soldiers would not have gone forward as expeditiously as 
 it did if there had been lacking any one of these three com- 
 ponents, the military, the industrial, and the scientific. 
 
 Employment Management. When America entered the war, 
 the practice of employment management was just beginning 
 to emerge into the status of a profession. Not very many 
 years had elapsed since large manufacturing and commercial 
 concerns first began quite generally to place responsibility 
 for their personnel in the hands of one executive, the employ- 
 ment manager. This executive was selected for his post 
 because he was an organizer and systematizer, and a good 
 judge of men, and not because he had had any special train- 
 ing for his new duties; for there existed neither the school 
 to train employment executives, nor any considerable body 
 of knowledge and accepted practice which could have been 
 
 39
 
 40 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 taught in such a school. But very rapidly during the past 
 fifteen years, such a substantial body of standard theory and 
 procedure in employment practice has taken shape. Men of 
 broad experience have crystallized their thought in books and 
 in numerous, technical articles on employment procedure, an- 
 alysis of the causes of labor turnover and of the methods of 
 lessening it, sources of labor supply, forms, record blanks, 
 the routine of employment office management, and the like. 
 
 Interchange of ideas and experience took place also through 
 frequent periodic meetings of various local Employment Man- 
 agers' Associations, the first of which was organized in Bos- 
 ton in 1911. The annual convention of the National ^Associa- 
 tion of Corporation Schools and the annual Conference of 
 Employment Managers likewise brought together the ablest 
 of the men and women who were engaged in the selection, 
 placement and development of employes. From these and 
 other sources grew a fund of information of a more or less 
 technical sort. In 1914 the Tuck School of Business Admin- 
 istration at Dartmouth College introduced a course of train- 
 ing for prospective employment managers and during the 
 next year a research course in employment management was 
 given at Northwestern University. The result of all these 
 tendencies was the steady building up of a professional con- 
 sciousness among men engaged in employment management, 
 and the creation of a nucleus of standard personnel practice 
 which, at the critical moment, was whole-heartedly made 
 available for Army use. 
 
 During the war the employment management movement 
 received a tremendous impetus. The acuteness of the labor 
 situation in thousands of factories, munition plants and ship 
 yards forced many employers to contemplate for the first time 
 the functionalizing of their employment practice. Under the 
 leadership of Capt. Boyd Fisher of the Ordnance Department, 
 detailed to the Council of National Defense, short intensive 
 
 l Bibliography of Personnel Management, by Coss and Outhwalte. War 
 JJepartment, 1919.
 
 PERSONNEL SYSTEM 41 
 
 courses for the training of employment managers were given 
 in several industrial centers. The graduation of the first 
 class of these emergency-trained managers at Rochester in 
 May, 1918, coincided with the meeting there of a convention 
 of employment managers, eight hundred strong, at which 
 was completed the organization of the National Association 
 of Employment Managers. Perusal of succeeding chapters 
 of this volume will show not only how the employment man- 
 agement movement has helped the Army, but also how the 
 development of methods and practice in the Army personnel 
 work has given in turn a powerful stimulus to the further 
 spread and development of employment management in in- 
 dustry. 
 
 Applied Psychology. The scientific approach to problems 
 of personnel has its roots in the psychological laboratories of 
 the universities. There, for more than thirty years scientists 
 have been busy with systematic researches into human traits, 
 and with measurements of differences in people's abilities. 
 The interest of these investigators has been chiefly theoretical. 
 They wanted to be able to give a more complete and accurate 
 scientific account of human nature and of the laws of behavior 
 than is possible without the use of a rigorous experimental 
 method. But more recently there has been an increasingly 
 insistent demand from commerce and industry as well as 
 from education and medicine that the methods of the ex- 
 perimental psychologist should be applied to practical prob- 
 lems of human adjustment and control. If a person's in- 
 telligence or alertness or retentiveness or ease of learning or 
 mechanical aptitude or esthetic sensitivity could be determined 
 and compared with that of other people in the psychological 
 laboratory, why should not these same methods be adapted 
 to the requirements of employers who want to ascertain 
 where each of their employes can work with a maximum of 
 satisfaction to himself and of advantage to the organization? 
 The Bureau of Salesmanship Research. Of the attempts 
 to bring psychological methods into helpful relation with
 
 42 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 business, perhaps the most significant was the Bureau of 
 Salesmanship Research at the Carnegie Institute of Tech- 
 nology in Pittsburgh. This Bureau was a cooperative enter- 
 prise, founded in 1916 by Mr. Edward A. Woods, a promin- 
 ent and successful business man of Pittsburgh, with the 
 participation of thirty concerns doing business of National 
 scope. Its purpose was to study the best methods then used 
 in selecting, developing and supervising salesmen, and also 
 to try out new methods which showed promise. The Bureau 
 maintained a small scientific staff of experts who developed 
 the new methods and put them to the test of actual trial, 
 with the help of the employment managers and sales managers 
 of the cooperating firms. The Director of this Bureau was 
 Dr. Walter Dill Scott, and its Executive Secretary, Dr. 
 Walter V. Bingham. Associated with them were Dr. G. M. 
 Whipple, Dr. J. B. Miner and a group of research assistants. 
 During the first year of the Bureau's activities they worked 
 out a manual of "Aids in Selecting Salesmen" which 
 embodied the best available ideas, old and new, in personnel 
 selection. There was a Personal History Blank which went 
 straight at the essential facts about an applicant's career. 
 There was a model Letter to Former Employers, designed 
 to secure a more accurate, illuminating and pertinent response 
 than is usually received through correspondence with an ap- 
 plicant's references. There was a form to guide the employer 
 during his personal interview with the applicant, designed 
 to focus his attention on those essential personal traits which 
 it is possible to evaluate under such circumstances. There 
 was a Rating Scale, ingeniously devised so that the inter- 
 viewer could make concrete comparisons of the applicant 
 with successful and unsuccessful salesmen whose traits were 
 well known to him, and so that he could express in numerical 
 form the resulting judgments about the applicant's char- 
 acteristics. And finally there was a set of mental tests, for 
 use in getting a measure of the applicant's general intelligence, 
 his range of information, his facility in the use of language,
 
 PERSONNEL SYSTEM 43 
 
 his imagination or foresight, and his speed and accuracy in 
 such routine clerical work as a salesman must often do 
 when making out orders and reports. 
 
 All five of these "Aids" the mental tests, the rating 
 scale, the interviewer's blank, the letter to former employers, 
 and the personal history blank had been prepared with a 
 view to their use in selecting successful high-grade sales- 
 men, and were proving their worth for that purpose; but the 
 principles which they embodied were applicable, with only 
 slight modifications, to the selection of men for any post call- 
 ing for superior intelligence and personal qualities. Recog- 
 nizing this fact, the business men present at the .annual 
 meeting of the cooperating members of the Bureau June 1, 
 1917, voted unanimously to tender the services of the scientific 
 staff of the Bureau to the War Department, and to make 
 available for Army use whatever of the Bureau methods might 
 be found applicable to military needs. 
 
 Already Dr. Bingham and Dr. Whipple had left at the in- 
 vitation of the National Research Council to join with R. M. 
 Yerkes of Harvard, E. L. Thorndike of Columbia, L. M. 
 Terman of Stanford, and other psychologists in working out 
 suitable methods for use in making mental examinations of 
 recruits. And Dr. Scott, with his research assistants, had 
 been busy adapting the rating scale so that it might be use- 
 ful as an aid in selecting successful candidates at Officers' 
 Training Camps. But no one at that time foresaw what a 
 vital contribution toward the organization of the National 
 Army would emerge from the initial investigations into scien- 
 tific personnel work, made possible by the Bureau of Sales- 
 manship Research. No one realized how the intense stress 
 of effort and devotion and patriotic impulse was destined to 
 fuse into one effective personnel system the best knowledge 
 and experience of the theoretical scientist, the practical em- 
 ployment manager and the trained Army officer.
 
 CHAPTER 4 
 
 EARLY EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE SCIENTIFIC 
 METHODS OF RATING OFFICERS 
 
 ORIGIN OF RATING SCALE 
 
 Early in May, 1917, the first form of the rating scale for 
 the selection of officers was devised by Dr. Scott and his 
 associates in the Bureau of Salesmanship Research of Carnegie 
 Institute of Technology. It was similar in form to the scales 
 previously used in several business houses for selecting em- 
 ployees for executive and other positions. It applied the 
 principle of comparing the individual with men of known 
 ability in the position for which he was a candidate. The 
 qualifications used as a basis for comparison were, of course, 
 differentt in the case of the Army from those used in the 
 business houses, inasmuch as the requirements for military 
 success are somewhat different from those for civilian success. 
 
 This first form was then printed, in order that it might be 
 subjected to a further refining process, which would make 
 it more completely satisfactory for the purpose intended. The 
 printed blanks were sent to various people who were thought 
 likely to be able to suggest improvements, and who might 
 also be in a position to bring it to the attention of military 
 authorities. One copy was sent to Mr. Paul S. Achilles at 
 Plattsburg. He submitted it through military channels to the 
 Commanding Officer at Plattsburg in June, and toward the 
 close of the month it was returned with the following nota- 
 tion: "The Commanding Officer will not be able to use this." 
 
 MILITARY AUTHORITIES BECOME INTERESTED 
 
 Meanwhile, another copy sent to Dr. E. L. Thorndike of 
 
 44
 
 EARLY EFFORTS OF RATING 45 
 
 Columbia University had been shown by him to Mr. F. P. 
 Keppel, then Assistant to Secretary of War Baker, later 
 appointed Third Assistant Secretary of War. Mr. Keppel 
 became much interested and asked for further data. On June 
 15, Dr. Scott sent him a full explanation of the rating scale, 
 and Mr. Keppel brought the whole matter to the attention 
 of The Adjutant General of the Army, Major General H. P. 
 McCain. 
 
 The impression which the scale made upon General McCain 
 and his associates in the Adjutant General's office is indicated 
 by the following letter : 
 
 WAR DEPARTMENT 
 Washington, D. C., June 30, 1917. 
 Professor Walter Dill Scott, 
 
 Carnegie Institution of Technology, 
 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 Your letter of June 15th with inclosed rating scale and 
 rating sheet received. If promotion by selection is 
 adopted for the National Army, the War Department 
 contemplates using this method of rating officers. 
 Your assistance is much appreciated. 
 Faithfully yours, 
 F. P. KEPPEL, 
 
 Assistant to Secretary of War. 
 
 A few days after writing this letter, Mr. Keppel wrote again 
 suggesting that Dr. Scott come down to discuss the matter at 
 length with the officers of the Adjutant General's Department. 
 Dr. Scott was at the time away on a Western trip and there- 
 fore did not receive the letters until July 5, whereupon he 
 telephoned to Mr. Keppel expressing his willingness to come 
 to Washington on the first train. He was told that they would 
 be very glad to see him. 
 
 On the morning of July .6, Dr. Scott arrived in Washington 
 and met Mr. Keppel, who introduced him to General McCain 
 and Colonel (later Brigadier General) Eugene F. Ladd, who
 
 46 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 was in charge of commissioned personnel. Both had examined 
 the scale and believed that it might possibly have some value. 
 Colonel Ladd had not thought of the possibility of the use 
 of the scale for selecting officer-candidates but only for the 
 promotion of officers. He assumed that the method in vogue 
 at the schools was entirely satisfactory. When the request 
 was made that the scale be tried out in an experimental way 
 at one of the officers' training schools, Colonel Ladd called 
 Major (later Brigadier General) Alfred W. Bjornstad and 
 Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Grenville Clark, and turned 
 the whole matter over to them with the order that they investi- 
 gate the proposed method and take any necessary action. 
 Major Bjornstad was just about to leave Washington and 
 suggested that Major Clark take care of the matter alone. 
 To this Colonel Ladd agreed. 
 
 The pressure of work upon Major Clark was so great, 
 however, that he found it impossible to give the necessary 
 time that day to the consideration of the scale, and as the 
 work at the office was urgent, he asked Dr. Scott to return 
 to Pittsburgh and come back to Washington five days later. 
 To this Dr. Scott agreed. His first great task had been 
 accomplished, that of securing the attention of the Army 
 authorities and their interest in the possibilities of the rating 
 scale. 
 
 During the next few days Dr. Scott spent much time in 
 trying to make improvements in the scale. As a result of 
 this consideration, and of suggestions received from various 
 sources, some changes were made. By the night of July 10 
 he was confident that the scale in its revised form would prove 
 a really practicable and satisfactory method of selection. 
 
 When he met Major Clark in Washington again on July 11 
 he found conditions much as they were at the time of his 
 previous visit. To accomplish anything at all it was necessary 
 to go to Major Clark's apartment, where they could work 
 undisturbed. During the three hour conference which 
 followed, the scale was completely analyzed and dissected,
 
 EARLY EFFORTS OF RATING 47 
 
 and was then reconstructed in very much the original form, 
 but with the change in the fifth qualification from "Value to 
 the Regiment" to "General Impression." At a conference 
 at Fort Myer, on July 16, this expression was changed to 
 "General Value to the Service." 
 
 This form was essentially the same as that of the scale in 
 all subsequent editions and revisions. It provided for ratings 
 on five essential qualifications. To the first four of them a 
 maximum of 15 points was assigned. To the fifth, "General 
 Value to the Service," a maximum of 40 points was assigned. 
 
 Tests at Fort Myer. Before it could be certain that the 
 scale would prove a satisfactory method of selecting officers, 
 it was necessary that it be subjected to a test. Dr. Scott, 
 therefore, suggested that he be permitted to demonstrate the 
 scale to the officer in command at Fort Myer. Mimeographed 
 copies of the scale were prepared and the following letter of 
 introduction was written by Major Clark and Colonel W. T. 
 Johnston of the Adjutant General's Department, who had 
 also become interested in the matter: 
 
 July 11, 1917. 
 
 From: The Adjutant General of the Army, 
 To: Commanding Officer, Officers' Training Camp, 
 
 Fort Myer, Virginia. 
 
 Subject: Method of selecting those suitable for commis- 
 sion in each training unit. 
 
 1. In view of the fact that the present method of 
 selecting and classifying men in the Officers' Training 
 Camps under instructions of May 18, 1917, is not deemed 
 entirely satisfactory, it is desired to work out a more 
 careful and scientific system for the second series of 
 camps. It is desired to experiment with the method re- 
 ferred to below in one or more companies of your camp. 
 For this purpose you will select the commanding officer of 
 the company or companies whose judgment and comment 
 on the method will be most valuable. 
 
 2. A plan for this purpose has been worked out by 
 Mr. Walter Dill Scott in consultation with Officers in the 
 War Department, which is believed to be of value. Mr.
 
 48 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Scott will present this letter and you will permit him to 
 explain the method to the company commander or com- 
 manders selected and afford him proper opportunity for 
 giving the method a thorough test. 
 
 By order of the Secretary of War, 
 W. T. JOHNSTON 
 
 Adjutant General. 
 
 On July 12, Dr. Scott presented his credentials to the Com- 
 manding Officer at Fort Myer, Colonel Charles W. Fenton, 
 and the senior instructor, Colonel William J. Glasgow. Major 
 George R. Spalding and Major E. O. Hunt were called into 
 conference with these officers and in a short time all of them 
 were converted to the value of the scale. As the letter 
 suggested that the system be tried out by company com- 
 manders, Captain Edmond R. Tompkins and Captain H. D. 
 Schultz were asked to make practical tests with it. After 
 about an hour's work they became fully convinced of the value 
 of the scale and submitted the following report upon it: 
 
 FORT MYER TRAINING CAMP FOR RESERVE 
 
 OFFICERS 
 
 (Copy) Fort Myer, Va., July 12, 1917. 
 
 From: Captain H. D. Schultz, 37th Infantry. 
 To: Commanding Officer, 5th Training Regiment. 
 
 Subject: Report on individual rating for selecting candi- 
 dates. 
 
 1. I have studied and put to an actual test the individual 
 rating sheets for selecting candidates, presented to me by 
 
 Mr. Walter Dill Scott, and find the system practicable. 
 Care is necessary in making the scale, care being taken 
 to select officers of diversified ability. After this scale 
 has been prepared the time required to grade the candi- 
 dates will be very short. 
 
 2. The good points in Mr. Scott's system are: 
 
 (1) That you have a concrete standard upon which 
 
 to base your judgment of the candidates. 
 
 (2) You select officers well known to you and have 
 
 them as living examples of what you consider 
 a candidate for commission should be.
 
 EARLY EFFORTS OF RATING 49 
 
 (3) It enables you to get the independent judg- 
 ment of any assistants who may be assigned 
 to your company. 
 
 H. D. SCHULTZ 
 
 I concur in the above. 
 
 EDMOND R. TOMPKINS 
 This system is the one for which I have been 
 
 groping. 
 (Capt.) J. B. Bennet. 
 
 It was agreed,, however, that a more thorough try-out was 
 necessary, and for that purpose all the officers at Fort Myer 
 were assembled on the following day. Each of them made 
 out a scale and rated ten of the men in his own command 
 according to the rating scale method. They then voted 
 unanimously that if the War Department permitted they would 
 use the rating scale in rating the men and in recommending 
 them for commissions in the first series of Officers' Training 
 Camps. 
 
 Tests at Plattsburg. These favorable reports on the prac- 
 ticability of the rating scale were most reassuring to the 
 Adjutant General's Office. It was felt, however, that it was 
 best not to regard the judgment at Fort Myer as in any sense 
 final, but inasmuch as Plattsburg was the head of the Officers' 
 Training Movement, the judgment of the officers there should 
 be secured before recommending the formal adoption of the 
 rating scale. Dr. Scott thereupon set off for Plattsburg im- 
 mediately with a letter of introduction from Colonel Johnston 
 to the Commanding Officer. Madison Barracks and Fort 
 Niagara were also notified to send representatives to Platts- 
 burg to confer with Dr. Scott and the Plattsburg officers. 
 
 This visit to Plattsburg was, of course, the most critical 
 situation that Dr. Scott had to face. The rating scale had 
 already been submitted and rejected there. The only hope 
 was that its rejection had been due to the fact that the scale 
 had not been personally presented and explained to them, 
 and therefore had not been thoroughly understood. If Platts- 
 burg could be persuaded to reverse its decision, then the scale
 
 50 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 would be adopted and would be used in the Officers' Training 
 Camps. If the previous rejection was reaffirmed, then the 
 work which had already been done would be wasted, and the 
 rating scale method would probably never be used in the 
 Army. 
 
 The circumstances of Dr. Scott's reception at Plattsburg 
 were not encouraging. The camp adjutant informed him 
 that the scale had been considered and rejected, and that the 
 Commanding Officer could not be seen that day. It was not 
 until the following day (Monday, July 16), when the officers 
 from Madison Barracks had arrived, that Dr. Scott was called 
 into conference with the Commanding Officer and the Senior 
 instructors of the two training camps at Plattsburg. There- 
 upon Dr. Scott was given an opportunity to present the facts 
 about the scale. 
 
 The Plattsburg officers were skeptical and were not so 
 easily convinced of the merit of the scale as the officers who 
 had previously examined it had been. When suggestions for 
 improvement were invited they ripped the scale to tatters. 
 As the views they expressed regarding improvements were 
 almost diametrically opposed to one another, they did not 
 come to any agreement, and consequently, toward the end of 
 the conference reinstated the scale in almost its original form, 
 but put more emphasis upon previous military experience. 
 They finally agreed that the scale should be presented to the 
 officers of the two camps at Plattsburg. 
 
 Here again the rating scale met the test in every respect. 
 In each camp the officers voted that they believed in the scale 
 and would prefer to use it as a method of ranking men and 
 recommending them for commissions at the end of this, the 
 first series of the Officers' Training Camps. When these 
 results were reported to the Commanding Officer he imme- 
 diately dictated a telegraphic report to Washington. In it 
 he incorporated his reply to an inquiry he had just received 
 as to the advisabilty of sending Dr. Scott to Fort Sheridan 
 and Fort Benjamin Harrison, where other Officers' Training
 
 EARLY EFFORTS OF RATING 51 
 
 Camps were being conducted. The telegram as a whole was 
 as follows: 
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL OF THE ARMY, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Professor Scott's plan is useful and practicable. It 
 will be used here to assist in selection of officers at end 
 of this camp. Recommend it) be made universal for all 
 future camps, but not compulsory for this camp. Believe 
 it would be of material assistance at Harrison and Sheri- 
 dan Camps. 
 
 WOLF. 
 
 Tests at other Officers' Training Camps. The tests at 
 Fort Benjamin Harrison and Sheridan resulted in much 
 the same conclusion as those previously reached. In both 
 cases the officers became enthusiastic for the scale and 
 accepted it. At Fort Benjamin Harrison, Brigadier Gen- 
 eral E. F. Glenn took special interest in the work, and at 
 Fort Sheridan, Colonel William J. Nicholson, the Com- 
 manding Officer, stated that the rating scale was the ideal 
 system which he had always intended? to work out and have 
 used. 
 
 Dr. Scott then went on to Chicago, where he had a con- 
 ference with Major F. F. Stebbins of the Central Depart- 
 ment, Major W. G. Sills from Fort Snelling, and Captain 
 A. M. Ferguson from Fort Riley. They likewise approved 
 the scale and agreed to return to their camps and attempt to 
 present the matter to their officers, so that the rating scale 
 would be used. It may here be noted that Captain Ferguson 
 became much interested in this and other phases of the per- 
 sonnel work, and was later appointed as Officer in charge 
 of the Personnel Work at Washington. 
 
 On July 22, Dr. Scott wired to Major Clark his report on 
 the progress in presenting the scale. To this he received 
 the following reply: 
 
 Dear Prof. Scott: 
 
 Your wire of July 22nd just came on my desk. Con- 
 gratulate you on your patriotic services and success. The
 
 52 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 telegraphic reports of your plan are uniformly favorable. 
 I suggest unofficially that you come here for a day soon 
 and tell Gen. McCain about it and go over plans for next 
 series of camps with Capt. Hayne and me. A comprehen- 
 sive system to be used from the start in all camps should 
 be installed. I am much interested personally in seeing 
 this worked out well. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 GRENVILLE CLARK, 
 July 23. Room 365. 
 
 Upon his return to Washington a few days later, Dr. Scott 
 found Colonel Johnston and Major Clark much pleased with 
 the reception the rating scale had met with in the various 
 training camps. At their suggestion a simplified set of printed 
 forms was devised and printed for use in the second series of 
 Officers' Training Camps, which was to begin shortly. 
 Assistant Secretary Keppel was also gratified by the success 
 of the movement and introduced Dr. Scott to Secretary Baker. 
 Dr. Scott demonstrated the rating scale to him as an instance 
 of the kind of service which the psychologists of the country 
 could render in the mobilization of the Army. As a result 
 of this conference and the investigations and reports which 
 followed it, Secretary Baker soon afterward authorized the 
 organization of the Committee on the Classification of Per- 
 sonnel in the Army.
 
 CHAPTER 5 
 
 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMITTEE 
 
 ON CLASSIFICATION OF PERSONNEL 
 
 IN THE ARMY 
 
 August 5, 1917, is remembered by personnel officers as 
 a significant date, because it marked the establishment of the 
 Committee on Classification of Personnel in the Army. This 
 was the culmination of a chain of events that brought to the 
 aid of the War Department the experience of men who in 
 their civil pursuits had dealt with problems of personnel 
 classification and placement. 
 
 MOBILIZING AMERICA'S MEN OF SCIENCE 
 
 From the moment that America's participation in the war 
 against Germany was decreed, it was evident that the Nation's 
 resources of men, brains, energy, money and materials would 
 all be at the disposal of her military chiefs. Only organi- 
 zation was lacking to harness these immense resources and 
 drive them toward the common goal. 
 
 The Council of National Defense proved to be an effective 
 project for bringing about a measure of the needed organiza- 
 tion and for securing the cooperation of able men of affairs. 
 This body early took over the National Research Council, 
 which thereafter served as its medium for guiding and co- 
 ordinating the war activities of American men of science. Uni- 
 versity laboratories of chemistry, physics, biology and medi- 
 cine were turned into experimental stations for the develop- 
 ment of new and improved methods of wireless telephony, 
 submarine detection, airplane construction, computation of the 
 trajectory of projectiles, poison gas manufacture, gas mask 
 design, transfusion of blood, antisepsis, and the like. 
 
 53
 
 54 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Activities of the Psychologists. One of several main com- 
 mittees of the National Research Council was the Psychology 
 Committee, which worked in close affiliation with committees 
 of the American Psychological Association. During the spring 
 of 1917, this committee, under the leadership of Dr. R. M. 
 Yerkes of Harvard, was encouraging a number of researches 
 pertinent to military personnel problems. For example, Dr. 
 Bentley, at Illinois, was assembling and digesting all the 
 available scientific literature in English and foreign langu- 
 ages on military psychology. Dr. Raymond Dodge of Wes- 
 leyan, was busy perfecting an apparatus for use in selecting 
 and training naval gun pointers. Drs. Burtt and Miles in 
 Boston, Dr. Thorndike in New York, Dr. Stratton in Berkeley, 
 and several others were analyzing the qualifications of suc- 
 cessful aviators and trying out tests that might aid in predict- 
 ing the likelihood that a candidate would make good as a 
 fighting flier. Dr. Woodworth of Columbia, was attacking 
 the difficult problem of tests for courage and self-mastery 
 under condition of strain and terror. And a group of seven 
 psychologists, chosen because of their contributions to the 
 technique of testing intelligence, were working night and 
 day on the preparation of practicable methods of measur- 
 ing the intelligence of recruits. Skepticism was expressed as 
 to whether this group could produce methods which would 
 really be workable under camp conditions, and which would 
 yield information of much value to the officers responsible 
 for assigning and training the soldier whose native intelligence 
 and mental alertness were to be tested. 
 
 "If the Kaiser had waited five years longer," wrote one 
 eminent psychologist, temperamentally cautious and conserva- 
 tive, "we might have been in a position to furnish the Army 
 with workable psychological methods of proven reliability." 
 To which the inevitable rejoinder was, "Since the Kaiser did 
 not wait, it is up to the psychologists to accomplish in five 
 months what would ordinarily require five years of plodding 
 research." The methods and information recently accumu-
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 55 
 
 lated by psychologists at the University of Illinois, the Car- 
 negie Institute of Technology, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, 
 and elsewhere were all pooled. Improvements were suggested 
 and tried out. And a technique of both group and individual 
 examinations of intelligence was developed which stood the 
 test and demonstrated its worth when tried out in July on 
 five thousand soldiers and sailors in four different training 
 camps. The results of this trial convinced the psychologists 
 that they at last had methods of mental testing which they 
 could heartily endorse for Army use. The National Research 
 Council made recommendations which Surgeon General W. 
 C. Gorgas accepted, that the new methods of mental testing 
 be adopted as a part of the routine of the examination of re- 
 cruits, and that Dr. Yerkes who had initiated the preparation 
 and trial of these methods be commissioned as major in the 
 Medical Department, to direct their installation and adminis- 
 tration in the Army. 
 
 PLANS FOR THE COMMITTEE 
 
 Parallel in point of time with the movement to apply to 
 Army personnel problems the best available methods of 
 mental testing, was Dr. Scott's successful campaign for the 
 introduction of systematic methods of judging and rating the 
 qualifications of officer candidates. (See Chapter 4.) The 
 results obtained by the use of the rating scale in eight of the 
 Reserve Officers' Training Camps, first series, convinced the 
 Adjutant General and the Secretary of War that other 
 branches of the Army might also find advantage in the 
 adoption of similar ways of disclosing ability and talent. 
 They made arrangements for Dr. Scott to confer with the 
 chiefs of all the War Department Bureaus regarding some 
 of their personnel problems, and to prepare a plan for mak- 
 ing available for them in meeting those problems the assist- 
 ance of a group of specialists. 
 
 Such a plan was drawn up on July 28, by Dr. Scott with 
 the assistance of Dr. W. V. Bingham, Head of the Division
 
 56 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 of Applied Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Tech- 
 nology, who at the time was working in the psychology office 
 of the National Research Council on the projected arrange- 
 ments for mental testing of recruits. The plan was patterned 
 roughly after the type of organization which had been used 
 by the Bureau of Salesmanship Research at Pitsburgh, with 
 which Scott and Bingham were associated as Director and 
 Executive Secretary. There was to be a scientific staff, a 
 nucleus of civilian experts who would constitute a research 
 and planning group, and a board of military representa- 
 tives of the various bureaus who would bring to this group 
 the problems to be attacked and who would also see to the 
 installation in their respective departments of such methods 
 as were developed. In the course of a few days which seemed 
 very long to the originators of the plan, impatient to see it 
 put into operation, it was considered by the War College, 
 by the Chiefs of the Bureaus and by The Adjutant General; 
 and met with their endorsement, and on August 5, 1917, the 
 Secretary of War ordered its adoption and directed that a 
 sum of $25,000 be set aside to cover the necessary expenses 
 of the work for six months. 
 
 The descriptive name selected by Secretary Baker for the 
 new organization was The Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel in the Army. It was placed under the jurisdiction 
 of The Adjutant General, rather than in the War College, 
 or in the Council of National Defense, because it was felt 
 that its work should be done in most direct contact with the 
 officers who were immediately responsible for the personnel 
 of the army. Major General H. P. McCain kept it under 
 his immediate personal supervision, instead of incorporating 
 it in one of the already established divisions of the Adjutant 
 General's Office, because its duties were without precedent 
 and also because he had the vision to see as not many men 
 did at the time, what a tremendously far reaching and diffi- 
 cult task was being undertaken.
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 57 
 
 THE COMMITTEE ORGANIZES 
 
 The original membership of the Committee consisted of ten 
 university psychologists who had specialized in the study 
 of human traits and abilities, and two employment man- 
 agers who had had extensive practical experience in the 
 selection and placement of workers. The Committee began 
 operations at once. At its first formal meeting in the Mun- 
 sey Building offices of the National Research Council, August 
 7th, Drs. Bingham, Dodge, Scott, Thorndike and Yerkes 
 were present. Dr. Thorndike was elected Chairman, and Dr. 
 Scott, Executive Secretary. Provisional assignments of re- 
 sponsibilities were agreed upon, not only for the members 
 present, but also for those who had not yet reached Wash- 
 ington, including J. R. Angell, R. C. Clothier, H. L. Gard- 
 ner, J. F. Shepard, E. K. Strong, Jr., L. M. Terman, and 
 J. B. Watson. 
 
 Two weeks later a new position was created, that of Di- 
 rector; and the man elected to fill it was Dr. Scott, who 
 more than any one else had been responsible for initiating the 
 whole enterprise. Dr. Thorndike continued in the capacity of 
 Chairman. The functions of these two men became analagous 
 to the functions of the President or General Manager of 
 a concern, who is responsible for administration, and the 
 Chairman of the Board, who retains the reins in the determin- 
 ation of general policy. The position of Executive Secretary 
 made vacant by Dr. Scott's acceptance of the Directorship, 
 was filled by Dr. Bingham who held that post throughout the 
 period of the Committee's activities, and who also, as second 
 in command to the Director, exercised his functions in his 
 absence. 
 
 Some Early Tasks. Among the first duties assigned to the 
 Committee was an apparently insignificant one; namely, the 
 revision, for the Air Division of the Signal Corps, of the 
 application blank for recording the personal history and 
 qualifications of applicants for admission to the aviation
 
 58 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 schools. The supply of the long four-page folders then in 
 use was exhausted, and the printing .of a fresh edition had 
 been ordered. Although the old blank called for a great deal 
 of detailed information that was never used, and failed to 
 provide for other information that would have been helpful 
 in deciding on the prospective officer's qualifications, the 
 officers in charge were going ahead with re-printing .without 
 attempt at revision because they were so overwhelmed with 
 work that they had no time to pause to make improvements. 
 So as soon as the responsible officer, Major Van Horn, learned 
 of the establishment of the Committee, he asked that it under- 
 take the revision of the application blank. 
 
 This work had to be done in the briefest possible time, and 
 so all available members of the committee turned to. The 
 results of their combined efforts were presented to the Signal 
 Corps by J. B. Watson, and crude as they were, were so 
 gratefully received that Dr. Watson was forthwith asked to 
 accept a major's commission in the Signal Corps, and to as- 
 sume responsibility for organizing and supervising the exam- 
 ining boards which were to make recommendations of candi- 
 dates for training in the Air Service. Dr. Thorndike, an in- 
 defatiguable and prolific worker, also cooperated with the 
 Signal Corps in improving the methods of selection of both 
 officers and men. 
 
 The Quartermaster Corps asked help in preparing qualifi- 
 cation record plans for use in the training courses soon to be 
 opened at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, and Mr. Gardner and 
 Dr. Shepard were detailed to adapt the principles of the rat- 
 ing scale to the requirements of that school and to work out a 
 convenient system for recording progress. 
 
 Dr. Dodge was assigned to cooperate with the Coast Artil- 
 lery, and made a visit to the Coast Defenses at Fort Monroe, 
 Va., to, see whether there was any need there for methods of 
 selecting gun pointers and men to be trained for the fire- 
 control squad, similar to those he had been developing for 
 the Navy.
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 59 
 
 Dr. Angell, who had some familiarity with the training of 
 Ordnance officers, was asked to keep in touch with the per- 
 sonnel problems of that Corps. He also helped Dr. Scott 
 and other members of the Committee in adapting the officers' 
 rating scale to the requirements of different bureaus and 
 Corps. 
 
 Dr. Scott's chief task aside from his multifarious executive 
 duties was to work with Major Grenville Clark and the other 
 officers of the Adjutant General's Department who were re- 
 drafting plans for the next series of Reserve Officrs' Train- 
 ing Camps. 
 
 Dr. Terman gave full time until October 1, as the special 
 representative of the Committee to assist the Medical Depart- 
 ment in the further development of psychological methods, a 
 task in which he had some help from other members of the 
 Committee, particularly Dr. Thorndike and Dr. Bingham. 
 
 Intelligence Testing Separated From Personnel Work. The 
 question has been frequently asked why this intelligence 
 testing was done under the Surgeon General instead of being 
 an integral part of the personnel system as administered by 
 the Adjutant General. The answer is not a logical but an 
 historical reason. 
 
 When the project for establishing the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel was first beginning to take shape, Dr. 
 Yerkes was already arranging his personal affairs prelim- 
 inary to accepting a commission in the Medical Department 
 pursuant to the recommendation of the National Research 
 Council. Dr. Bingham wired urging him not to accept the 
 commission because of the prospect of what appeared to be a 
 larger opportunity for usefulness on the proposed Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel. When the Committee was 
 finally organized Dr. Yerkes was appointed one of the mem- 
 bers; but his original project for developing the psychological 
 work in the Surgeon General's Office was already so well ad- 
 vanced that it seemed clearly unwise to abandon it, and to 
 begin anew with another project which if successful would
 
 60 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 have resulted in the development of the psychological exam- 
 ining and its incorporation as an organic part of the camp 
 personnel work, all under the supervision of the Adjutant 
 General's Department. To this sequence of circumstances 
 rather than to any well considered principle of organization, 
 is attributable the fact that personnel classification, including 
 the systematic interviewing and trade-testing of the recruits, 
 was administered by the Adjutant General's Department, 
 while the mental testing was done by the Medical Depart- 
 ment, and only the results of the tests turned over to the per- 
 sonnel adjutant's office for recording on the soldiers' qualifi- 
 cation cards. Indeed, the question of a merger of the psycho- 
 logical service with the personnel service was raised repeat- 
 edly during the fifteen months following the establishment 
 of the Committee on Classification of Personnel, such a sug- 
 gestion originating sometimes from the office of the Secre- 
 tary of War, and sometimes from the Surgeon General's 
 Office, or from the War Plans Division, or from officers in 
 the camps. But the answer always seemed clear that, although 
 the services logically belonged together, it was unwise under 
 the circumstances to swap horses in the middle of the stream. 
 Quarters in the War Building. At the beginning of its 
 work the committee was provided by the National Research 
 Council with office quarters in the Munsey Building on E 
 Street, near Fourteenth, which at that time housed the Coun- 
 cil of National Defense. But it was evident from the start 
 that the best work could be done only if the Committee were 
 located right in the War Building, where were not only the 
 offices of the Secretary of War, the Chief of Staff, and the 
 Adjutant General, but also the chiefs of most of the other 
 War Department Bureaus. So the Committee counted itself 
 fortunate when on August 24- it was given Room 526, a sort 
 of attic room with one small window, on the fifth floor of the 
 State, War and Navy Building. Adjoining it was Room 528, 
 a large and ornately furnished "cathedra.1," as it was dubbed. 
 As the work of the Committee grew, the space assigned to it
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 61 
 
 steadily expanded until it included not only the "cathedral" 
 but ten other rooms as well. 
 
 The record of this expansion in the scope of the Com- 
 mittee's responsibilities is found in later chapters of this 
 volume. Only one step in that development will here be 
 touched upon, but that is a step of utmost moment. 
 
 The Beginnings of Expansion. At one of the first informal 
 conferences of the Committee the question was raised as to 
 what provision was being made to render available for the 
 use of mustering and assignment officers in the National Army 
 cantonments the information regarding the occupations and 
 qualifications of drafted men which had been obtained by the 
 local draft boards by means of the questionnaires. It was 
 thought that the Committee might be of some assistance in 
 perfecting the blanks and forms which would be utilized for 
 this purpose when, three or four weeks later, the stream of 
 selective service men would begin to flow from all parts of 
 the nation into the cantonments. 
 
 Some preliminary inquiries were made as to who was 
 preparing those plans. It was found that the Provost Mar- 
 shal General's Office had taken no steps in that direction 
 because it was charged only with responsibility for examining 
 and selecting the recruits and delivering them to the Army. 
 It had nothing to do with them after their arrival at camp. 
 The information on the questionnaires, as far as that office 
 was concerned, would remain with the local boards. Inquiries 
 in various offices of the War Department brought the assur- 
 ance that the matter was being provided for, but no one 
 seemed able to tell just who had it in hand; so that soon the 
 apprehension deepened into the conviction that no one at all 
 had been definitely charged with responsibility for classifying 
 the recruits of the new National Army, and assigning them 
 according to their abilities. When the situation was brought 
 to the attention of Major General McCain he directed the 
 Committee to undertake this work, to draw up plans for an 
 adequate soldier classification and placement system, and also
 
 62 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 to prepare to put those plans into operation. The Committee 
 empowered Mr. Clothier to supervise the preparation of these 
 plans and arrangements. 
 
 This move marked the early transition of the Committee 
 from its original status as an advisory, research and planning 
 group, to an organization with executive and supervisory 
 responsibilities as well. Here was to be its largest single 
 task and its greatest opportunity for service. If this duty 
 could be fully met, the wealth of skill and talent and special- 
 ized experience which the nation was about to pour unstintedly 
 into the ranks of the expanded Army, would not be wasted or 
 lost, but would be judiciously used where the most pressing 
 military needs required. 
 
 The establishment of the Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel in the Army is to be credited to five men: Secre- 
 tary Newton D. Baker, who recognized the necessity for the 
 utilization of the best ability of the country in this phase of 
 the task of mobilization and training; Major General H. P. 
 McCain, who foresaw as few regular army officers did, how 
 complex and how vital was the impending personnel problem; 
 Major Grenville Clark, who was deeply concerned about the 
 need for an adequate supply of able, trained officers, and who 
 from the very first perceived the value of systematic per- 
 sonnel work in sifting and conserving officer material in the 
 training camps; Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, who as Assistant 
 to the Secretary of War, in early July first brought the whole 
 matter to the attention of the military authorities and who in 
 countless instances since that day has proven himself a power- 
 ful supporter of the work; and Dr. Walter Dill Scott, who 
 first conceived the idea, and whose faith in the cause, coupled 
 with his tremendous energy and devotion, enabled him to 
 accomplish for the Army a truly distinguished service.
 
 CHAPTER 6 
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL WORK INTO 
 THE CAMPS 
 
 ADOPTION OF SOLDIER'S QUALIFICATION CARD 
 
 Shortly after the Committee on Classification of Personnel 
 was organized, it was realized that the work to be done was 
 so diversified that particular assignments must be given to the 
 individual members of the Committee. Accordingly, the matter 
 of installing personnel work in the National Army was 
 assigned to Mr. Clothier and Dr. Angell. 
 
 Several days were given over to the preparation of a classi- 
 fication card to record the individual abilities and qualifications 
 of the men in the national army. Finally, on August 23, the 
 form was sufficiently completed to go to press. The form 
 decided upon was a card, comprising questions covering all 
 essential information about the man, a list of the principal 
 kinds of skill needed by the army, so far as it was possible at 
 that early date to determine them, and a set of numbers along 
 the top of the card corresponding to numbers indicating the 
 kinds of skill below. The plan provided for colored celluloid 
 tabs to be affixed on the proper numbers at the top of the 
 cards to indicate at a glance the cards belonging to men having 
 certain kinds of skill. 
 
 On the afternoon of August 23, 1917, The Adjutant Gen- 
 eral, Major General H. P. McCain approved the card and gave 
 orders to go ahead, stipulating only that the card should be 
 shown to the officer who had charge of all forms, in order to 
 avoid any conflict with existing forms. 
 
 Due to certain difficulties, among which was the impossibility 
 of filing the card due to the tabbing system according to the 
 
 63
 
 64 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 A. G. O. system, it was finally decided not to print the cards 
 as an A. G. O. form. In consequence, the form was given 
 the initials of the Committee on Classification of Personnel and 
 became Form CCP-1, the first of the many forms devised and 
 issued by the Committee. For this printing a supplementary 
 appropriation of $26,000 was approved. (A more detailed 
 discussion of the development of this card is presented in 
 Chapter 11). 
 
 INTRODUCTION INTO NATIONAL ARMY CAMPS 
 
 Early Plans at Washington, On August 29th, Dr. Scott, 
 Dr. Bingham, Major Grenville Clark and Mr. Clothier 
 went to the War College to see whether the War College 
 had devised any plans for assigning men in the canton- 
 ments to places in the Army for which they were specially 
 fitted. The group was introduced to Colonel P. D. Loch- 
 ridge, Director of the War College, who explained that 
 he had just ordered telegrams issued to all the national army 
 and national guard cantonments ordering them to give atten- 
 tion to the placement of men according to their kinds of skill. 
 These telegrams, however, failed to suggest any method of 
 accomplishing this result. When Dr. Scott explained the 
 Committee plan to Colonel Lochridge, Colonel Lochridge 
 reacted favorably at once and called the War Department on 
 the telephone to hold the telegrams which he had ordered sent 
 out. 
 
 Colonel Lochridge requested that the plan be applied at 
 once to both national army and national guard camps, but it 
 was recognized that by attempting too much the group might 
 accomplish too little, and Dr. Scott explained, therefore, that 
 for the present the Committee would restrict its efforts to the 
 men of the national army. Colonel Lochridge's telegram was 
 sent to the Commanding Generals of the national guard can- 
 tonments but later reports showed that the results were almost 
 negligible. 
 
 It was felt that the \vork would not properly function in
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 65 
 
 the camps unless it were supervised by an officer with at least 
 the rank of captain. It quickly became apparent that the 
 camp work would require a man of intelligence and ability, 
 corresponding in a crude way to the employment manager of 
 an industrial concern and that in no manner could this work be 
 regarded as statistical or clerical in nature if it was really to 
 prove of value to the army. 
 
 On August 25, 1917, therefore, Major (later Col.) Jens 
 Bugge sent the following telegram to each of the national army 
 cantonments : 
 
 "Division Commander: 
 
 You will detail for work in assignment of drafted men 
 in your cantonment a Captain of Reserve Officers' Corps 
 to cooperate with Committee on Classification of Person- 
 nel in Army. Should be trained business man, an em- 
 ployer of labor if possible and familiar with advanced 
 employment practices. Order him to report to Scott 
 Saturday morning, Sept. 1, 9 A. M., Room 526, War 
 Building, Washington. 
 
 McCAIN." 
 
 Because of the shortness of the time remaining before the 
 first drafted men would reach camp, it was felt desirable to 
 undertake the work at first in only four cantonments, thereby 
 in actual practice determining the best ways and means of 
 getting the maximum results. On this basis the Committee 
 would be prepared, when the second draft entered camp, to 
 install a system tested in actual experience. Owing to the 
 postponment of the draft by ten days, however, Major Bugge's 
 advice to go ahead at once in all sixteen cantonments, pre- 
 vailed. He explained that this was not the time to take half- 
 way steps ; that the nation was at war and that it was better 
 to go ahead on a big scale and make mistakes than to go 
 ahead on a small scale and make none. 
 
 Plans for Supervision of Work. From the very outset 
 the Committee recognized the need for supervision of the 
 work in the camps. It was felt that owing to the geographi-
 
 66 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 cal distance between the camps, an artificial means of co- 
 ordinating the work in all would be necessary, if individ- 
 ual practices were not to spring up in each which would 
 tend to nullify the effectiveness of the whole organization. 
 Furthermore, the Committee appreciated the need of in- 
 structing the personnel officers in their duties and of educat- 
 ing them to a full conception of the possibilities and the 
 value of their work. It was decided, therefore, that for 
 this supervisory work the Committee should procure from 
 industrial concerns, which had installed advanced employment 
 methods in their own organizations, employment managers of 
 training and experience. 
 
 The appropriation for the salaries and expenses of these 
 employment managers had not yet been approved, but so great 
 was the confidence of the Committee in the necessity for the 
 help of these men and in the inevitable approval of the work 
 that Mr. Gardner and Mr. Clothier started out on the morn- 
 ing of August 30, 1917 to secure these sixteen men. Mr. 
 Gardner went to New England and through New York state 
 to Buffalo; Mr. Clothier went to Philadelphia, Newark, New 
 York and Chicago. Dr. Scott operated from Washington by 
 telegraph. This campaign for men took about a week and re- 
 sulted in enlisting the service of Philip Brasher, Chile Explor- 
 ation Company, New York City; William Clark, International 
 Harvester Company, Chicago; N. F. Dougherty, Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company, Philadelphia; J. W. Dietz, Western Elec- 
 tric Company, Chicago; C. R. Dooley, Westinghouse Electric 
 and Manufacturing Company, East Pittsburgh, Pa.; R. B. 
 King, Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, Newark; W. S. Mac- 
 Arthur, Armour and Company, Chicago; W. A. Sawyer, 
 American Pulley Company, Philadelphia; J. E. Sheridan, 
 Crane Company, Chicago; A. J. Turner, Washington Water 
 Power Company, Spokane, Wash. ; Kendall Weisiger, Southern 
 Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, Atlanta, Ga. ; C. J. 
 Whipple, Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett and Company, Chicago; 
 M. M. Jones, Thomas A. Edison Inc., Orange, N. J.; Philip
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 67 
 
 J. Reilly, Dennison Manufacturing Company, Framingham, 
 Mass. ; R. H. Puffer, Larkin Company, Buffalo. 
 
 Original Orders to Camp Commanders. In order that 
 the Division Commanders might be acquainted with the 
 Army's plans for the proper placement of personnel and 
 the purpose of the telegram of August 25, the following 
 telegram was issued on August 29 : 
 
 "Commanding General: 
 
 A careful study will be made of the abilities of the drafted 
 men of your command with a view to ascertaining their special 
 qualifications for duty in the different branches of the service. 
 To assist you in doing this work in a systematic manner a plan 
 has been formulated by the Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel in the Army recently appointed by Secretary of 
 War. Plan provides for securing data concerning the educa- 
 tion, occupation and special qualifications of each drafted man. 
 There will be a simple qualification record for each man, these 
 to be assembled and analyzed in a Personnel Office in each 
 cantonment under charge of a Personnel Officer selected by 
 Division Commander. Forms, filing cases and expert civilian 
 assistance will be furnished by the Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel. Further details will be furnished shortly. 
 
 The meeting of Personnel Officers which your Division Per- 
 sonnel Officer has been directed to attend in Washington, 
 September 8th is in connection with this work. 
 
 McCAIN." 
 
 Supplementing this telegram the following letter was issued 
 on September 5, in which the relationship that was to exist 
 between the Committee and the Army was emphasized. 
 
 "From: The Adjutant General. 
 
 To: Division Commander at 
 
 Subject: Classification of Personnel in the Cantonment. 
 
 "1. The classification of men in the cantonment as to their 
 occupational qualifications will be made jointly by a civilian 
 expert supplied by the Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel in the Army and the Personnel Officer already ap- 
 pointed by you. Major Jones of the Statistical Department, 
 The Adjutant General's Office, Washington, D. C., is direct- 
 ing the three statistical officers in your camp to cooperate in 
 so far as they are not otherwise occupied.
 
 68 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "2. The relationship between the expert supplied by the 
 Committee on Classification of Personnel in the Army and the 
 Personnel Officer is that between a manager in a concern and 
 a certified public accountant temporarily called in by the firm 
 to install a new system of accounting. The Personnel Officer 
 will report to the Division Adjutant concerning all matters 
 dealing with the classification of men in the cantonment. But 
 in all matters dealing with the installation of the system the 
 expert supplied by the Committee will have full charge. As 
 soon as the Committee feels that the system has been thor- 
 oughly established the expert will be withdrawn and the Per- 
 sonnel Officer will be left in full charge. It is anticipated 
 that the services of the expert will be needed for ten weeks 
 and they have volunteered their services on that understanding. 
 
 "3. The furniture for the Personnel Office has already been 
 ordered by the Quartermaster General's Office and shipped 
 in care of the Personnel Officer. 
 
 "<t. The following items should be provided: 
 
 (1) Approximately 300 square feet of floor space for the 
 
 Personnel Office at Division Headquarters. 
 
 (2) Telephone. 
 
 (3) Quarters in the camp. 
 
 (4) Suitable place in camp for meals for which he will 
 
 pay- 
 
 (5) Clerical assistance as required, to be performed by 
 
 men detailed from the command. 
 
 (Signed) 
 JENS BUGGE, Adjutant General." 
 
 Conferences on Field Work. On September 8, the first con- 
 ference of field men, personnel officers and civilians, was held 
 in Room 526, State, War and Navy Building. Besides the 
 civilians named above the following officers attended: 
 
 Captain Lawrence Ewing of Camp D evens, 
 Captain Frank Knox of Camp Dix, 
 Captain Richard L. Boyd of Camp Gordon, 
 Captain Frank W. Ehrlich of Camp Jackson, 
 Captain J. Straughan Downing of Camp Lee. 
 Captain W. C. Lawrence of Camp Sherman, 
 Captain C. A. Edwardsen of Camp Taylor, 
 Captain Francis W. Perry of Camp Upton.
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 69 
 
 In addition, General McCain, Major (now Colonel) Jens 
 Bugge, Major P. T. Hayne, Major (now Lt. Col.) Grenville 
 Clark, Major (now Lt. Col.) J. O. Walsh and several other 
 officers, together with all members of the Committee, were 
 present. 
 
 General McCain made the opening address as follows : 
 
 "I hardly know what to say about the work of this 
 Committee. This is all new, and, from my viewpoint, a 
 most important innovation. We can never expect to get 
 the maximum service out of any army unless we have each 
 man placed where he can serve best. Hence it is highly 
 important that we should know what every man is fitted 
 to do. It is useless to make a chemist a teamster, or put 
 a teamster to nursing. If we can get every man at his 
 proper job we can all work in unison and get somewhere. 
 It is a big contract you have, and it is up to you! The 
 collection of the information about the men is not so diffi- 
 cult, but the trouble is going to be in arranging it and 
 putting it where it will be readily accessible to the Com- 
 manding Generals. A Commanding Officer must have a 
 certain piece of information at a moment's notice. You 
 must be in a position to give this information right off 
 the bat! 
 
 "Also we are now wholly ignorant of the capabilities 
 of all officers in the National Guard. If your committee 
 can help us with a system for the promotion of officers 
 we will be very grateful indeed." 
 
 On the following day, General McCain spoke again for a 
 few minutes, as follows : 
 
 "We here in the War Department want to know where 
 we are lacking and where we have made good. If the 
 data concerning the men in the army can be sent here 
 where it is accessible to the Secretary of War and to the 
 Chief of Staff, they can select the material best fitted for 
 different expeditions. Then in each one of the camps you 
 must have this information where the Division Adjutant 
 and the Camp Commander will have it at hand. Your 
 job after that is to find some system of selection and 
 some basis for promotion. 
 
 If we can have the information on these cards in the
 
 70 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 War Department I think we can accomplish a whole lot. 
 I hope you gentlemen will adopt a scheme that is sim- 
 . plicity itself. 
 
 You will never find a perfect scheme until you put 
 whatever scheme you have into operation. You are going 
 to make mistakes, but go right ahead! It is not difficult 
 to explain why you have made a mistake, but it is difficult 
 to explain why you have not done anything." 
 
 Major Bugge was another officer who saw the problem "in 
 the big." He spoke as follows : 
 
 "I have been here about two months, and one thing I 
 have noticed is that we don't do things on a large enough 
 scale. We have had an army of 25,000 for so long that 
 we still want to apply the same methods to an army of 
 10 or 15 times as large. The Committee said at first, 
 'We are going to try our method on four camps.' The 
 trouble with a plan like that is that the four camps are 
 doing one thing and the others are doing something else, 
 so that there is no basis of comparison. It is just lost 
 time. 
 
 "The work which this Committee is doing will prove 
 invaluable. It will help us to put round pegs into round 
 holes. The only suggestion I have is that when you get 
 this information you should try as far as possible to get 
 an estimate of what the Division Commander needs. It 
 would be a good plan to have everything over and above 
 what the Division Commander needs put in some sort of 
 reservoir where they will be on tap. Some Division Com- 
 manders want to hold on to everything they can get hold 
 of. You should fix it so that you don't have to quarrel 
 with the Division Commander when you want a man. I 
 think you will find that General McCain will back you 
 up in any practical scheme that you propose." 
 
 Major Grenville Clark, the representative of The Adjutant 
 General with the Committee outlined the work to be done in 
 the following words: 
 
 "I would like to call attention to the fact that, as I 
 see it, there are three separate problems before this 
 Committee :
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 
 
 71 
 
 1. Assigning the men. 
 
 a. Into their proper places in the Division. 
 
 b. Getting the data so that men can be taken out of 
 
 the Division if necessary for special service. 
 
 2. Keeping track of the men after the assignments 
 have been made. 
 
 3. Working out a selection system for the promotion 
 of officers." 
 
 Mr. Clothier and Dr. Strong had charge of the conference 
 which proceeded very satisfactorily. At the outset the officers 
 were inclined to believe they were being side-tracked and 
 would lose their chance of promotion. During the course of 
 the morning, however, one after another began to see that the 
 work meant a great future rather than a handicap. The 
 conference continued with a luncheon at the University Club 
 at noon and then in the office throughout the afternoon and 
 evening and the following morning. At the conclusion of the 
 conference the officers returned to their camps with the civil- 
 ians who had been assigned to those camps. 
 
 The assignments were as follows: 
 
 CAMP OFFICER 
 
 Devens Capt. Lawrence Ewing 
 Dix Frank Knox 
 
 Gordon Richard L. Boyd 
 
 Jackson Frank W. Ehrlich 
 
 Lee J. S. Downing 
 
 Meade T. S. Dunn 
 
 Sherman W. C. Lawrence 
 
 Taylor " C. A. Edwardsen 
 
 Upton F. W. Perry 
 
 Following the conference at Washington, one of the so- 
 called Civilian Experts raised a query as to whether the 
 position could not be adequately filled by a clerk, because 
 it seemed to him that the work was largely that adapted to a 
 high grade clerk. He was assured that a clerk was all that 
 was necessary, allowed him to return to his home, where 
 he still is. All the other civilians, both at Washington and 
 St. Louis, looked upon the task as one equal to any that ever 
 
 CIVILIAN .; 
 Philip J. Reilly 
 William Alfred Sawyer 
 Kendall Weisiger 
 Philip Brasher 
 N. F. Dougherty 
 R. B. King 
 C. R. Dooley 
 E. K. Strong, Jr. 
 M. M. Jones
 
 72 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 befell a man either in civil or military life. Alost of the men 
 regarded it as a wonderful opportunity to be able to utilize 
 all of their energy in the interest of the Army. The work was 
 undertaken with enthusiasm and as a task worthy of unselfish 
 service. The men all realized when they left Washington 
 and St. Louis, that they were going to the hardest job that 
 they had ever had, that they would be unable to keep any 
 regular hours, and enjoy the conveniences of home life, but 
 they felt it was the greatest opportunity they had ever 
 en j oyed. 
 
 Conference at St. Louis. On September 9, Mr. Clothier and 
 Dr. Strong left for St. Louis in order to hold a similar con- 
 ference for the officers superintending the work in the western 
 cantonments. The conference was held at Planters Hotel. 
 On the evening of the 10th there was a small informal dinner 
 with the civilians in order to permit preliminary discussion; 
 those present were Whipple, Dietz, MacArthur, Puffer, Clark, 
 Strong, and Clothier. The work was outlined and the follow- 
 ing morning the officers presented themselves: Capt. Bruce R. 
 Honeyman of Camp Dodge, Capt. J. C. Strutz of Camp 
 Funston, Capt. Lawrence H. Whiting of Camp Grant, Capt. 
 James T. Dortch of Camp Pike, Capt. J. Perry Moore of 
 Camp Travis, and Capt. D. J. Coman of Camp Lewis. 
 
 The program was similar to that of the conference in 
 Washington and resulted in the officers obtaining a good con- 
 ception of and degree of enthusiasm for the work. After the 
 conference the civilians accompanied their officers to the can- 
 tonments in order to inaugurate and develop the work. The 
 assignments were as follows: 
 
 CAMP OFFICER CIVILIAN 
 
 Grant Capt. L. H. Whiting R. H. Puffer 
 
 Pike James T. Dortch J. Walter Dietz 
 
 Dodge Bruce R. Honeyman C. J. Whipple 
 
 Funston J. O . Strutz J. E. Sheridan 
 
 Travis J. p erry Moore William Clark 
 
 Lewis D. J. Coman Arthur J. Turner
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL ' 73 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NATIONAL ARMY 
 CANTONMENTS 
 
 In those early days the work was still simple in nature and 
 relatively crude when compared with the refinements later 
 introduced. The original plan provided for the interviewing 
 of the men by their company commanders, but this was found 
 to be impracticable for two reasons. First, it was impossible 
 to properly train the company commander in analysis and in- 
 terview. He already was charged with a thousand and one 
 duties and had not the time nor the inclination to be careful 
 and penetrating in this work. Subsequently, it became appar- 
 ent that there was a tendency on the part of those officers, who 
 wished to do so, to disguise the special abilities of high grade 
 men in order to forestall and prevent the drawing of those 
 men out of their companies and the assigning of them to posi- 
 tions elsewhere, where their specific abilities could be used. 
 
 Later, therefore, it was found far more effective to provide 
 for the interviewing and the filling out of the soldiers' qualifi- 
 cation cards by officers and enlisted men of superior intelli- 
 gence especially trained for this work. This permitted an in- 
 creasing degree of intelligence and accuracy in preparing the 
 qualification cards and prevented the possibility of intentional 
 concealment on the part of the company commanders. 
 
 Discussion as to where the cards should be kept at Com- 
 pany, Regimental or Division Headquarters finally resulted 
 in the decision to keep all cards at Division Headquarters, 
 whence intra-unit transfers could be made, and to permit 
 company commanders to retain duplicates of cards of their 
 men for assistance in assigning men in their companies. For 
 this purpose a buff qualification card was prepared which 
 was practically identical with the white qualification card. 
 The use of these buff cards was not made mandatory, but 
 optional with the company commanders. 
 
 It soon became apparent that the officers themselves had no 
 proper guidance or knowledge to assist them in assigning
 
 74 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 their men effectively. This was America's first great scientific 
 war and the Tables of Organization had not contemplated 
 using men according to their skill, but according to their 
 physical and military qualifications only. Yet it was soon 
 seen that in a scientific war of this kind industrial skill, 
 which cannot be made overnight in a training camp, was 
 going to be a factor that must be reckoned with seriously. 
 
 As a means of assisting the division officers in assigning 
 their men a chart was prepared, based on the Tables of Orga- 
 nization, which was intended to show iri a crude way where 
 men of certain kinds of skill should be placed. This was 
 known as Chart A and was subsequently amended and issued 
 as Chart B, showing the number of specialists needed in each 
 unit in the division on a war-strength basis. These charts 
 were the germ of the Tables of Occupational Needs explained 
 elsewhere in this book. 
 
 Several weeks afterwards a telegram was directed to the 
 Commanding Generals of the various camps asking their judg- 
 ment of this system. The results were generally favorable 
 and in many cases were enthusiastic. General McCain had, 
 furthermore, formed his own opinion of the value of this 
 work and consequently directed that the Committee should 
 undertake at once the classification of the men in the National 
 Guard camps. 
 
 EXTENSION OF SYSTEM 
 
 National Guard Camps. Letters of explanation and tele- 
 grams were therefore issued to the Commanding Generals at 
 the National Guard Camps and a conference similar to those 
 held with the National Army personnel officers was called in 
 Washington, on October 27, 1917. The officers present were: 
 
 Captain C. B. Altemose of Camp Hancock. 
 
 Captain D. M. Simons of Camp McClellan, 
 
 Captain G. S. Tait of the 41st Division at Camp Mills, 
 
 Captain W. H. Kyle of Camp Sevier, 
 
 Captain Royal Mattice of Camp Sheridan, 
 
 Captain E. E. Gauche of Camp Wadsworth,
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 75 
 
 Lieutenant Fred A. Feld of Camp Wheeler. 
 
 In organizing the work in the national guard camps it was 
 felt that it would not be necessary to have a civilian super- 
 visor for each camp owing to the fact that the work was now 
 commenced and that it would be possible to train the 
 national guard personnel officers in part by having them visit 
 national army cantonments where the work was already func- 
 tioning and in full swing. It was decided, therefore, to have 
 four civilian supervisors instead of eight. These were 
 Brasher, Dougherty, Sawyer and Weisiger. 
 
 The conference was uniformly successful. The procedure 
 was the same as in the conferences with the national army 
 personnel officers. A great deal of encouragement and enthu- 
 siasm resulted from General McCain's opening remarks. 
 Whereas, at the conference of national army personnel officers 
 on September 8, General McCain had expressed himself as 
 believing the work had merit, but asking to have it proved to 
 him, he now expressed himself as convinced of its merit and 
 believing that the system installed by the Committee was one 
 of the most valuable contributions that had been made to the 
 Army in the last twenty years. 
 
 After the conference the personnel officers from the na- 
 tional guard camps were conducted to certain of the national 
 army camps where the system was in full operation. In this 
 way they were given an object lesson and afforded an oppor- 
 tunity to see the machinery moving. This method of coach- 
 ing them was undoubtedly very effective. 
 
 Following the conference Mr. Clothier and Dr. Strong left 
 for San Antonio, arriving there October 30. As at St. Louis, 
 there was a preliminary dinner meeting the evening before 
 the conference, which was attended by Dietz, MacArthur, 
 Puffer, Clark, Strong and Clothier. 
 
 The next morning the conference was called at the Hotel 
 St. Anthony. The officers present were: 
 
 Captain D. E. Beams of Camp Beauregard, 
 Captain T. R. Crippen of Camp Bowie,
 
 76 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Captain Smith of Camp Cody, 
 
 (who was later replaced by Capt. N. W. Larimore), 
 Captain W. D. Moreland of Camp Doniphan, 
 Captain B. J. Kempter of Camp Kearney, 
 Captain W. C. Grierson of Camp Logan, 
 Captain E. H. Allen of Camp MacArthur. 
 
 Just before the opening of the meeting a telegram was 
 received from The Adjutant General directing that full em- 
 phasis should be placed upon the importance of this work 
 and that the names of the officers who were undertaking it 
 should be telegraphed to Washington. These orders were 
 complied with and were very effective in impressing upon the 
 officers the value of the work and of the opportunity that was 
 presented to them. Following the conference the officers and 
 civilians left for a three-day apprenticeship at nearby national 
 army camps where the work was already in operation. 
 
 Regular Army Divisions. Orders were now received from 
 General McCain to proceed with the classification of men in 
 all branches of the army and to proceed with the organization 
 of the personnel work in the Regular Army units. Accord- 
 ingly the Committee proceeded with the personnel work in the 
 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Regular Army divisions. The situation 
 in the regular army divisions was different from that in the 
 national army and national guard units, inasmuch as the 
 regular army divisions were at that time distributed all over 
 the United States in units sometimes as small as companies. 
 Especial stress was laid upon the 3rd and 4th divisions, as 
 they were bound overseas at an earlier date and were more 
 concentrated than the other regular army divisions. Both of 
 these divisions were at that time located at Camp Greene, 
 N. C., and to Camp Greene, accordingly, Mr. MacArthur was 
 sent. Subsequently he was replaced by Mr. Reilly. 
 
 Coast Defense Stations. About the first of January, 1918, in- 
 structions were received to undertake the classification of men 
 at the Coast Defense Stations, of which there were twenty- 
 seven in the United States and about five at other points, such
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL 77 
 
 as at the Canal Zone, Phillipmes, etc. In November, cards for 
 officers and men had been sent to Coast Defense Stations with 
 instructions for the classification of the personnel at such 
 stations, but the results were not satisfactory in fact, so 
 unsatisfactory that about February 1st, a telegram was issued 
 to the Commanding Officer of each post instructing him 
 to hold in abeyance the classification of his personnel pending 
 the arrival of a representative of this Committeee. This condi- 
 tion was a vivid testimonial to the value of the system of 
 supervision which had been responsible in such large part for 
 the success of the work in the national army and national 
 guard cantonments. Subsequently, the classification of Coast 
 Defense units was accomplished under a system of supervi- 
 sion identical with those in operation in the national army and 
 national guard cantonments. 
 
 Conclusion. The above account covers the preliminary 
 stages in establishing personnel work in the army. The work 
 steadily progressed from this point, as told in subsequent 
 chapters, until it was an integral part of the entire Army in 
 this country and abroad.
 
 CHAPTER 7 
 
 
 
 THE PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 
 FALL AND WINTER, 1917-18 
 
 Simultaneously with the introduction of the personnel 
 classification system into the National Army cantonments and 
 into the camps of the National Guard and Regular Army divi- 
 sions, improvements in the system were constantly being 
 developed by the planning group in Washington. 
 
 It was during this period that the Central Personnel Record 
 Office was started by H. L. Gardner and rapidly developed 
 by A. C. Robinson III., to maintain a continuous inventory 
 of the skilled and partly skilled men in the camps. Here, 
 too, were received from the Staff Corps personnel officers their 
 requisitions for specialists, to be inquired into by Major 
 Grenville Clark and passed on to the Operations Branch of 
 the General Staff with recommendations as to priorities and 
 as to the best sources of supply. 
 
 The need for a common language and a more exact termin- 
 ology in all these personnel transactions brought about the 
 revision by E. K. Strong, Jr., and J. J. Swan of the index of 
 occupations and the initiation by Mr. Swan of his plans for 
 the volume of Army Trade Specifications. 
 
 The pioneer work of F. T. Fisher, Max Watson and T. L. 
 Kelley on the development of trade tests led on November 1 
 to the establishment of the Trade Test Division, under Mark 
 M. Jones, to prepare technical aids for interviewers and 
 standardized tests of trade proficiency. 
 
 A significant study of systems of receiving and handling 
 men in the camps and of the accompanying army paper work 
 the bane of company commanders was begun on November 
 
 78
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 79 
 
 16 by W. R. DeField, whose recommendations eventually led 
 to important simplifications of procedure. 
 
 J. R. Angell prepared a plan for the classification of all 
 officers, and devoted a great deal of time to the study of pos- 
 sible methods of systematic rating and promotion on merit. 
 He helped W. D. Scott prepare plans for the selection of 
 officer candidates from among the men in the ranks. The use 
 of the rating scale in this connection was introduced in all the 
 camps, by the method of lectures and demonstrations, during 
 the second half of November. 
 
 Psychological Examining. The tentative use of mental 
 tests in four of the National Army cantonments during the 
 fall months had abundantly demonstrated their practicability 
 and their possibilities for usefulness. In response to an 
 inquiry from the Surgeon General regarding the value of the 
 test data in classifying and assigning recruits, the Committee 
 voted on December 5 to recommend the extension of the 
 psychological examining to all cantonments. Favorable action 
 was taken by the Surgeon General and the General Staff; and 
 the winter and early spring months saw not only an extension 
 of the field of the psychological examining, but an increasing 
 understanding on the part of personnel officers and psychol- 
 ogists of how the intelligence scores could be utilized^ in 
 selecting superior recruits for special assignment or training, 
 and in distributing available talent so as to effect a well 
 balanced organization. 
 
 Increasing the Supply of Skill. It was early recognized 
 that any adequate program of personnel supply must reckon 
 with the facilities at the disposal of the Army for training 
 occupational specialists. Dr. Kelley called special attention 
 to this matter and on December 6 was directed to make a 
 survey of staff corps facilities for training trade apprentices. 
 His illuminating report was one of the documents that helped 
 Major Clark to bring forcibly to the attention of the Adju- 
 tant General and the General Staff the need for vastly greater 
 facilities for the training of technicians. Other agencies,
 
 80 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 including the Federal Board for Vocational Education and the 
 Committee on Engineering and Education of the Council of 
 National Defense, had been striving toward the same end. 
 Among the data which these agencies found useful in making 
 their point that the facilities of the technical schools of the 
 country must be utilized, was a first rough summary prepared 
 by W. V. Bingham and L. R. Frazier in January, 1918, to 
 show the total needs of the Army for skilled workers, together 
 with the visible supply and the resulting surplus or shortage 
 in each essential army trade. 
 
 A program of short intensive courses for selective service 
 men specially inducted and sent to trade and technical schools, 
 was advocated* particularly by Col. (later Brig.-Gen.) R. I. 
 Rees, Major (later Lt. Col.) Clark, and Major (later Col.) 
 J. H. Wigmore, and led to the establishment of the Committee 
 on Education and Special Training and, later, the Students' 
 Army Training Corps. (See Chapter 41.) 
 
 Major Clark who from the beginning had been administra- 
 tive officer for the Committee on Classification of Personnel 
 was given large responsibilities in connection with the new 
 committee. And as this work rapidly expanded it became 
 necessary for him to withdraw more and more from the per- 
 sonnel organization. 
 
 Shortly after the opening of the new year, the War Service 
 Exchange was inaugurated under Winslow Russell and J. J. 
 Coss, with the co-operation of Major (later Lt. Col.) E. N. 
 Sanctuary, to enable the War Department more fully to take 
 advantage of the numerous civilian proffers of service. (See 
 Chapter 39.) 
 
 Personnel Supervision. Out in the camps many hundreds 
 of officers and men in the personnel organizations were con- 
 stantly working out simplifications of procedure and improve- 
 ments of technique in interviewing, classifying, assigning, 
 recording and reporting. Any device of organization or 
 building arrangements or routing of men which was found to 
 effect a saving of time -and money and labor, or to increase
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 81 
 
 the accuracy of classification and placement, was wanted in 
 all the camps and not merely in the one which first made the 
 discovery. It was indispensable that these live camp organ- 
 izations be kept in closest touch with each other and with 
 Washington. 
 
 It was to meet this situation that the plan of having several 
 traveling personnel supervisors was adopted. A selection was 
 made from among the civilian employment managers and per- 
 sonnel experts who had supervised the initial installation of 
 the personnel classification in the National Army cantonments 
 and the National Guard camps. About the first of January, 
 1918, Kendall Weisiger was made responsible for the inspec- 
 tion and general supervision of personnel work in the South- 
 eastern region, including Camps Gordon, McClellan, Sheridan, 
 Hancock, Wheeler, Jackson, Sevier and Wadsworth. William 
 H. Clark, who had introduced the work into Camps Travis. 
 Logan and Bowie, extended his points of contact to the other 
 camps in Texas and the adjoining territory, and later did a 
 great deal to standardize the personnel work in Texas aviation 
 camps also. 1 Similarly A. J. Turner became responsible for 
 the Far West, R. H. Puffer for the Middle West, and P. J. 
 Reilly for the Northeastern and Central Eastern regions. 
 W. S. Mac Arthur and C. J. Whipple, while no longer giving 
 full time to the War Department, were called upon in 
 emergencies to continue this work of inspection and super- 
 vision. 
 
 The interchange of information and experience between 
 Washington and the camps was further facilitated by 
 frequent trips which members of the Committee made to cen- 
 ters where the work seemed to be progressing with exceptional 
 smoothness or with difficulty. These visits often enabled them 
 to straighten out tangles and get results which no amount of 
 correspondence could have accomplished. Of still greater 
 value for the development of the whole movement was the 
 
 1 The sudden death of Mr. Clark, which occurred In February, almost 
 Immediately after the cessation of his duties, is mourned by every one who 
 knew of his splendid service to the Army in the Southwest.
 
 82 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 i 
 
 first-hand information regarding actual camp problems which 
 they brought back to the Washington office. 
 
 Continual shifts in the enlisted personnel of the division 
 personnel offices were reported. Soldiers were temporarily 
 detailed to help the personnel officers, but were not perma- 
 nently assigned there because no provision for such assign- 
 ments appeared in the Tables of Organization issued in 
 August. Efforts toward a more stable organization led at last 
 to the authorization of a nucleus of permanently assigned per- 
 sonnel officers and assistants. At the same time, the activities 
 of the insurance section, the statistical section and the per- 
 sonnel section of the division adjutant's office, all of which 
 were closely related, were consolidated under a single head. 
 The resulting economies of organization released a number of 
 competent officers and men for other duties. 
 
 The Personnel Manual. Dr. Strong became the recognized 
 authority on details of the classification regulations and of 
 actual procedure in the camps. He was responsible for all 
 changes in C.C.P. forms. He was also charged with the duty 
 of preparing the chapters of the Personnel Manual, which 
 crystallized for general use the best practices of all the camps. 
 Into this volume went the results of his own experience in 
 receiving, classifying and assigning men at Camp Taylor and 
 elsewhere, his studies of all the pertinent regulations, orders 
 and reports, and his summaries of the concensus of opinion 
 gleaned from personnel officers and supervisors. This manual 
 was in a sense a development of two earlier documents. One 
 was Mr. DeField's report on the practice developed by 
 Captain F. W. Perry for receiving men at Camp Upton. The 
 other was a guide for interviewers, prepared by a group of 
 junior officers while serving under Mr. Weisiger's supervision 
 as a "flying squadron," to go from camp to camp in his ter- 
 ritory wherever the classification program was most in need 
 of help. 
 
 Liaison with A. E. F. Headquarters. The recommendation 
 of a mission to France to extend the personnel classification
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 83 
 
 into the American Expeditionary Forces is contained in the 
 minutes of the Committee meeting of October 13, 1917, and 
 reappears on December 6. But it was not until March 3 that 
 R. C. Clothier and Major L. H. Whiting actually sailed from 
 Hoboken on this errand. In anticipation of such a move, Mr. 
 Reilly had been called from his duties as a traveling super- 
 visor to relieve Mr. Clothier of the administration of the field 
 work. 
 
 On arrival in Europe, Mr. Clothier sent back illuminating 
 reports, first on the British system of classifying and handling 
 men and later on actual conditions as he found them among 
 our own troops in the replacement camps, the training areas, 
 the services of supply and the zone of combat. These reports 
 were replete with suggestions that looked toward the improve- 
 ment of the personnel system in America, in order that it 
 might function more effectively in France. 
 
 The Turning Point. The month of March witnessed the 
 culmination of several phases of the Committee's efforts. The 
 first edition of Mr. Swan's Trade Specifications and Occupa- 
 tional Index of Professions and Trades in the Army came 
 from the press on the twenty-first. One week later were 
 issued the Tables of Occupational Needs of an Infantry Divi- 
 sion. Chapters of the Manual began to appear and were im- 
 mediately distributed. 
 
 All of these aids were most welcome in the camps where 
 the recently consolidated personnel, insurance and statistical 
 organizations were now functioning smoothly. They were 
 received just in season to be of help in classifying and assign- 
 ing the April draft increment, whose arrival in the camps 
 marks an important turning point in the history of the army 
 personnel system. 
 
 The period then drawing to a close had not been without 
 its troubles and anxieties. Important personnel requisitions 
 which seemed to call for immediate action by the Central 
 Office sometimes became congested and were long delayed 
 while in the hands of the Priorities Committee, or were mis-
 
 84 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 laid among the desk accumulations of an overburdened officer. 
 The Washington and New York job printers had not always 
 been able to get out the revised blanks and forms as fast as 
 the recruits arrived at the camps. The division personnel 
 officers had long pleaded for authorization of an adequate 
 office force of enlisted personnel, and had repeatedly received 
 assurances that it would come soon ; but it was actually mid- 
 winter before the wheels of departmental routine actually 
 ground out the authorization. Supervisors had sometimes 
 come in from the field with harrowing tales of "atrocities," 
 as they were called, blunders in Washington and in the camps 
 that had resulted in gross wastage of precious personnel. And 
 in nearly every division, there were some officers who had 
 developed a hostility to the whole classification plan because 
 they saw in it only a device for robbing them of some of their 
 best men. But discouragements, difficulties and delays, no 
 matter how exasperating, had not permanently impeded the 
 progress of an organization that felt itself charged with 
 responsibility for one of the essential elements in the program 
 of defeating Germany. 
 
 A rapidly mounting flood of combat troops began to move 
 toward the ports of embarkation, following the departure of 
 the Rainbow Division in October, November and December, 
 the Forty-first in January and Seventy-seventh in March; 
 and the personnel work soon took on new aspects. 
 
 The first problem was obviously to see that each unit before 
 departure had its full quota of personnel, with all the essential 
 specialists distributed in proper proportion. Some division 
 commanders insisted on a careful "balancing" of the personnel 
 in the regiments and other units of their commands, so that 
 each had its due share of technical skill, intelligence, and 
 leadership ability. 
 
 The checking of the papers of all the men before embarka- 
 tion presented a neat new problem of system. General
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 85 
 
 Pershing cabled a request that with every soldier should come 
 his qualification card. It was imperative to see also that the 
 service record, the insurance and allotment form, the statis- 
 tical blank, three "locator" or directory cards and the other 
 necessary papers were on hand for every soldier that stepped 
 aboard a transport. It was in April that Major (later Lt. 
 Col.) Royal Mattice was called from the personnel office of 
 Camp Sheridan to supervise the organizations at the ports of 
 embarkation that were responsible for checking up this inven- 
 tory of papers. He devised convenient simplifications of 
 procedure and also gave instructions in their use to adjutants 
 and company commanders of divisions on the priority list. 
 
 The instant that a division began to leave its cantonment 
 for a pre-embarkation camp, the vacated quarters were made 
 ready for new occupants. Every camp was kept filled to 
 capacity. Larger and larger draft increments were called 
 until in July the monthly total of inductions reached 401,147. 
 
 A knotty problem of organization arose when the original 
 division personnel organizations went abroad. What should 
 be the relationship of the depot brigade personnel adjutant's 
 office, which was responsible for the original classification and 
 assignment of recruits, to the personnel adjutant of the new 
 division and to the camp personnel adjutant who was respon- 
 sible for the personnel of the permanent camp organizations, 
 such as the base hospital, the camp quartermaster, the remount 
 depot and camp headquarters? 
 
 Colonel A. M. Ferguson, who from this time on was the 
 responsible officer in immediate charge of the entire personnel 
 organization, met the situation by building up strong camp 
 personnel offices. He arranged that the camp personnel adju- 
 tant should keep the records not only of all the soldiers in 
 the permanent camp service units, but also of the recruits from 
 the time they were classified in the depot brigades until they 
 were definitely assigned and transferred into the divisional 
 units. He further strengthened the camp personnel offices by 
 seeing to it that able captains were selected to head them and
 
 86 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 that as rapidly as they proved their quality they received due 
 recognition by promotion to a majority. This policy was pos- 
 sible only because the personnel adjutants, being officers of 
 the Adjutant General's Department, were selected and as- 
 signed from Washington and could not be replaced by the 
 camp commanders except with the approval of The Adjutant 
 General. 
 
 Training New Personnel Officers. It was foreseen that 
 there would be a dearth of qualified personnel officers. To 
 meet this situation, the policy was adopted of holding brief 
 schools in different districts for the training of officers in 
 personnel work. The first of a series of eleven such schools, 
 organized and conducted by Dr. Strong and Mr. Weisiger, was 
 held in Washington, April 25 to May 4. To the training 
 and inspiration of these short courses of specialized instruction 
 must be credited a notable strengthening of the accuracy and 
 effectiveness of the personnel classification. Out of them grew 
 a new professional spirit and a deeper loyalty to their task 
 on the part of personnel officers. 
 
 The first school was opened with an address by Major- 
 General H. P. McCain, The Adjutant General, in which he 
 impressed upon the students the military importance of 
 adequate and accurate personnel records. 
 
 The War Department was fortunate in having in Washing- 
 ton at this time Major General R. Hutchison, C.B., D.S.O., 
 Director of Organization of the British Army. On invitation 
 by The Adjutant General, he addressed the personnel officers' 
 school, telling very convincingly about the personnel problems 
 the British Army had faced, and describing how, under stress 
 of bitter experience, the British War Office had come to rec- 
 ognize personnel administration as absolutely fundamental in 
 the organization of their army. At this time, and later in 
 conference with high officials of the War Department, General 
 Hutchison took occasion to advocate a strong centralized 
 control of all personnel, enlisted and commissioned, and in so
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 87 
 
 doing, rendered a notable service to the development of the 
 personnel idea in the American Army. 
 
 The Reason for Depot Brigades. A narrative of the army 
 personnel organization may have a value quite apart from any 
 mere interest in historical records if it brings into relief prob- 
 lems of policy, of organization, of method and of personnel 
 problems that are bound to arise again in any similar national 
 emergency. 
 
 One basic question of policy in building a civilian army 
 which found a clear answer in American experience during 
 the Spring of 1918, concerns the need for the maintenance of 
 ample sources for the prompt supply of men of designated 
 qualifications to the organizations needing them. 
 
 When the General Staff decided upon the plans for mobili- 
 zation and training of the National Army it wisely made provi- 
 sion for large reservoirs of recruits. In each of the sixteen 
 National Army cantonments, in addition to an infantry divi- 
 sion of about twenty-seven thousand men, there was to be a 
 depot brigade, a skeletonized organization, with room for 
 fifteen or twenty thousand more men. This theory was funda- 
 mentally sound. New arrivals fresh from civilian pursuits 
 might first enter the depot brigade, there to undergo the 
 rigors of physical examination and inoculation, have their 
 numerous papers completed, and receive their first lessons in 
 soldiering. Then as needed they would be distributed to 
 infantry, artillery or staff corps units, after which their train- 
 ing would proceed without further interruption by transfer. 
 But it was not until March, 1918, that this project of main- 
 taining a reservoir of recruits in the depot brigades began to 
 operate in the manner here described. Meanwhile the newly 
 installed personnel system had very nearly suffered wreck, 
 through having to do what it was never devised to do; and 
 many ambitious and hard-working officers of the line had seen 
 their half-trained outfits shattered through repeated with- 
 drawals of their ablest men for transfer to other units. No 
 wonder those officers, eager to be among the first to fight,
 
 88 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were discouraged at the repeated inroads on the personnel of 
 their commands; and no wonder they developed a resentment 
 against the personnel officer and the system of classification 
 which had made possible the carrying out of the War Depart- 
 ment orders to make those transfers. 
 
 Perhaps some historian of the future will assemble all the 
 causes which contributed to bring about this condition. Certain 
 it is that many of the National Guard divisions fell short of 
 the anticipated number of troops, and large drafts from the 
 National Army camps were taken to fill the gaps. This fact 
 does not go far toward explaining the difficulty, however, 
 since some at least of the division commanders, apparently 
 with an eye to the success of their own commands rather 
 than of the Army as a whole, seized the opportunity to get 
 rid of a few thousand of their least promising men. It was 
 rather the insatiable demand for specialists on the part of the 
 staff corps, particularly of the Engineers, the Quartermaster 
 Corps and the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps, that 
 resulted in heavy drafts upon the enlisted personnel of the 
 divisions. As the General Staff of the American Expedition- 
 ary Forces in France perfected its plans, it continually dis- 
 covered pressing need for additional technical units, foresters, 
 railway operatives, laundry companies, stevedores, telegraph 
 construction men and the like. And these new technical units 
 had to be organized and transported to France to do their 
 work before the fighting troops could come in any consider- 
 able number. The rapid procurement of the skilled men for 
 these technical organizations threw a heavy burden on the 
 Operations Division of the General Staff in Washington and 
 on the personnel system in the camps. To be sure, thousands 
 of these specialists were secured by voluntary enlistment 
 directly from their civilian pursuits ; but many thousands more 
 had to be taken from the National Army cantonments, and 
 from the National Guard divisions too, be it said. Moreover, 
 these had to be hand-picked men, most of them skilled trades- 
 men of more than average intelligence and resourcefulness.
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 89 
 
 And since a man who has the capacity to become a foreman 
 in a shop is also the man who can be developed into a valu- 
 able corporal or sergeant, the withdrawal from the divisions 
 of a large number of trade specialists inevitably cost them 
 heavily in non-commissioned officer material. 
 
 Why were these heavy drafts made upon the divisions 
 instead of upon the depot brigades alone? Because the depot 
 brigades did not contain the required specialists in sufficient 
 number. Some of them contained very few troops of any 
 kind. Why were there not a larger number of selective ser- 
 vice men called, to keep the depot brigade reservoir filled? 
 Ask those officers in the Quartermaster Corps who in the late 
 fall of 1917 had not been able to get manufactured and 
 shipped to the camps a sufficient supply of overcoats. 
 
 These are but samples of the multitudinous complications 
 that beset the officers in charge of organization during the 
 early period. It was a glad day for both division commanders 
 and camp personnel officers when in the early spring of 1918 
 more troops began to be available for filling the combat divi- 
 sions up to strength. That period marked a transition to a 
 new era in the history of army personnel classification. The 
 tide of requisitions began to flow the other way. Henceforth 
 when men were once assigned to divisional units they could 
 be left there to pursue their soldierly training undisturbed. 
 Commanders of artillery regiments and supply trains could 
 ask for the necessary complement of mechanics and truck 
 drivers with some assurance of securing what they specified, 
 either at once or when the next contingent of drafted men was 
 classified. These officers now realized that the personnel 
 system was devised to build an army instead of to tear one 
 down. 
 
 The depot brigade became a huge sieve. The small fraction 
 of utterly incompetent and feeble minded were promptly 
 returned to their homes. Non-English speaking recruits and 
 others who were physically or mentally not quite qualified to 
 begin at once the rigors of regular infantry drill, were
 
 90 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 assigned to development battalions for one or two months of 
 specially adapted training (see Chapter 40). Peculiarly rare 
 and valuable specialists were segregated and held for assign- 
 ment from Washington (sec Chapter 32). As a result of this 
 sifting process which took place during the initial two weeks 
 of quarantine, all recruits when finally assigned out of this 
 depot brigade reservoir could be placed in the organization 
 where they would permanently find their best usefulness. 
 
 This theory of the depot brigade is so fundamentally sound, 
 and it worked out so admirably in practice, that everyone 
 regretted keenly that the capacity of these reservoirs was 
 not great enough to handle all of the incoming drafts. Ap- 
 proximately a fourth of the hundreds of thousands of men 
 inducted during the spring and summer of 1918 were brought 
 into the Army by some back door instead of through the gate- 
 way of the regular receiving stations in the depot brigades. 
 About fifty thousand selective service men a month were 
 inducted at various army posts where only the most meagre 
 of temporary personnel organizations were set up and where 
 the quarters were so limited that the new arrivals had to be 
 shipped out again almost immediately, before there was time 
 for any adequate classification. Others, selected by the local 
 boards, were sent directly to vocational schools of the Com- 
 mittee on Education and Special Training. Still other 
 thousands came directly into staff corps camps as a result of 
 special induction or of recruiting campaigns. The critic who 
 chooses to cite numerous individual instances of buried talent 
 or misplaced ability must not charge them all against the per- 
 sonnel classification system. 
 
 Creating New Divisions. As the original divisions moved 
 out in rapid succession toward the ports, new organizations 
 were quickly formed in the camps they vacated. Six of these 
 'camps were designated for the special training of replacement 
 troops. Thus Camp Hancock became the center for training 
 machine gunners, Camp Taylor was given over wholly to field
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 91 
 
 artillery, etc.; while in still other camps, new complete divi- 
 sions were organized for training. 
 
 It was a mooted question in the General Staff whether 
 these new divisions should be made as the first ones had been, 
 out of wholly new and untrained troops, or whether the 
 recruits should first be trained in specialized camps for infan- 
 trymen, artillerymen, engineers, and men of other arms which 
 are parts of divisional units, and then later brought together 
 into a divisional organization. It was recognized that certain 
 of these troops could be trained much more quickly than 
 others. Thus the British, at the time when they were hardest 
 pressed to get additional troops to France, were sending men 
 across the Channel and into infantry combat six weeks after 
 calling them from civil life; while their practice in organizing 
 machine gun battalions has been to select infantrymen already 
 experienced in France and bring them back for three to four 
 months' special training in the great Machine Gun School at 
 Grantham. 
 
 But once more the limited available capacity of our camps, 
 coupled with the difficulties of transportation involved in the 
 plan for assembling divisions, proved a decisive factor in the 
 situation. Moreover, it was recognized that not only must the 
 soldiers be trained, but the officers, too, need the experience of 
 working for a considerable period as integral parts of a com- 
 plete divisional unit. And so the new divisions were created 
 de novo as the earlier ones had been, but with these marked 
 differences: a larger number of men already specially trained, 
 formed the nucleus of the more technical units ; and the new 
 recruits that went into all the units passed first through the 
 depot brigades. Their original assignment to a company or 
 train in a division was made on the basis of their individual 
 qualifications and the requirements of the particular units to 
 which they were sent. In the words of Major General P. C. 
 Harris, The Adjutant General, "these new divisions were 
 scientifically constructed." 
 
 Utilizing the Lest Fit. It was foreseen that the supply of
 
 92 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 drafted men in Class I., physically qualified for full military 
 service, would eventually be exhausted. It was also recog- 
 nized that many army duties, particularly those of a clerical 
 sort, could be performed quite as well by men not fit for com- 
 bat service. Mr. Swan was delegated to study the possibilities 
 for utilizing limited service men, so as to release many who 
 were physically fit for overseas duty. He also co-operated 
 with Lt. Col. Bernard Lentz of the General Staff and Lt. 
 Colonel H. E. Mock of the Surgeon General's Office in 
 preparing the plans for the development battalions, which 
 were created in May, and which saved to the Army many 
 thousands of recruits who otherwise would have been useless. 
 (See Chapter 40.) 
 
 The number of limited service men called to the colors 
 eventually totalled 108,355. 
 
 Progress. The space limits of this narrative forbid more 
 than the briefest mention of several notable developments: 
 the extension of the classification system to the personnel of 
 the Ordnance, Quartermaster, and Aviation camps, and the 
 Coast Defense stations ; the resulting need for more super- 
 vision, which led to the appointment of several junior per- 
 sonnel supervisors, and the selection of Mr. J. F. Page to 
 assist Mr. Reilly in directing their work; the introduction, in 
 June, of the standardized trade tests; the initiation by Mr 
 A. E. Dodd, in July, of the Personnel Specifications Unit 
 which eventually, under Captain James Gregg, completed th? 
 monumental task of preparing definitions of duties and state- 
 ments of qualifications for every post in practically every unit 
 of the army; the sailing of Mr. W. S. MacArthur, July 7, to 
 relieve Mr. Clothier of the duties of liaison between the Com- 
 mittee and the headquarters of the A. E. F., and of Dr. 
 Bingham and Dr. Beardsley Ruml, to study the occupational 
 classification and trade test methods of the British Army. 
 
 Other chapters will describe in detail the enlargement, 
 under Mr. W. B. Hale, of the central office for supervising 
 the allotment and distribution of the skill in the incoming
 
 PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT 93 
 
 draft increments; the selection of pivotal men for furlough 
 back to essential war industries ; the gradual standardization 
 of procedure in receiving men into camp, leading to large 
 economies of time and money, and ultimately to the authoriza- 
 tion of buildings specially designed for this purpose; the 
 spread throughout the staff corps of the officers's classification 
 system, and the final adoption of the rating scale for use in 
 the entire army in making quarterly reports on all officers; 
 the pains taken to insure the correct use of this scale, by 
 personal instruction of the officers in all camps and by analysis 
 of the ratings reported duties in which A. U. Pope showed 
 unusual effectiveness. 
 
 The business of the Committee had multiplied, particularly 
 in the printing and distribution of C. C. P. forms. I. B. Davies 
 did a service for which every member of the Committee was 
 grateful, in systematizing the records of purchase and ship- 
 ment, simplifying the accounting, and smoothing out numerous 
 kinks in the office organization. With the help of M. L. Free, 
 D. Hughes, and E. B. Graves, he exemplified within the Com- 
 mittee's home offices the basic principles of personnel adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Problems. One complication was developing which later 
 grew increasingly serious: the personnel adjutants were 
 coming to handle more and more of the paper work of the 
 adjutant's office, so that less of their thought and energy could 
 be concentrated on strictly personnel administration. A 
 divorce of these two functions was clearly indicated, and 
 plans were prepared to effect such a separation; but the 
 armistice arrived just as these plans were about to be realized. 
 
 Perhaps the most serious defect in the army personnel 
 organization at this time, as viewed from Washington, was 
 the absence of unified administration of the personnel in all 
 staff corps camps. The Quartermaster camp at Jacksonville, 
 for example, had a surplus of skilled machinists and mechanics 
 which were greatly needed in the Ordnance Department at 
 Camp Hancock; and the Ordnance camp had several extra
 
 94 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 teamsters and horseshoers which the Quartermaster Corps 
 required. But the machinery for effecting a prompt inter- 
 change was lacking. In the next two chapters will be found 
 suggestions of the direction in which developments were 
 moving, toward the logical goal of one unified control of per- 
 sonnel throughout all branches of the service.
 
 CHAPTER 8 
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION OF PER- 
 
 SONNEL TRANSFERRED TO JURISDICTION 
 
 OF THE GENERAL STAFF 
 
 The first principle of personnel administration enunciated in 
 Chapter I, was that of "Functionalization." As was there 
 pointed out, this meant that "the control and adminstration 
 of personnel must be made the first duty of an official who 
 gives it his undivided thought and his best energies." "Officers 
 who are also charged with a multitude of other pressing 
 duties" cannot be held responsible for "search for talent," 
 "personnel classification," nor for "assigning men to the duties 
 where their special abilities will count for most." 
 
 The Army had already functionalized such duties as keep- 
 ing records, handling supplies, health and sanitation, legal 
 functions, etc., by the establishment respectively, of the Adju- 
 tant General's Department, the Quartermaster Corps, the 
 Medical Department, the Judge Advocate General's Depart- 
 ment, etc. But personnel work had never been recognized in 
 the Army as a separate function ; nor had it been, except in a 
 few concerns, in business. 
 
 The enlargement of the Army forced attention upon the 
 matter. And as time went on certain serious defects in the 
 existing organization came more and more prominently to the 
 front, so that almost simultaneously from a number of quarters 
 plans were developed for a more complete centralization of all 
 personnel work. 
 
 THE SITUATION IN JUNE, 1918 
 
 The Infantry, which constitutes by far the larger part of 
 our armies, had no chief and no personnel section. The Field 
 
 95
 
 96 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Artillery, which, next to the Infantry, constitutes the largest 
 part of the Army, had a chief, but no personnel section. The 
 Signal Corps, Quartermaster Corps, Medical Department, Ord- 
 nance Department, Coast Artillery, and some of the smaller 
 bureaus maintained separate personnel sections under direction 
 of their chiefs. At least, four of these branches of the service 
 had assigned to their personnel sections a larger force of 
 officers and clerks and greater floor space than that maintained 
 in the Adjutant General's Department which kept the records 
 of Infantry and Field Artillery and many personnel records 
 of the entire Army. 
 
 THE NEED FOR CENTRALIZATION 
 
 The most important need for centralization was that of 
 functionalization. Personnel work needed to be recognized as 
 a specific function of the Army and administered on the same 
 basis throughout the army as, for example, the handling of 
 supplies. There was next the need for centralizing the control 
 of all supply and demand of personnel both commissioned 
 and enlisted. Once centralized there could be established and 
 operated a standardized system of recruiting, handling of 
 selective-service men regardless of the camps to which sent, 
 classification, appointment, transfer, etc. Records could simi- 
 larly be standardized and much correspondence thereby 
 eliminated. 
 
 A concrete example makes the need clearer. At one of the 
 Quartermaster Mechanical Repair Shops they received en- 
 listed men from various sources. Some were fitted for the 
 specialized work to be done there some were not. The per- 
 sonnel adjutant spent some time scouting around for good 
 mechanics in a nearby camp and when he found a man to his 
 liking, made a trade of an able-bodied man of value to infantry 
 in return for a mechanic. War Department orders forbid such 
 transfers, but it was carried on because it was so essential to 
 the best interests of the repair shop. With a centralized 
 personnel organization such transfers could easily have been
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 97 
 
 provided for, but up to the signing of the armistice, such an 
 emergency could not be handled except by the handling of 
 each individual case through the office of the Quartermaster 
 General and The Adjutant General in. Washington. 
 
 STEPS LEADING TO CENTRALIZATION 
 
 On May 23, 1918, Colonel I. L. Reeves, Inspector General's 
 Department, addressed a memorandum to The Assistant Sec- 
 retary of War on the subject of "Centralization of Personnel 
 Sections of all Bureaus." This report pointed out the needs 
 for centralization, and purported to answer all arguments 
 against the change. Following this report many memoranda 
 were prepared and boards appointed to investigate and report 
 on methods of centralization. 
 
 One of the first of these reports was furnished by the War 
 Service Exchange, a branch of the Committee, which was con- 
 cerned with securing specialists, particularly for commissioned 
 positions in the Army. A summary of the report is given in 
 Chapter 39. 
 
 On June 6, 1918, Colonel Reeves presented another memo- 
 randum, going into the subject in greater detail. 
 
 Three days later a board was appointed "for the purpose of 
 submitting recommendations as to any changes that might be 
 considered as necessary or desirable in the existing system of 
 classification of enlisted personnel of the Army of the United 
 States." This board consisted of one member of the General 
 Staff [Lt. Col. (later Brig. Gen.) R. I. Rees], one from the 
 Adjutant General's Department [Lt. Col. (later Col.) A. M. 
 Ferguson], one from the Provost Marshal General's Office 
 [Lt. Col. (later Col.) J. H. Wigmore], and the director of 
 the Committee on Classification of Personnel [Dr. W. D. 
 Scott]. On June 8th, 1918, this board reported as follows: 
 
 "The Board advises that the Committee on Classification 
 of Personnel performs an indispensable service to the 
 Army in locating classified and distributing skilled men to
 
 98 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 meet the necessities in the organization of units both in 
 the line of the Army and in the Staff Corps. 
 
 "The Board believes that the work of the Committee 
 has developed along correct lines, and has no recommen- 
 dations to make in the change of its present operations, 
 but that all changes recommended by it will be in the 
 direction of greater co-ordination with other departments 
 and further expansion of its duties. 
 
 "In its consideration of the industrial index of the 
 Provost Marshal General's Office the Board believes that 
 the index, in larger form should be continued and that it 
 should become an important adjunct, co-ordinating with 
 the work of the Committee on Classification of Personnel, 
 in placing skilled men directly into organizations of the 
 Army in which technicians or mechanics are needed. 
 
 "The Board recommends that the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel be given every assistance in estab- 
 lishing proper co-ordination of its personnel work in 
 America, and with that in the American Expeditionary 
 Force ; that the closest possible cooperation be established 
 between the Provost Marshal General's Office and the 
 Committee on Classification of Personnel, in order that 
 the industrial index may be completely utilized to fill the 
 Army's needs and also to protect the need for skilled men 
 in essential war industry ; that the closest possible cooper- 
 ation be established between the Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel and the Psychological Division of the 
 Medical Department, in order that the findings of that 
 division may be fully employed in assigning men 
 
 "Finally as a logical sequence of the above recommen- 
 dation, the Board further recommends the establishment 
 of a centralized personnel division by the Adjutant 
 General of the Army." 
 
 CENTRALIZATION OF COMMISSIONED PERSONNEL 
 
 Up to August 26, 1918, no action was taken toward cen- 
 tralization, although various plans were suggested in addition 
 to those referred to above. On that date General Orders, 
 No. 80, was issued which outlined the duties of the General 
 Staff and definitely provided for personnel work as a function 
 of the Operations Division, General Staff, in these words:
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 99 
 
 "The duties of this division shall include cognizance 
 and control of the following: 
 
 "(a) The recruitment and mobilization of the Army, 
 including the assignment and distribution of the draft; the 
 personnel of troops ; the movement and disposition of 
 troops, and the determination of all overseas priorities. 
 
 "(b) The appointment, promotion, transfer and assign- 
 ment of the commissioned personnel of all branches of the 
 Army." 
 
 General Orders No. 86. The above was followed on Sep- 
 tember 18, 1918, by General Orders No. 86, Section III, as 
 follows : 
 
 "1. In order to carry out the provisions of subpara- 
 graph b, paragraph 5, General Orders, No. 80, War 
 Department, 1918, relating to General Staff duties, which 
 assigns to the Operations Division, General Staff, 'the 
 appointment, promotion, transfer, and assignment of the 
 commissioned personnel of all branches of the Army', 
 there is established the Commissioned Personnel Branch, 
 Operations Division, General Staff, which will be formed 
 by consolidation of (a) the Commissioned Personnel Sec- 
 tion, General Staff, and (6) the Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel of The Adjutant General's Office, to- 
 gether with such additional officers of the General Staff 
 Corps and clerical force as may be assigned to it from 
 time to time. 
 
 "2. The Commissioned Personnel Branch, Operations 
 Division, General Staff, will be under the control of a 
 General Staff officer, to be known as Chief of the Per- 
 sonnel Branch. 
 
 "3. All staff corps and departments will hereafter sub- 
 mit requisitions to the Operations Division, General Staff, 
 for the number and kind of officers needed for any par- 
 ticular organization or duty. These requisitions will be 
 filled in, the same manner as now followed in assigning 
 enlisted specialists. Recommendations for promotion will 
 likewise be submitted to the Operations Division. 
 
 "4. The commissioned personnel branches of the various 
 staff corps and departments, as heretofore operated, are 
 hereby abolished and their functions and personnel, as 
 far as may be necessary, will be taken over into the 
 Commissioned Personnel Branch of the General Staff.
 
 100 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The commissioned personnel activities in the various staff 
 corps and departments will thereafter be confined to the 
 keeping of the necessary records to enable them to requisi- 
 tion, under the direction of their chief, such commissioned 
 personnel as may be required." 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMITTEE UNDER THE 
 GENERAL STAFF 
 
 The above order transferred the Committee from the juris- 
 diction of the Adjutant General's Department to the General 
 Staff. But the General Order pertained only to commissioned 
 personnel, whereas the Committee was concerned with both 
 commissioned and enlisted personnel. The logjical thing 
 apparently was to establish a Centralized Enlisted Personnel 
 Branch and had the war continued this probably would have 
 taken place. See Chapter 22 for further details. 
 
 As the only possible method of harmonizing the conflicting 
 elements of the situation was to go ahead on the supposition 
 that there was a Personnel Branch in the Operations Division 
 which included commissioned and enlisted personnel and that 
 the Committee was in charge of the Enlisted Personnel Section 
 of the Personnel Branch. Upon this basis the organization 
 chart of October 5, 1918 was drawn up, as follows: 
 
 Organization Chart of October 5, 1918 
 
 I. Administration 
 
 1. Training of personnel adjutants, etc. 
 
 2. Supervision of Field Work. 
 
 a. Depot Camps and Army Posts. 
 
 b. Development Battalions. 
 
 c. S. A. T. C. Schools. 
 
 3. Inspection of Units. 
 
 4. Supervision of Personnel Work in Staff Corps 
 
 Camps. 
 
 5. -Trade Tests. 
 
 6. Statistics. 
 
 7. -Supplies, etc.
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 101 
 
 II. Demand Section 
 
 1. Line Troops. 
 
 2. Staff Corps. 
 
 3. Industry. 
 
 III. Planning 
 
 1. Adjustment of Present Supply to Demand. 
 
 2. Planning Future Supply and Demand. 
 
 3. Personnel Specifications. 
 
 4. Limited Service Men. 
 
 IV. Supply Section 
 
 1. The Draft. 
 
 2. S. A. T. C. 
 
 3. Special Induction. 
 
 4. Development Battalions. 
 
 5. Transfer. 
 
 In addition to the duties herein outlined the Committee 
 cooperated in many ways with the Commissioned Personnel 
 Section. 
 
 The Committee Militarized. Up to this time the Committee 
 had operated entirely as a committee of civilians within the 
 Adjutant General's Department. Major (later Lt. Col.) 
 Grenville Clark had originally represented the Committee in 
 official matters with The Adjutant General. In April, 1918, 
 he was made a member of the Committee on Education and 
 Special Training (see Chapter 41). Lieutenant Colonel (later 
 Colonel) A. M. Ferguson then took his place. 
 
 On October 22, 1918, Major General Henry Jervey, Assis- 
 tant Chief of Staff ordered that the members of the Commit- 
 tee stationed at Washington and certain associates be com- 
 missioned. In accordance with this the following received 
 their commissions : Colonel Walter Dill Scott, Lt. Col. W. V. 
 Bingham, Lt. Col. R. C. Clothier, Lt. Col. J. J. Coss, Lt. Col. 
 P. J. Reilly, Lt. Col. Edward K. Strong, Jr., Lt. Col. J. J. 
 Swan, and Major J. F. Page. A few days previous Dr. 
 Raymond Dodge had been co.mmissioned Lieutenant Comman- 
 der in the Navy in appreciation of his services along personnel 
 lines. The following would have been commissioned as major 
 or captain had the signing of the armistice not intervened,
 
 102 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 their papers being on that date in process of transit through 
 the Adjutant General's Office: C. F. Axelson, C. R. Beard, 
 Storm V. Boyd, J. C. Burg, C. R. Chase, William Clark, E. 
 M. Delabarre, F. F. Dugan, H. E. French, E. H. Furman, 
 E. R. Halliday, J. W. Harrison, L. B. Hopkins, G. B. Hotch- 
 kiss, C. W. Jones, G. M. Leonard, J. H. Lewis, S. B. Mathew- 
 son, D. J. O'Connor, E. S. Robinson, Beardsley Rural, A. J. 
 Turner, Kendall Weisiger, H. L. Wellman, C. J. Whipple, 
 S. E. Wright; W. B. Hale and Winslow Russell. 
 
 NEED FOR CENTRALIZED ENLISTED PERSONNEL 
 
 BRANCH 
 
 The same reasons for centralizing commissioned personnel 
 held for centralizing enlisted personnel work. There was 
 also the additional need due to the fact that General Orders 
 No. 86, had merged the Committee with the General Staff, 
 but had not transferred its work with enlisted personnel from 
 the Adjutant General's Department to General Staff, so that 
 the resulting situation was most confusing. 
 
 On October 30th, steps were inaugurated which would prob- 
 ably have led to this centralization had the armistice not 
 intervened. It was realized that the Allotment Section, Opera- 
 tions Division, General Staff, was dependent upon the effi- 
 ciency of the several enlisted personnel sections of the Staff 
 Corps. And there was confronting this Section a shortage 
 of about 500,000 specialists so that every precaution would 
 have to be observed in the handling of all specialists through- 
 out the army. Through the Allotment Section distribution was 
 made of specialists from depot brigades to Staff Corps anu 
 through the Committee's field supervisors some control was 
 exercised over the handling of these specialists in the Staff 
 Corps camps. But the Allotment Section had no control over 
 the Enlisted Personnel Sections of the various Staff Corps 
 and consequently could not provide that there would be an 
 efficient utilization of specialists within the Staff Corps itself 
 nor for an efficient transfer of specialists between the Staff
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION 103 
 
 Corps in terms of their needs and supply. Major D. W. K. 
 Peacock was accordingly appointed to make recommendations 
 with the ultimate purpose in mind of developing a standard- 
 ized organization and office procedure in each of the Enlisted 
 Personnel Sections of the Staff Corps and to bring all of them 
 into direct harmony with the Allotment Section and the Per- 
 sonnel Branch, both of the Operations Division of the General 
 Staff. 
 
 As an illustration of the need for just this, note that on 
 September 4, 1918, the Committee outlined a complete plan 
 for personnel work to the Personnel Section of the Depart- 
 ment of Military Aeronautics. This was done in order that 
 a more efficient handling of personnel from the Washington 
 Office would eliminate many of the defects reported by the 
 Committee's field supervisors. But the Committee was power- 
 less to enforce its program as neither it nor the Personnel 
 Branch had direct authority over the Department of Military 
 Aeronautics. The result was that no changes were accom- 
 plished.
 
 CHAPTER 9 
 
 STATUS OF PERSONNEL ORGANIZATION AT 
 CONCLUSION OF ARMISTICE 
 
 ORGANIZATION UNDER THE GENERAL STAFF 
 
 The previous chapter of this history has related how the 
 personnel work of the Army was concentrated under the 
 direction of the General Staff. At that time the Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel went out of existence in name, 
 although its functions and personnel continued the same as 
 ever under the name of the Miscellaneous Section of the Per- 
 sonnel Branch of the Operations Division of the General Staff. 
 
 Simultaneously the General Staff ruled that the personnel 
 of the Committee and its associates should be militarized, 
 although the work had been carried on from the beginning 
 under these men in civilian status. As has been stated above, 
 only a few of the commissions were received before the 
 Armistice was signed. In consequence the remaining mem- 
 bers of the group were prevented from accepting military 
 status through the order then issued preventing the granting 
 of further commissions. As a result, from November llth 
 until the conclusion of the group activities in 1919, some of 
 the members were in military status and others were in civilian 
 status. 
 
 The work of the personnel organization at this time was 
 clearly functionalized and individual responsibilities assigned 
 to individual members. The Chief of the Division, Colonel 
 A. M. Ferguson, exercised general direction of policies. The 
 administration of the Division was exercised through Lt. Col. 
 R. C. Clothier, Executive Officer. The divisions of the work 
 are outlined as follows: 
 
 104
 
 STATUS OF PERSONNEL 105 
 
 I. Planning Sub-Section 
 
 Col. W. D. Scott 
 
 In the absence of Colonel Scott the Planning Sub-Section 
 of the Miscellaneous Section functioned under the direction 
 of Lieutenant Colonel Bingham. This section was charged 
 with all planning and research work in relation to personnel 
 work in the Army. Owing to the ramifications of the Army 
 work it was, of course, necessary to subdivide the functions 
 of the Planning Sub-Section into specialized duties. These 
 are outlined as follows: 
 
 a. Procurement and Distribution of Enlisted Personnel 
 Mr. Wm. B. Hale. Determination of plans for the future 
 raising of armies as a basis for determining future needs for 
 enlisted personnel. Analytical study of the future needs of 
 the Staff Corps and line units. Preparation of such plans 
 in detail. Determination in advance just where, how and 
 when specialists and others are to be obtained. Co-ordination 
 of the various sources of supply to this end. 
 
 b. Camp Procedure. Lt. Col. Strong and Mr. D. J. O'Con- 
 nor. Study of ways and means of increasing the effectiveness 
 and simplicity of personnel work in the camps and at Army 
 posts. Revision and correction of forms to meet new condi- 
 tions. Initiating new and better ways of getting results. 
 Analysis of methods. Devising ways and means to meet 
 preparation of manual covering such procedure. 
 
 c. Cooperation with Policies and Planning Branch (Com- 
 missioned Personnel) Lieut. Col. Bingham. 
 
 d. Development Battalions Lt. Col. Swan and Mr. Harry 
 R. Wellman. Study of Army organization to determine in 
 what positions and in what ways limited service men can be 
 used most effectively in the army organization. Cooperation 
 with the Medical Department in the preparation of tables to 
 be used as bases for the effective placement of such men. 
 Selection and assignment of men in the development battalions. 
 
 e. Officers' Ratings and Qualifications Dr. E. L. Thorn- 
 dike and Dr. H. O. Rugg. Study of officers' ratings and
 
 106 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 qualifications as a means of standardizing procedure and 
 making ratings and qualifications more accurate and effective. 
 
 f. Trade Specifications Lt. Col. Swan. Preparation of 
 specifications giving exact analysis of all jobs in the Army as 
 a means of standardizing terminology and insuring complete 
 understanding on the part of everyone engaged in army 
 personnel work, with reference to the meaning of terms. 
 
 g. Staff Corps Personnel Work Lt. Col. Strong and Maj. 
 D. W. K. Peacock. Preparation of plans for the standardiza- 
 tion of the organization of enlisted personnel work in the 
 Staff Corps. Cooperation in the establishment of proper 
 coordination. Liaison with the section in charge of the devel- 
 opment of tables of occupational needs. 
 
 h. S. A. T. C. Personnel Work Dr. Thorndike and Lt. 
 Col. Coss. Provision for and direction of cooperation of orga- 
 nization with the Committee on Education and Special Train- 
 ing, in charge of S. A. T. C. Assistance to Dr. Thorndike 
 in plans for enlistment, classification and selection of 
 S. A. T. C. soldiers and officer candidates. Direction of plans 
 for S. A. T. C. Personnel Schools and maintenance of school 
 for Personnel Officers at Ft. Sheridan. Cooperation with Per- 
 sonnel Methods Division, S. A. T. C. in teaching and advisory 
 status. 
 
 i. Demobilization Lt. Col. Coss and Lt. Col. Clothier. 
 Preparation of report on plans for demobilization prepared by 
 other nations. Preparation of suggested plans for the demo- 
 bilization of the United States Army after the war with the 
 greatest possible expedition and safety, with a special refer- 
 ence to the ability of industry to reabsorb the man-power thus 
 relieved. 
 
 j. Preparation of Trade Tests Mr. L. B. Hopkins and Mr. 
 Beardsley Ruml, Mr. Storm V. Boyd, Major Joseph Hayes, 
 Mr. S. B. Mathewson, Mr. E. S. Robinson, Mr. Max Wat- 
 son. Studying of Army trades according to the needs of the 
 Army and the preparation and standardization of trade tests 
 for the selection in advance of men who possess skill in those
 
 STATUS OF PERSONNEL 107 
 
 trades. The testing of such tests to establish their reliability, 
 k. Tables of Personnel Specif cations Lt. Col. Bingham, 
 Major Sydney A. Friede, Capt. Jas. Gregg, Capt. Joseph M. 
 Larimer, Lieut. J. W. Dissette, Lieut. R. J. Byrnes. Study 
 of the personnel needs of the line units and of the staff corps 
 for personnel in terms of industrial qualifications. Prepara- 
 tion of tables translating army terms into terms of industrial 
 skill showing the number of officers and men of each par- 
 ticular kind needed in the effective organization of each kind of 
 unit these tables to be used as bases for the recruitment of 
 army units. 
 
 II. Field Direction Sub-Section 
 
 Lieut. Col. Reilly and Major Page 
 
 This branch of the work covered the installation of the 
 personnel system in the Army Camps, and its constant super- 
 vision by mail and through military and civilian representa- 
 tives to insure effective and prompt operation. Through the 
 Division of Field Direction the plans of the Planning Branch 
 were crystallized into effective action and applied practically 
 to the problems of the Army. Under this there were five 
 sub-divisions : 
 
 a. General Supervision and Inspection of Work in Camps 
 William Clark, Mr. A. J. Turner, Mr. C. R. Beard, Mr. E. M. 
 Delabarre, Major Geo. F. Wilhelm, Mr. Henry E. French. 
 Supervision and direction of field work at Depot Camps and 
 other Army Posts. Assistance to personnel officers. Stan- 
 dardization of practice in the field. Inspection of results. 
 
 b. Trade Test Installation Capt. E. O. Buhler. Installa- 
 tion in the camps of the trade test system prepared and 
 standardized by the Trade Test Section of the Planning Staff. 
 Supervision of the operation of trade tests in the camps to 
 insure the effective testing of enlisted men claiming skill in 
 certain trades. 
 
 c. Development Battalions Mr. Harry R. Wellman. Appli- 
 cation of personnel system through practice in the develop-
 
 108 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ment battalions. Supervision of the work in those camps to 
 insure close operation between line, medical and personnel 
 officers and effective placement and use of limited service men. 
 
 d. Final Inspection of Units Lt. Col. Royal Mattice. 
 Responsibility for the inspection of units bound overseas with 
 reference to the completeness of their records. 
 
 e. Supervision and Inspection Coast Artillery Capt. G. 
 E. Shipway. Installation of the personnel system in the posts 
 of the Coast Artillery, and standardization of the procedure 
 for placing men properly in the effective organization of coast 
 artillery units. 
 
 III. Allotment Sub-Section 
 
 Mr. Wm. B. Hale and Mr. Kendall Weisiger. 
 Under this Sub-Section was conducted a study of present 
 and future needs of line organizations and staff corps 
 for enlisted personnel and of enlisted personnel available for 
 these needs, both in hand and probable. Inspection of requisi- 
 tions and of reports of personnel available received from the 
 various camps and other sources according to the adequacy of 
 the supply of various kinds of skilled men and the relative 
 urgency of the demand in different units. Selection of rare 
 specialists needed by industry, and the scrutiny and analysis 
 of requests for such men. Maintenance of record of requisi- 
 tions received and how handled, and of record of personnel 
 furnished. 
 
 a. Coordination of Requisitions Mr. A. C. Robinson and 
 Mr. Ralph T. Bickell. Reception, scrutiny, analysis and 
 consolidation of requisitions determining relative priority of 
 each in cooperation with Lieut. Col. R. H. Kimball of the 
 Operations Division, General Staff. 
 
 b. Distribution and Supply Mr. H. P. Shaw and Mr. 
 Hathaway Watson. Balancing of the supply of men against 
 the demand according to the relative importance and immediate 
 urgency of the requisition. 
 
 c. Placement of Rare Specialists Mr. Louis R. Frazier.
 
 STATUS OF PERSONNEL 109 
 
 Selection of rare specialists needed by essential industries. 
 
 d. Statistics Mr. Stephen E. Wright. Study and analysis 
 of reports and requisitions filled in order to summarize and 
 crystallize information regarding the needs of the Army for 
 skilled men and the available supply. 
 
 IV. Training Sub-Section 
 
 Lt. Col. Strong and Major Chas. A. Abel. 
 This sub-section was charged with the maintenance of 
 schools for personnel officers and others engaged in person- 
 nel work; it having been recognized that officers or civilians 
 cannot undertake this work effectively without special training. 
 
 V. Classification and Rating of Officers' Sub-Section 
 Col. Scott, Mr. C. F. Axelson and Mr. Arthur U. Pope. 
 
 This sub-section was charged with the installation and 
 supervision of the rating scale for officers (including tabula- 
 tion and analysis of ratings) and the preparation and use of 
 the officers' qualification cards (including maintenance of 
 qualification card file). 
 
 VI. War Service Exchange Sub-Section 
 
 Mr. Winslow Russell and Mr. G. C. Wells. 
 The War Service Exchange was charged with the receiv- 
 ing of personal applications or letters from men seeking 
 war service, and the proper classification of such applications 
 and the reference of the applicants to branches of the national 
 service requiring their services. Following the organization 
 of the Procurement Section of the Personnel Branch of the 
 General Staff, the War Service Exchange functioned also as 
 Washington's agency. 
 
 a. Interviewing Mr. Wells and Dr. E. B. Holt. 
 
 b. Demand Rev. Alexander Thompson. 
 
 c. Supply Mr. Harvey E. Weeks and Mr. L. L. Brown. 
 
 VII. Administration Sub-Section 
 
 a. Forms and Publications Mr. G. B. Hotchkiss.
 
 no HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 b. Purchasing Mr. M. M. Samuels. 
 
 c. Accounting and Auditing Mr. I. B. Davies and Miss 
 Dorothy Hughes. 
 
 d. Library Mr. G. S. Pattillo. 
 
 e. Employment Miss Margaret L. Free. 
 
 f. Office Direction Mrs. Gladys Anthony. 
 
 TRANSFER BACK TO ADJUTANT GENERAL 
 
 Following the conclusion of the armistice the routine con- 
 structive work of the Miscellaneous Section came to an end. 
 All preparations were made for the receipt of the November 
 llth draft in the camps, but upon the acceptance of the 
 armistice this draft was cancelled. Plans were immediately 
 prepared for the demobilization of the units in camp, and this 
 duty devolved upon the Miscellaneous Section of the Person- 
 nel Branch owing to the fact, naturally, that the Personnel 
 organization was in control of the only effective machinery in 
 the Camps which could assume charge of the demobilization 
 procedure. 
 
 Yet the clearing of men out of the Army, being largely a 
 matter of paper work, was a duty functionally belonging to 
 the Adjutant General's Department and in consequence of this 
 fact, a memorandum was issued on November 20, 1918, as 
 follows : 
 
 MEMORANDUM FOR THE ADJUTANT GENERAL: 
 
 Subject: Transfer of Miscellaneous Section, Personnel 
 Branch, Operations Division, General Staff. 
 
 1. You are advised that by direction of the Secretary 
 of War the personnel and functions of the Miscellaneous 
 Section, Personnel Branch, Operations Division, General 
 Staff, are hereby transferred to the control of The Adju- 
 tant General. 
 
 2. Col. A. M. Ferguson, General Staff, Chief of this
 
 STATUS OF PERSONNEL 111 
 
 Section, has been directed to report in person to you with- 
 out delay for orders. 
 
 HENRY JERVEY 
 
 Major General, General Staff 
 
 Assistant to the Chief of Staff 
 
 Director of Operations. 
 
 By 
 
 , . P. P. BISHOP 
 Brigadier General, General Staff 
 Chief, Personal Branch, 
 Operation Division. 
 
 In accordance with this order, all relations for the present 
 between the Miscellaneous Section and the Personnel Branch 
 terminated, and the Miscellaneous Section became functionally 
 part of the Adjutant General's Department, assuming for the 
 purpose, the name of the Classification Division. 
 
 The organization of the Classification Division did not differ 
 from that of the Miscellaneous Section of the Personnel 
 Branch. The functions and the relationships continued as 
 theretofore, with the exception that the Chief of the Classi- 
 fication Division reported direct to The Adjutant General of 
 the Army rather than to the Chief of the Personnel Branch 
 of the Operations Division of the General Staff. 
 
 The effect of the armistice was noticeable at once in the 
 work of the Classification Division. The field work came to 
 a stand-still almost immediately, and the supervisors were 
 released again for their duties in civil life, in spite of the 
 fact^hat it was felt by many that their services were still 
 needed in a very acute degree, in the coordination and super- 
 vision of the work in the camps. The personnel adjutants 
 in the camps, heretofore charged with the work of receiving 
 men and their proper classification and placement, now found 
 themselves charged with the duty of clearing men out of 
 camps ; the entire machinery was thrown into reverse with 
 the selective feature omitted. 
 
 The work of the Training Sub-Section came to an end
 
 112 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 almost immediately, and schools which had been scheduled 
 for personnel officers were cancelled. 
 
 The Allotments Branch continued for several weeks in the 
 anticipation of functioning in the process of demobilization 
 as it was undetermined at that time whether or not demobili- 
 zation should be according to industrial requirements. Subse- 
 quently it became apparent that demobilization would be by 
 military units rather than by industrial needs whereupon the 
 need of the services of the Allotment Branch came to an end. 
 In consequence the Allotments Branch disappeared gradually, 
 and retained only a skeleton organization to wind up its 
 affairs. 
 
 The War Service Exchange disappeared almost overnight. 
 There was no further need for it, and the executives and their 
 clerical help were released with the exception of a skeleton 
 staff retained to clear out the files and return the letters of 
 rcommendation and other valuable papers to those who had 
 filed them with the War Service Exchange. 
 
 The section of the Classification Division given over to the 
 classification and rating of officers increased in scope and 
 responsibility after the conclusion of the armistice and had 
 more floor space and added personnel given to it in order to 
 bring the files of the officers of the American Army up-to-date 
 and to enter the October and January ratings.
 
 SECTION III. 
 MAN-ANALYSIS 
 
 In placing men properly in any organization 
 three things must be considered: the qualifications 
 of the man, the job the man is to do, and the place- 
 ment of the man so that his qualifications match up 
 with the requirements of the job. In industry there 
 are in addition many other factors to be consid- 
 ered, such as wages paid, working hours, housing 
 conditions, etc., which do not pertain to the Army 
 problem. In consequence, one must not think of 
 Army personnel work as synonymous with em- 
 ployment management. The former is a much 
 simpler problem. Nevertheless it has sufficient com- 
 plexity to challenge the attention and interest of 
 big-minded men who want to tackle a hard and try- 
 ing task. 
 
 This section deals with the first main subdivision 
 of Army personnel work, i. e., man analysis. In 
 considering this subject the activities of the person- 
 nel system will be viewed not so much from an his- 
 torical point of view as from that of tracing the 
 gradual solution of the problems encountered by 
 the system. 
 
 Army personnel work is based upon a frank 
 avowal that men have individual differences and 
 these differences must be taken into account if the 
 
 113
 
 114 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Army would utilize its men to greatest advantage. 
 Chapter 10 is primarily concerned with the two 
 problems: first, how shall individual differences be 
 measured? and second, what do the differences 
 mean? Both of these questions are fundamental to 
 any actual utilizations of the fact of individual dif- 
 ferences. [ Several contributions in this field are re- 
 corded which may well benefit society at large even 
 in greater measure than they have the Army.] 
 In Chapter 11 the development of the Qualification 
 Card is traced particularly in the light of the prob- 
 lems raised in the preceding chapter. The operation 
 of this classification of enlisted men is finally de- 
 scribed in the last chapter of the section Chapter 
 12.
 
 CHAPTER 10 
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION AS TO A MAN'S 
 QUALIFICATIONS 
 
 THE NEED FOR MAN-ANALYSIS IN THE ARMY 
 
 As an illustration of the need for personnel work consider 
 this case. In June, 1918, there was no real centralized per- 
 sonnel system for enlisted men in the Department of Military 
 Aeronautics. In consequence, enlisted men were handled 
 for the most part as just so many men. From one of these 
 fields twenty-five men were shipped as privates to France in a 
 casual detachment. They were to serve in France in no special 
 way. Among the twenty-five men was a gauge and tool-maker 
 of ten years' experience who had last worked for the Westing- 
 house Company on the manufacture of rifles and had earned 
 $40 a week. A second had been a construction foreman for 
 the B. & O. R. R. for eight years, earning $50 a week. He 
 had handled as high as 320 men at a time. A third man in 
 this lot of twenty-five was a marine engineer with four years' 
 experience in the Boston Navy yard, earning $40 a week. 
 Here he had had a general training in the repair of ship 
 engines. Prior to this he had had experience in drafting and as 
 a machinist with two years' technical training as a back- 
 ground. Undoubtedly such men were of value as privates to the 
 Department of Military Aeronautics. But how much more valu- 
 able would they have been to the Army and nation in winning 
 the war, if the first one had been used in a munitions plant 
 in manufacturing rifles, the second in a railroad engineer 
 regiment and the third as an engineer or assistant engineer 
 in one of the new boats of the Emergency Fleet Corporation! 
 
 About November 1st, 1917, the following requisition for 
 
 115
 
 116 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 men was received from General Pershing. Freight cars had 
 been shipped to France for his use but no workmen had been 
 sent to erect the cars upon their arrival. The need for their 
 use was great. 
 Number Occupation 
 
 20 Buckers-Up Experienced in car riveting work with gen- 
 eral knowledge of pneumatic tools. 
 4 Car Builders General workers on wooden cars. 
 10 Car Deckers For laying floors. 
 
 12 Car Fitters Bolters up of steel frame work for riveting. 
 15 Car Riveters. 
 
 4 Carpenters General good wood workers. 
 4 Checkers Men who handle stock materials and record its 
 
 application to cars. 
 6 Clerks General. 
 4 Door Hangers. 
 2 Electricians or Wiremen. 
 2 Electricians or Helpers. 
 
 4 Engineers, Power House To operate 200 horse-power gaso- 
 line engine and generators. 
 4 Engineers, Yard Crane Locomotive type. 
 4 Firemen, Yard Crane. 
 6 Inspectors, Car Experienced on new car work. Able to 
 
 read prints. 
 
 4 Machinists Erecting Men 
 2 Machinists Pneumatic tool repairmen. 
 23 Painters. 
 2 Pipe Fitters. 
 2 Pipe Fitters' Helpers. 
 6 Rivet Heaters. 
 
 18 Roofers Car. 
 1 Stencil Cutter. 
 4 Stenographers. 
 
 19 Side and End Liners Experienced in putting sides and 
 
 ends of cars onto the steel frame work. 
 6 Trimmers Experienced in applying brake steps, grab irons, 
 
 door handles, etc. 
 18 Truck Builders. 
 
 206
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 117 
 
 Can one estimate in dollars and cents the advantage to the 
 Army as a whole if such men could be quickly and accurately 
 discovered and shipped to France? This is what the person- 
 nel system has done. 
 
 Another example was reported by a personnel supervisor, 
 as follows: 
 
 "When I first visited the Post, I found that the . . . .th 
 Artillery Regiment had been organized. My information 
 is that over three months were required to form the orga- 
 nization and during that time sixty per cent of the men 
 had to be transferred either within or out of the regiment 
 because they were riot fitted for the places they were 
 filling. After the regiment finally was completed and 
 had left, there were numerous 'comebacks' about the 
 men's papers and records, caused largely by the number 
 of transfers. During these three months the entire 
 clerical force at Headquarters was kept busy on this one 
 job. 
 
 "The Commanding Officer, the Adjutant, and the Per- 
 sonnel Officer, now appreciate the possibilities of person- 
 nel work, with the result that the system has been effi- 
 ciently followed ever since it was started in April. 
 Recruits are carefully interviewed and records properly 
 kept. 
 
 "In May they received information that a regiment 
 would be organized within the Post. The qualifications 
 of the men were balanced against the Tables of Occupa- 
 tional Needs for a Heavy Field Artillery Regiment, with 
 the result that when the formal orders were issued, 
 creating the . . . .th Regiment of Heavy Field Artillery, 
 95% of the men were picked and transferred to the 
 regiment in five days. After this there were less than 
 six per cent of transfers affecting the regiment, and most 
 of these were of men going into the regiment to fill 
 vacancies, and less than one per cent were of men trans- 
 ferred within the regiment because of being improperly 
 placed. This regiment boarded the transport for Over- 
 seas Service with the remark by its Commanding Officer 
 that it was the best organization of its kind that he had 
 ever seen. While it was being organized, the same cleri- 
 cal force attended to the work incidental to the selection 
 and transfer of four other detachments comprising a little
 
 118 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 over 1,000 men, with everything running smoothly and no 
 'comebacks' later on. 
 
 "To summarize: By use of the CCP-1 cards (soldiers' 
 qualification cards), and Tables of Occupational Needs, 
 a better regiment was organized in one-half the time, by a 
 smaller force, with no incidental confusion and no 'come- 
 backs.' " 
 
 According to records, 1,100,000 men were requisitioned from 
 camps on the basis of their inventories of skilled men and 
 transferred to other camps or to France where units needing 
 such men were in course of organization. In addition to these 
 1,100,000 transfers there were certainly an equal number more 
 of transfers that were ordered made between units in the same 
 camp of which there are no record. Think of the difficulties 
 incident to the proper placements of such enormous numbers 
 of men in the light of the machinery that had been in vogue 
 in the Regular Army before the war and which was considered 
 good enough for all needs in the great emergency. It is here 
 repeated in practically the words of one of the leading officers 
 of the Army. "The old system of finding out about men was 
 quite sufficient. If a Captain wanted to know how many 
 carpenters there were in his Company, he would simply say, 
 'All those who are carpenters step forward'. Thereupon the 
 carpenters were known and no paper work was required." 
 
 Today there are recognized four principal methods of esti- 
 mating a man's worth and usefulness: his record of achieve- 
 ment, his rating in special tests, the estimate of the man 
 himself and of others acquainted with him, and his physical 
 conditions. Each of these will now be discussed in some 
 detail. 
 
 RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 The man's record of achievement can be subdivided into: 
 first, his occupational history; second, his education; third, 
 his leadership experience; and fourth, his military history. 
 
 Occupational History. The experience of the Army has 
 been that a very reliable statement of what the man has done
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 119 
 
 in an occupational way can be obtained when he is properly 
 interviewed. According to personnel procedure a complete 
 record of just what he had done from the time he left school 
 until he entered the Army was recorded first of all in the 
 form of notes on a pad. After the interviewer was satisfied 
 he had a complete statement, he determined what was the 
 man's main civilian occupation and then filled in the space on 
 the Qualification Card (see Figure 1, pages 120, 121, as to 
 
 (1) Name of main occupation. 
 
 (2) Details of just what he did at that job. 
 
 (3) Years of experience. 
 
 (4) The Army symbol. For example, carpentry was sub- 
 divided into 22 subdivisions, i.e., block maker, pulley, 8 bl; 
 boat carpenter, 8b; bridge, timber carpenter, 8br; cabinet 
 maker, 8cb; etc. 
 
 (5) Interviewer's estimate of his skill at the trade, ex- 
 pressed as apprentice, journeyman, or expert. (Skill less 
 than that of an apprentice was ignored as not of sufficient 
 value to warrant transferring a man on that basis). 
 
 (6) Firm worked for. 
 
 (7) Department, Shop or Branch. 
 
 (8) Kind of business (the industry; e. g., shipbuilding, tex- 
 tile, etc.) 
 
 (9) Address of Firm. 
 
 (10) Weekly Wages. 
 
 Items 1-5 and 10 were recorded similarly for the 2nd best 
 and 3rd best occupations and occasionally the 4th best. 
 
 Experience derived from interviewing between 3,000,000 
 and 4,000,000 men brought about steady improvement along 
 two different lines. The first was to secure greater and greater 
 detail as to just whnl the man did. The second was to train 
 interviewers in their work. 
 
 Comparison of the first Qualification Record Card actually 
 used (see Figure 2, pages 124, 125), with the last one used in 
 the Army (See Figs. 10, 11, Vol. II) shows very clearly this 
 increased emphasis upon the details of what the man had done.
 
 120 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 iiiiiiimiiiimi 
 
 NOiivDunvno .syaiaios .j^-it,
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 
 
 121 
 
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 3ti 
 
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 MV 
 
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 jilliii]
 
 122 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 For the first card ignores the item entirely, and there was no 
 thought in September, 1917, of subdividing trades except into 
 the 49 main groups listed upon the card. By October, 1917, 
 however, the necessity of such details had been recognized and 
 the edition of October 20 gives two lines to this item. There- 
 after there was a steady increase in emphasis upon it, until 
 in the edition of November 1, 1918, (never actually used; 
 see Figs. 10, 11, Vol. II), a total of eight lines was devoted 
 to this item covering the main occupation, the 2nd best and 
 the 3rd best. 
 
 Strangely enough the importance of recording the details 
 as to the 2nd and 3rd best occupation, did not appear until 
 the February 1, 1918 edition. Before that date such informa- 
 tion was recorded only to the extent of underlining the occu- 
 pations as listed, once for apprentice skill, twice for journey- 
 man skill. From then on until the November 1st edition 
 there was no change in this respect. 
 
 From the very beginning it was planned to divide all the 
 men into three groups with respect to their main occupation ; 
 first, those with very little experience ; second, apprentices ; 
 third, journeymen and experts grouped together. This divi- 
 sion has been maintained throughout almost without change. 
 Dating from the February 1 edition of the card, a fourth 
 group, i.e., the experts, was recognized as distinct from jour- 
 neymen. But it has played but small part in the system. 
 
 The method of determining whether a man belonged to one 
 group or another has, however, changed very markedly. At the 
 beginning, the interviewer underlined the occupation in the 
 list, once for apprentice skill, twice for journeyman skill. 
 After the man had been interviewed, a classifier read over 
 the card and made the estimate. This was shown for an 
 apprentice by affixing an orange celluloid tab to the top of 
 the card directly over the index number corresponding to his 
 trade. In the same way a green tab was used for a journey- 
 man. For example, if a man was an apprentice draftsman and 
 a journeyman carpenter, an orange tab was affixed at 29 and
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 123 
 
 a green tab at 8. Dating from the February 1 revision, the 
 interviewer was called upon to record his estimate of the 
 man's skill by circling one of the three letters, "A.," "J." and 
 "E." This forced him to do better interviewing as he had to 
 secure sufficient details to enable him to make such a judg- 
 ment. The classifier would then revaluate the card. Dis- 
 crepancies in their estimates were utilized as the basis for 
 discussion at regular conferences, as a result of which there 
 came about better and better interviewing and classification. 
 In May, 1918, trade-tests (see chapter 30 for details) were 
 introduced into Army camps. On the basis of these actual 
 try-outs of a man's skill, he was judged a novice, apprentice, 
 journeyman, or expert. This was recorded in an appropriate 
 space on the card (See June 1, 1918 edition, Figure 1.) The 
 classifier was still looked upon, however, as one who was privi- 
 leged to grade the man for example, as journeyman, if his 
 judgment dictated such a classification, even if the interviewer 
 and trade-tester had both graded him apprentice. But actu- 
 ally the trade-test determined the rating of the man's skill 
 in practically every case where it was used. (Further discus- 
 sion of classifying and tabbing cards is presented on pages 
 109 to 115, Volume II). 
 
 A further improvement in recording the man's occupational 
 history appears in the sub-division of occupations and the 
 requirement that interviewers, trade testers and classifiers 
 assign the men to definite sub-divisions. At first carpenters 
 were either apprentice or journeyman carpenters. No dis- 
 tinction was made between bridge carpenters and cabinet 
 makers so far as the classification of the men went. In prac- 
 tice it was not so bad as it sounds, for if a requisition for 
 cabinet makers or railroad car carpenters was received, the 
 cards of all carpenters would first of all be taken from the 
 file and then the descriptive matter on each card would be 
 read over in order to discover the cabinet makers or railroad 
 car carpenters. Thousands of men were properly selected in 
 this manner, but many others were not selected so well. This
 
 124 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 
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 125
 
 126 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 method threw upon the file-clerks the task of determining 
 ability, rather than upon the classifier, whose special duty it 
 was to do just this. On October 20, 1917, the first index of 
 occupations appeared. It contained in addition to the 49 main 
 occupations, 37 supplementary occupations and these 86 main 
 groups were sub-divided into 165 sub-divisions. Each sub- 
 division was given a code letter, for example, 
 
 8. Carpenter at 
 
 Boat Builder y 
 
 Carriage Maker av 
 
 Form Carpenter cy 
 
 Saw Filer j 1 
 
 Wagon Maker mg 
 
 67. Chemical Industry Worker bb 
 
 Etc. 
 
 Instructions were issued to classify men under these 165 
 sub-divisions and to record at the top of the card next to the 
 tab the appropriate code letters. In this way when such 
 sub-divisions as boat builders, were required, cards tabbed at 
 8 could be quickly inspected and only those cards with the 
 letter "y" beside the tab would be considered. This scheme 
 was put into operation in only a few camps, largely because 
 of the difficulty of remembering the meaning of the symbols. 
 On February 1, proof of what was then on hand of a 
 rather complete index of Army occupations was issued. This 
 index listed 50 main occupations and 45 supplementary ones 
 with a total of 575 sub-divisions. A new code system was 
 introduced, made up of a number and letter or letters, the 
 letters in each case being suggestive of the occupation. For 
 example: 
 
 Carpenters 8 
 
 Boat 8b 
 
 Bridge (Timber) 8br 
 
 Cabinet Maker 8cb 
 
 Car Decker 8cr 
 
 Etc.
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 127 
 
 This mnemonic device was immediately taken up by the men 
 in the personnel offices and shortly after a bridge carpenter 
 was referred to almost generally as "8br." But the symbols 
 were not placed at the top of the cards to any great extent. 
 
 On the June 1 edition of the qualification card appeared for 
 the first time a definite place for the symbols (see page 120). 
 Thereafter they were used universally. The interviewer was 
 required to record under what sub-division of an occupation 
 the man should be put and how good he was at it. This 
 resulted not only in having the facts recorded but also in 
 a decided improvement in the interviewing as it forced a com- 
 plete statement of just what the man had done in order to 
 make the classification. 
 
 Education. In recounting a man's achievements, we have 
 besides his occupational history, his education to consider. 
 The first qualification card to be used (see page 125) called 
 for: 
 
 Grade reached (last reader used) in school 
 
 Years in High School Did you graduate ? 
 
 Years in College Did you graduate ? 
 
 Subjects of specialization 
 
 Years in Technical School .... Did you graduate ? 
 
 Name course pursued 
 
 Years in Trade or Business School 
 
 Name course pursued 
 
 A month and a half later, the new revision called in addition 
 for the name of the College, the Technical School, and the 
 Trade or Business School. So much confusion had arisen 
 because interviewers did not know the nature of an educational 
 institution and so were crediting "years in college" for a 
 business college, etc., that this measure became imperative. No 
 further changes were made except to reorganize the arrange- 
 ment for the space devoted to this subject (see page 121). 
 
 The February 1 revision included space for the first time 
 for "Army Training School Certificates, etc." No change 
 was made in this item until the June 1 revision when the space 
 was doubled and information was called for as to location of
 
 128 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 school, weeks spent at school, whether man graduated or not, 
 the nature of the course, and the rating in terms of apprentice, 
 journeyman or expert. There were three kinds of schools to 
 which this space was devoted. First pre-enlistment courses 
 conducted by the Federal Board for Vocational Education; 
 second, post-enlistment but pre-service courses conducted by 
 the Committee on Education and Special Training; and third, 
 army courses to which soldiers were detailed as an integral 
 part of their training. Such courses gave instruction in wire- 
 less telegraphy, horseshoeing, auto repair, etc. Certificates 
 were furnished students in the first two types of courses as 
 to their proficiency and it was data taken from these certifi- 
 cates that was recorded in this space. Due to a lack of a 
 thorough-going standardization of instruction or manner of 
 expressing the results obtained by the students, a great deal 
 of trouble was experienced in classifying the graduates to 
 the satisfaction of the students, their instructors and the Army 
 personnel system. As far as possible, however, such students 
 were assigned to units where their training could be put to 
 use. (See telegram of March 23, 1918, from A. G. O.) In- 
 formation as to graduation from the third type of instruction 
 was much more difficult to handle as the men were constantly 
 attending such schools and division or camp headquarters was 
 ordinarily not notified. As early as February 12 it was recog- 
 nized that such information should be secured and in one 
 division orders were issued requiring instructors in charge to 
 report to the personnel officer. 
 
 Ability to speak foreign languages was called for on the 
 first card. The information desired was : 
 
 Do you speak French well? German? 
 
 Any other language? 
 
 The wording of the first question was changed in the Febru- 
 ary 1 revision to "Can you carry on a conversation in French?" 
 This was done in the expectation of eliminating all but those 
 who could actually speak fluently in the foreign tongue. In
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 129 
 
 the June 1 edition this was revised to provide space for 
 "fairly well" and "fluently." Just before this change a sur- 
 vey had shown that only 10% of those claiming ability in 
 French and but 40% in German could really speak well 
 enough to act as interpreters. Following this disclosure most 
 personel offices established the custom of checking all state- 
 ments as to language ability through the use of interviewers 
 who could speak the language. At one time one office main- 
 tained interpreters in 26 languages. 
 
 Commencing with the February 1 revision, the cards of 
 men unable to speak English (non-E), or who were illiterate 
 (L), were checked. Such men were not assigned important 
 positions. To some extent also they were assigned to com- 
 panies where they could secure training in speaking English. 
 But most of this latter function was handled as a company 
 matter. 
 
 To what use was all this information concerning education 
 and languages put? The amount and kind of schooling was 
 utilized mainly as background information as to how good 
 the man probably was at his civilian trade. The presence 
 of technical training always counted in favor of the man's 
 experience. Its absence also counted against him. For 
 example, a "civil engineer" with no schooling above grammar 
 school was scrutinized most carefully before being recorded 
 as more than a surveyor. Besides serving in a background 
 way, high school or college graduates were very frequently 
 selected when men of leadership ability were called for. 
 
 It has already been explained that students in the Army 
 Training Schools were assigned as far as possible to units 
 where their training could be utilized. In the case of foreign 
 language ability, we have a situation directly comparable to 
 occupational ability. Requisitions from the War Department 
 for men who could speak French were frequent. And as far 
 as possible men who could speak French and German were 
 distributed so that each company would have one of each. But 
 there were far too few such linguists to accomplish much
 
 130 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 along this line. The system of classifying linguists was not 
 upon their ability to speak the language but upon their ability 
 to act as interpreters. As a good interpreter must speak and 
 write both languages and be fairly intelligent and well- 
 educated, foreigners were not tabbed unless they knew Eng- 
 lish. They were green tabbed at 52 for French, 53 for 
 German, and 54 for other languages if they knew both lan- 
 guages and had had some high school work or its equivalent. 
 They were orange tabbed if they spoke both languages but had 
 had less education. 
 
 Leadership Experience. The first card carried the state- 
 ment, "Describe the job or enterprises in which you exercised 
 the greatest authority or leadership; such as foreman, mana- 
 ger, captain, etc.," with four lines for the answer. The space 
 was cut to three lines in the October 20 revision and to one 
 line in the February 1 revision. During the first few months 
 the answer to this question was found of very great value as 
 it recorded the most important thing the man had done in the 
 way of leadership. When the space carried such statements 
 as "Taught Sunday School class of 8 boys," or "Managed 
 farm, 2 laborers," one did not select the man for a job calling 
 for leadership qualities. In the last few months this space 
 was largely ignored for leadership information, the psycho- 
 logical intelligence rating having largely taken its place in 
 this respect. The fact, however, that the November 1, 1918 
 revision provides two lines of space for the information and 
 it is still retained on the face of the card is positive proof of 
 its very great value in aiding the classifier properly to evalu- 
 ate the man. 
 
 The first card provided that leadership should be tabbed 
 at 50. The second card (Oct. 20) eliminated this feature, 
 substituting construction foreman ;instead. Leadership is 
 hardly a primary quality and only primary qualities should be 
 tabbed. If one wants a boss carpenter, he will first of all 
 "pull" all carpenters tabbed at 8, and then go over the cards 
 to find that one with the greatest boss experience. But he
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 131 
 
 would not first of all select "leaders" and then look for 
 carpenters. It was found that this was universally the case. 
 
 There is no question that the majority of men who have 
 shown leadership ability in civil life made good as leaders in 
 the Army in the United States. Experience at the front has 
 demonstrated, on the other hand, that many men judged in 
 terms of past performance fail at the crucial moment and that 
 often a man who has never before shown any aptitude for 
 leadership assumes command in time of emergency. The world 
 has much to learn before leaders may be selected with any 
 high expectation of ultimate success. 
 
 Military History. The fourth record of achievement is that 
 of military experience. Information of that sort was called 
 for on the first card under the caption "Outline any previous 
 military experience you have had, giving grade, period of 
 service and organization," and four lines of space was reserved 
 for the information. Military experience was to be tabbed at 
 54, but that was eliminated on February 1. At the same time 
 the space devoted to this subject was cut to two lines. Exper- 
 ience has shown that this information is little used by a camp 
 or division personnel officer. And it is a fair question whether 
 space should be devoted to it on the card. The company 
 commander has the information in the Service Record and 
 discovers the fact as soon as the recruit appears. 
 
 Another phase of military history has reference not to the 
 man's military experience before entering the Army but after 
 he has been in the Army some time. Provision for recording 
 this was made on the June 1 revision of the card. Twenty-six 
 army specialties were listed and a system of tabbing provided 
 to indicate proficiency in them. As request for this innovation 
 came from France it was assumed that it would be used in 
 the Expeditionary Forces. So far no reference to its use in 
 any way has been received at Washington. 
 
 Conclusion: Record of Achievement. The four sub-divisions 
 of his previous record; occupational history, education, capa- 
 city for leadership, and military career have been reviewed.
 
 132 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The Army experience has been that the facts can be ascer- 
 tained if trained interviewers are employed. And that experi- 
 ence has demonstrated the great value of knowing and utiliz- 
 ing all this information the first three items by the personnel 
 officer and the fourth by the company commander, if not by 
 the personnel officer. 
 
 THE SOLDIER'S SCORE IN SPECIAL TESTS 
 
 It will be recalled that four principal methods of estimating 
 a man's worth and usefulness were set forth. His record of 
 achievement has been discussed and the second his score 
 in special tests is now before us for consideration. Two 
 such tests were used, one to test his general intelligence and 
 the other to test his ability in a specific trade. 
 
 Intelligence Tests. These tests are discussed at some length 
 in Chapter X of Vol. II and it is sufficient to state here that 
 in each camp a Psychological Examiner was stationed, com- 
 missioned in the Medical Department. All soldiers were 
 given the tests and as a result were graded either "A," 
 "B," "C-f ," "C," "C ," "D," "D ," or "E." "E" men, 
 including approximately one-half of one per cent of the 
 recruits, were ordinarily discharged. The meaning of the 
 letter ratings is as follows: 
 
 A. Very Superior Intelligence. This grade is earned by 
 only four or five soldiers out of a hundred. The "A" group 
 is composed of men of marked intellectuality. Such men are 
 of high officer type when they are also endowed with leader- 
 ship and other necessary qualities. 
 
 B. Superior Intelligence. "B" intelligence is superior, but 
 less exceptional than that represented by "A." The rating 
 "B" is obtained by eight to ten soldiers out of a hundred. The 
 group contains a good many men of the commissioned officer 
 type and a large amount of non-commissioned officer material. 
 
 C+. High Average Intelligence. This group includes about 
 fifteen to eighteen per cent of all soldiers and contains a large 
 amount of non-commissioned officer material with occasionally
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 133 
 
 a man whose leadership and power to command fit him for 
 commissioned rank. 
 
 C. Average Intelligence. Includes about twenty-five per 
 cent of soldiers. Excellent private type with a certain amount 
 of fair non-commissioned officer material. 
 
 C . Low Average Intelligence. Includes about twenty per 
 cent. While below average in intelligence, "C " men are 
 usually good privates and satisfactory in work of routine 
 nature. 
 
 D. Inferior Intelligence. Includes about fifteen per cent 
 of soldiers. "D" men are likely to be fair soldiers, but are 
 usually slow in learning and rarely go above the rank of 
 private. They are short on initiative and so require more 
 than the usual amount of supervision. Many of them are 
 illiterate or foreign. 
 
 D and E. Very Inferior Intelligence. This group is 
 divided into two classes (l) "D " men, who are very inferior 
 in intelligence but are considered fit for regular service; and 
 (2) "E" men, those whose mental inferiority justifies their 
 recommendation for Development Battalion, special service 
 organization, rejection, or discharge. 
 
 The immense contrast between "A" and "D " intelligence 
 is shown by the fact that men of "A" intelligence have the 
 ability to make a superior record in college or university, 
 while "D " men are of such inferior mentality that they are 
 rarely able to go beyond the third or fourth grade of the ele- 
 mentary school, however long they attend. In fact, most 
 "D " and "E" men are below the "mental age" of 10 years 
 and at best are on the border-line of mental deficiency. "B" 
 intelligence is capable of making an average record in college, 
 "C+" intelligence cannot do so well, while mentality of the 
 "C" grade is rarely equal to high school graduation. 
 
 The principal use to which this information was put was to 
 see to it that each company or battery had its pro rata share of 
 intelligence; in other words, that each had its share of super- 
 ior men intellectually, of average men, and of inferior men.
 
 134 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The information was also utilized as an aid in determining 
 how good a man was at his trade. For example, a carpenter 
 of two years' experience, earning $30.00 a week before the 
 war and of "B" intelligence would be rated a journeyman, 
 whereas a carpenter of five years' experience, earning $18.00 
 a week and of "D" intelligence would be rated an apprentice. 
 The "B" man could undoubtedly learn in 2 years what the 
 "D" man could not learn in five years, hence it would be 
 fair to rate them in terms of their earnings instead of their 
 years of experience. 
 
 These intelligence scores were used in many camps in select- 
 ing men for Officers' Training Schools. In some camps men 
 of "C " or lower intelligence were not accepted, as it was 
 learned from experience that practically none could do the 
 work. And to a limited extent when the armistice was signed, 
 men were being assigned to units in terms of their intelligence. 
 Headquarters Companies, Machine Gun Companies, etc., were 
 being made up of men of "A" to "C " intelligence, but not 
 of "D" men. 
 
 The intelligence score was recorded in the space marked "I" 
 (Intelligence) upon the qualification card. Provision for this 
 was made, dating from the very first card. 
 
 Trade Tests. A trade test measures the ability of the man 
 to do the work of a particular trade and gives him a score in 
 terms of "N" (novice), "A" (apprentice), "J" (journeyman), 
 and "E" (expert). Some tests are oral in nature and test his 
 knowledge; others require him to do some carefully selected 
 task which is known to be typical of that trade. They are 
 discussed at some length in Chapter 29 and also in Chapter VI 
 of Volume II. They were first introduced into the army at 
 Camp Joseph E. Johnston in May, 1918, and by August, 1918, 
 were established in all the Depot Brigade camps and several 
 of the Staff Corps camps. 
 
 Space for the record of one trade test was provided in the 
 March 15 revision of the card, space for three tests in the 
 June 1 revision, and for eight tests in the November 1 revision.
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 135 
 
 It was found from experience that some men had to be given 
 as many as four or five tests and sometimes more than that 
 before all of their varied experience had beenj properly 
 covered. The reason for so many tests can be appreciated 
 when it is realized that seven tests were sometimes necessary 
 to test a general auto repairman, i.e., carburetor, magneto, 
 general engine, general chassis, vulcanizing, battery repair, 
 and radiator tests. In addition there was a test for driving 
 an auto and another for driving a truck. 
 
 It is needless to recount the value of such tests determining 
 as they do with great accuracy just how good a man is at 
 a particular trade. The following notice issued in the official 
 bulletin of one of the large eastern camps indicates a new 
 use for the trade tests, and at the same time shows how com- 
 pletely they were established asr a means of determining the 
 degree of trade skill possessed by a claimant. 
 
 "All drivers of touring cars, motorcycles and trucks 
 will be issued a driver's license by the Trade Test Officer. 
 Any unlicensed drivers found driving touring cars, 
 motorcycles or trucks will be reported to their company 
 commanders. Licenses will not be interchangeable." 
 
 Conclusion: Special Tests. The use of intelligence and 
 trade tests in the Army marks the first great step toward a 
 real science of personnel work. For here we have adequate 
 methods of measuring the individual as to certain definite 
 qualifications, and the results can be apprehended and used 
 by any one at all familiar with them. The next steps in 
 extending this science will be in the establishment of tests 
 to cover the material discussed in the following section. 
 
 THE ESTIMATE OF THE MAN AND OF OTHERS AS 
 TO HIS QUALIFICATIONS 
 
 The third principal method of estimating a man's usefulness 
 is to be obtained from what he thinks of himself and from 
 what others think of him. This third method was used in
 
 136 
 
 estimating the man's interests, his character, and his occupa- 
 tional skill as based on the opinion of former employers and 
 friends. There is no other way of handling the first two. 
 The latter has been very well taken care of in Army person- 
 nel work through the use of trained interviewers and trade 
 tests, as far as estimating his ability to do specific kinds of 
 work, but not as to his personal habits of industry, faithful- 
 ness, etc. 
 
 The man's interests. From the earliest edition of the quali- 
 fication card space was reserved in which to record the man's 
 preference as to the branch of service he should enter. In the 
 February 1 revision the item was changed to read, "State 
 preference for branch of service and special duty in that 
 branch." The additional information was requested as it 
 was found that most recruits did not have a clear idea of the 
 functions of the various branches of the service and conse- 
 quently their preference for "Engineers" or "Signal Corps" 
 was based on totally erroneous impressions. But recruits 
 did know very often that they wanted to "work with horses," 
 "drive a truck," "do electrical work," or " go over the top." 
 The next revision (March 15) changed the wording to read, 
 "Branch of service or special duty preferred," which freed 
 the idea of "special duty" from any definite reference to 
 "branch of service" a decided improvement. 
 
 The information thus secured from the men was used to a 
 considerable extent in the early days. When several men 
 were being considered for special assignment, those were 
 selected as far as possible who preferred that work. But later 
 on, due to the shortage of specialists, the man's preference was 
 considered less and less. This was undoubtedly a weakness 
 of the system but came about very naturally in the rush of 
 filling requisitions for thousands of specialists of all sorts and 
 kinds each month. Future improvements in personnel work 
 will make possible greater use of the man's preference and 
 interests since it is very clear from many investigations, that 
 what a man wants to do is generally indicative of what he
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 137 
 
 can do, and when he is so placed he is much more contented 
 and so raises the general morale of the whole unit. 
 
 The Man's Character. In the early days no provision was 
 made to secure information as to the man's character from 
 interviewing him. But a special form CCP-3 (see Figure 
 3, next page), was prepared which was to be sent by the 
 personnel officer to the man's former employer. It will be 
 noted that the form calls for an estimate of the man's (a) 
 trustworthiness, (b) general intelligence, (c) ability to super- 
 vise and direct men, (d) ability to work with others, (e) his 
 skill as a (trade entered on blank), and (f) the general esti- 
 mate of the man's character and qualifications. The blank 
 was never used, except in one camp, and no particular value 
 was found for it there. Actually such information as "trust- 
 worthiness" and "ability to work with others" is of little value 
 in the Army although it is without doubt very important in 
 industry. This is due to the organization of the Army under 
 which the men must be fairly trustworthy and must work with 
 others or suffer immediate consequences. The other items on 
 the blank were covered in other ways: "General Intelligence" 
 through actual tests; "ability to supervise and direct men" 
 
 through information secured under leadership; "skill as 
 
 " through careful interviewing and later 
 
 trade tests. 
 
 A new situation arose in June, 1918, which called for defi- 
 nite information as to a man's character and ability. The 
 draft was taking from essential industries many men needed 
 therein, despite the regulations supposedly operative in the 
 local boards. This brought about "furloughing to industry" 
 many men thus drafted. On July 1 instructions were sent 
 out by letter from The Adjutant General's Office, providing 
 that a revised Form CCP-3 (see Figure 22, Volume II) be 
 sent the former employer in the case of specialists designated 
 by the War Department. These forms were mailed direct 
 by the employer to The Adjutant General, where the claims 
 for furloughing were considered. In the case of chemists a two-
 
 138 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 page questionnaire (a mimeographed CCP form) was filled 
 out by the man concerned and this was forwarded to The 
 Adjutant General. Both papers were considered together be- 
 fore assigning the man to a chemical unit, returning him to 
 industry, or assigning him to other Army work. In the latter 
 
 WAR DEPARTMENT 
 The Adjutant General's Office 
 
 (Commute, on Clnificiion of Pcrtonnel in the Army) 
 
 From: Personnel Officer, 
 To: (Name) 
 
 The man whose r 
 i (Job) 
 
 appears 
 
 . the T 
 
 side states that he > 
 Since he is being c< 
 
 is employed by you at (P 1 ""*) 
 
 sidered for a responsible position in the army, you are re- 
 
 quested to answer the questions on the reverse side of this card. If you are not personally acquainted with his work, kindly have 
 the questions answered by the manager, superintendent or other official in your Company best able to supply this information 
 accurately. 
 
 The Government assumes that you will answer fully, carefully, and with the utmost frankness. Your reply will be considered 
 strictly confidential. A franked envelope is enclosed for your reply. Immediate attention to this matter is important. 
 Form No. CCP-J. Pe 
 
 Your estimate as to his ability in the following? 
 
 How )6tog was he in your employ? 
 
 years. In what capacity? 
 
 1 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 What was his last weekly wage? % 
 
 . When did he leave you ? 
 
 3 
 
 
 Indicate answers by X in appropriate brackets. 
 
 Very Aver- Very 
 
 How do you rate hii Good Good age Poor Poor. 
 
 a. Trustworthiness? ( )()()()(). 
 
 b General intelligence? ( )()()()() 
 
 c Ability to supervise and direct men ?-( )()()()() 
 
 d Ability to work with others? ( )()()()() 
 
 e. His skill as a ?-( )()()()(). 
 
 General Remarks. _ 
 
 Your personal estimate of the man's character and qualifications 
 
 FIG. 3. 
 
 Questionnaire to Employers (CCP Form 3, First Edition) 
 (Original Size 4x7%) 
 
 case such action resulted when it was felt that his claims as a 
 chemist had little or no merit. 
 
 This represents all that was attempted in the matter of 
 sizing up a man's character as far as the personnel organiza- 
 tion itself was concerned. And to date no adequate solution 
 to the problem has been suggested which is operative for
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 139 
 
 enlisted men in the Army. Attention should be called, how- 
 ever, to one attempt at solving this problem. In introducing 
 personnel work into the National Guard and Regular Army 
 divisions a flying squadron of officers and enlisted men was 
 established who handled the classifications by going from camp 
 to camp. This group under the direction of Mr. Kendall 
 Weisiger graded men as they interviewed them according to: 
 
 A Physique B Intelligence C Leadership D Loyalty 
 
 (1) Robust (1) Keen (1) Self-confi- (1) Intense 
 
 dent 
 
 (2) Average (2) Average (2) Average (2) Average 
 
 (3) Poor (3) Dull (3) Retiring (3) Antago- 
 
 nistic 
 
 The instructions merely stated that "the great majority of 
 men will fall within the middle class. To be significant both 
 extremes should be used sparingly. After the interview is 
 completed the interviewer will place the personality rating 
 under 'Remarks' using the symbols shown in the table ex- 
 pressed in the following manner: A-l, B-2, C-2, D-l." 
 
 This system was utilized in classifying thousands of men 
 but soon fell into disuse when it became apparent that inter- 
 viewers showed great differences in the way in which they 
 would rate the same man. For example, three exponents of 
 the system rated a heavy built man as A-l, A-2, and A-3, on 
 the different grounds that "he was robust," "fine-looking, but 
 too fat to be called more than average," and "poor because 
 too fat." 
 
 Interest in "loyalty" survived after the other three items dis- 
 appeared. And on the next revision of the card (Feb. l), 
 space was provided for the birthplace of the soldier, of his 
 father, of his mother and whether he was a citizen, had taken 
 out first papers, or was an alien. In addition a square with 
 the letters S. D. (suspected of disloyalty) was included. Those 
 suspected of disloyalty on the basis of their birthplace or of 
 their general behavior were checked in this square and their 
 cases called to the attention of the Intelligence Officer. This
 
 140 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 was a valuable addition to personnel work and has rendered 
 very great service. 
 
 THE MAN'S PHYSICAL CONDITION 
 
 In the early days of the war there was no need for noting 
 the man's physical condition as only physically fit were ac- 
 cepted for service. Gradually, however, the feeling developed 
 that this was a mistaken idea. Examples of this sort accumu- 
 lated. A first class stenographer was not accepted because 
 of flat feet, even though there was a great shortage of stenog- 
 raphers. A $5,000 a year wholesale and retail shoe man was 
 not accepted because he had poor eyesight, when he was 
 needed by the Camp Quartermaster to handle the issuing of 
 shoes and could be employed by the Government for $30.00 
 a month. Finally, in June, 1918, authority was granted to 
 accept limited service men for service. This is' not the place 
 to record the gradual development in regulations and methods 
 pertaining to this subject. For that see Chapter 27. Suffice 
 it to say that in the June 1 revision space was reserved for 
 "Med. Class" (Medical Classification). In this space was 
 written rating 1, 2 or 3. A rating 1 man was "satisfactory 
 physically, mentally, and morally." Rating 2 included men 
 physically fit yet found lacking in other respects, as for 
 instance, uncertain ability to speak, read and write English, or 
 of slow mentality. It also included men not quite fit for 
 general military service but free from serious organic disease, 
 and otherwise competent and desirable. These could be used 
 for any domestic and any but the heaviest combat service 
 (overseas). Rating 3 included those of such physical classi- 
 fication that they could be utilized and their retention was 
 warranted for restricted or limited domestic service. 
 
 This classification was made by medical officers and per- 
 sonnel officers and at first was recorded on a 5 x 8 card kept 
 in the development battalions. This system was unsatis- 
 factory as it involved the use of a second card and the records 
 were not in the hands of the personnel officer. Besides this a
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION 141 
 
 still more serious objection was found in the rating system 
 itself. These ratings involved a summary estimate of the 
 physical, mental and moral condition of the man. Once made 
 and recorded it meant little to one who then encountered it, 
 for he could not tell, for example, whether rating 2 was due to 
 poor physical condition, illiteracy, low intelligence or low 
 morality, and weakness in these different qualities called for 
 very different assignments. 
 
 In consequence of this situation the November 1 revision of 
 the qualification card was prepared. Upon the back of this 
 card space was reserved for the Physical Findings with extra 
 space for subsequent changes. As the card was never used, 
 no evaluation of it from actual experience is possible but it 
 was prepared after consideration of the whole situation. The 
 plan provided that men accepted as limited service should be 
 either immediately assigned to the depot brigade or, if their 
 condition could be improved through special training, to the 
 development battalion. In the former case their physical 
 classification would be recorded on the face of the qualification 
 card in the square entitled "Final Physical Classification." 
 In the latter case the classification would be recorded on the 
 back of the card in the square entitled "Preliminary Physical 
 Classification." When the man graduated from the develop- 
 ment battalion and was ready for assignment a final classifica- 
 tion would be given him and entered on the face of the card. 
 These physical classifications differed from the ratings first 
 used in that they referred only to physical condition and did 
 not include such factors as illiteracy, intelligence, etc. It was 
 felt that such a system would provide the best results as in 
 this way the personnel officer had before him on the card a 
 complete statement as to the man's condition and each factor 
 was recorded separately. 
 
 In addition to this, the card provided space for the 
 "Surgeon's O. K." opposite the man's main, second best, and 
 third best occupations. If in the judgment of the medical 
 officer his physical condition was such that he should not
 
 142 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 engage in any particular occupational work in the Army the 
 word "No" would be written in the appropriate square. For 
 example, a construction foreman with a weak heart might be 
 allowed to act as foreman but not as a carpenter. 
 
 It is believed that this system would have made it fairly 
 easy to handle rapidly and accurately limited service men, as 
 well as the physically fit. Up to the time of the armistice it 
 required considerable time per man to place them with due 
 regard to their physical disqualifications; and if they had to 
 be rapidly assigned as was so often the case, then little atten- 
 tion to their individual defects was possible. 
 
 Commencing with the October 20, 1917, revision the items 
 "Height" and "Weight" were included on the card. They 
 have been of considerable value in selecting men for certain 
 units, as Machine Gun Battalions and Truck Units which 
 required men of at least 150 pounds weight almost exclusively.
 
 CHAPTER 11 
 THE SOLDIERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 
 
 The Soldiers' Qualification Card contains a record of all 
 the information about him that is .deemed necessary in order 
 to utilize his services to the greatest advantage in the Army. 
 The first card used in the Army (September 1st, 1917) is illus- 
 trated, pages 124 and 125. One subsequent revision, on June 
 1, 1918, is also shown on pages 120 and 121. These two 
 editions with the edition of November 1 (see Fig. 10, 11, Vol. 
 II) represent the important changes in the development of 
 the card. 
 
 In the preceding sections many details of the card have been 
 discussed. It is the purpose of this section to present more 
 general problems relating to the card as a whole. 
 
 REQUIREMENTS FOR AN IDEAL CARD 
 
 The fundamental requirements for the card were five in 
 number. It should be as simple as possible; it should be ade- 
 quate for the needs of the Army ; it should provide for a simple 
 method of cross-indexing; it should provide for distinguishing 
 between degrees of skill in a trade ; and it should fit a standard 
 filing system. Because of the first two requirements, which 
 were maintained to the end, items were never added until it 
 was clear that they were really needed. The third requirement 
 relative to cross-indexing demanded very careful study at the 
 beginning. It was recognized that men would be useful along 
 more than one line; and that the use of duplicate and even 
 triplicate cards to show secondary and tertiary usefulnesses 
 would be out of the question because of the difficulty of keep- 
 ing all cards on one man properly located. A card suitable 
 for use in the Hollerith machine was considered. Such cards 
 
 143
 
 144 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 are admirable for statistical work. But a personnel card, altho 
 used to some extent as the basis for statistics, is employed 
 much more for other purposes. The cards are filed by com- 
 panies and the main problem is to so organize the company 
 that the right number of specialists are contained therein. Such 
 balancing can be done better by glancing at the cards again 
 and again than by running all the cards through the machine 
 to discover how many men there are of a certain specialty. 
 And again in selecting specialists one must always take into 
 account not only the question of whether a man can do the 
 work then needed but what else he can do. It would be folly 
 for example, to assign a man to the Signal Corps because he 
 was an electrician when the card shows also that he is an 
 X-ray operator, most needed in the Base Hospital. Such dis- 
 tinctions can hardly be made with Hollerith cards. The tab- 
 bing system which was adopted eliminated the need for dupli- 
 cate cards and seemed in every way superior to the Hollerith 
 card system. All machinists are tabbed at 6, all blacksmiths 
 at 7, etc. And in a few minutes the cards of any trade can be 
 pulled from the file. At the same time each such card carries 
 with it tabs on any other trades at which the men are skilled, 
 thus serving as warning signals against using a man in a trade 
 at which he is less valuable to the army than in some other. 
 
 The fourth requirement that different degrees of skill in a 
 trade should be readily indicated also favored the tabbing 
 system- as compared with that of the Hollerith card. For by 
 the use of orange tabs for apprentice and green tabs for jour- 
 neymen or experts and no tabs for unskilled men, three 
 degrees of skill were readily shown. 
 
 The fifth requirement for an ideal card was that it should 
 fit into standard filing systems. The adopted form in the 
 Adjutant General's Office is a form 8^x3% inches which is 
 filed on end. As there were needed at least 50 tabs for the 
 qualification card occupying 8 inches of space, it was impos- 
 sible to use the A.G.O. filing system which gave but 3% inches 
 of tabbing space. The earliest form of card was of this A.G.O.
 
 SOLDIERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 145 
 
 shape but had to be filed on the side. Filing cases for such 
 an unusual form could not be secured under 60 days and with 
 little assurance of shipment then. This situation forced the 
 use of an 8x5 card. But for such a sized form it was impos- 
 sible to secure authorization from the A.G.O. in September, 
 1917. In consequence the Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel was forced to start its own system independent of tue 
 A.G.O. Thus arose the "CCP" group of forms. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL 
 CLASSIFICATION CARD 
 
 It is very clear from the early records of the development of 
 the Committee on Classification of Personnel that the original 
 idea of its founder, Dr. Walter Dill Scott, was the introduc- 
 tion of the rating scale into the army for selecting officers. 
 (See Section II.) In the letter of July 30, 1917, to the Secre- 
 tary of War the name of the Committee is first mentioned and 
 there the phrase "Classification of Personnel" is emphasized. 
 But there the only mention of personnel work as now under- 
 stood was as follows: 
 
 "4. If a demand arises for services on a large scale 
 such as classifying all of the 500,000 men in the first 
 National Army, an added expense of ten cents per 
 man would be necessary." 
 
 This was the letter upon which final action was taken by 
 the Secretary of War. In the August 3rd letter, a revision of 
 the earlier letter, the second one of the "immediate problems" 
 was "Assistance in preparing personal history blanks and 
 efficiency blanks for training camps." This item represented 
 what would be the duty of the Committee along these lines, 
 i. e., to help in preparing the blanks that the Army would use 
 in classifying men. 
 
 During the next three weeks it was discovered that no one 
 in the Army was working on the problem of utilizing specialists 
 as they came into the Army in the draft, yet every one assumed
 
 146 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 that some one else must know all about it, and had made plans 
 accordingly. In the notes of August 15, there appears, "we 
 began to formulate cards for the National Army, taking as a 
 point of departure the card we had drawn up for the Officers' 
 Training Camp, for the Quartermaster, and for the Signal 
 Corps." "Mr. R. C. Clothier drew up a tentative plan which 
 had three parts. One part was to be torn off and used for 
 Post Office address, another part to be torn off and used to 
 keep records of progress of the individual men in the com- 
 pany, and the third and main part was to be the qualification 
 card." 
 
 About August 21st the name "Qualification Record Card" 
 appeared and on that day, so the records show, "Mr. Clothier 
 put the finishing touches on our card for the National Army 
 work, and we all felt assured of great success." Little did 
 they know then of the long history of revisions ahead of the 
 card. This occurred three days before the arrival of Dr. 
 Strong who has spent a good share of his time for fifteen 
 months in the development of the card. And in the next ten 
 days there averaged one new proof from the printer a day. 
 During those days "all worked industriously on getting ready 
 for the vocational survey. We interviewed representative offi- 
 cers for each branch and arm of the Army, requesting that 
 they should give us the list of occupations in which training 
 was valuable for their particular service. By frequent per- 
 sonal interviews we were enabled to secure thoroughly good 
 lists from all branches of the Army. When these lists of occu- 
 pations were combined, we had the list of occupations as it 
 appears on our qualification record cards." It is really quite 
 surprising how well this work was done under the circum- 
 stances. Subsequent experience brought about but few changes 
 in the list. 
 
 On August 28th another letter was addressed to the Secre- 
 tary of War, as follows : 
 
 "A new problem is facing the Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel in the Army. How may drafted men with special
 
 SOLDIERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 147 
 
 fitness, such as cooks, auto repairmen, switchboard men, bac- 
 teriologists, etc., be discovered immediately upon entering the 
 cantonments and assigned to those units where their services 
 will be of the greatest value to the Army? " This let- 
 ter asked for an appropriation of $26,000 to carry out the 
 classification plan. 
 
 On September 1st a small supply of the qualification cards 
 were printed and several individuals spent two days having 
 them filled out by soldiers in the District of Columbia National 
 Guard and in other units. Several changes resulted, the prin- 
 cipal one being that the plan to have enlisted men fill out their 
 own cards was abandoned in favor of having them made out 
 by the company commander. A few days later the qualifica- 
 tion card, illustrated on page 124 was printed for use in the 
 first draft. 
 
 SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS OF THE QUALIFICATION 
 
 CARD 
 
 Many items in the gradual evolution of the card have been 
 already discussed in the preceding chapter. A few others 
 which pertain not so much to the means of evaluating the 
 soldier himself, but rather to the efficient functioning of the 
 system, need mention here. 
 
 The introduction of personnel work into the National Guard 
 Divisions brought about many transfers of men from one unit 
 to another in order that each should have its share of the 
 specialists it needed. It was soon recognized that some system 
 must be adopted whereby the men most valued by a company 
 commander should be indicated so that they would not be 
 transferred by the division personnel officer except after care- 
 ful evaluation of the relative merits of the men in his present 
 and proposed unit. Otherwise such an amount of friction and 
 opposition would develop as to prevent the personnel officers 
 from accomplishing their work. In consequence on the Feb- 
 ruary 1st revision appears the square marked "Preferred." 
 All such preferred men were checked after consultation with
 
 148 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the company commander and it was understood that they 
 would not be transferred without consultation with him. In 
 most instances the company commander showed a high sense 
 of his duty to the division and Army as a whole and asked for 
 but few men to be "preferred." The system aided very mate- 
 rially in that the cadre was protected thereby winning the sup- 
 port of many officers who would otherwise have fought the 
 system. 
 
 When a man had been assigned to a unit because of special 
 fitness it seemed very desirable to keep a record of the action, 
 else later on he might carelessly be re-transferred to another 
 unit. And also if a man had been assigned as cook and later 
 the company commander claimed he had no cooks, the record 
 would show that so-and-so was a cook and had been assigned 
 to his company as such. To accomplish this in the February 
 1st revision the items "Vocational Assignment" and "Military 
 Assignment" were added. Here such information was to be 
 recorded. Much confusion arose as to the terms and in the 
 March 15th revision the terms were stated as "Vocational As- 
 signment" and "Rank." The former item was again changed 
 in the June 1st revison (see page 120) to "assigned by Person- 
 nel Officer as ." In some camps this information was 
 
 recorded and used; in others it was largely ignored. Experi- 
 ence has demonstrated its value especially in the office of a 
 division personnel office as contrasted with a camp personnel 
 office, as many otherwise unpleasant controversies can be 
 eliminated. 
 
 The space for recording the soldier's organization was kept 
 on the back of the card until the November 1st revision when 
 it was placed upon the face of the card. The need for this 
 change was long realized but there seemed to be no way of 
 accomplishing it until it was decided to eliminate the list of 
 occupations. The greatest gain by the change affects the type- 
 writing of lists of names. Under the old system the typist 
 had to look at the face of the card for "name" and "army 
 serial number/' on the reverse for "organization" and on the
 
 SOLDIERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 149 
 
 face again for "occupation." The change eliminated the need 
 for turning the card over. 
 
 Space for recording information as to the man's "talent in 
 furnishing public entertainment" was provided from the start. 
 On the February 1st revision appear in addition "Religious 
 preference" and "Member of what fraternal organization." 
 The three items were never used directly by the personnel 
 adjutant, but the information was utilized many times by 
 chaplains, Y. M. C. A. and other welfare workers, and by 
 local churches in getting up entertainments. At one camp 
 nearly every such organization called upon the company com- 
 mander for such information. The presence of the information 
 on the cards also eliminated the need for the circulation of 
 cards of inquiry by such organizations. 
 
 The addition of the item "Physical Findings" in the Novem- 
 ber 1st edition was designed not only to furnish that informa- 
 tion to the personnel adjutant who needed it in properly plac- 
 ing limited service men but it was also included in order to 
 make unnecessary the use of a second qualification card in de- 
 velopment battalions. The plan contemplated the assignment 
 of an assistant camp personnel adjutant to handle the qualifi- 
 cation cards of all men in development battalions and to keep 
 the qualification cards of such men in the development bat- 
 talion as long as they were unfit for service. 
 
 Such changes as just enumerated were thus in line with one 
 of the general policies of the personnel organization ; namely, 
 to eliminate all unnecessary blanks. 
 
 THE S. A. T. C. RECORD CARD 
 
 As the personnel card for college men in the Students' Army 
 Training Corps (see Volume II for illustration) was pre- 
 pared very largely by the personnel organization and was to be 
 paid for by this organization, it deserves mention at this point. 
 Since all soldiers must have a qualification card (G. O. No. 46) 
 it was necessary to use either the Soldiers' Qualification Card 
 or devise a new one. As these college men had had little occu-
 
 150 
 
 HISTORY OP PERSONNEL 
 
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 SOLDIERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 151 
 
 
 
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 152 - HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 pational experience it was felt that the former would not be 
 particularly applicable. In consequence the S.A.T.C. Record 
 Card (CCP-50) was adopted. The signing of the armistice 
 prevented its use and no estimate of its real usefulness is at 
 hand. See Chapter 41 for further discussion. 
 
 APPLICANTS' QUALIFICATION CARD 
 
 In connection with the work of the War Service Exchange, 
 which was organized as a part of the Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel, a card was prepared, known as "Applicants' 
 Qualification Card" (Form CCP-1120), see Figure 4, page 
 150. Thousands of civilians desirous of securing service in the 
 Army or in governmental organizations used this form to set 
 forth their qualifications. The card was found very valuable. 
 Largely due to experience with it the change was made in the 
 Soldiers' Qualification Card on November 1 (See Volume 
 II), whereby the list of occupations was omitted from the 
 card and greater space was provided for giving in detail what 
 the soldier had done. 
 
 The Applicants' Card was classified by men specially 
 trained, and filed according to the classification of occupations 
 given in the Index of Occupations, CCP-4. 
 
 One valuable finding in the use of this card should be rec- 
 orded. In the case of many men, when given sufficient space, 
 it is found that they record very trivial performances as tho 
 they were important. This enables the classifier to get a bet- 
 ter line on their small calibre or lack of judgment than in any 
 other way. In the light of this experience application blanks 
 should provide more than sufficient space for writing. 
 
 Following the establishment of the Personnel Branch in the 
 Operations Division, General Staff, a standardized application 
 blank for all candidates for a commission was developed. This 
 card showed clearly the influence of the Applicants' Qualifica- 
 tion Card (Form CCP-1120) and other forms developed by 
 the Committee.
 
 CHAPTER 12 
 
 THE ACTUAL OPERATION OF THE 
 CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM 
 
 The classification of soldiers developed into five separate 
 steps. First was the interview, second the trade test, third the 
 classification, fourth the tabbing of the cards, and fifth the 
 tallying of occupations for an occupational report to Washing- 
 ton. Each step was performed by different men specially 
 trained for the work. 
 
 INTERVIEWING SOLDIERS 
 
 Due to the experience gained on September 1, 1917, in 
 having several companies of soldiers fill out their own cards it 
 was realized that the soldier must be individually interviewed 
 and the card prepared by the interviewer. In consequence the 
 first plan called upon the company commander to do this 
 interviewing. The plan was thoroughly tried out in all na- 
 tional army camps during September, October and November, 
 and voted largely a failure. Some company commanders 
 always did a first class job, but most did the work in a very 
 perfunctory manner. And as time went on they did poorer 
 and poorer work. One reason for this was that they quickly 
 came to realize that if they reported a man as exceptionally 
 good they ran a good chance of losing him to some other unit. 
 Many good men were camouflaged as farmers with little or no 
 education. This was particularly true of stenographers, 
 typists and cooks. At one camp in October when 100 very 
 poor men were transferred as laborers to the Remount Station 
 a veritable howl went up and delegations of Captains, Majors, 
 Colonels, and even one Brigadier General came to the per- 
 sonnel office claiming that their best men were being taken 
 
 153
 
 154 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 from them. The cards showed no such talent. The most 
 serious objection to company commanders preparing the cards, 
 however, was the lack of standardization in the work. 
 
 As a result of all this, when the classification was extended 
 to the national guard divisions in November and December, 
 it was insisted that all men should be interviewed by commis- 
 sioned officers after training in the work. For example, at 
 Camp Kearney one hundred lieutenants and captains were 
 utilized. Much better work resulted. But there was a con- 
 stant change in the personnel detailed to the work causing 
 instruction to be given almost every day to new officers. And 
 -as the officers most likely to remain detailed were officers not 
 needed elsewhere because of inferior qualities, most of the in- 
 terviewing was done by the poorer officers who showed little 
 interest in the work. 
 
 Recognition of the inferior interviewing resulted on Feb- 
 ruary 1st in an order (letter of A. G. O.) being issued requir- 
 ing that all men about to be transferred from one camp to 
 another on War Department requisition for specialists should 
 be re-interviewed. Emphasis upon this was maintained for 
 several months. 
 
 During the spring of 1918 interviewing by enlisted men 
 detailed to the personnel office commenced. The substitution 
 of enlisted men for officers was not formally recognized until 
 some time later. The change wrought a great transformation 
 in the work as the enlisted men were selected on the basis of 
 their ability to do good interviewing. They became very much 
 interested in the work, as it really is a fascinating j ob for those 
 who like it. And in addition there gradually developed in 
 most camps a regular series of conferences in which inter- 
 viewing was systematically studied. A great impetus to such 
 training followed the series of Schools for Personnel Adju- 
 tants which were held during the months of April to Novem- 
 ber, 1918. 
 
 During lull periods the interviewers in many camps were 
 allowed to visit nearby cities in which they visited the various
 
 CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM 155 
 
 industrial plants and thereby came in personal contact with 
 many phases of occupational work. As an illustration of the 
 interest in good interviewing, when the interviewers at Camp 
 Gordon learned that draft men were to be shipped there from 
 Ohio they made up a list of all the industries of that state and 
 read up on the subject quite extensively. 
 
 TRADE TESTING 
 
 During the spring and summer of 1918, trade tests were 
 introduced into the National Army camps and men claiming 
 ability in many trades were tested as to their actual ability. 
 (See Chapter 30 for further details.) The ratings from these 
 tests were recorded on the qualification cards and utilized in 
 finally classifying the soldiers. 
 
 Psychological intelligence scores were also utilized in esti- 
 mating a man's general value to the service. These tests were 
 conducted by the Psychological Examiner, under the direction 
 of the Surgeon General's Office. Such tests were given at first 
 in only four National Army camps. Later they were intro- 
 duced into all the camps. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION 
 
 After the interview and intelligence and trade test a classi- 
 fier looked over the card and determined (a) how skilled the 
 man was at each trade and (b) which trade was of most value 
 to the service. The former was determined upon the basis of 
 all the information on the card. Roughly speaking one to three 
 years' experience was accorded an orange tab (apprentice) and 
 more than three years' a green tab (journeyman). Under one 
 year of experience was ignored except in special cases where 
 there was a great demand and a decided shortage of certain 
 specialists, as wireless men, pigeon fanciers, etc. In the same 
 way a man coming under $25.00 to $30.00 a week was gen- 
 erally rated an apprentice and over that amount a journey- 
 man. But very early it was recognized that local rates of pay
 
 156 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 had to be taken into account. Information as to education, 
 leadership experience, age, and experience in other occupa- 
 tions, was considered. 
 
 Very shortly a noticeable standardization as to classification 
 in any one camp was apparent. This occurred because the 
 classifiers worked together and discussed the merits of all 
 doubtful cases among themselves. But there was equally a 
 noticeable lack of standardization between camps. This was 
 particularly true in the case of camps that had a large or small 
 supply of certain specialists. There was a decided tendency to 
 underrate the skill of specialists if they had many of them, 
 and to overrate the skill of specialists if they had few of them. 
 For example, lumbermen at Camp Lewis in Washington had to 
 be. foremen to be green tabbed, whereas lumbermen of slight 
 experience at Camp Taylor in Kentucky were green tabbed, 
 since they had but thirty-five all told among ten thousand. 
 
 Visits of supervisors travelling from camp to camp aided 
 very materially in effecting a fairly good standardization as 
 between camps. The Schools for Personnel Adjutants at which 
 this subject was emphasized accomplished much more. It is 
 fair to add, however, that classification never became thorough- 
 ly standardized until trade tests were introduced. These tests 
 helped greatly in this respect. 
 
 Prior to the introduction of trade tests a small handbook, 
 "Aids to Interviewers" TT-1, (see Figure 15, Chapter 28), 
 was issued. This was prepared under the direction of Mr. M. 
 M. Jones ; much of the actual compilation having been done by 
 Mr. Max Watson. A series of questions with their answers 
 were given for about one hundred trades. It was thought that 
 its use would aid in determining the man's skill. In some 
 camps the hand books were used considerably; in other camps 
 indifferently. The greatest use of the "Aids for Interviewers" 
 resulted indirectly in focusing attention upon the difficulties of 
 making adequate classifications. 
 
 A different sort of effort was made to standardize the
 
 CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM 
 
 157 
 
 classification. On June 14th, a table after the following 
 scheme was issued: 
 
 A. G. O. Desig- 
 nation. 
 
 No. Occupation. 
 
 6. Machinist. 
 
 7. Blacksmith. 
 
 8. Carpenter. 
 
 9. Concrete worker, 
 
 etc. 
 
 Hate as an appren- 
 tice, with ORANGE 
 tab, enlisted men 
 who have the years 
 of experience in a 
 trade indicated be- 
 low. 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 Rate as a journey- 
 man with a GREEN 
 tab, enlisted men 
 who have the years 
 of experience in a 
 trade indicated be- 
 low. 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 But men cannot be classified with regard to their skill at a 
 trade on the basis of years of experience alone. Some strik- 
 ingly bad illustrations of this table are: 
 
 27. 
 45. 
 61. 
 
 94. 
 
 Care of horses 
 Barber 
 
 Airplane Me- 
 chanic 
 Rubber worker 
 
 The camps were deluged with men who had had care of 
 horses. In consequence, the standard had to be raised not 
 lowered else most every card would be orange tabbed at 27, 
 although most such men would be of little use in that work in 
 the Army. Most barbers become full jonrneymen by a year 
 and vulcanizers become experts in many cases in 3 months 
 time. As there were practically no airplane mechanics, it 
 was a mistake to require two years experience before tabbing. 
 Rather should 3 months or even two months be set as the 
 lower limit, so as to have a record of any such experience. 
 The table is recorded here to indicate a subject never properly 
 standardized and which should be done. But it cannot be so 
 standardized in any such easy manner as indicated here. 
 Rather must one include wages, age, education, other expe- 
 rience, intelligence and possibly other factors. The need for
 
 158 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 such standardization is however lessened by the use of trade 
 tests. 
 
 The question as to which occupation a man was most valu- 
 able at to the Army was an equally trying problem. In the 
 first few months of personnel work the problem was present 
 but not clearly recognized. In placing men as early as Sep- 
 tember 1917 it was felt that some occupational experiences 
 were more valuable than others. But no set of instructions 
 were issued, as far as now known, until April 20. Then 
 Chapter V of the Personnel Manual was printed. It called 
 attention to the fact that the man's main occupations should 
 be determined, "taking into account (1) the man's experience 
 and (2) the needs of the Army. His main occupation may 
 or may not be the same as that which is recorded on his card 
 as the main occupation, since here the needs of the Army 
 are also considered." This statement was aimed just as much 
 at defining "main occupation" on the card as "main occupation" 
 in classifying. The former referred to what was actually 
 the man's m^in occupation in civil life what he considered 
 his main occupation. The latter considered what was his main 
 usefulness to the Army. Much confusion had existed prior 
 to this time and in many cases interviews made main occu- 
 pation mean main usefulness. This was a mistake as again 
 and again the man's main occupation was desired. Moreover, 
 it was realized that this information might be needed when 
 the men returned from France. This has been shown to be 
 true in the case of wounded soldiers needing reconstruction 
 training and would have been most valuable if the army had 
 been demobilized industrially as has been done in England. 
 
 The whole problem of "main occupation" in terms of army 
 needs arose in the necessity of reporting occupational strength 
 to Washington. It never was felt in the camp except in this 
 connection. There was no workable scheme whereby men 
 could be reported except as skilled or partly skilled in one 
 occupation. Hence a decision was forced on the camps con- 
 concerning each man and once the decision was made it was
 
 CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM 159 
 
 necessary to count the man that way ever after, since, the camp 
 was credited with the man until ordered transferred. In 
 order to make clear how this was done it will be necessary 
 to take it up in connection with the system of tabbing. 
 
 TABBING QUALIFICATION CARDS 
 
 The original system called for orange tabs to represent 
 "sufficient knowledge or experience to make him of substan- 
 tial value in any of the branches of the service." A green 
 tab represented an "expert in that occupation" (Instructions 
 of September 1917). Very rapidly the meaning of orange 
 and green tabs came to mean apprentice and journeyman 
 skill as outlined above. On October 15th, semi-monthly re- 
 ports were instituted calling for the total number of green 
 and orange tabs for each occupation. As many cards carried 
 more than one tab these totals did not represent men but the 
 number of occupational usefulnesses. As long as requisitions 
 from Washington for specialists totaled far less than the 
 supply, allotment on the basis of the total number of tabs 
 worked all right. But as soon as demand and supply com- 
 menced to approximate each other, trouble arose, as mani- 
 festly a man could not be transferred as both a carpenter 
 and draftsman, although he might be so reported. In order to 
 rectify this, orders were issued on February 1st, 1918, that 
 where there were two or more green tabs on index numbers 
 G to 50, that occupation which represented the man's best 
 usefulness to the army should be noted and the green tab 
 retained there. The other green tabs were to be removed 
 and black ones put in their place. The tabs then meant: 
 
 Green Journeyman experience, main usefulness to army. 
 Black Journeyman experience, secondary usefulness to army, 
 Orange Apprentice experience, either main or secondary. 
 
 This Semi-monthly report called for the total number of 
 green, black and orange tabs for each occupation. 
 
 Following a conference in Washington, April, 1918, it was
 
 160 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 decided that the orange tabs should be similarly distinguished. 
 But instead of using another colored tab, it was ordered that 
 when an orange tab represented the man's main usefulness 
 a cross mark (X) should be made on the tab. All orange 
 tabs representing secondary usefulness were left as they were. 
 The tabs then meant: 
 
 Green Journeyman experience, main usefulness to army. 
 
 Black Journeymen experience, secondary usefulness to army. 
 . Orange X Apprentice experience, main usefulness to army. 
 
 Orange Apprentice experience, secondary usefulness to army. 
 
 The change from two tabs to four tabs was largel}' made 
 in order to make it easy for the personnel officer to tally his 
 cards, since all that was necessary was to count the tabs. 
 
 But when the reports of occupational specialists commenced 
 calling (February, 1918), for occupations not by group head- 
 ings but by sub-divisions this convenience disappeared. Now 
 it was necessary to handle each card and to call off the par- 
 ticular sub-divisions to which the man was assigned. No ad- 
 vantage accrued from the presence of four colored tabs over 
 the two. In consequence, the order was issued discontinuing 
 black and orange X tabs. All journeymen whether of main 
 or secondary usefulness were to be green tabbed. All appren- 
 tices were similarly orange tabbed. Thus changes in the 
 system of reporting specialists to Washington resulted in 
 changes in the tabbing systems. 
 
 Another very real cause for the change back to the two 
 color tabbing system was the fact that the four tab system 
 was too complicated and many in the personnel office did not 
 seem to be able to use the system properly. In the light of 
 this experience it is extremely doubtful if the Army should 
 ever adopt any more complicated tabbing system than now 
 in force. 
 
 Tabbing Military Qualifications. As already shown the 
 qualification card of June 1st revision (see page 120) listed 26 
 Army Specialists. These were to be tabbed by affixing white 
 tabs to the top of the card according to the second row of
 
 CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM 161 
 
 small index numbers. As frequently such a tab could not 
 be placed squarely over its appropriate number because of 
 the presence of green and orange tabs, it was arranged that 
 they should be placed as near as possible in their correct 
 position and that the appropriate number be written on the 
 white tab. This system, however, was never used in France. 
 
 TALLYING QUALIFICATION CARDS FOR 
 OCCUPATIONAL REPORT 
 
 After the cards were classified and tabbed they were turned 
 over to another group of enlisted men who prepared a report 
 for Washington of the occupational strength of the newly 
 arrived drafted men. The report blank (CCP-15) is illus- 
 trated on page 168 of Volume II. The list of occupations to 
 be reported on was changed every month. The more impor- 
 tant of the occupations for army needs were starred and the 
 most important were marked with a "*3." A study of such 
 changes from month to month gave the chief classifiers a 
 fairly accurate knowledge of the needs of the Army, and they 
 classified men as to their main occupations accordingly. As 
 they thus reviewed the cards they checked with a blue pencil 
 close to the tab and appropriate symbol letters the particular 
 occupation under which the man was to be reported. He was 
 so reported and held subject to a requisition calling for that 
 particular occupation. This was necessary during the last 
 months before the armistice as the total supply of specialists 
 was much below the demand and once a camp was credited 
 with a specialist, it was essential that Washington could obtain 
 the man when called for. 
 
 USE OF QUALIFICATION CARD BY COMPANY 
 COMMANDER 
 
 Originally, a duplicate qualification card on buff stock was 
 to be made out by the company commander for his own use. 
 This was purely optional, however. Experience showed that
 
 162 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 few officers desired such cards nor made use of them, even if 
 supplied with them. In consequence, in April, 1918, the prac- 
 tice of supplying buff duplicate cards was abandoned. There 
 were certain officers, more often in engineer organizations, 
 who did make considerable use of the cards. One engineer 
 regiment had a set for the regiment in the Adjutant's Office, 
 and another set for each company maintained in the several 
 company offices. 
 
 Page 6a of the Service Record was prepared to give the 
 company commander the most important items on the quali- 
 fication card covering education, language ability, intelligence 
 rating, occupational experience and military qualifications. 
 This feature was not introduced until after the armistice was 
 signed so no record is at hand as to how far this procedure 
 might supply all the uses that company commanders found 
 for the buff card.
 
 SECTION IV. 
 JOB ANALYSIS 
 
 It is not only necessary to "size up" the man ac- 
 curately in order to assign him to that duty where 
 he can be of greatest advantage to the Army, but 
 it is also necessary to "size up" the duty he is to 
 perform. If requisitions for skilled men are inac- 
 curately prepared, then even though they may be 
 most carefully filled, placement will not be made as 
 efficiently as it should be. 
 
 Job-analysis for Army purposes falls into four 
 general sub-divisions, three of which are concerned 
 primarily with the problems of the enlisted men. 
 First, there had to be a classification of occupations 
 useful for Army purposes and a standard termin- 
 ology which would make this classification effective. 
 (See Chapter 13.) Second, Tables of Occupational 
 Xeeds and the more elaborate Personnel Specifica- 
 tions showing the requirements of different kinds 
 of Army units had to be prepared (See Chapter 
 14.) Third, summaries showing the number of 
 specialists of all kinds needed in the Army had to 
 be compiled, as a basis for the proper allocation of 
 such numbers as were available. ( See Chapter 15. ) 
 
 The fourth subdivision is concerned with the 
 problems of job-analysis as applied to Officers. 
 (See Chapters 16 and 17.)
 
 CHAPTER 13 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS AND 
 STANDARD TERMINOLOGY 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 
 
 Classification of Occupations on the Qualification Card. 
 The records are extremely fragmentary as to what was done 
 during August, 1917, everyone being too busy to stop and 
 write down what he or anyone else had done, nor did any one 
 feel that such matters were of any moment. The earliest 
 reference to job analysis is on August 15, when plans were 
 "begun to formulate cards for the National Army." Such a 
 card required a list of occupations in terms of which men 
 would be grouped. And such a list could only be drawn up 
 on the basis of what civilian occupations are made use of in 
 the Army. The records show that, "During the next two weeks 
 all worked industriously on getting ready for the vocational 
 survey. They interviewed representative officers from each 
 branch and arm of the Army requesting that they should give 
 us the list of occupations in which training was valuable for 
 their particular service. By frequent personal interviews they 
 were enabled to secure thoroughly good lists from all branches 
 of the Army. When these lists of occupations were com- 
 bined, they had the list of occupations as it appears on our 
 Qualification Record Cards." This list is shown below in 
 the first column, dated August, 1917. The card upon which 
 this list appeared was never used however, except in some 
 units of the Coast Artillery. It was immediately revised, 
 based on experience in trying it out on soldiers in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia National Guard. The first card (September, 
 1917) used in classifying selective-service men (illustrated on 
 
 165
 
 166 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 page 121) contained the list of occupations shown in the second 
 column below. The final list of occupations, adopted on Feb- 
 ruary 1st is shown in the third column. 
 
 [NOTE: In reading lists of occupations read each occupation from 
 left to right, the development and changes in the list being shown 
 in parallel lines in the subsequent lists.] 
 August, 1917 September, 1917 
 
 1. Factory worker 1. Factory worker 
 
 2. Farmer 2. Farmer 
 
 3. Laborer 3. Laborer 
 
 4. Lawyer 4. Lawyer 
 
 5. Teacher 5. Teacher 
 
 G. Machine hand 
 
 7. Machinist 
 | 8. Blacksmith 
 {8. Wheelwright 
 
 9. Carpenter 
 
 10. Concrete worker 
 
 11. Electrician 
 
 12. Locksmith 
 
 13. Miner 
 
 14. Painter 
 
 15. Plumber 
 
 16. Railroader, 
 
 traffic 
 
 17. Rigger 
 
 (Included in 
 "Factory 
 worker" 1) 
 6. Machinist 
 J7. Blacksmith 
 | 7. Wheelwright 
 
 8. Carpenter 
 
 9. Concrete worker 
 | 10. Electrician 
 
 | 10. Dynamo expert 
 5 11. Locksmith 
 (11. Gunsmith 
 
 12. Miner 
 
 13. Painter 
 
 14. Pipe-fitter 
 
 f 15. Railroad, oper- 
 \ ating man 
 
 [16. Section-hand 
 18. Rigger 
 
 18. Engineer, rail- 
 
 road 
 
 19. Engineer, sta- 
 
 tionary 
 
 20. Engineer, grad- 
 
 uate 
 
 21. Engineering 
 
 student 
 
 17. Railroad fire- 
 man 
 17. Steam Engineer 
 
 21. Engineer 
 uate 
 
 grad- 
 
 February, 1918 
 
 1. Factory worker 
 
 2. Farmer 
 
 3. Laborer 
 
 4. Lawyer 
 
 4. Teacher 
 
 5. Business man 
 (Included in 
 
 "Factory 
 worker" 1) 
 
 6. Machinist 
 
 7. Blacksmith 
 
 8. Carpenter 
 
 9. Concrete worker 
 
 10. Electrician 
 
 11. Gunsmith 
 
 12. Miner 
 
 13. Painter 
 
 14. Pipe fitter 
 
 15. R. R. operating 
 
 man 
 
 16. Road worker 
 (See supplementary 
 
 list Occupa- 
 tion No. 100) 
 
 17. Engineman, fire- 
 
 man
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 167 
 
 August, 1917 September, 1917 
 
 February, 1918 
 
 19. Sheetmetal 
 
 19. Sheetmetal worker 
 
 worker 
 
 
 20. Foundry man 
 
 20. Foundryman 
 
 
 21. Structural steel 
 
 
 worker 
 
 22. Auto driver 5 22. Auto driver 
 
 22. Chauffeur auto 
 
 ) 23. Motor-truck 
 
 23. Chauffeur truck 
 
 driver 
 
 23. Auto repairman J 24. Auto repairman 24. 
 1 24. Gas engine re- 25. 
 pairman 
 
 524. Horseshoer 25. Horseshoer 
 
 1 24. Hostler (horse- 
 man) 
 
 25. Mule-packer 26. Mule-packer 
 
 26. Teamster 
 
 27. Veterinary 
 
 27. 
 
 $28. 
 | 28. 
 
 28. Draftsman 29. 
 
 f 29. Lineman 32. 
 
 (29. Phone repair- f33. 
 man { 
 
 30. Phone operator [33. 
 
 31. Photographer 34. 
 
 (still) 
 
 32. Photographer 35. 
 
 (moving) 
 
 33. Surveyor 30. 
 f34. Telegrapher f 31. 
 I 34. Wireless opera- | 31. 
 
 tor 
 35. Visual signaller 
 
 Care and hand- 27. 
 
 ling of horses 
 Veterinary { 28. 
 
 Farrier { 28. 
 
 Draftsman 29. 
 
 Lineman 32. 
 
 Phone - repair- 33. 
 
 man 
 
 Phone operator 33. 
 Photographer f 34. 
 
 Moving picture [ 34. 
 
 expert 
 
 Surveyor 30. 
 
 Telegrapher $ 31. 
 Wireless oper- | 31. 
 
 ator 
 
 35. 
 
 Auto mechanic 
 Gasoline engine re- 
 pairman (not 
 auto) 
 
 (Included in 
 Blacksmith See 
 Occupation No. 
 7) 
 
 Bricklayer 
 
 (See supplemen- 
 tary list Occu- 
 pation No. 100) 
 
 Horse, care of 
 
 Veterinary 
 Farrier 
 Draftsman 
 Lineman 
 
 Telephone repair- 
 man 
 
 Telephone operator 
 Photographer, still 
 
 Photographer, mov- 
 ing 
 
 Surveyor 
 Telegrapher 
 Wireless man 
 
 Lumberman
 
 168 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 August, 1917 
 [36. Boatman 
 \ 36. Navigator 
 [36. Seaman 
 
 37. Accountant 
 
 38. Clerk 
 
 40. Storekeeper 
 39. Stenographer 
 
 J41. Baker 
 
 {41. Cook 
 
 42. Butcher 
 
 43. Grocer 
 
 f44. Chiropodist 
 | 44. Dentist 
 \ 44. Druggist 
 | 44. Medical student 
 | 44. Nurse 
 [44. Physician 
 45. Band Musician 
 
 46. Barber 
 
 47. Canvas worker 
 
 September, 1917 
 
 5 36. Navigator 
 
 { 36. Seafaring man 
 
 37. Accountant 
 [38. Clerk 
 
 -{38. Bookkeeper 
 [38. Shipper 
 
 38. Stockkeeper 
 
 5 39. Stenographer 
 {39. Typewriter 
 J40. Baker 
 {40. Cook 
 
 41. Butcher 
 
 42. Grocer 
 
 [43. Chiropodist 
 
 | 43. Dentist 
 
 | 43. Druggist 
 
 \ 43. Medical Student 
 
 | 43. Nurse 
 
 [ 43. Physician 
 
 [44. Brass wind in- 
 strument 
 
 [44. Other band in- 
 strument 
 
 45. Barber 
 
 46. Canvas worker 
 
 February, 1918 
 J 36. Boatman 
 {36. Mariner 
 
 37. Accountant 
 
 38. Clerical worker 
 
 18. Stockkeeper 
 $ 39. Stenographer 
 {39. Typist 
 f40. Baker 
 {40. Cook 
 
 41. Butcher 
 
 42. Merchant, jobber, 
 
 wholesaler 
 
 43. Medical man 
 
 48. Harness maker 
 
 49. Shoemaker 
 
 50. Tailor 
 
 51. Watchmaker 
 
 I 47. Harness maker 
 
 { 47. Shoemaker 
 
 48. Tailor 
 
 49. Watchmaker 
 
 44. Band musician 
 
 45. Barber 
 
 (See supplementary 
 list Occupation 
 No. 76 
 
 46. Printer 
 
 47. Leather worker 
 
 48. Tailor 
 
 (See supplementary 
 list Occupation 
 No. 72) 
 
 49. Inspector 
 
 50. Construction fore- 
 
 The most striking thing about these three lists is the few 
 changes. "Engineer graduate" and "engineering student"
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 169 
 
 were dropped entirely as "it was found from practice that they 
 could readily be found when wanted, among the college grad- 
 uates, who number less than 1% of drafted men. "Rigger," 
 "Mule-packer," "canvas worker" and "watch maker," although 
 important occupations from the army standpoint occur in too 
 few numbers to warrant a place on the main list and so were 
 relegated to the supplementary list. "Visual signaller" was 
 dropped entirely as not being a civilian occupation. In the 
 place of these occupations were added "sheet metal worker," 
 "foundryman," "structural iron worker," "lumberman," "in- 
 spector" and "construction foreman," all trades found in con- 
 siderable number in the draft and of value not in combat units 
 so much as in construction work, particularly in France. 
 
 The Index of Occupations. The first edition of the Quali- 
 fication Card provided for a "supplementary" group of occu- 
 pations in addition to the group numbered from 1 to 49. It 
 was recognized that there were other occupations not listed 
 which would be of value in organizing the Army. At that 
 time no attempt was made to list them. On September 28, 
 a short additional list was issued with instructions that all 
 such occupations should be tabbed at "S" on the card. 
 Another list was issued on October 20, and called "Index 
 of Occupations." It contained in addition to the 49 main 
 occupations, 37 supplementary occupations and these 86 main 
 groups were subdivided into 165 subdivisions. On February 
 1, a second revision was issued listing 50 main occupations 
 and 45 supplementary ones with a total of 575 subdivisions. 
 And this was further extended in the revision of April 10, 
 to 50 main and 47 supplementary occupations with a total 
 of 693 subdivisions. On November 1, the last revision 
 appeared with a total of 714 subdivisions. The three revi- 
 sions did not consist merely of adding occupations but also 
 included some eliminations and many consolidations of items 
 and rearrangements. Particularly was this true of the second 
 revision. 
 
 No trouble was experienced in tabbing all the supplemen-
 
 170 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 tary occupations at "S" with the" single exception of the 
 group "Airplane Mechanic" and then only in the Division 
 of Military Aeronautics. In those offices they had a large 
 enough number of men belonging to each of the eight sub- 
 divisions of that group to warrant having several separate 
 groups. 
 
 As has been pointed out in a preceding chapter the Index 
 of Occupations of October 20 had a code system of one or 
 two letters representing each subdivision as: 
 
 24' Auto Repairer k 
 
 Magneto repairer fs 
 
 Motorcycle repairer gg 
 
 Upholsterer mb 
 
 tefe . 40. Baiter t 
 
 45. Barber v 
 
 This code system was never employed to any extent because 
 of the difficulty of remembering the meaning of the symbols. 
 With the February 1 revision was introduced a new code 
 system, made up of a number and letter or letters, the letter 
 in each case being suggestive of the occupation. For example : 
 
 Auto Mechanic 24 
 
 Assembler 24a 
 
 Battery 24b 
 
 Carburetor 24c 
 Chassis and body, also 
 
 truck 24ch 
 
 Designer, expert, etc. 24d 
 
 Baker and Cook 40 
 
 Baker 40b 
 Caterer, dining car con- 
 ductor, steward o r 
 
 restaurateur 40ca 
 
 Cook 40c 
 Etc. 
 
 This mnemonic device was immediately adopted by all as 
 there was no difficulty in remembering the occupations for 
 which the code symbols stood.
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 171 
 
 At the time the February 1st Index of Occupations was 
 being developed considerable attention was given to the propo- 
 sition of using the Census Bureau's system of classification 
 of occupations and their symbol numbers. The Provost Mar- 
 shal General was preparing to obtain a card for each man 
 in the draft upon which would be recorded his occupational 
 fitness. And they had decided to use the census classifica- 
 tion. If both systems could be harmonized, it was felt that 
 much would be gained. On the other hand, it was pointed 
 out that the census classification was on the basis of indus- 
 tries while the classification already found extremely useful 
 in the Army was on the basis of the tools a man used. A car- 
 penter according to the former would be listed many times, 
 once for each instance at which he was found in the various 
 industries. According to the latter all carpenters' were 
 grouped at 8 and the various significant subdivisions were 
 given letter subdivisions of 8. In consequence when a man 
 was needed in the Army to use a saw and hatchet and drill 
 he could be found under one heading, not under many. It 
 was further urged against the census system that the code 
 numbers could never be remembered and consequently much 
 of the advantage accruing from their use would be lost just 
 as had happened with the code system of October 20. 
 
 The February 1st revision of the Index of Occupations was 
 drawn up very largely by Dr. Strong utilizing material secured 
 by different members of the Committee. Much of the credit 
 of the work was due to Mr. Swan who was engaged upon 
 standardizing the terminology of occupational terms. A full 
 list of army organizations which were being formed or were 
 to be formed was obtained. These were analyzed with the 
 help of officers intimately connected with them and all the 
 kinds of occupational specialists who would be useful in the 
 speedy organization of the units were noted. From this 
 material was developed the list of civil occupations useful 
 to the Army. All other civil occupations were ignored. The 
 occupations had then to be grouped to fit the tabbing system
 
 172 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 on the qualification card. Because of this certain occupa- 
 tions were grouped together that under other circumstances 
 would have been assigned separate groups. 
 
 About the middle of January the pressure became so great 
 for the use of some sort of a list of occupations in connection 
 with plans for supplying the Staff Corps with specialists that 
 proof was distributed of what then had been prepared. A 
 little later when the work was completed, it was found that 
 it could not be issued as it differed in many details from the 
 proof, and plans for 250,000 men had already been drawn 
 up in terms of the proof. The completed work, consequently, 
 had to be tabled, even though it was much more free from 
 misunderstanding and faulty classification. This proof became 
 the February 1 Index of Occupations. The April and Novem- 
 ber revisions because of the same condition merely consisted 
 of additions and a few minor corrections. 
 
 The February, April and November editions were all 
 printed in two forms. One appeared in sheet form approxi- 
 mately 20 x 17 inches and tabulated the group headings and 
 their sub-divisions. The other appeared in booklet form, 
 9x4 inches and tabulated in addition all sub-divisions in 
 alphabetical order. In order to distinguish them apart the 
 sheet was called "Classification of Occupations" (CCP-7) and 
 the booklet "Index of Occupations" (CCP-4). Those familiar 
 with the whole classification system and using it constantly 
 found the sheet form preferable as items could be found very 
 quickly by them. The booklet, on the other hand, was handier 
 for the infrequent users since they could locate any item in 
 its alphabetical place. 
 
 Extension of Occupational Classification to Provost Mar- 
 shal General's Office. The first questionnaire issued about 
 December 15, 1917, contained eighty-seven main headings 
 and fifty-four sub-headings corresponding in general to the 
 then existing Index of Occupations. It was supplied the Pro- 
 vost Marshal General at his request. The list was expanded 
 to about four hundred headings in the revised questionnaires
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 173 
 
 used for the draft of men from 18 to 45 years of age. See 
 Chapter 45 dealing with cooperative measures between the 
 Committee and the Provost Marshal General for further 
 details. 
 
 Conclusion. The Index of Occupations became the official 
 classification of occupations for use in the Army and in the 
 draft and its list furnished for ready reference practically all 
 the civil occupations found useful in army organizations. 
 
 From an industrial standpoint it is probable that a differ- 
 ent classification and larger scope is desirable. As time went 
 on and the Government took over for direct operation or 
 general supervision a wider range of industries, not in any 
 sense army functions, and hence not included in the original 
 list of occupations or specifications, the need of a broader 
 classification was more and more felt. This became increas- 
 ingly evident towards the last as the Government gradually 
 took one civilian industry after another, such as, the manu- 
 facture of revolvers and the manufacture of various forms of 
 gas and gas appliances, charging of gas shells, manufacture 
 of nitrate and explosives of various sorts. When such a classi- 
 fication of all occupations has been prepared in terms of the 
 functions of the work and not of the industry, employment 
 managers will have an exceedingly useful instrument for 
 classifying employees and for standardizing wages throughout 
 the country. 
 
 STANDARDIZATION OF TERMINOLOGY 
 
 After the jobs or occupations have been listed and classified 
 the next step is to define the terms. In fact, definition must 
 run along parallel to classification. But historically the need 
 for such work does not arise until classification has been be- 
 gun. Shortly after the first Index of Occupations was pre- 
 pared (October 20) Mr. Swan commenced gathering informa- 
 tion about occupations useful to the Army. Army officers 
 most familiar with the work to be performed by soldiers in 
 the Army carefully prepared definitions of the terms used
 
 174 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 and statements of the qualifications needed for efficient service. 
 These were carefully edited often after several conferences on 
 the subject. They were issued on March 21, 1918, in a 
 book of 239 pages, "Trade Specifications." The book is offi- 
 cially referred to both as War Department Document No. 774 
 and -as CCP-504. A specimen page follows : 
 
 7 BLACKSMITH 
 BLACKSMITH, GENERAL 7-g BAMSC 
 
 47 
 
 DUTIES 
 
 1. All around general hammer and anvil work, and light forglngs 
 of any kind. 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS 
 
 2. Must be capable of doing all kinds of welding, and able to make, 
 from drawings or samples, any and all kinds of medium and light 
 machine and hand forgings, and familiar with the use of either 
 coal or coke forge or small furnace. Some experience on a light 
 steam or power hammer desirable. 
 
 Should be able to figure stock. 
 
 Must be capable of making repairs to automobiles, frames, axles, 
 springs, general machinery, wagons, wheels, chains, tube bending 
 and tool dressing, and shoeing horses and mules. 
 
 Should have a good knowledge "of heat treatment of steel, In- 
 cluding oil and water tempering and air hardening. 
 
 Should have had similar experience with contracting railroad or 
 mining company or as country general blacksmith. 
 
 SUBSTITUTE OCCUPATIONS 
 
 3. Machine shop blacksmith, contractor blacksmith, forge shopman, 
 or as country general blacksmith. 
 
 BLACKSMITH, LOCOMOTIVE 7-1 BANON 
 
 48 
 
 DUTIES 
 
 1. General blacksmith work, in connection with erecting new or 
 repairing and rebuilding damaged locomotives and equipment. 
 
 QUALIFICATIONS 
 
 2. Must be an experienced blacksmith, familiar with general, light 
 and heavy forging, such as connecting rods and main frames, 
 using gang sledges or power driven hammer. 
 
 Must thoroughly understand heating large pieces, such as slabs 
 and billets in coal, coke, oil or gas furnaces. 
 
 Must be able to work to drawings or samples, and be able to 
 calculate stock required. 
 
 Must be thoroughly skilled In making all kinds of welds in iron 
 and steel. 
 
 Also thoroughly skilled in the use of hand tools, such as cut- 
 ters, flatters, fullers and swages, and capable of working from 
 templates and blueprints to close dimensions. 
 
 Should have had similar experience in railroad shop, locomotive 
 familiar with the use of tools used in flanging and forming plates, 
 angles and braces used in boiler work. 
 
 Should have had similar experience in railroad shop, locomotive 
 plant or heavy blacksmith in any industrial concern. 
 
 SUBSTITUTE OCCUPATIONS 
 
 3. Forgesmith, heavy forgeman, heavy blacksmith, flange turner. 
 
 FIG. 5. 
 
 Trade Specifications (CCP-504) Sample Page
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 175 
 
 By reference to the specimen page one obtains the best pos- 
 sible idea of the nature of this book and its value. Each 
 occupation is described in terms of the duties to be per- 
 formed and the qualifications necessary. Several substitute 
 occupations are also listed, so that if a man of the proper 
 qualifications is not available the next best choices are at 
 hand. The name of the occupation is listed as it appears in 
 the Index of Occupations, with the code symbol and also a 
 five letter symbol for use in cabling. The specifications de- 
 scribe the ideal skilled man from the army standpoint. It 
 was not expected that all the stated qualifications would be 
 found in each man. The immediate and large needs of the 
 Army for specialists had to be met by utilizing the substitutes 
 stated, or less skilled workers and apprentices. 
 
 A revised edition of "Trade Specifications' was issued on 
 October 12, 1918, in which a few minor corrections were 
 made and a number of occupations were added. A special 
 supplement appeared shortly after expanding the "67-Chem- 
 ist" classification. (See Chapter 28 for certain other phases 
 of the subject.) 
 
 Use made of Trade Specifications. "Trade Specifications" 
 was used by many officers in preparing requisitions for special- 
 ists and by personnel officers in the camps in accurately deter- 
 mining what was wanted by these requisitions and in classi- 
 fying men. A good illustration of the need for such an aid 
 in preparing requisitions is furnished in the case of General 
 Pershing's request for forty "multiplex puncher operators." 
 This requisition was relayed on to the camps with the result 
 that all sorts of "punch operators" were received. Then it 
 was discovered that what was wanted were operators of a 
 multiplex telegraph typewriter. The original term used in the 
 requisition was perfectly intelligible to telegraph men but not 
 so to any others. If this term had been standardized this 
 confusion and resulting delay in shipping men would not 
 have occurred. 
 
 In addition to this use of the "Trade Specifications" within
 
 176 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 MILLWRIGHT (General) 
 
 Other Names by Which Occupation is Known: 
 Factory Millwright. 
 
 Occupations Most Nearly Allied: 
 
 Machinist, Carpenter. 
 Trade Requirements: 
 
 He installs and maintains general power and transmis- 
 sion machinery and equipment in shop, plant or factory 
 for any purpose; must be able to install and maintain 
 hangers, shafting, pulleys, belts of all types, machine 
 tools, frames, and general equipment; should be a prac- 
 tical power transmission man, able to lay out and erect 
 stringers, hanger and braces ; must be familiar with 
 handling tackle and heavy machinery with the use of 
 jacks, hoists, slings, blocks, skids and cribbing. 
 
 Education : 
 
 Common school. 
 Physical Requirements : 
 
 Average strength ; ability to work overhead. 
 Mental Requirements : 
 
 Average intelligence. 
 Experience. 
 
 Must have experience in laying out from drawing or 
 sketches, and be familiar with blue prints and mechani- 
 cal drawings ; knowledge of concrete forms, and concrete 
 work desirable. Experience in rolling mill or large 
 manufacturing plant, machine shop or railroad construc- 
 tion work would be beneficial ; should understand appli- 
 cation and repair of belts. 
 
 Entrance Requirements for Training School: 
 
 Common school education, average strength and intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 Rate Established:
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 177 
 
 the Army, five thousand copies were also furnished the local 
 boards of the country for use in classifying selective service 
 men. 
 
 Extension to Labor Department and U. S. Shipping Board 
 Emergency Fleet Corporation: The basic idea expressed in 
 "Trade Specifications" has been taken up by the Labor De- 
 partment. Already a number of pamphlets have appeared 
 under the heading of "Descriptions of Occupations" covering 
 Water Transportation; Office Employees; Textiles and 
 Clothing; Boots and Shoes; Harness and Saddlery; Tanning; 
 Medicinal Manufacturing;. Mines and Mining; Cane Sugar 
 Refining; Metal Working; Building and General Construc- 
 tion; Railroad Transportation; Shipbuilding, etc. The 
 United States Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation 
 has also issued a similar work covering "Shipyard Occupa- 
 tions." In this work, published July, 1918, they have added 
 a number of headings to be discussed under each occupa- 
 tion. A sample page is included here. 
 
 Conclusion. This activity directed toward the standard- 
 ization of occupational terminology and the setting forth of 
 the necessary qualifications for a job has already had pro- 
 nounced effect in industry. Much more is to be expected as 
 men extend the idea to other activities. For when we defi- 
 nitely know what we want a blacksmith or sales-manager 
 to do, then are we in a favorable position to select the right 
 man and to hold him accountable. When similar precise 
 information is at hand as to what we want in a grammar 
 school or college graduate we shall have a pronounced im- 
 provement in the activities of those institutions.
 
 CHAPTER 14 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 Personnel Specifications of the Army are a development of 
 this war made necessary primarily by the demand for occu- 
 pational specialists, and secondarily by the necessity .of 
 utilizing to the last degree every available bit of human mate- 
 rial. The need of such specifications increased as the organi- 
 zation of units of a great variety were authorized and as the 
 reserve of man-power decreased. They are, in brief, an 
 expression of the relation that exists between the man's quali- 
 fications and the duties of his job in the Army. As the classi- 
 fication of the specialists coming into the Army provides the 
 supply of human material for distribution among the Corps 
 and Arms of the service, so Personnel Specifications classify 
 the demand, making it possible to achieve the aim of per- 
 sonnel work to put "The Right Man in the Right Place." 
 
 NECESSITY FOR PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 Lack of Organized and known Demand for Specialists 
 Supplied by Occupational Classification of the Army. Speci- 
 fications of personnel were not arrived at either in form or 
 substance without considerable experiment, and experience 
 in the use of substitutes. The occupational classification of 
 the Army, begun in September, 1917, and expanding by de- 
 grees in all branches of the Army until May 9, 1918, G. O. No. 
 16 W. D. prescribed it for all soldiers, provided a growing 
 reservoir of occupational specialists. This supply was 
 assembled by occupations. Except by occupations, therefore, 
 there was no proper way of drawing on it. But the demand 
 for occupationalists, although vaguely known, was nowhere 
 defined. Before the occupational classification of the Army 
 
 178
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 179 
 
 was begun, it was felt there would be a large demand for 
 workers of many varied trades and for all degrees of skill 
 from apprentices to experts. The demand soon manifested 
 itself. Scattered requests came to The Adjutant General 
 for various kinds of occupational specialists from the Air 
 Service, Quartermaster Corps, and from General Pershing, 
 who early in the War needed "buckers-up and holders-on" 
 to complete the assembling of railroad cars shipped to him 
 knocked down. Yet in no central office was there any exact 
 knowledge of what the demand might be. A few of the staff 
 corps alone had accurate and complete knowledge of what it 
 was. 
 
 TABLES OF OCCUPATIONAL NEEDS 
 
 To remedy this state of affairs, work was started in Septem- 
 ber, 1917, by Dr. R. B. Perry to organize tables of an infantry 
 division upon the basis of what trades should be used to 
 provide the proper occupational balance. The Tables of Or- 
 ganization of the Army, although providing the allowances 
 of various grades, sergeants, corporals, privates, etc., for 
 each organization on a unit basis, did not, except in few 
 instances, provide what occupational skill was required in 
 order that the unit might properly perform its function. For 
 each unit the Tables of Organization allowed a certain num- 
 ber of cooks, horseshoers, wagoners, etc., each of which is 
 an army grade, but in many instances the civilian occupational 
 need was not correctly indicated by such grade, since by 
 horseshoer (grade) of a motorized regiment an auto mechanic 
 is intended, and by wagoner (grade, in same regiment) chauf- 
 feur or truck driver is intended. 
 
 Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before in the 
 Army, so there was neither any foundation on which to build, 
 nor any trustworthy information from which tables could be 
 compiled. The commanding officers of several Infantry and 
 Field Artillery Regiments were asked to submit estimates of 
 the minimum number of occupational specialists required for
 
 180 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the efficient operation of their regiments. These estimates 
 in many cases exhibited such an extreme degree of divergence 
 as to indicate upon the part of these commanding officers 
 fundamentally different ideas of the manner in which certain 
 parts of their organizations were intended to function. For 
 instance, one colonel estimated that a large number of truck 
 drivers and mechanics would be required by an Infantry Regi- 
 ment; another thought a very few would suffice; and the 
 estimate of still another fell between these extremes. The 
 first probably expected that he would be called upon to do 
 most of his motor transport work himself; the second believed 
 he must rely entirely on the Quartermaster Corps to bring 
 up supplies, and the third thought that he ought to provide 
 a reserve in case he could not obtain all the help he needed 
 from the Quartermaster Corps. This is perhaps an extreme 
 case; yet it illustrates not only the vital necessity for stand- 
 ardized tables of occupational needs, but also the practical 
 difficulties which were encountered in attempting to construct 
 these tables. 
 
 P'rom cases like the above it was seen that, in framing the 
 occupational tables, entire dependence could not be placed 
 upon the judgments of officers who differed so widely among 
 themselves. A preliminary study of the Tables of Organi- 
 zation with special reference in each case to the function 
 which the unit was to perform, and to the equipment trucks, 
 horses, motorcycles, caissons which would have to be handled 
 and operated by the personnel of the unit, was therefore 
 made. 
 
 The first occupational summary was issued in October, 1917, 
 and consisted of a table showing the specialists required in 
 each regiment of Infantry, Field Artillery and Engineers, 
 each Machine Gun and Field Signal Battalion and each Sup- 
 ply Train of an Infantry Division, on the basis of their mini- 
 mum strength. It was very simple in form, consisting of 
 only one large sheet, and was called Chart A. This was
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 181 
 
 shortly revised on the basis of maximum strength and was 
 issued as Chart B. (See Figure 12). 
 
 It was recognized that Chart B was only a stop-gap which 
 was to be replaced as soon as further investigation and study 
 would permit the compilation of more complete and reliable 
 tables. Dr. Bingham undertook this investigation. Once 
 more the advice of a number of Commanding Officers in 
 the field was asked and the resulting suggestions for improve- 
 ment in Chart B were given careful consideration. Many 
 officers in Washington who were qualified to speak authori- 
 tatively on the subject were interviewed. Numerous visits 
 were made to the Army War College where was obtained from 
 the officers who had compiled the Tables of Organization, de- 
 scriptions of the functions and duties which they had con- 
 templated would be performed by the units and the indi- 
 viduals within the units whose strictly military structure they 
 had so meticulously defined. In other words, the Tables of 
 Organization stated explicitly for each kind of company 
 the exact number of non-commissioned officers, of privates 
 first-class, privates, cooks, mechanics, wagoners and horse- 
 shoers which were to constitute that company, but they gave 
 almost no indication either of the duties these men were to 
 perform or of the qualifications which were required in order 
 to perform these duties most efficiently. It was the intention 
 of those who were preparing the Tables of Occupational 
 Needs to find out the duties to be performed by the individual 
 men and then to define the dutes in the terms of the occupa- 
 tional qualifications which best fitted a man to perform them. 
 The first Tables of Occupational Needs of an Infantry 
 Division were drawn up during February, 1918 by Dr. Bing- 
 ham, assisted by Mr. L. R. Frazier and Mr. Kendall Weisiger, 
 and were published and distributed to the Army in March. 
 This first edition contained about seventy separate tables, 
 one for each kind of unit, and a dozen charts on which were 
 summarized the occupational requirements of the larger units 
 of the division.
 
 182 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The Tables were probably of most value in assisting divi- 
 sion personnel adjutants properly to distribute among the 
 various units the drafted men who were assigned to the divi- 
 sion by the War Department, thus assuring to each unit its 
 proper proportion of the available specialists. They were 
 employed to a lesser extent in the assignment of individual 
 men to duty within a company or battalion. Incidentally the 
 final summaries were of assistance to the Operations Branch, 
 General Staff, in determining what proportion of specialists 
 from the draft should be left for assignment to line troops 
 and what proportion might be transferred to technical 
 branches of the service. 
 
 It was realized that the first edition was in no way perfect 
 and that the opinions of officers in the field, particularly those 
 who had seen active service in France, should be secured 
 and embodied in a revised edition. Accordingly, a repre- 
 sentative of the Committee who happened to be leaving for 
 France on the day the first numbers were published, took a 
 few copies along with him and at his first opportunity sub- 
 mitted them to the commanding generals of two of the divi- 
 sions then at the Front. They and their assistants were able 
 to offer but few suggestions and accordingly the tables, as 
 revised in France were returned to this country to be edited 
 and republished. Taking the comments made by the officers 
 of the American Expeditionary Force, and the latest esti- 
 mates of the Chiefs of the several Staff Corps having per- 
 sonnel in an infantry division, as the basis, a second edition 
 was prepared under the direction of Mr. Alvin E. Dodd, and 
 issued in September, 1918. This edition received general 
 distribution. 
 
 Limitations of Tables of Occupational Needs. Although 
 the Tables of Occupational Needs were a great advance in the 
 proper placement of men, they had two important limitations. 
 In the first instance, there was a limitation upon their suc- 
 cessful use by personnel adjutants. The qualifications, even 
 of the occupational specialist, cannot properly and definitely
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 183 
 
 be described purely by a name which indicates his occupa- 
 tion. For instance, wireless operators, in addition to their 
 ability to receive and transmit wireless messages at varying 
 rates of speed, possess other inherent occupational qualifica- 
 tions. Some have a wider and more scientific knowledge of 
 the use of wireless apparatus than others. Physical limi- 
 tations may even play some part in the determination of the 
 assignment of an occupational specialist. A wireless sergeant 
 of Heavy Artillery must be able to stand up during the strain 
 of continuous work in action, while the radio sergeant in 
 the Air Service in the Repair Unit need not be possessed of 
 nearly so perfect a physique or physical condition, but should 
 have a more extensive and accurate knowledge of a wireless 
 instrument than the heavy artilleryman. Yet both of these 
 men are described by the term "wireless operator." In a 
 Table of Occupational Needs this is as completely as they 
 can be described by the occupational title. In consequence, 
 it was felt necessary to attempt some further definition of 
 the qualifications than the mere statement of an occupational 
 name. 
 
 The second limitation was found in the difficulty unit com- 
 manders experienced in assigning specialists to positions with- 
 in a unit after they had been allotted by the personnel adju- 
 tant. It is no disparagement of these unit commanders to 
 state that the exact duties a man performs were not at all 
 times clearly and prominently present in their minds. The 
 qualifications a man possessed, in many instances, were well 
 indicated on the soldiers' qualification cards, but to take the 
 cards and make the proper assignment of men to jobs within 
 an organization required more than the knowledge of the 
 name of the job to be filled it required some conception of 
 the exact duties of the man to be uppermost in the mind f 
 the person making the assignment. In order, therefore, 
 properly to relate the qualifications to the duties some concise 
 but comprehensive description of the duties was necessary.
 
 184 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 In August, 1918, Mr. Dodd was placed in charge of revising 
 the Tables of Occupational Needs then in existence and of 
 developing further tables for staff corps organizations. An 
 organization was effected, later known as the Personnel Speci- 
 fications Unit, which was able to handle the editing of tables 
 as they came from the various staff corps, and further, to com- 
 pile specifications for staff corps which had no facilities for 
 collecting such material. 
 
 With the aim of overcoming the limitations of tables of 
 occupational needs discussed above, Captain James Gregg, 
 A.G.D., was given the task of devising a form that would re- 
 late the duties of the job to the qualifications of the man, and 
 distinguish the qualifications necessary for the different types 
 of job to which men of the same occupation would be assigned. 
 The present form of Personnel Specifications resulted from 
 this experimentation. Except in the case of Field Artillery, 
 they give first, the army title; second, the nearest equivalent 
 civilian occupation, degree of ability at it, and symbol; third, 
 a suggested substitute civilian occupation ; and fourth, a con- 
 cise but comprehensive explanation of the duties of the job. 
 In order to save printing, and to make the definition of duties 
 compact, very frequently qualifications have been stated in 
 terms of duties ; that is, the method of expression of the duties 
 served to indicate what qualifications, other than occupational, 
 were required in order to assure the proper execution of the 
 duties. Two examples will illustrate these points: 
 1st, Radio Sergeant, for Heavy Artillery: 
 
 1 Radio Sergeant. . . . Wireless operator 1 Jour. 31w/ 
 
 Substitute : Telegrapher. 
 
 Cares for and operates wireless apparatus, and makes 
 repairs under adverse conditions. Sends and receives 
 messages at the rate of fifteen words per minute. 
 
 Abbreviation "Jour." stands for Journeyman. "31W" is the code 
 symbol used in "Index of Occupations" for "wireless telegraphers."
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 185 
 
 2nd, Sergeant in a Tank Repair and Salvage Company: 
 
 1 Mechanic. . . .Gen. auto repairman 1 Jour. 24g. 
 Substitute: Auto engine mechanic, or engine bl<#ck 
 tester. 
 
 Times and grinds valves; repairs and adjusts car- 
 buretors, and lubricating and ignition systems ; lines up 
 shafting and fits bearings; welds aluminum, steel, cast 
 iron and bronze parts of motor equipment. May be called 
 upon to do general blacksmith work and to read mechani- 
 cal sketches and blue prints. 
 
 In the first case, in stating that the Radio Sergeant "sends 
 and receives messages at the rate of 15 words per minute," 
 a certain standard of ability as a radio operator is required; 
 in the second example given, the fact that the general auto 
 repairman called for in the Tank Repair and Salvage Com- 
 pany "may be called upon to do general blacksmith work and 
 to read mechanical sketches and blue prints," elaborates his 
 qualifications beyond the name of his occupation. 
 
 Insufficiency of Occupational Qualifications. The tendency 
 that predominated very largely in the Committee was to call 
 for- any sort of a man by his occupational name. 40.1 percent, 
 of the personnel of an Infantry Division according to the 
 revised Tables of Occupational Needs published in September, 
 1918, were designated as occupational specialists. In a very 
 real sense, the Tables of Occupational Needs were inaccurate. 
 What was meant was not that 40.1 percent, of the personnel 
 of the Infantry Division had to be occupational specialists 
 but that 40.1 percent, of the duties performed by men in the 
 Division had occupational character. In other words, the 
 tendency was to give the company commander who needed 
 a man to perform slight carpentering operations an apprentice 
 carpenter, or if he needed a man who was required to make 
 a few wire ties, an apprentice electrician. In lieu of any- 
 thing better in the way of expressing a demand for men this 
 method was permissible. If a wire must be tied one is much 
 more sure that the tying will be accomplished by assigning 
 to that job an apprentice electrician than by assigning a crane
 
 186 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 operator or a clerk. Yet there was much wastage in this 
 method. 
 
 Leadership must be Considered. Again this tendency 
 toward assigning occupational specialists to perform every job 
 ran itself into the ground in other directions. Theoretically 
 the best person for a first sergeant is a man who has had con- 
 siderable experience in handling men. Inasmuch as his con- 
 nection with the men is not of an overly refined or highly 
 intellectual character, a college professor or a business exec- 
 utive is not required. If one had to pick an occupational 
 specialist for this position one would naturally pick some 
 such individual as a construction boss, and the pity of it is that 
 in many instances in Tables of Occupational Needs the con- 
 struction foreman was actually specified for the position of 
 first sergeant. The trouble with this is not that the construc- 
 tion boss would not make a good first sergeant, but that some- 
 body else might make a better one. In assigning a specialist 
 to a job which requires a good deal more than mere occupa- 
 tional ability one cannot be sure that the occupational special- 
 ist so assigned, will be able to perform the duties. In other 
 "words, a man cannot be warranted for a non-commissioned 
 officer's job purely on the basis of his occupational qualifica- 
 tions. A non-commissioned officer must in addition to occu- 
 pational skill possesses other qualifications which will fit him 
 for the business in the army for which he is warranted. 
 Although the foreman, boss, or superintendent theoretically 
 makes the best first sergeant for a Rifle Company in many 
 particular instances it has been found that in that company 
 it is the telegrapher, clerk, benchhand, miller or bricklayer 
 who in the ordinary run of events looms up as the best 
 material for a first sergeant. There have been no endeavors 
 to influence the company commander's selection of non-com- 
 missioned officers even by sending him occupational special- 
 ists for non-commissioned jobs; the mistake, however, was 
 made in attempting to embody qualities of physique, education, 
 intelligence and character in a mere occupational name.
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 187 
 
 Intelligence. In the third place, the more the various jobs 
 of the Army were studied the more it became apparent that 
 in order to put "The Right Man in the Right Place" one had 
 to consider more than occupational qualifications. It became 
 apparent that not only was it impossible in all instances to 
 assign men on the strength of their occupational qualifications 
 but that in many instances occupational qualifications were a 
 hindrance. In the first days of the new draft army and the 
 occupational classification of it, commanding officers were very 
 willing to have all the occupational specialists assigned to 
 their organizations that personnel adjutants would assign 
 simply because they found that the average of intelligence 
 was higher in occupational specialists than in men who had 
 no training or skill. But with the development of the Army 
 Mental Tests a new measure of intelligence and a more accu- 
 rate one was arrived at. From the time that these were 
 adopted universally by the Army, it was possible to specify 
 a certain grade of intelligence and to secure it. Command- 
 ing officers, moreover, discovered that in the present army 
 men had to do a great deal more than walk or write, (to some 
 extent, complete qualifications for many enlisted positions of 
 the old army), in order to be able to produce the kind of or- 
 ganization that was required. Intelligence was a factor ; and 
 in addition to maintaining a certain level of intelligence in an 
 organization there were some men who necessarily had to 
 have more intelligence than others. Furthermore, command- 
 ing officers realized that the sooner they got this intelligence 
 functioning in the right place the more quickly would their 
 organization be fit for overseas service, and so in Personnel 
 Specifications in such places as were necessary there were in- 
 corporated requests for men of a definite amount of intelli- 
 gence to perform the duties of the job. 
 
 Education. Other qualifications that were essential to 
 proper functioning in a particular place were looked for by 
 those training the men for these positions. In certain posi- 
 tions in the Army education was a requisite. For example in
 
 188 ' HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 many instances it was necessary to specify that certain indi- 
 viduals be able to read and write English, as not only was our 
 Army made up of men in large proportion who could not read 
 or write English but also of men who were illiterate in any 
 language. Again, it was found necessary to stress certain 
 technical qualifications. Qualifications akin to those men- 
 tioned above in the cases of the man who had to do minor 
 carpentering, and the man who had to tie wires were asked 
 for. Such qualifications did not actually amount to technical 
 qualifications but did involve some skill at one thing or another. 
 This situation was the same as that already brought out in 
 regard to leadership, where it has been found that a leader 
 can not in every instance be picked upon the basis of his prior 
 experience, nevertheless the indications on a soldier's quali- 
 fication card provide a very good clue for assigning a man 
 to a position in which this qualification plays an important 
 part. 
 
 Physical Qualifications. In the last place, physical quali- 
 fications play a large part in the assignment of men to the 
 various organizations which any modern Army employs. 
 Many places can be filled by men of limited physical abilities. 
 It is not necessary that a physically perfect man be assigned 
 to all jobs. Here is felt the need of an extended study by the 
 Medical Department in conjunction with the specialists of 
 all arms of the service in order to determine once and for all 
 those positions for which men of limited physical ability can 
 be used to advantage. In some places defective eyesight, 
 defective hearing, a malfunctioning heart, or lameness would 
 not be a drawback, but these are not matters of guesswork ; 
 they should be matters of scientific study and elaboration, and 
 Personnel Specifications have generally declined to specify 
 accurately the physical qualifications of a man, mainly ex- 
 pressing desired physical excellence, because it has been real- 
 ized that anything short of scientific knowledge on the subject 
 would be useless. 
 
 Therefore the development of Personnel Specifications has
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 189 
 
 progressed to the point where for every position in the Army 
 a detailed study or job analysis had to be made. It was im- 
 possible to arrive at any accurate information as to what con- 
 stituted the qualifications of a man for a job until the duties 
 of the job were analyzed and set forth. Throughout the whole 
 course of this matter the endeavor has been to put the horse 
 before the cart but this arrangement can not be made until 
 job analysis gets into the Tables of Organization. It is im- 
 possible to lay out the organization of any functioning depart- 
 ment or unit in the Army until one is aware of the duties 
 of the various positions. To allow a certain number of 
 sergeants, a certain number of corporals, a certain number 
 of privates to a given organization without knowing what jobs 
 they are to perform is like sending ammunition to the front 
 without the assurance it is going to be used. And so in the 
 study of Personnel Specifications made from August, 1918, to 
 the present day an effort has been made to master the details 
 of the job and to reduce to writing a brief but comprehensive 
 definition of the duties thereof in order to arrive at the point 
 where the qualifications of the person to perform those duties 
 could properly be determined. 
 
 EXPANSION OF PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 While the second edition of the Tables of Occupational 
 Needs for an Infantry Division were being completed in Sep- 
 tember, 1918, Personnel Specifications for other arms of the 
 service had been commenced, upon the basis of the develop- 
 ment mentioned above. A detail of Coast Artillery officers 
 who had attended the 10th School for Personnel Adjutants at 
 Camp Meigs was started working on Personnel Specifications 
 for Coast Artillery. The method of procedure was new and 
 to a. very large extent the rules for making definitions had to 
 be formulated as the work progressed. Nevertheless, within 
 three weeks Personnel Specifications for the entire Coast Ar- 
 tillery Corps (exclusive of fixed armament), including trench
 
 190 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 mortars, artillery headquarters, anti-aircraft artillery, railway 
 artillery, motorized artillery, and trains and parks, were com- 
 pleted. The publication of this book, however, was delayed 
 because it was felt necessary to have the work approved by 
 officers who had seen service with these units in the field in 
 France. Captain Joseph M. Larimer, A.G.D., therefore, one 
 of the detail of officers, who was later detailed as an assistant 
 to Captain Gregg, took this work to Camp Eustis, Virginia, 
 where it was thoroughly checked by the officers of the Coast 
 Artillery Corps who had been with these units in service over- 
 seas. The work was approved almost verbatim and was issued 
 in December, 1918. 
 
 The first of the series of Personnel Specifications to appear 
 in print was the Air Service, Division of Military Aeronautics, 
 in three sections: Section I., Headquarters and Balloon Sec- 
 tion, Form CCP-470, published November, 1918; Section II., 
 Service Units, Form CCP-471, published November, 1918; 
 Section III., Construction, Repair and Supply Units, Form 
 CCP-472, published December, 1918. This work was com- 
 piled almost entirely by First Lieutenant John W. Dissette 
 of the Air Service, who had assisted in the preliminary organ- 
 ization of some flying fields. This officer later compiled a 
 supplement to the Air Service M'hich contains the Personnel 
 Specifications for a single unit flying field, this book 
 (CCP-473) being published in January, 1919. 
 
 Shortly afterwards appeared the Coast Artillery Corps, a 
 book of 102 pages (CCP-465). In rapid succession thereafter 
 .appeared Personnel Specifications for: 
 
 Motor Transport Corps, complete (CCP-458). Decem- 
 ber, 1918. 
 
 Cavalry Regiment (CCP-460), December, 1918. 
 
 Signal Corps, including Field Signal Battalion, Telegraph 
 Battalion and Pigeon Company (CCP-475), December, 
 1918. 
 
 Tank Corps, complete (CCP-459), December, 1918. 
 
 Corps of Engineers, in three sections, January, 1919:
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 191 
 
 Section I. (CCP-480) : 
 
 Part 1. Divisional Troops (Fully Armed). 
 Part 2. Corps and Army Troops (Fully Armed). 
 Section II. Special Troops, except Transportation 
 
 (Partly Armed). 
 
 Section III. Transportation Troops (Partly Armed), 
 Gas Regiment of the Chemical Warfare Service 
 (CCP-479). March, 1919. 
 
 In addition to the books published there were also prepared 
 Personnel Specifications for the Field Artillery, Quartermaster 
 Corps, Medical Department, Ordnance Department and In- 
 fantry Machine Gun Units. The Tables of Occupational 
 Needs, Form CCP-457, had been published in December, 1918, 
 for the Quartermaster Corps to satisfy the immediate needs 
 for an occupational survey in that branch of the service. The 
 expansion of this work to cover the entire Army was largely 
 the result of the insistence of Mr. Dodd, whose theory it was 
 that the Personnel Specifications Unit must function for the 
 entire Army inasmuch as it was found that the various units of 
 the Army were not able to codify the demand in a standard 
 fashion. 
 
 The work of editing these Specifications, iii addition to the 
 officers mentioned above, was aided by Captain Charles C. 
 Dilley, A.G.D., who was one of the original detail of Coast 
 Artillery Officers which drew up the specifications for the 
 Coast Artillery. 
 
 METHOD OF MAKING PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 Standardization of Needs. The occupational classification 
 of the Army has standardized, at least for Army purposes, 
 the various trades. The qualifications and duties of each par- 
 ticular vocation have been clearly and definitely set forth in 
 "Army Trade Specifications." Staff Corps, therefore, in order 
 to secure the specialists needed have been required to use 
 these standard definitions of what constitutes the different 
 grades. Each staff corps, except in rare instances, determined
 
 192 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the requirements of the corps as to (1) a man's trade skill, 
 (2) other qualifications necessary for his proper functioning, 
 and (3) the description of his army duties. In order, how- 
 ever, to standardize the expression of the needs of the various 
 corps and arms, it was necessary to clear the requisitions for 
 personnel through a central office which possessed the requisite 
 facilities for making this demand uniform. In this way the 
 terminology for qualifications and duties for each organization 
 was simplified and standardized. 
 
 Qualifications of Members of the Personnel Specifications 
 Unit. The men who composed this unit were selected from 
 those who possessed three qualifications. No less than two 
 were required to be present in each individual; it being pos- 
 sible so to divide the -work that it passed successively twice 
 through the hands of those possessing all the qualifications. 
 Following are these qualifications: 
 
 1. Knowledge of army organization and resultant military 
 functioning. The essentials of military relationship must 
 always be borne in mind. Even when an army unit is per- 
 forming a function almost purely vocational it is frequently 
 necessary to estimate to what extent the military relationship 
 will affect the performance of these duties. Further, if there 
 are military duties to be performed, in addition to and inde- 
 pendent of the vocational functioning, only a person who has 
 had varied or extensive military service can qualify in this 
 respect. 
 
 2. Ability to understand the functioning of the various 
 trades. In order properly to describe the duties of -any army 
 job, and to determine what sort of man will be required at 
 that job in the light of the duties he performs, one must be 
 able to visualize the job being performed. This qualification 
 depends upon the person having actually seen the operation 
 being performed, or upon a wide experience with trade special- 
 ists, from which he can determine what the specialist would 
 do under given circumstances. 
 
 3. Ability to collate, unify and edit demands for trade
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 193 
 
 specialists. This calls for more than ordinary editorial ability. 
 It requires good judgment, and some knowledge of the trades. 
 Necessity for Supervision of All Specifications by One Staff. 
 Whether the work of compiling personnel specifications is 
 initiated by the Personnel Specifications Unit or by officers 
 within a Staff Corps who arc expert in matters of its per- 
 sonnel, it is necessary that all specifications be edited and gen- 
 erally supervised by the Specifications Unit. Otherwise it is 
 inevitable that deviations from the general plan will creep 
 into the specifications which will make it difficult to handle 
 personnel matters for the Army as a whole. 
 
 UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES IN MAKING PERSONNEL 
 SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 Function of the Army Unit. Before one can intelligently 
 demand specialists for the formation of an army unit, the 
 functions of that unit must be well defined in all particulars. 
 For the purpose of conveniently classifying the primary func- 
 tion of the unit, army organizations, ranging in size from a 
 detachment to a brigade, can usually be placed under one of 
 the following three heads: 
 
 1. Combatant units armed, equipped and organized 
 
 for attacking the enemy. 
 
 2. Administrative- 1 units which administer the affairs of 
 
 the army in accordance with regulations. 
 
 3. Technical or vocational units which perform duties 
 
 which call for the employment of technical or occu- 
 pational specialists as such. 
 
 This classification may, at first, seem illogical or contrary 
 to the general method of classification. But when it is remem- 
 bered that it is made purely upon the basis of the primary 
 function of the unit, the reason for it will be apparent. 
 Thus a regiment of sappers (Corps of Engineers) is not 
 classified as combatant, but as technical, for its primary 
 function is to work with the pick and shovel, although armed, 
 it utilizes these arms only in emergencies and for its own
 
 194 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 defense ; similarly, an organization of military police, although 
 armed, has primarily an administrative function, and is so 
 classified. A rifle company in an infantry regiment, a machine 
 gun company, and a battery of artillery would obviously fall 
 under combat. A supply company would be administrative. 
 Engineering troops, in general, and a motor mechanics regi- 
 ment (air service) would fall under technical. 
 
 Determination of Subsidiary Operations of Unit. The 
 method in which the unit accomplished its primary function 
 will depend to a large extent upon the nature of the function. 
 The primary function of a combatant unit being to fight, the 
 method of accomplishing this, and the consequent division of 
 the work will be largely tactical. So that in a machine gun 
 company of an infantry regiment the work of the unit will be 
 divided among the tactical divisions of the company which 
 are the company headquarters, the three platoons and the 
 combat trains. But for the purpose of finding out what duties 
 each man performs, and what qualifications each must possess, 
 a stop cannot be made here. Each of these tactical divisions 
 must be further analyzed. So that it is found that in each 
 platoon, there are headquarters and two sections. Each sec- 
 tion is composed of two squads and the function of each squad 
 is to fire one machine gun. Thus, the smallest operation in 
 the unit is arrived at, and the matter of deciding upon the 
 qualifications and duties of each person who assists in the 
 operation is simplified. In a similar manner consideration of 
 functions of the operations performed by each sub-division are 
 reduced to the simplest operation it performs. 1 
 
 1 Note: In this connection, therefore, there may first be 
 
 , aiiu UUUKB are nepi to ueierrnme me amount 01 loou a company 
 r. The system of feeding, housing: and equipping the men, is 
 
 a function constant with every unit. Others may vary, but except 
 
 that the number of men for which it functions is variable this one is 
 fixed. The persons who draw the supplies and issue them, provide the food 
 
 may draw, 
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 196 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Definition of Duties. Having sifted the operations of the 
 organization down to those performed by each individual, one 
 comes to the point where the analysis of the individual job is 
 the inevitable step. The range of each job must be clear in 
 the mind of the person who is defining its duties. Consequently 
 in describing these duties no function that the man will natu- 
 rally perform, or might in all probability be called upon to 
 perform, must be overlooked. Right here is seen the necessity 
 for visualizing the man at his work in the Army. The rules 
 governing the expression of the duties are too numerous to 
 discuss in this volume. 
 
 Determination of Number and Placement of Specialists. 
 Having analyzed the job of each man, one is now in a position 
 to determine what sort of a man is needed in each place. Not 
 only must one consider the exact duties of the individual in 
 fixing his qualifications, but also his relation to the functions 
 of the others in the unit must be taken into account. 
 
 An instance of this sort of analysis of the work of a unit 
 for the purpose of deciding upon the placement of specialists 
 is seen in the accompanying diagrams. Figure 6 shows the 
 organization of the work of a Landing Gear Repair Company 
 of a Motor Mechanics Regiment, the primary function of 
 which is to repair the landing gear of forty airplanes which 
 daily pass through the regiment for repair. First appears the 
 function of company administration which has to do with the 
 messing, quartering and equipping of the individuals of the 
 company, the factor constant for all military units. The 
 operations of the company vocationally are divided into four 
 parts: 1. Inspection, 2. Dismantling, 3. Assembling, and 4. 
 Stock Room Supply. The landing gear of the plane to be 
 repaired passes successively through all of these stages. 
 These are further subdivided, as they naturally would, into 
 the dismantling of the wheels and tires, fittings and axles. 
 Then the number of men needed to keep this operation going 
 on forty planes daily is determined. How many journeymen 
 are required for the more intricate processes, how many
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 197 
 
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 198 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 apprentices to assist these journeymen, and how many laborers 
 to supply both, and to assist in the work of handling the 
 heavier pieces. In the second diagram, Figure 7, the num- 
 bers of such specialists are shown accordingly as they are 
 needed for the different operations. 
 
 Relation of Trade Ability to Army Grade. Civilian occu- 
 pation and degree of skill having been discovered, some 
 attempt must be made to relate them toi the army position 
 which the specialist will occupy. Expertness in a given grade 
 in the army unit, functioning on vocational lines almost 
 requires that such expert be given an army grade consistent 
 with his degree of skill in civil life. The general connection 
 between his civilian occupation and his army grade, however, 
 must be studied. The following questions naturally arise : 
 
 1. In connection with his army duties, does he control 
 
 men, if so, how many? 
 
 2. If the organization is purely vocational, will his army 
 
 grade depend purely upon his experience at the 
 trade ? 
 
 In the third diagram, Figure 8, appears the determination 
 of the army grade of the specialists in the company according 
 to the relation that exists between the duties of the position 
 and the army grade. 
 
 Other Qualifications. It is well known that men cannot be 
 classified by occupations alone. This pertains to functions 
 they perform in the army as much as it does to what they do 
 in civilian life. The authority that comes to a man because of 
 his being warranted in a particular grade must be a matter of 
 concern to those who draw up tables of personnel specifica- 
 tions. Indiscriminate assignment of men to army grades can- 
 not usually be made purely upon a basis of vocational ability. 
 Whether or not the man is to be a non-commissioned officer, is 
 not, however, the determining factor in the consideration of 
 his other qualifications. It may happen he must be poten- 
 tially a non-commissioned officer in which instance he must 
 have leadership ability. Likely he must possess a certain
 
 
 
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 200 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 amount of intelligence as determined by the army mental tests. 
 In other places in the Army it may be necessary that his phys- 
 ical qualifications be taken into account. Some positions are 
 more of a strain upon the physique of a man than others. Jn 
 many jobs in the Army, a man with a physical defect may 
 be used, if so, this physical limitation must be specified. It 
 may be again that for the purpose of the job he must have 
 a certain amount of education. 
 
 Army Schooling. It may be that the army position will 
 draw upon his trade ability only to a small extent. It may be 
 that no trade ability will fit him for this job. Consideration 
 must therefore be given to these three points. 1. Can the 
 man function in the army directly from civil life in a purely 
 vocational way? 2. Will his civilian occupation provide 
 merely a background of knowledge upon which he must draw, 
 properly to function? 3. Is it required that he attend an 
 Army Training School in order to learn the duties of his job? 
 The answer to any of these three questions provides a quali- 
 fication which is in the newer tables, expressed as Army 
 Schooling. Any or all of these may be important. It is 
 essential that their potential importance be considered. 
 
 Table of Occupational Organization. Personnel Specifica- 
 tions in the newer tables, are summarized in table form 
 showing relationship between occupations and army grades, 
 and indicating organization totals. (See Figure 9). 
 
 RESULTS ACHIEVED THROUGH THE USE OF 
 TABLES OF OCCUPATIONAL NEEDS 
 
 The following quotation from a letter of September 25, 
 1918, is typical of the attitude of many officers as to the value 
 of the specifications. 
 
 "I believe that your Tables of Classification for the Medi- 
 cal Department permit of the organization of sanitary for- 
 mations which are at least doubly as efficient at the outset 
 as they otherwise could be, and that even after long train- 
 ing the organizations created under the hit-or-miss arrange-
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 201 
 
 ment could never hope to be even more than fractionally 
 as efficient. It is a great step in advance and something 
 I had personally hoped for over 25 years." 
 
 Colonel M , Medical Corps. 
 
 CovnDurruL 
 
 For Offidil UM Only 
 
 | MODEL Table of Occupation*! Orjanizalion] 
 
 HEADQUARTERS COMPANY 
 75 MM. (3-INCH) FIELD ARTnAjjRr REGIMENT 
 
 (Tables of Organization Nc 
 
 T. O. O. 14 
 
 i. 13 and 14) 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 * 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 c 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 18J 19 j 
 
 21 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 i 
 
 Jp | Specficalion No. 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL 
 SPECIALISTS. 
 
 Symbol. 
 
 Decree of skill 
 
 ARMY GRADE. 
 
 4 
 
 4) 
 I 
 
 |l 
 
 Battalion Sergeant* 
 Major. 
 
 j 
 
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 7. 
 
 Supply Sergeant. 
 
 Stable Sergeant 
 
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 FIG. 9
 
 CHAPTER 15 
 
 DETERMINATION OF ARMYS NEEDS FOR 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 
 
 In the course of the development and expansion of the 
 Committee it was found necessary to compile several sets 
 of statistics relative to the occupational qualifications of 
 the men who were drafted into the Army and to the occu- 
 pational requirements of the Army itself. The immediate 
 purpose of compiling such statistics was, in most cases, to 
 enable that part of the Committee which was assisting 
 the Operations Branch, General Staff in its work of assign- 
 ing drafted men to army organizations, to perform this work 
 with the added efficiency which full information on the large 
 aspects of their problem would make possible. 
 
 However, the value of these statistics was by no means 
 limited to the work of distributing the draft. From the very 
 beginning of the compilation of the Tables of Occupational 
 Needs the figures on the proportions of various kinds of spe- 
 cialists in the draft were a guide in so framing the Tables as to 
 avoid specifying a ridiculously large number of more or less 
 rare men in cases where men of related occupations or of 
 lesser skill would serve nearly as well. The statistics were 
 also of value in forecasting the occupational shortages which 
 would have to be made up somehow by special training in 
 camp, by special draft, by individual induction or by train- 
 ing in the War Department's trade schools and thus to enable 
 the Operations Branch or the Committee on Education and 
 Special Training to prepare to supply the anticipated defi- 
 ciencies a month or two before they were actually due to 
 occur. These uses to which such statistics were put are de- 
 scribed more in detail in Chapter 33, but it is the purpose 
 
 202
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 203 
 
 of this chapter to give some of the actual statistics and to 
 describe how they were compiled. 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL REQUIREMENTS FROM 
 JANUARY 1, TO MAY 1, 1918 
 
 The first important statistical investigation was undertaken 
 early in January, 1918, under the direction of Dr. Bingham, 
 for the specific purpose of demonstrating the necessity of 
 establishing special Army trade schools to overcome the seri- 
 ous shortages in skilled personnel, with resulting retardation 
 of the Army's training program and impairment of its effi- 
 ciency, with which it would be faced within the next four 
 months unless energetic action was taken at once. The result- 
 ing figures, when brought to the attention of the proper 
 authorities, exerted considerable influence in leading to the 
 establishment of the Committee on Education and Special 
 Training whose principal function, during the remainder of 
 the war was to train, by intensive courses in colleges and 
 schools throughout the country, large numbers of trade special- 
 ists for technical army units. 
 
 This summary of occupational requirements, which is 
 printed below in Table 1 is largely self-explanatory. It will 
 be remembered that at the time this summary was prepared 
 the policy of calling into the Army large monthly increments 
 of men had not been adopted. After the first call of the 
 draft in the fall of 1917, no more men had been drafted and 
 in January it was still quite undecided as to when the next 
 call would be made. Therefore the only supply from which 
 specialists for technical units could be drawn was from within 
 the Army itself as then constituted, with the exception of a 
 comparatively small number of men, who were voluntarily 
 inducted. Accordingly the first column in the summary in- 
 dicates the total skilled (journeymen) personnel among the 
 779,772 enlisted men in the National Army and National 
 Guard cantonments on December 15, 1917 from which prac- 
 tically all the specialists for the Army must come for the
 
 204 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 next few months. The second column indicates the esti- 
 mated needs of the thirty divisions at those cantonments. 
 These estimates were based on 'Chart B,' the fore-runner 
 of the Tables of Occupational Needs, and were necessarily 
 rather rough and imperfect. The third column indicates the 
 resulting surplus or shortage, as the case may be. The figures 
 in the fourth main column were based upon special state- 
 ments from the Chiefs of all the Staff Corps as to their esti- 
 mated requirements from January 1st to May 1st, 1918; and 
 in the fifth column appear the estimated shortages or sur- 
 pluses. (The shortages are in black-faced type.) 
 
 Table 1. Needs of the Army for Enlisted Men of Special Qualifica- 
 tions Reqwred by May 1, 1918. 1 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Total 
 Skilled 
 Personnel 
 
 Estimated 
 Needs of 30 E 
 Divisions 
 
 Surplus or H 
 Shortage 
 
 Needs of _ 
 Staff Corps < 
 
 Surplus or _, 
 Shortage 
 
 Accountant 
 
 1313 
 
 540 
 
 773 
 
 853 
 
 80 
 
 Aeroplane Mechanic 
 
 49 
 
 
 49 
 
 6700 
 
 6651 
 
 Artist 
 
 611 
 
 
 611 
 
 31 
 
 580 
 
 Auto Driver 
 
 8551 
 
 5880 
 
 2671 
 
 20717 
 
 18046 
 
 Auto Repairer 
 
 5807 
 
 5340 
 
 467 
 
 5611 
 
 S144 
 
 Baker 
 
 1780 
 
 2220 
 
 440 
 
 2072 
 
 2512 
 
 Barber 
 
 6295 
 
 5880 
 
 415 
 
 1180 
 
 7fiS 
 
 Blacksmith 
 
 1401 
 
 3120 
 
 1710 
 
 4063 
 
 5782 
 
 Boiler Maker 
 
 . . . . 535 
 
 
 535 
 
 164 
 
 371 
 
 Bookkeeper 
 
 3940 
 
 540 
 
 3400 
 
 670 
 
 2730 
 
 Bridge Carpenter 
 
 222 
 
 
 222 
 
 2379 
 
 2157 
 
 Butcher 
 
 2150 
 
 420 
 
 1730 
 
 289 
 
 1441 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 'This estimate Is made without allowance for the skilled men needed 
 In the Regular Army Divisions now forming-, some of whom will doubtless 
 be Included among- the troops to be transferred from the National Army 
 to the Regular Army. Neither is any account taken of possible demands of 
 the Expeditionary Forces for technical men. Over against these consider- 
 ations stands the fact that the National Army has, in certain vocations, 
 a reserve of partly skilled men not included in these totals, but capable of 
 being trained to the technical work required.
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 
 
 205 
 
 Table 1. Needs of the Army for Enlisted Men 
 tions Required by May 1, 1918. 
 
 of Special Qualifica- 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Total 
 Skilled 
 Personnel 
 
 Estimated 
 Needs of 30 S 
 Divisions 
 
 Surplus or y 
 Shortage 
 
 Needs of 
 Staff Corps << 
 
 Surplus or 
 Shortage 
 
 Care and Handling Horses... 
 Canvas Worker 
 
 14883 
 110 
 3 
 134 
 4810 
 227 ' 
 39 
 18058 
 1227 
 3362 
 875 
 
 386 
 1141 
 1296 
 245 
 
 3245 
 1596 
 
 353 
 163 
 
 1848 
 
 1808 
 48 
 1202 
 135 
 
 460 
 421 
 
 1087 
 
 391 
 
 72 
 308 
 
 61860 
 120 
 
 120 
 
 10500 
 
 120 
 11220 
 5430 
 17880 
 
 300 
 2190 
 1530 
 
 4170 
 
 1530 
 
 1470 
 
 150 
 270 
 
 2130 
 
 5220 
 
 300 
 
 46977 
 10 
 3 
 14 
 5690 
 227 
 81 
 6838 
 4203 
 14518 
 875 
 
 86 
 1049 
 234 
 245 
 
 925 
 1596 
 
 1177 
 163 
 1848 
 
 338 
 48 
 1052 
 135 
 
 1670 
 421 
 4133 
 391 
 228 
 308 
 
 4874 
 1087 
 37 
 700 
 4500 
 
 5975 
 919 
 7402 
 1103 
 
 3325 
 1335 
 950 
 
 5605 
 1628 
 
 1843 
 
 251 
 
 277 
 817 
 
 9723 
 
 1228 
 
 1085 
 536 
 840 
 
 1494 
 1287 
 45 
 
 51851 
 1097 
 34 
 686 
 10190 
 227 
 81 
 863 
 5122 
 21920 
 228 
 
 86 
 4374 
 1569 
 705 
 
 6530 
 32 
 
 1843 
 
 1428 
 114 
 1031 
 
 9385 
 48 
 1052 
 1363 
 
 2755 
 115 
 4973 
 
 1103 
 1515 
 263 
 
 Carbon Lamp Man 
 
 Carrier Pigeon Expert 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 Chemical Industry Worker .... 
 Chiropodist 
 
 Clerk 
 
 Concrete and Cement Worker. . 
 Cook 
 
 Construction Foreman 
 
 Dentist 
 
 Draftsman 
 
 Drucforist . 
 
 Dynamo Expert 
 
 Electrician 
 
 Engineer Graduate 
 
 Engineer, Locomotive. (Sec 
 Fireman) 
 
 Farrier 
 
 Firefighter 
 
 Foundryman 
 
 Gasoline Engine Repairman . . . 
 Gas Works Man 
 
 Grocer 
 
 Gunsmith 
 
 Harness Maker 
 
 I loistman 
 
 Horse Shoer 
 
 Inspector 
 
 Instrument Repairer 
 
 Interpreter .
 
 206 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 1. Needs of the Army for Enlisted Men of Special Qualifica- 
 tions Required by May 1, 1918. 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Total 
 Skilled _ 
 Personnel 
 
 Estimated 
 Needs of 30 ^ 
 Divisions 
 
 Surplus or >- 
 Shortage 
 
 Needs of ,_ 
 Staff Corps ^ 
 
 Surplus or ^ 
 Shortage 
 
 Laboratory Worker 
 
 159 
 228 
 2025 
 66 
 2555 
 1248 
 
 5476 
 1272 
 243 
 138 
 160 
 3871 
 530 
 459 
 7402 
 
 93 
 321 
 
 3228 
 405 
 507 
 108 
 3554 
 168 
 733 
 1944 
 136 
 7 
 
 365 
 
 102 
 2929 
 
 540 
 1920 
 
 720 
 
 5580 
 
 5400 
 180 
 1320 
 12780 
 
 12000 
 540 
 
 5730 
 3720 
 
 4740 
 720 
 
 720 
 
 240 
 
 381 
 
 228 
 105 
 66 
 2555 
 
 528 
 
 104 
 1272 
 243 
 138 
 160 
 1529 
 350 
 861 
 5378 
 
 93 
 11679 
 
 2688 
 405 
 5223 
 108 
 166 
 168 
 4007 
 1224 
 136 
 7 
 
 355 
 
 102 
 
 2689 
 
 98 
 3095 
 18 
 1805 
 1976 
 
 8068 
 283 
 
 280 
 316 
 446 
 359 
 837 
 2941 
 
 1225 
 295 
 1516 
 
 1353 
 611 
 
 300 
 
 608 
 
 5232 
 1034 
 
 381 
 130 
 2990 
 48 
 750 
 1448 
 
 8172 
 989 
 243 
 142 
 156 
 1975 
 9 
 1698 
 8319 
 
 93 
 11679 
 
 1463 
 110 
 6739 
 108 
 1519 
 168 
 4007 
 613 
 136 
 7 
 300 
 
 963 
 
 5130 
 1655 
 
 Laundry Expert 
 
 Lineman 
 
 Locksmith 
 
 Locomotive Fireman 
 
 Lumberman 
 
 Machinist 
 
 Mason 
 
 Medical Student 
 
 Metal Finisher 
 
 Millwright 
 
 Miner 
 
 Moving Picture Expert 
 
 Mule Packer 
 
 Musician 
 
 Navigator 
 
 Nurse 
 
 Painter 
 
 Pattern Maker 
 
 Photographer . . .* 
 
 Physician 
 
 Pipe Fitter and Plumber 
 Plaster Molder 
 
 Policeman (M. P.) 
 
 Printer 
 
 Purchasing Agent 
 
 Psychological Examiner 
 
 Propeller Maker 
 
 Quarryman and Explosives 
 Expert 
 
 R. R. Construction Man 
 
 R. R. Operating Man .
 
 OCCUPATIONAL' SPECIALISTS 207 
 
 Table 1. Needs of the Army for Enlisted Men of Special Qualifica- 
 tions Required by May 1, 1918. 
 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 V 
 
 
 73 
 
 'g 2 
 
 M *" 
 
 - u 
 
 M 
 
 c >- 
 
 t *> 
 
 c bo 
 
 
 oj 0^ c 
 
 08 2 
 
 . ^ 
 
 (A 
 
 VJ (1 
 
 Occupation 
 
 o H i 
 
 c ^ .2 
 
 u 
 
 OH O 
 
 no O 
 
 "H. o 
 
 
 *"* en fe 
 
 "^ 3 
 
 3 "^ 
 
 5Z sj 
 
 3 
 
 
 2 
 
 W fc 
 
 en M 
 
 en 
 
 en M 
 
 R. R. Shop Mechanic 
 
 161 
 
 
 161 
 
 37 
 
 124 
 
 Rigger 
 
 476 
 
 360 
 
 116 
 
 593 
 
 477 
 
 Sanitary Expert 
 
 26 
 
 
 26 
 
 
 26 
 
 Seafaring Man 
 
 813 
 
 600 
 
 213 
 
 186 
 
 27 
 
 Section Hand (see R. R. Const.) 
 
 1452 
 
 
 1452 
 
 
 1452 
 
 Sheet Metal Worker 
 
 1256 
 
 180 
 
 1076 
 
 1630 
 
 554 
 
 Shipper 
 
 1001 
 
 1080 
 
 79 
 
 
 79 
 
 Shoemaker 
 
 977 
 
 2130 
 
 1153 
 
 287 
 
 1440 
 
 Steam Engineer 
 
 2153 
 
 960 
 
 1193 
 
 1459 
 
 266 
 
 Stenographer 
 
 4263 
 
 3000 
 
 1263 
 
 1800 
 
 537 
 
 Stockkeeper 
 
 1246 
 
 540 
 
 706 
 
 1606 
 
 900 
 
 Struc. Steel & Iron Worker 
 
 676 
 
 
 676 
 
 367 
 
 309 
 
 Surveyor 
 
 719 
 
 2460 
 
 1741 
 
 2105 
 
 3846 
 
 Tailor 
 
 1670 
 
 1080 
 
 590 
 
 1782 
 
 1192 
 
 Technical Instructor 
 
 17 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 17 
 
 Telegrapher 
 
 1688 
 
 3390 
 
 1702 
 
 7839 
 
 9541 
 
 Telephone Operators 
 
 393 
 
 5190 
 
 4797 
 
 4797 
 
 9594 
 
 Telephone Repairer 
 
 611 
 
 3540 
 
 2929 
 
 2938 
 
 5867 
 
 Tool Maker 
 
 344 
 
 
 344 
 
 527 
 
 183 
 
 Truck Driver 
 
 4228 
 
 27450 
 
 23222 
 
 30184 
 
 53406 
 
 Typewriter 
 
 1043 
 
 3000 
 
 1957 
 
 1722 
 
 3679 
 
 Undertaker 
 
 196 
 
 
 196 
 
 8 
 
 188 
 
 Ventilation Expert 
 
 8 
 
 
 3 
 
 81 
 
 78 
 
 Veterinary 
 
 226 
 
 660 
 
 434 
 
 1341 
 
 1775 
 
 Vulcanizer 
 
 197 
 
 
 197 
 
 328 
 
 131 
 
 Watchmaker 
 
 346 
 
 120 
 
 226 
 
 18 
 
 208 
 
 Water Supply Man 
 
 44 
 
 
 44 
 
 196 
 
 132 
 
 Welder 
 
 164 
 
 120 
 
 44 
 
 457 
 
 413 
 
 Wheelwright 
 
 129 
 
 420 
 
 291 
 
 1129 
 
 1420 
 
 Wireless Constructor 
 
 10 
 
 120 
 
 110 
 
 
 110 
 
 Wireless Operator 
 
 209 
 
 1740 
 
 1531 
 
 7575 
 
 9106
 
 208 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL CENSUS OF NATIONAL ARMY 
 
 (1917) 
 
 Immediately after the preparation of the above summary, 
 work was started on another tabulation which proposed to 
 indicate the numbers of journeymen and apprentices in each 
 occupation in the first draft call of 1917. It was found nec- 
 essary to omit the men transferred to National Guard Divi- 
 sions, because no occupational record of these transfers was 
 available. When completed, however, the summary was based 
 on a total of approximately 425,000 men including men in 
 National Army camps on December 15, 1917 and all men who 
 had been transferred therefrom except to National Guard 
 Divisions. For convenience the figures were reduced to a 
 basis of 100,000 men; i. e., it was stated that among the total 
 of 425,000 men, there were 1311 skilled accountants and 1034 
 partly skilled accountants to each 100,000. This scheme of 
 employing a common basis of 100,000 men so simplified com- 
 parisons of different sets of figures that it was used in prac- 
 tically all similar statistical tables thereafter. 
 
 GENERAL PERSHING'S SIX-PHASE PROJECT 
 
 Upon the receipt of General Pershing's six-phase project 
 for the construction, step by step, of a well-balanced oversea 
 Army, the Chiefs of the various Staff Corps were asked to 
 define in terms of occupations the requirements of the units 
 which would be organized under their jurisdiction. The re- 
 sulting reports were then summarized occupationally by the 
 Central Distributing Office of the Committee and used as a 
 guide in distributing the draft as soon as monthly calls began 
 to be made. 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL STATISTICS OF DRAFT 
 INCREMENTS OF 1918 
 
 After draft calls began to be made monthly, it -became the 
 custom to compile occupational summaries of each of them
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 209 
 
 on the 100,000 basis, which is described above. The study 
 of the July 22nd draft, covering over 200,000 men, is prob- 
 ably the most reliable of any of these single-draft summaries. 
 The large number of men, the well-distributed sources from 
 which they came, the variety of occupations represented (over- 
 300 sub-occupations), the fact that practically all the men 
 were inducted at camps which were exceptionally well- 
 equipped to interview and classify them, and the particular 
 oare that was taken in making the tabulation all conduced to 
 making this summary a particularly valuable one. Although 
 it is too detailed to be reproduced here, it has been combined 
 with subsequent reports and condensed into a form suitable 
 in this volume. In this condensed form the more than 300 
 sub-occupations have been combined into less than 100 main 
 headings and no differentiation has been made between jour- 
 neymen and apprentices. The figures are based on a total 
 of 427,048 general service white men in the draft increments 
 of July 22nd, August 26th, and September 3rd, but they have 
 been reduced to a basis of 100,000 men in order that they 
 might be compared with such figures as those in the second 
 column, representing the requisitions submitted by the Staff 
 Corps reduced to the same basis. These requisitions, received 
 between July 1st and November 1st, 1918, represent 423,865 
 men. The hundreds of thousands of men whom the Opera- 
 tions Branch 'requisitioned' for Infantry and Field Artillery 
 are not included in this total. The figures in the second col- 
 umn must not, therefore, be taken as typical of the entire 
 Army, but only of the specialized organizations of the Staff 
 Corps. 
 
 Table %. Showing Probable Supply of the Army and Demand of the 
 Staff Corps for Occupational Specialists 
 
 Demand by 
 
 Symbol Occupation Probable Supply Staff Corps 
 
 per 100,000 per 100,000 
 
 6 Machinist and Mechanic 1970 4835 
 
 7 Blacksmith 708 3730 
 
 8 Carpenter 2301 2976
 
 210 HISTORY OF 
 
 PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 2. Showing Probable Supply 
 
 of the Army and Demand of the 
 
 Staff Corps for Occupational Specialists 
 
 
 Demand by 
 
 Symbol Occupation 
 
 Probable Supply Staff Corps 
 
 
 per 100,000 per 100,000 
 
 9 Concrete or Cement Worker 
 
 376 44 
 
 10 Electrician 
 
 687 1219 
 
 11 Gunsmith 
 
 30 608 
 
 12 Miner and Quarry Worker 
 
 1724 665 
 
 13 Painter 
 
 810 435 
 
 14 Pipefitter 
 
 770 761 
 
 15 Railroad Operating Man . . 
 
 921 1153 
 
 16 Road Worker 
 
 874 314 
 
 17 Engineman and Fireman . . 
 
 1762 1770 
 
 18 Stockkeeper 
 
 1292 1984 
 
 19 Sheet Metal Worker 
 
 276 286 
 
 20 Foundryman 
 
 489 52 
 
 21 Structural Steel Worker . . 
 
 312 339 
 
 22 Chauffeur 
 
 5686 5581 
 
 23 Chauffeur, Heavy Truck . . 
 
 1906 7538 
 
 24 Auto Mechanic 
 
 2139 7633 
 
 25 Gas Engineer or Repairman 
 
 622 344 
 
 26 Bricklayer 
 
 495 370 
 
 27 Horseman 
 
 14854 5951 
 
 28 Farrier and Veterinarian . 
 
 38 635 
 
 29 Draftsman 
 
 118 722 
 
 30 Surveyor 
 
 81 1158 
 
 31 Telegraph or Wireless Man 
 
 225 2665 
 
 32 Lineman and Cableman . . . 
 
 335 1540 
 
 33 Telephone man 
 
 134 921 
 
 34 Photographer 
 
 105 92 
 
 35 Lumberman 
 
 2021 3144 
 
 36 Mariner and Boatman 
 
 199 146 
 
 37 Accountant 
 
 191 39 
 
 38 Clerical Worker 
 
 3990 3820 
 
 39 Stenographer and Typist . . , 
 
 779 1953 
 
 40 Baker and Cook , 
 
 1318 3565 
 
 41 Butcher 
 
 622 566 
 
 42 Merchant 
 
 447 105 
 
 43 Medical man , 
 
 283 84 
 
 44 Musician 
 
 449 1874 
 
 45 Barber 
 
 506 352 
 
 47 Leather Worker 
 
 344 743 
 
 48 Tailor 
 
 504 507
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 211 
 
 Table 2. Showing Probable Supply of the Army and Demand of the 
 Staff Corps for Occupational Specialists 
 
 Demand by 
 
 Symbol Occupation Probable Supply Staff Corps 
 
 per 100, 000 per 100.000 
 
 49 Inspector 69 271 
 
 50 Construction Foreman 157 1203 
 
 61 Airplane Mechanic 37 1695 
 
 63 Boiler Maker 248 301 
 
 65 Balloonist 1 49 
 
 66 Pigeon Fancier 35 5 
 
 67 Chemist and Chemical Worker 1 181 60 
 
 68 Fire Department Man 68 47 
 
 69 Gas Plant Worker 2 67 
 
 70 Crane Operator 248 392 
 
 72 Instrument Maker and Repairman .... 70 254 
 
 74 Bacteriologist 11 12 
 
 75 Laundryman 120 277 
 
 76 Canvas Worker 20 199 
 
 77 Compressor Operator 11 3 
 
 79 Millwright 73 114 
 
 80 Cooper 61 18 
 
 82 Policeman and Detective 119 297 
 
 84 Purchasing Agent 89 10 
 
 88 Sanitarian 3 26 
 
 89 Mathematician 9 61 
 
 90 Mule Packer 14 13 
 
 91 Munitions Worker 231 
 
 94 Rubber Worker 169 197 
 
 95 Water Supply Man 19 75 
 
 % Welder, Cutter 86 168 
 
 98 Refrigeration Operator 12 51 
 
 100 Rigger and Cordage Worker 30 324 
 
 102 Transportation Man 32 684 
 
 105 Civil Engineer 45 41 
 
 106 Commercial Engineer 15 3 
 
 Miscellaneous and Unclassified 45345 19633 
 
 (Includes factory workers, farmers, 
 laborers, lawyers, teachers, business 
 men and salesmen who are not experi- 
 enced in any other occupation) 
 
 'Note: Names of drafted chemists were referred to Chemical Warfare 
 Service for placement. Hence there was no necessity for requisitioning 
 them. The demand greatly exceeded the supply.
 
 212 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL STATISTICS OF THE A. E. F. 
 
 A very interesting report covering the qualifications of 
 approximately 600,000 men of the A. E. F. was prepared 
 in France during January, 1919. It is unusually complete 
 and gives in great detail the number of journeymen and ap- 
 prentices in each of 704 occupations in the Army and Corps 
 troops of the 1st and 2nd Armies, in each of sixteen divisions 
 and in each of the Staff Corps. It also distinguishes be- 
 tween main and secondary occupations. The report occupies 
 an immense volume of over ninety very large pages, and is 
 far more elaborate than any of the summaries described 
 above, which, having been prepared primarily to assist the 
 Committee in prosecuting the war and not as records for the 
 information of experts after the war, were gotten up as simply 
 and with as little detail as possible. The A. E. F. report 
 was summarized in two forms: (a) by organizations, and 
 (b) by main occupations. This second summary, with the 
 text of the letter accompanying the report, is reproduced 
 below. It will be noticed that five occupations, which, in all 
 reports and summaries prepared in the United States were 
 combined under the heading 'Unclassified' because they were 
 of slight military value, are listed in detail in the A. E. F. 
 tabulation. This accounts for the very small number of 'un- 
 skilled' men. These five occupations are: Factory Worker, 
 Farmer, Laborer, Lawyer, and Teacher, and Business Man 
 and Salesman. 
 
 PERSONNEL DIVISION 
 
 CENTRAL RECORDS OFFICE 
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S DEPARTMENT 
 
 AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 
 
 FRANCE 
 
 February 8, 1919. 
 From: Personnel Division, Central Records Office, 
 
 A. P. O. 902. 
 
 To: Statistical Division, G. H. Q. A. E. F. 
 
 Subject: Occupational Report for January 10, 1919. 
 
 1. The following report of the occupational strength of
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 213 
 
 the A. E. F. as of January 10, 1919, is herewith submitted. 
 This report is a compilation of the reports made by such 
 units of the A. E. F. which had, on the above date, the 
 qualification cards of the enlisted personnel completed and 
 in proper condition to submit the required information. 
 
 2. The Index of Occupations (From CCP-4) includes 
 704 items and this report shows the number of enlisted 
 men in the units of the A. E. F. reporting which have had 
 experience in these itemized occupations, if they are skilled 
 or partly skilled therein, and also a distinction is made 
 between their main and secondary civil occupation. 
 
 3. The Personnel Adjutant of each reporting unit for- 
 warded tally sheets compiled by him to the Central Records 
 Office and the Personnel Division thereof has consolidated 
 this information and assembled it in detail within this 
 report. The report of those units of Staff Corps such as 
 Air Service and Engineers which are attached or assigned 
 to Armies, Corps or Divisions are included in the totals of 
 the respective Armies, Corps and Divisions and not in the 
 totals of the Staff Corps. 
 
 4. For the combat units which reported the qualification 
 cards tallied represent approximately 75 per cent, of the 
 total strength of the combined organizations and the reports 
 for other units represent a somewhat smaller percentage of 
 the total strength. This report, therefore, covers approxi- 
 mately 600,000 men of the A. E. F. 
 
 H. D. McBRIDE, 
 
 Major, A. G. D. 
 
 Table 3. Index and Tabulation by Primary Occupation Showing 
 Vocational Skill in American Expeditionary Forces 
 
 Occupation Main Occupation Secondary 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Skilled Pt. Skilled Skilled Pt. Skilled 
 
 Accountant 1311 1034 233 666 
 
 Airplane Mechanic 203 152 323 393 
 
 Architect 65 62 26 42 
 
 Artist 289 208 39 125 
 
 Auto Mechanic 9004 9400 2075 8190 
 
 Bacteriologist 58 45 22 57 
 
 Baker and Cook 6205 7073 703 4209
 
 214 HISTORY OF 
 
 PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 3. Index and Tabulation by Primary Occupation Showing 
 Vocational Skill in American Expeditionary Forces (Con't) 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Main Occupation Secondary 
 Occupation 
 
 Skilled Pt. Skilled Skilled Pt. Skilled 
 
 Balloonist 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 9 
 
 Banker and Broker 
 
 62 
 
 89 
 
 8 
 
 33 
 
 Barber 
 
 2088 
 
 1711 
 
 137 
 
 851 
 
 Blacksmith 
 
 2763 
 
 3162 
 
 328 
 
 1825 
 
 Boilermaker 
 
 1036 
 
 1018 
 
 102 
 
 395 
 
 Bricklayer 
 
 1390 
 
 1079 
 
 144 
 
 572 
 
 Brush Maker 
 
 26 
 
 14 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 Business and Salesman 
 
 6875 
 
 11154 
 
 941 
 
 4165 
 
 Butcher 
 
 2398 
 
 2406 
 
 235 
 
 1308 
 
 Canvas Worker 
 
 74 
 
 130 
 
 28 
 
 71 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 7025 
 
 7794 
 
 864 
 
 5311 
 
 Chauffeur 
 
 10057 
 
 16199 
 
 4290 
 
 19323 
 
 Chauffeur, heavy truck 
 
 4970 
 
 6788 
 
 1904 
 
 6283 
 
 Chemist and Chemical Worker . . 
 
 365 
 
 562 
 
 87 
 
 226 
 
 Civil Engineer 
 
 412 
 
 265 
 
 42 
 
 104 
 
 Clerical Worker 
 
 14642 
 
 25577 
 
 2323 
 
 12019 
 
 Commercial Engineer 
 
 82 
 
 23 
 
 12 
 
 23 
 
 Compressor Operator 
 
 27 
 
 35 
 
 14 
 
 43 
 
 Concrete and Cement Worker . . 
 
 1052 
 
 1764 
 
 318 
 
 1435 
 
 Construction Foreman or Supt . . 
 
 1074 
 
 675 
 
 262 
 
 788 
 
 Cooper 
 
 190 
 
 185 
 
 30 
 
 78 
 
 Crane Operator, hoistman * 
 
 817 
 
 850 
 
 148 
 
 439 
 
 Detective and Policeman 
 
 410 
 
 455 
 
 53 
 
 260 
 
 Dog Trainer 
 
 9 
 
 35 
 
 6 
 
 38 
 
 Draftsman 
 
 1046 
 
 1446 
 
 250 
 
 925 
 
 Education extent of 
 
 12fi7 
 
 3670 
 
 4228 
 
 21100 
 
 Electrician 
 
 4290 
 
 4715 
 
 538 
 
 2559 
 
 Employment Manager 
 
 30 
 
 51 
 
 3 
 
 18 
 
 Engineman and Fireman 
 
 5340 
 
 11202 
 
 830 
 
 4044 
 
 Engraver, Stencil and Die 
 
 38 
 
 54 
 
 4 
 
 18 
 
 Factory Worker 
 
 4556 
 
 11080 
 
 683 
 
 4957 
 
 Farmer 
 
 34520 
 
 78003 
 
 3276 
 
 17567 
 
 Farrier and Veterinarian 
 
 227 
 
 379 
 
 117 
 
 303 
 
 Fire Department Man 
 
 175 
 
 193 
 
 45 
 
 123 
 
 Foundrvman 
 
 1637 
 
 2622 
 
 200 
 
 985 
 
 Gas Plant Worker 
 
 73 
 
 71 
 
 24 
 
 41 
 
 (las Engineman Repairman 
 
 988 
 
 1327 
 
 397 
 
 1592
 
 OCCUPA TIONAL SPECIALISTS 
 
 215 
 
 Table 5. Index and Tabulation by Primary Occupation Showing 
 Vocational Skill in American Expeditionary Forces (Con't) 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Main Occupation Secondary 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Skilled Ft. Skilled 
 
 Skilled Ft. Skilled 
 
 Gunsmith, Armorer 
 
 208 
 
 368 
 
 65 
 
 213 
 
 Heating Vent. Engineer 
 
 30 
 
 28 
 
 6 
 
 25 
 
 Horseman 
 
 10688 
 
 30667 
 
 3363 
 
 23543 
 
 Hydraulic Press Oper. 
 
 26 
 
 12 
 
 2 
 
 19 
 
 Inspector 
 
 616 
 
 729 
 
 125 
 
 520 
 
 Instrument Maker and Repairer 
 
 806 
 
 665 
 
 84 
 
 229 
 
 Interpreter French 
 
 270 
 
 514 
 
 1167 
 
 2415 
 
 Interpreter German 
 
 578 
 
 1020 
 
 3053 
 
 5641 
 
 Interpreter Other Languages . . 
 
 979 
 
 826 
 
 5185 
 
 11238 
 
 Laborer 
 
 8685 
 
 29349 
 
 839 
 
 7181 
 
 Laundryrnan 
 
 335 
 
 401 
 
 30 
 
 139 
 
 Lawyer and Teacher 
 
 1510 
 
 2051 
 
 223 
 
 967 
 
 Leather Worker 
 
 1950 
 
 2360 
 
 155 
 
 1033 
 
 Lineman and Cableman 
 
 2015 
 
 2021 
 
 219 
 
 1419 
 
 Lumberman 
 
 2469 
 
 5020 
 
 492 
 
 2712 
 
 Machinist and Mechanic 
 
 11806 
 
 14691 
 
 1094 
 
 5729 
 
 Mariner and Boatman 
 
 976 
 
 1579 
 
 126 
 
 947 
 
 Mathematician, expert 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 Medical Man 
 
 2302 
 
 1839 
 
 166 
 
 590 
 
 Merchant, Jobber or Wholesaler 
 
 1457 
 
 1862 
 
 215 
 
 1176 
 
 Metal Finisher 
 
 274 
 
 334 
 
 41 
 
 128 
 
 Millwright 
 
 250 
 
 336 
 
 58 
 
 196 
 
 Miner or Quarry Worker 
 
 5004 
 
 7235 
 
 475 
 
 2529 
 
 Mule Packer 
 
 38 
 
 51 
 
 30 
 
 60 
 
 Munitions Worker 
 
 258 
 
 616 
 
 90 
 
 422 
 
 Musician, Band 
 
 1317 
 
 1680 
 
 457 
 
 117 
 
 Painter 
 
 3283 
 
 3788 
 
 340 
 
 2398 
 
 Photographer 
 
 1040 
 
 949 
 
 237 
 
 1085 
 
 Physicist 
 
 16 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 Pigeon Fancier 
 
 73 
 
 112 
 
 53 
 
 204 
 
 Pipefitter 
 
 3658 
 
 4589 
 
 482 
 
 2715 
 
 Plasterer 
 
 283 
 
 250 
 
 108 
 
 88 
 
 Printer 
 
 2517 
 
 2729 
 
 231 
 
 1153 
 
 Psychologist 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 
 4f 
 
 Purchasing Agent 
 
 250 
 
 229 
 
 39 
 
 163 
 
 Railroad Operating Man 
 
 6183 
 
 5141 
 
 664 
 
 2266 
 
 Refrigeration Operator 
 
 104 
 
 93 
 
 12 
 
 58
 
 216 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 8. Index and Tabulation by Primary Occupation Showing 
 Vocational Skill in American Expeditionary Forces (Con't) 
 
 Occupation 
 
 Main Occupation Secondary 
 
 Occupation 
 
 
 Skilled Pt, 
 
 Skilled 
 
 Skilled Pt. 
 
 Skilled 
 
 Rigger and Cordage Worker . . . 
 
 287 
 
 310 
 
 103 
 
 241 
 
 Roadworker 
 
 1629 
 
 4866 
 
 279 
 
 2013 
 
 Rubber Worker 
 
 605 
 
 677 
 
 94 
 
 376 
 
 Sanitarian 
 
 46 
 
 29 
 
 11 
 
 24 
 
 Sheet Metal Worker 
 
 1548 
 
 2197 
 
 202 
 
 1045 
 
 Stenographer and Tvpist 
 
 2219 
 
 2533 
 
 794 
 
 3713 
 
 Stevedore 
 
 514 
 
 820 
 
 37 
 
 216 
 
 Stock, Stores, Keeper 
 
 2945 
 
 6386 
 
 667 
 
 3857 
 
 Structural Steel Worker 
 
 1503 
 
 1796 
 
 181 
 
 894 
 
 Surveyor 
 
 435 
 
 644 
 
 145 
 
 535 
 
 Tailor 
 
 1534 
 
 1900 
 
 95 
 
 758 
 
 Telegraph and Wireless Man . . 
 
 2262 
 
 1377 
 
 146 
 
 1090 
 
 Telephone Man 
 
 1160 
 
 1167 
 
 194 
 
 1204 
 
 Transportation Man 
 
 249 
 
 153 
 
 60 
 
 122 
 
 Undertaker . . : 
 
 233 
 
 219 
 
 17 
 
 62 
 
 Upholsterer and Trimmer 
 
 201 
 
 126 
 
 24 
 
 72 
 
 Water Supply Man 
 
 89 
 
 91 
 
 7 
 
 64 
 
 Welder, Cutter 
 
 257 
 
 218 
 
 63 
 
 181 
 
 Writer 
 
 334 
 
 319 
 
 41 
 
 117 
 
 Miscellaneous, unlisted occupa- 
 
 
 
 
 
 tions 
 
 425 
 
 399 
 
 11 
 
 27 
 
 Total 219,915 365,163 49,491 221,549 
 
 Total Skilled and Partly 
 
 Skilled 
 
 Add Number unskilled 
 Men . 
 
 219,915 
 
 585,078 
 7,776 
 
 49,491 
 
 271,040 
 
 Total number of men on 
 whom report is made 592,854
 
 CHAPTER 16 
 
 JOB-ANALYSIS APPLIED TO DUTIES OF 
 OFFICERS 
 
 The method of classifying officers according to their 
 previous civil experience was entirely different from that of 
 enlisted men. This led to a noticeable difference in the study 
 of job analysis for officers and enlisted men. Personnel 
 specifications for officers were not developed so early as were 
 those for enlisted men, nor so extensively, nor in so great 
 detail. The main reason for this was that enlisted specialists 
 perform very largely in the army the same duties they do in 
 industry. Officers who are specialists, on the other hand, 
 direct occupational work, but do not perform it. And so far, 
 good personnel specifications for executives and administrators 
 have been exceedingly difficult to write. For example, contrast 
 the ease of describing what a bridge carpenter will have to 
 do in an engineer regiment with the difficulty of recording 
 what his captain has to do. 
 
 The system of classifying civilian experiences of officers is 
 discussed in this chapter, whereas the subject of personnel 
 specifications for officers is taken up in the following chapter. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS FOR OFFICERS 
 
 The First Officers Qualification Card. The first card was 
 printed on November 5, 1917. This was a 5x8 inch card 
 (see Figure 21, Chapter 42) and was used in several divi- 
 sions about to sail for France and in many posts of the Coast 
 Artillery. At the time the cards were printed there existed 
 only the small Index of Occupations of October 20th con- 
 taining but 86 occupational groups and 165 sub-divisions. 
 This list was thoroughly unsatisfactory for the use of classi- 
 
 217
 
 218 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 fying officers as it contained hardly an item but those of trades- 
 men, whereas officers, as leaders, must be classified largely in 
 terms of executive and administrative positions. Dr. James 
 R. Angell, in consequence, prepared a list of 74 occupational 
 group headings, some of which were subdivided. For example, 
 "Inspector" was subdivided into 14 items. To give an idea of 
 these groupings the first twenty are listed: 
 
 1. Accountant 15. Contractor 
 
 2. Architect 16. Computer 
 
 3. Armorer expert 17. Dentist 
 
 4. Army paper expert 18. Druggist 
 
 5. Artist, including camouflage 19. Electrotype expert 
 
 6. Balloon expert 20. Engineer 
 
 7. Banker a. Aeronautical 
 
 8. Blue print expert b. Automotive 
 
 9. Broker c. Chemical 
 
 10. Cable worker expert d. Civil 
 
 11. Carrier pigeon expert e. Electrical 
 
 12. Castor bean expert f. Mechanical 
 
 13. Conservation expert g. Mining 
 
 14. Contract expert h. Sanitary 
 
 The 74 occupational groups were to be tabbed by the use 
 of four colored tabs. Index numbers 1 to 52 were to be 
 marked by orange or green tabs according to the skill of the 
 officer at the occupation. Index numbers 53 to 78 were stag- 
 gered with the numbers 1 to 52 and were to be tabbed with 
 yellow and blue tabs. Experience soon showed that this 
 idea was not convenient. Later experience has taught that 
 a tabbing system of four colors on two rows of index num- 
 bers is too complicated to be installed in a large organization 
 involving the work of many officers and enlisted men. 
 
 Later Officers' Qualification Cards. Because the Novem- 
 ber 5th card did not contain reference to military qualifications 
 it was necessary to revise it in order to include such informa- 
 tion. And because of the inadvisability of tabbing 78 items 
 on a 5x8 card the whole question of revising the occupational 
 list was brought up. After considerable study it was deter-
 
 JOB-ANALYSIS 219 
 
 mined that 47 numbers should be allotted to occupational 
 experience and 20 additional numbers for military experience 
 and miscellaneous items. A total of 67 index numbers forced 
 the use of a 1 1 inch card. In cutting down the 74 original 
 occupational groups to 47 it was necessary to group many of 
 them together under one heading. Thus, No. 1 "accountant" 
 and No. 57 "statistician" were included under the new head- 
 ing, "Accounting and Clerical Worker"; No. 7 "Banker" and 
 No. 9 "Broker" under the new heading "Banker or Broker." 
 Several items were eliminated, e. g., "Armorer expert," as 
 being the work an enlisted man would do, not an officer; 
 "Army paper expert," as a purely military qualification ; "Blue 
 print expert," not an officer's duty; etc. And on the other 
 hand several new items were added, mainly as sub-divisions, 
 however. In the main, items were grouped on the basis of the 
 industry as it was felt that the civil experience of the officer 
 would be used as fitting him to direct others in much the same 
 way that administrators direct subordinates in industry. 
 Moreover, when officers are requisitioned in terms of de- 
 signated civilian experience they are generally called for in 
 terms of the general field of activity in which they are to be 
 used. For example, they are asked for as, railroad men, as 
 lumbering men, as construction men, etc. This is not the ideal 
 manner and the Army was gradually educated up to stating 
 specifically what the officer was to do. But in January, 1918, 
 it was the common procedure and the card was prepared with 
 that situation in mind. 
 
 To meet these considerations a 8^x11 card was issued on 
 January 5th, 1918, (illustrated as Figure 22, Chapter 42). 
 This card has been revised several times, the last time on 
 October 1st, 1918, but the changes have been cf minor char- 
 acter and have been primarilv for the purpose of better fitting 
 the card for use in one Staff Corps or another as its use \vas 
 extended to them. During this time the list of occupations 
 was changed in only one respect as to main group headings. 
 "Meteorologist" was included under "Physicist" and "Metall-
 
 220 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 urgist" was put in its place. The number of sub-divisions, 
 however, was increased from 143 to 173. 
 
 Recommendations as to a New Officers' Qualification Card. 
 Was the development of a different occupational classification 
 for officers from that of enlisted men a wise procedure? We 
 have seen that the officers' list did develop because the Index 
 of Occupations for enlisted men was inadequate for the pur- 
 pose in January, 1918. But since the present Index of Occu- 
 pations does cover all the items on the officers' qualification 
 card there seems no reason now why it should not be substi- 
 tuted for the present list of occupations on the officers' card. 
 This will provide one standard list of classifying all officers 
 and enlisted men in the Army, and it will do away with the 
 grouping of occupational experience by industries which 
 inevitably leads to overlapping and confusion. 
 
 A seemingly wise division of the possible 68 index numbers 
 possible on an 8x11 card would be as follows: 
 S and 1-40 Occupational experience. 
 
 41-57 Military experience (allowing one more than now used) 
 
 58-62 Rank (58-2nd Lieut, 59-lst Lieut., 60-Capt, 61-Major, 
 
 62-Lieut-Col. and above). 
 
 63 Education. 
 
 64 Membership in Societies. 
 65-67 Foreign Languages. 
 
 68 Regular Army Officer. 
 
 The occupations for which tabbing would be made possible 
 are as follows, utilizing the classification set forth in CCP-4. 
 
 S. Supplementary. 37. Accountant. 
 
 2. Farmer. 40. Baker and Cook. 
 
 4. Lawyer and Teacher. 42. Merchant, Jobber, Whole- 
 
 5. Business Man and Salesman. saler. 
 
 6. Machinist. 43. Medical Man. 
 
 10. Electrician. 49. Inspector. 
 
 11. Gunsmith. 50. Construction Superintendent. 
 
 12. Miner. 61. Airplane Mechanic. 
 15. Railroad Operator. 62. Artist, camouflage. 
 
 17. Engineman. 64. Architect. 
 
 18. Stock Storekeeper. 67. Chemist
 
 JOB-ANALYSIS 221 
 
 24. Auto Mechanic. 71. Banker and Broker. 
 
 25. Gasoline Engine Man, not 72. Instrument Maker. 
 
 auto. 82. Detective. 
 
 28. Farrier, Veterinarian. 84. Purchasing Agent. 
 
 29. Draftsman. 85. Personnel Director. 
 
 30. Surveyor. 88. Sanitarian. 
 
 31. Telegrapher and Wireless 102. Transportation Man. 
 
 Man. 104. Writer. 
 
 33. Telephone Man. 105. Civil Engineer. 
 
 34. Photographer. 106. Commercial Engineer. 
 
 35. Lumberman. 
 
 36. Mariner. 
 
 This list includes far more than appears at first because 
 many of these headings are very broad. For example, take 
 the case of "6 Machinist." This group includes such sub- 
 divisions as: 
 
 Acid Plant, Machinist 6ap 
 
 Assembler 6a 
 
 Lathe Hand 61 
 
 Locomotive 61o 
 
 Marine engine 6m 
 
 Mechanical engineer 6me 
 
 Railroad shop mechanic 6rs 
 
 Tool room expert 6tr 
 Etc. 
 
 During peace times officers' cards would not be tabbed at 
 68 Regular Army Officer, since when all cards are tabbed at 
 the same point they make it difficult to handle them in the file. 
 But on declaration of war all cards would be tabbed and there- 
 after they would be readily distinguished from Reserve Offi- 
 cers' cards. 
 
 Another improvement in the officers' cards would be to eli- 
 minate the list from the card entirely and to use most of the 
 space for the officer to record in detail what he has done. An 
 expert classifier should then consider each card and classify 
 the officer just. as is done in the case of enlisted men. This 
 change would be in line with the development that has taken 
 place in the case of the Soldiers' Qualification Card (See illus-
 
 222 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 tration of the November 1st, 1918, edition, page 86, Vol. II.). 
 After the card had been classified it would be tabbed accord- 
 ingly, all occupations not provided for on index numbers 
 1 40, being tabbed at "S," if of value to the army in any 
 way.
 
 CHAPTER 17 
 COMMISSIONED PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 Further than the efforts described in the proceeding chapter 
 to analyze the needs of the Army in so far as they concerned 
 commissioned personnel, no centralized effort was made to 
 define the various jobs, which the officers of the Army in all 
 of its branches had to perform. To be sure, individual efforts 
 of the various arms and staff corps of the service were con- 
 tinually exerted in the procurement of officer material both 
 from civil life and from enlisted men, and the formulation of 
 policies both as to the procurement and as to the training of 
 these men for duty as commissioned officers, necessitated a 
 certain amount of job analysis. However, the chief result 
 was the rise of competition between the various staff corps in 
 discovering and procuring this officer material. This com- 
 petition resulted in seriously impeding the progress of the 
 mobilization of the Army as a whole, as was plainly indicated 
 in the situation which arose in the late summer of 1918, when 
 plans were launched for doubling the number of officers in the 
 Army. Out of this situation arose a compelling necessity for 
 centralizing the procurement and placement of commissioned 
 personnel, and out of this necessity came the organization of 
 the Personnel Branch of the General Staff, in September, 
 1918. 
 
 At the beginning of the war, the demand for officers rested 
 chiefly upon the infantry and artillery arms of the service. 
 At first, calls for officer material came in the form of the 
 Reserve Officers' Training Camps, in May, 1917. The pri- 
 mary intention of such camps was to produce nothing but 
 Infantry, Cavalry, and Field Artillery officers. Incidentally 
 officers for the Coast Artillery, the Aviation section of the 
 
 223
 
 224 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 f 5 
 
 ~ 
 
 1 111 
 
 Elg;; |rjf :&;*ifiigj is isis 
 
 J * v ' X S 5 
 
 iiilIililiiMlllSSlli iiifflld 
 
 
 o 
 
 r-i a 
 
 X 
 
 bO 
 
 CS 
 -
 
 OFFICERS' SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 225 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 a
 
 226 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Signal Corps, the Adjutant General's Department, the Ord- 
 nance, and the Quartermaster Corps, were trained and com- 
 missioned. The first two of these classes were, it will be 
 observed, as much line officers as Infantry, Cavalry and Field 
 Artillery. The third class was filled by candidates from the 
 training camps of two general categories, namely, those having 
 ability to speak French or German, and desiring to function 
 in the capacity of interpreters and intelligence officers, rather 
 than in the line; and those selected for statistical duties. The 
 fourth and fifth classes were filled by those officers who, it 
 was apparently felt by commanding officers of training camps, 
 had not the qualifications, or had not at one training camp 
 received the development necessary to fit them to become offi- 
 cers of the line. These latter classes were selected super- 
 ficially, the implication being that inasmuch as they were not 
 good enough for the line they must be good enough for the 
 staff corps. The only general criterion of judgment in the 
 case of the Quartermaster Corps, for instance, seemed to be 
 financial experience. Subsequent to these original develop- 
 ments, and of increasing importance, arose the necessity for 
 commissioning men in the various branches of the service, not 
 in the line. 
 
 In the fall of 1918, however, the commissioning by the staff 
 corps was done away with, and all commissions except those 
 given in the Central Officers' Training Schools, were to be 
 issued by the Commissioned Personnel Branch of the Opera- 
 tions Division of the General Staff. Procurement of material 
 for such officers was to be the function of the Procurement 
 Section of that branch. At this time the Committee on 
 Classification of Personnel in the Army had been absorbed by 
 the Miscellaneous Section of the Personnel Branch, and it was 
 to the Committee that the Procurement Section turned and 
 requisitioned the facilities of the Personnel Specifications Unit 
 in order to secure the specifications, outlines of duties and 
 qualifications, for officers. The plan for commissioned per- 
 sonnel specifications was limited primarily in its scope to an
 
 OFFICERS' SPECIFICATIONS 227 
 
 analysis of the duties to be performed by officers of the staff 
 corps, and only incidentally to the duties to be performed by 
 line officers. 
 
 Accepting the soundness of the principle upon which en- 
 listed personnel specifications were constructed, and recog- 
 nizing their importance as a requisite to proper placement in 
 the Army, the plan of job analysis for officers was consequently 
 developed, in large part, along the lines previously laid down 
 by the Personnel Specifications Unit. Under the direction of 
 Mr. Alvin E. Dodd, and with the assistance of Lieutenant 
 Colonel J. J. Coss, Captain James Gregg of the Personnel 
 Specifications Unit, devised an information sheet, illustrated in 
 Fig. 10, which was distributed to staff corps and departments 
 with directions to fill in copies of the information sheet for 
 all officers concerned, and to return the same for an editorial 
 revision and standardization of these specifications by the 
 Committee. The information thus collected was edited and 
 reconstructed in the form which appears in Fig. 11, page 
 230, and, but for the armistice, would have been turned over to 
 the Procurement Section of the Personnel Branch for use in 
 recruiting and inducting men for officers, and initially assign- 
 ing and alloting those men to the branch of the service where 
 their qualifications would appear, according to personnel 
 specifications, to be of the greatest utility. 
 
 Thus it is seen that commissioned personnel specifications 
 for each corps or arm of the service constitute an analysis of 
 the qualifications and brief, but comprehensive outline for the 
 range of duties of each officer position in such corps or arm. 
 These specifications being prepared with a view of determining 
 whether a particular person is qualified for a commission, and 
 where he should, as a commissioned officer, be assigned, only 
 such qualifications were considered as were thought to have 
 been necessary to fulfill such a function. Commissioned per- 
 sonnel specifications are divided into three parts: (1) Quali- 
 fications, (2) Special army training, and (3) Duties, according 
 to the following outline:
 
 228 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 I. QUALIFICATIONS: 
 
 1. Age Limits, 
 
 a. Best those within which a man is likely 
 to be most able to perform the duties of 
 the position. 
 
 b. Possible those within which a man can 
 possibly function, although, in all prob- 
 ability, not so well as he will within the 
 best limits. 
 
 2. Physical Requirements. 
 
 a. Whether he is to be assigned to combatant 
 duty or to a position which will not draw 
 upon his physique and which can be satis- 
 
 _ factorily filled by a limited service man. 
 
 b. Specific physical attributes, expressed 
 positively or negatively. This is usually 
 true only in the case of limited service 
 where such physical defects as would not 
 interfere with the performance of his 
 duties are specified. 
 
 3. Minimum Schooling. 
 
 The least schooling which will fit a man for 
 the position. Note: If schooling is not a 
 decisive qualification, the expression "no ar- 
 bitrary requirements" may be used. 
 
 4. Civilian Occupations (in Order of Preference). 
 
 Names of occupation, (standardized terms) 
 with indication of number of years at occu- 
 pation. 
 
 5. Special or Technical Qualifications. 
 
 Both required and desired those qualifica- 
 tions, which whether occupational or other- 
 wise are highly essential or highly desirable 
 that one should have in order to perform the 
 duties of the position. 
 
 6. Leadership. 
 
 That degree essential or desired divided 
 as follows:
 
 OFFICERS' SPECIFICATIONS 229 
 
 (1) Maximum normally required of an offi- 
 cer actually in command of combatant 
 troops. 
 
 (2) Average maximum normally required of 
 an officer whose duties are of an executive 
 nature requiring initiative and control of 
 a large force. 
 
 (3) Average normally required of an officer 
 whose duties are largely of an admin- 
 istrative nature. 
 
 (4) Nominal normally required of an officer 
 engaged principally in research. 
 
 II. SPECIAL ARMY TRAINING: 
 
 a. Prior to being commissioned amount of 
 army training additional to the qualifica- 
 tions which are the potentialities a man 
 brings with him for the performance of the 
 duties of the position, essential or desirable 
 in order to assure the performance of the 
 duties. Note: In many instances, officers 
 direct from civil life can function in the 
 army without this special army training. 
 This is particularly true of administrative 
 officers as contrasted with officers actually 
 in command of troops. 
 
 b. Subsequent to being commissioned 
 amount of army training as an addition to 
 civilian and previous army training, essen- 
 tial or desirable in order to assure the per- 
 formance of the duties. Note: This ap- 
 plies to higher positions of responsibility 
 or command, such as a chief of section, as 
 above an assistant chief of section, or a 
 battalion commander as above a company 
 commander. 
 
 III. DUTIES: 
 
 Brief but comprehensive statement of actual 
 duties of position, covering range of the usu- 
 ally varied activities incidental to the per- 
 formance of those duties. Note: Because of 
 the greater scope of officers' duties such defini- 
 tions of duties are usually more extended 
 than the definitions of duties of enlisted men.
 
 230 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Engineering Division 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATIONS 
 Construction Division 
 
 ADVISORY ENGINEER ON RAILWAYS; MAJOR 
 
 Qualifications 
 
 Aye limits: Best, 35-54; possible, 35-50. 
 Physical requirements: Limited service only; must be free 
 from disabilities that would interfere with performance 
 of the duties of this position. 
 Minimum schooling: Graduate of professional or technical 
 
 school, or equivalent. 
 Civilian occupations in order of preference: 
 
 1. Railway civil engineer, 10 years. 
 Special or technical qualifications: 
 
 Required: Experience (immediately preceding this serv- 
 ice) corresponding to that of a division engineer, 
 assistant chief engineer of an important railroad sys- 
 tem, or of a division or general superintendent who 
 has previously served as a division engineer, covering 
 location, construction, design of tracks and yards, de- 
 sign of auxiliary structures, and operation of freight 
 terminal. 
 Leadership : 
 
 Essential, average. 
 Desired, average maximum. 
 Special Army Training 
 
 None. 
 Duties 
 
 Prepares standard plans and specifications for railroad 
 structures. Determines the probable traffic conditions for 
 the various projects. Designs the railroad layout for in- 
 dividual projects, including connections with existing rail- 
 roads and arrangements of service tracks and yards. De- 
 signs appurtenances, such as coal stations, water stations, 
 engine houses, etc. Advises with the proper persons as to 
 operating questions involved, including selection of equip- 
 ment. Assists in negotiations with existing railroads. Ad- 
 vises with the proper persons on the maintenance and repair 
 of railroad property. 
 
 FIG. 11. 
 Sample, Commissioned Personnel Specifications
 
 OFFICERS' SPECIFICATIONS 231 
 
 Owing to the cessation of hostilities in November, 1918, and 
 the consequent abandonment of plans to increase commissioned 
 personnel, the final development of these specifications was 
 not emphasized. Nevertheless, the preparation and collection 
 of the material commenced prior to November 11, 1918, con- 
 tinued after that date, but only one set of the personnel speci- 
 fications, that of the Construction Division of the Army (pub- 
 lished in March, 1919, as CCP Form-490) was effected. If 
 the situation of October, 1918, had continued, these commis- 
 sioned personnel specifications would have served the same 
 purpose as enlisted personnel specifications, and would have 
 been available for use, particularly by the Operations Divi- 
 sion of the General Staff, and incidentally by, (l) those 
 agencies acting in co-operation with the Procurement Section 
 of that division, such as Students' Army Training Corps, and 
 (2) by the various corps and arms of the service themselves.
 
 SECTION V. 
 THE PERSONNEL OFFICE 
 
 As originally planned, personnel work in the 
 Army was to be operated from a division or camp 
 personnel office. Each such camp office was viewed 
 as a separate organization. There enlisted men 
 would be classified and properly placed in some 
 unit in the camp. Through supervision directed 
 from Washington these separate offices would be 
 standardized as to procedure. But there was little 
 thought in the early days that men would be trans- 
 ferred from one camp to another. Consequently, 
 no organization was established at Washington for 
 such a purpose. The entire operating organization 
 was thoroughly decentralized. As the work pro- 
 gressed the very great need for specialists forced 
 the development of a general clearing office at 
 Washington and gradually brought about a re- 
 organization of the personnel organization so that 
 at the time of the signing of the Armistice it was 
 actually comparable to a string of stores whose buy- 
 ing and selling was almost entirely directed from 
 the central office. 
 
 Not only did the general organization of person- 
 nel offices change from September, 1917, to Novem- 
 ber, 1918, but the functions of these offices also 
 expanded. At the beginning the personnel office
 
 234 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 comprised one officer and a few enlisted men tem- 
 porarily detailed to him who handled the qualifica- 
 tion cards and were charged with the proper place- 
 ment of men within the units of the camp. At the 
 close of the war the office was the largest in the 
 camp, composed of seven commissioned officers and 
 two hundred men. But its work now included 
 not merely the proper placement of the men, but 
 the maintenance of all records regarding them. 
 Here insurance and allotments were originated and 
 handled; the alphabetical locator cards were main- 
 tained; all papers incident to the enlistment of 
 soldiers into the service as well as to their discharge 
 were prepared; all strength reports were checked 
 and consolidated; and in most camps all transfer 
 orders were prepared, the shipment of men was 
 supervised and the papers carefully checked. 
 
 What led to this evolution from a simple organ- 
 ization with simple functions to a very complex 
 one ? The answers to this question will be presented 
 under the following heads : 
 
 Early beginnings of Personnel Work in the 
 Camps (Chapter 18.) 
 
 Rise of Paper Work in the Personnel Office 
 (Chapter 19.) 
 
 Receiving the Draft ( Chapter 20. ) 
 
 Personnel Work in Staff Corps Camps ( Chap- 
 ter 21.) 
 
 Plans for Separation of Personnel Work and 
 Adjutant's Work (Chapter 22.)
 
 CHAPTER 18 
 
 EARLY BEGINNINGS OF PERSONNEL WORK 
 IN THE CAMPS 
 
 EARLY PLANS FOR PERSONNEL OFFICES 
 
 In Chapter 6 is given in detail the steps that led up to the 
 establishment of personnel offices, first, in national army can- 
 tonments, and later, in all camps in this country. In order 
 that the development may be clear, a few facts will be re- 
 peated but with emphasis upon the bearing they have on 
 work in the camps. 
 
 The basic ideas as to establishment of personnel work in 
 the camps were three. First, the appointment of a captain 
 to act as personnel officer in the camp. Second, the assign- 
 ment of a civilian experienced in employment work who should 
 be stationed at the camp and aid the captain in organizing 
 and operating his work. These ideas were clearly brought 
 out in the telegrams of August 25 and 29 and the letter of 
 September 5 (See Chapter 6). And third, active supervision 
 of the work in all the camps through letters from the central 
 office at Washington and visits of civilian supervisors. It was 
 recognized that without this supervision it would be impos- 
 sible to standardize the work in the various camps. And 
 moreover, it was realized that a very rapid exchange of ideas 
 and experiences between camps was essential to good work, 
 as no one had had experience in personnel work in an army. 
 
 Following a conference at Washington September 8-10, the 
 personnel officers arid civilian experts went to their respective 
 camps in the eastern part of the country to inaugurate the 
 work. Personnel officers and civilians assigned to western 
 camps met in conference at St. Louis, September 11 and 12 
 and then proceeded to their camps. 
 
 235
 
 236 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 INTRODUCTION OF PERSONNEL WORK INTO 
 NATIONAL ARMY CAMPS 
 
 Getting Started. The letter of September 5 has been given 
 in full in Chapter 6. The third and fourth paragraphs are 
 repeated here for they proved to be a veritable "magna 
 charta." 
 
 "3. The furniture for the Personnel Office has already been 
 ordered by the Quartermaster General's Office and shipped in 
 care of the Personnel Officer. 
 
 4. The following items should be provided: 
 
 (1) Approximately 300 square feet of floor space for 
 
 the Personnel Office at Division Headquarters. 
 
 (2) Telephone. 
 
 (3) Quarters in the camp. 
 
 (4) Suitable place in camp for meals for which he will 
 
 pay- 
 
 (5) Clerical assistance as required, to be performed 
 
 by men detailed from the command." 
 
 In most camps there was very little office space for anyone. 
 This order secured space and made it possible to obtain suffi- 
 cient furniture and office supplies. And in most camps with- 
 out this letter it would probably have been impossible to secure 
 a phone, owing to the great shortage; and without a phone 
 little could have been accomplished. 
 
 The first duty was to present the matter to commanding 
 officers and secure their intelligent interest and cooperation. 
 This was not so easily done since many of them viewed the 
 new work as another civilian enterprise that if given rope 
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 early days nearly every one was new to his duties and it was 
 no easy task to secure compliance with orders of any sort, 
 to say nothing of unusual orders requiring much time and 
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 PERSONNEL WORK IN CAMPS 237 
 
 of cases. They were then classified, tabbed and filed by com- 
 panies, the personnel officer and civilian expert doing most of 
 the work. Later, details of enlisted men were secured and 
 they were gradually trained in what to do. 
 
 One of the greatest difficulties in checking up the cards to 
 ascertain if all were present was the lack of complete lists. 
 It was practically impossible to obtain them from company 
 commanders because of interference on the part of higher 
 ranking officers and the information existed nowhere else. 
 The Statistical Officers ought to have had this information, 
 but their instructions were to wait until forms were supplied 
 them and they did not come for weeks. Gradually in all 
 sorts of ways the qualification cards were checked and missing 
 ones obtained. But not for months did one know for certain 
 that his list was complete. 
 
 The First Requisitions. Almost as soon as the cards were 
 received requisitions commenced coming to the personnel office. 
 The most common requests were for cooks and stenographers, 
 with typists a good third. Such requisitions were extremely 
 difficult to fill as there were but few men of such qualifications 
 in the first 5% of the draft. And it was often difficult to get 
 stenographers to serve as many were promised all sorts of 
 things by their company commanders to stay with them; 
 besides some wanted to drill and have the chance to go over 
 the top. But gradually good stenographers were supplied 
 the General, the Chief of Staff, and other officers at Head- 
 quarters. Such personal services did much to win the support 
 of these officers to the work. 
 
 In one camp the camp quartermaster was ordered to dis- 
 pense with his civilian help and substitute for it enlisted men. 
 Soldiers were carefully selected on the basis of their quali- 
 fication cards for these positions and reinterviewed before 
 being transferred. The results were appreciated and there- 
 after no trouble was experienced in getting supplies of all 
 sorts for the personnel office. Moreover, the quartermaster 
 talked considerably about the service rendered and helped
 
 238 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 very materially in establishing the work on a solid foundation. 
 The interest of the Commanding General and his faith in 
 the effectiveness of the classification system hinged, to a large 
 extent, on the promptness and accuracy with which these ini- 
 tial demands for specialists could be met. The Personnel Of- 
 ficer of the Division wrote the following letter to the super- 
 visor of the classification work in the camps within a few 
 weeks after the work was started in that division: 
 
 "I have the pleasure to report that 9:30 P. M. Saturday 
 night, Major Miller of the Ordnance wanted 125 auto mechan- 
 ics of three years or more training and in an hour and a 
 half we had the list complete. 
 
 "In 45 minutes we had three men for printing office. While 
 the printers were getting out the type, I had an expert auto 
 mechanic setting up the press and an electrician connecting 
 the motor all done and running in three hours. 
 
 "The base hospital had thirteen firemen. Investigation 
 proved the firemen were those who fired boilers, and steamers, 
 but were not fire fighters. 
 
 "We got a fire chief the Assistant Chief of the Canton, 
 Ohio, Fire Department, twenty minutes after the call, and 
 Major Cole came over in his car and got the man. Major 
 Cole says we have a box of cigars coming to us. 
 
 "Major Wilson, Signal Corps, wanted six pigeon fanciers. 
 I got him ten in ten minutes. The financial department of 
 Quartermaster's Department wanted a man to assist in pay 
 rolls, gave them Pat Tompkins who was pay roll clerk in 
 Haydenstone Bank at Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 "The Quartermaster wanted thirty-five men in warehouse. 
 Gave him just what he wanted in thirty minutes. Headquar- 
 ters wanted three stenographers. In three hours, I gave them 
 fifteen to choose from. 
 
 "Today, General Smith asked for three men to go to France 
 as "Billeting Officers" I gave him three. He said, let me 
 see them. He took them all and congratulated me. So it goes. 
 
 "I deserve no credit; I take no credit, only I am very 
 proud of the system, and the help of the supervisor whose 
 assistance is of untold value." 
 
 The First Job-Analyses. Job analysis early came to the 
 front. A requisition for packers from the Engineer Sub-depot
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN CAMPS 239 
 
 resulted in several men being transferred only to have it 
 announced that they were not what was wanted. Finally a 
 visit to the depot resulted in complete understanding. Fairly 
 intelligent men of some carpenter experience were wanted. 
 They were found and the incident was closed. A little later 
 the Colonel of Engineers dropped in one day and said, "You 
 gave us what we asked for, but we didn't ask for the right 
 kind of men. We don't want specialists, we want all around 
 men with intelligence." After that his requisitions were better 
 expressed and better filled. Out of 800 sent him he testified 
 that all but 24 were what he wanted, an efficiency of 97%. 
 Again, it was commonly supposed that machinists should be 
 assigned to Machine Gun Battalions. After considerable trial 
 a Major reported that they should be sent to the Ordnance. 
 What he wanted was not lathe hands but handy-men men 
 who liked to "tinker." Such men naturally took to any mech- 
 anism and shortly knew all about it. Thus much was learned 
 as the days went by about what had to be done. But unless 
 the Tables of Occupational Needs and Personnel Specifica- 
 tions, which later appeared, had been developed by men with 
 no other task to do, they would never have been worked r out 
 in the camps because there was too much else to be done there. 
 Balancing the Divisions. The one main idea uppermost in 
 the minds of the personnel officer and the civilian expert was 
 to "balance" the division forming at the camp. At the very 
 beginning there was nothing definite to go by. The result 
 was that certain energetic officers in the camp made their 
 wants known and efforts were made to fill them. Other or- 
 ganizations were more or less ignored for lack of information. 
 When Chart B (See Figure 12, insert) was received giving 
 the number of each kind of specialist per organization there 
 was a definite basis for action. This chart, by the way, was 
 received with as much enthusiasm by line officers as by the 
 personnel officer. Gradually a fairly definite policy developed 
 in each camp as to the transferring of men from one organi- 
 zation to another so as to meet the specifications of the Chart.
 
 240 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The greatest obstacle to efficient personnel work was the 
 practice of assigning men to units according to the geographi- 
 cal location of their local boards. Thus all the men from 
 Gary, Indiana, went to the 309th Engineers at Camp Taylor. 
 As a result this organization had three companies with scarcely 
 a handful who could speak English. Before this engineer 
 organization could function efficiently the men would have to 
 be taught English and also in most cases construction work 
 as very few had had any but laborer's work in steel mills. 
 Once men were assigned to a unit they commenced "to take 
 root" unless they were inferior men, and the longer they re- 
 mained the more difficult was it for the personnel officer to 
 have them transferred elsewhere. An illustration makes this 
 clearer. The Judge-Advocate in one division requisitioned 
 for a sergeant major who spoke French and German, had 
 had some legal training and was bright and intelligent with 
 a good soldierly bearing. Such a man was obtained. When 
 he reported to the Judge-Advocate, however, he stated he did 
 not want the position, that recently he had become very much 
 interested in bacteriology and wished to work at that. A 
 month later he was ordered transferred to the base hospital as 
 a bacteriologist. The company commander immediately re- 
 ported to the office in protest. The man was his first sergeant 
 and best drill master. Moreover the man had changed his 
 mind and wanted to stay in infantry. Later the Colonel and 
 Adjutant of the Regiment protested to the Chief of Staff. 
 Finally, after the Judge Advocate had testified as to the man's 
 refusal to accept a sergeant majorship because of his interest 
 in bacteriology, the Colonel withdrew his objection, particu- 
 larly since the base hospital needed bacteriologists and this 
 was the only one in camp. Had the soldier been kept in a 
 true depot brigade during this period, there would have been 
 no trouble in placing him when the requisition was received. 
 
 Gradually this obstacle was lessened by one change after 
 another. But it never was really eliminated until the depot 
 brigade was established as a separate and distinct organiza-
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN CAMPS 241 
 
 tion from the division and until an efficient camp personnel 
 office was placed in charge of the personnel in the depot 
 brigade. 
 
 As an example of how satisfactorily men were selected even 
 in the early days the statement of one regimental commander 
 is recorded here. The letter was written shortly after the sys- 
 tem was installed in his camp. 
 
 "During the past four days this regiment has received about 
 2,000 men from the Personnel Office. The transfers have 
 been effected rapidly and accurately, due to the excellent sys- 
 tem and efficient personnel of the Personnel Office. 
 
 "My regimental personnel officer has reported to me that 
 he has received the utmost consideration and courtesy from 
 the Personnel Officer. The papers of the men have been 
 handled accurately and well and whatever changes were neces- 
 sitated by the rapidity of the transfer, have since been made 
 with dispatch. 
 
 "Great praise in my opinion is due to the Division Per- 
 sonnel Officer and his assistant, who have supervised the actual 
 selection of the men for the Division. An Infantry Regiment 
 requires certain specialists that are hard to find and in every 
 case the Personnel Officer or his representative have been 
 unfailing in their search. Moreover, the rank and file -of 
 non-specialists have been good with but few exceptions. I do 
 not know how the other Regimental Commanders of the Divi- 
 sion feel, but I would not think it right to omit calling to the 
 attention of the Division Commander, the existence of a Per- 
 sonnel Department which is able within three days to recruit 
 one Infantry Regiment to war strength, not only with all 
 the required specialists but also with over 90% of the neces- 
 sary papers intact and accurately made out." 
 
 War Department Requisitions for Specialists and their 
 Effect on Personnel Work. On October 5th, 1917, the first 
 requisition was issued from Washington for occupational spe- 
 cialists to be transferred from one camp to another. This 
 called for printers and book binders for overseas service. 
 During that month, 5,334 men were so transferred and during 
 November a total of 16,239. The numbers so requisitioned 
 increased in number so that a total of approximately 960,000
 
 242 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were transferred in 13 months. During the first few months 
 in addition thousands of unclassified men were transferred out 
 of camps to other units. Until July these transfers took men 
 not only out of national army camps but also out of definite 
 units in those camps. Naturally all officers concerned were 
 very much exasperated and in a short time much of their 
 antagonism was directed at the local personnel office, as from 
 this office came the obnoxious orders. This feeling became 
 so strong in some camps as to very seriously affect the per- 
 sonnel work. And even today officers are met with who 
 raise the whole situation as an argument against personnel 
 work. 
 
 There is no doubt that calls for specialists would have been 
 made whether a personnel organization existed or not. The 
 criticism leveled at it was unforunate and unfair, but most 
 natural. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the exist- 
 ence of the personnel organization made it possible to secure 
 these specialists in much less time and with a far higher 
 degree of accuracy than would have otherwise been possible. 
 
 EXTENSION OF PERSONNEL WORK TO NATIONAL 
 GUARD AND REGULAR ARMY CAMPS 
 
 On October 17th 1917, orders were issued to National 
 Guard Camp Commanders in the eastern part of the United 
 States directing them to appoint personnel officers and have 
 them report to Washington for instructions. There a confer- 
 ence of several days was held and following it the personnel 
 officers accompanied by civilian experts reported to their 
 respective camps for duty. A similar conference for per- 
 sonnel officers from western camps was held at San Antonio, 
 Texas, Nevember 1st and 2nd. 
 
 As the national guard divisions were fairly well filled, the 
 problem was somewhat different from that of the national 
 army camps. The two principal things to be done were to 
 classify the men and to balance the division. Profiting from 
 experience with company commanders preparing qualification
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN CAMPS 243 
 
 cards, interviewing boards were constituted composed en- 
 tirely of officers. At Camp Kearney, for example, approxi- 
 mately one hundred lieutenants and captains were utilized. 
 They interviewed all the enlisted men and prepared the cards. 
 When this was done statements were secured from unit com- 
 manders as to what specialists they needed to complete their 
 organizations. In terms of such statements and of Chart B, 
 transfers were then ordered. The extent to which this was 
 actually accomplished differed markedly in the various camps. 
 In some, the division was pretty thoroughly balanced, in 
 others very little was accomplished. A colonel from one camp 
 where most units were in this way pretty well balanced, volun- 
 tarily stated in November, 1918, while in France that the 
 balancing a year before, had increased the efficiency of his 
 regiment 100%. Specialists not needed in one organization to 
 which they belonged but badly needed elsewhere were thus 
 efficiently utilized. Not only was this accomplished, but in 
 some camps it had the additional value in breaking up politi- 
 cal groups whose influence had been not of the best. The 
 latter benefit cannot be really credited to personnel work in- 
 asmuch as it was not definitely planned for. 
 
 Personnel work was in a similar manner introduced into 
 Regular Army Camps on December 15th, 1917. The general 
 procedure was as described above. 
 
 From this time on personnel work was gradually extended 
 being introduced into one camp after another of the Staff 
 Corps. (See Chapter 21). 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF THE PERSONNEL OFFICE 
 
 The organization of a personnel office in the early days con- 
 sisted of a captain, the civilian expert, and a few temporarily 
 detailed enlisted men. They issued qualification cards to the 
 company commanders, or in national guard camps to the Inter- 
 viewing Board; received the cards back; classified, tabbed 
 and filed them ; made up reports ; and filled requisitions for 
 occupational specialists.
 
 CHAPTER 19 
 
 RISE OF PAPER WORK IN THE PERSONNEL 
 
 OFFICE 
 
 As originally planned the personnel officer was to handle 
 the qualification cards of enlisted men and to use them in 
 placing specialists to the best advantage of the army. It was 
 felt that one officer with a few enlisted men could carry on 
 this work in an efficient manner. When the armistice was 
 signed the camp personnel office comprised 7 officers and 200 
 men and carried on an enormous amount of paper work. It is 
 estimated that an average office in connection with merely 
 receiving drafted men handled about 432,000 forms per month 
 entailing 520,000 signatures by commissioned officers. All 
 this was in addition to the regular routine of the office. 
 
 EARLY CAUSES FOR RISE OF PAPER WORK IN THE 
 PERSONNEL OFFICE 
 
 Personnel Officer an Assistant to the Adjutant. The per- 
 sonnel officer was appointed by War Department orders to 
 handle personnel work. But he was made an assistant to the 
 Adjutant. Since the Adjutant was very short-handed in the 
 early days and was swamped with work, it was most natural 
 that he should call upon the personnel officer, to assist him in 
 his regular duties. Within a short time every personnel officer, 
 in consequence, was performing certain duties in addition to 
 that of personnel work. In one camp it would be the handling 
 of morning reports, in another handling correspondence, in 
 another some other phase of the Adjutant's work. 
 
 Rendering Service. One of the principal features of per- 
 sonnel work was to render service. From General McCain 
 down throughout the organization this was emphasized. When 
 
 244
 
 RISE OF PAPER WORK 245 
 
 the personnel officer was given another duty to perform he 
 viewed it as an opportunity to render service and endeavored 
 to do it to the best of his ability. Within a short time it 
 became notorious that enlisted men in the personnel office had 
 longer hours and more work to do than anywhere else. Sur- 
 prising to say little complaint was made on this score, 
 although plenty arose from other causes. 
 
 Visits of civilian supervisors to the camps were another 
 indirect factor in the rise of paper work in the personnel 
 office. First of all they encouraged the personnel officer to 
 go ahead and conquer the new job. They also reported what 
 was being done in other camps, thereby suggesting many times 
 additional duties which were of value elsewhere in building up 
 good will for the work. 
 
 Serious Study of Paper-work Situation. Reports from the 
 supervisors warned the Committee at Washington, however, 
 that this additional work was seriously interfering with effi- 
 cient classification and placement of enlisted men. On the 
 whole, their recommendations were to accept the additional 
 work but to secure an adequate permanent force of enlisted 
 men in order that it might be properly accomplished. This 
 recommendation will be discussed later on. Realizing the 
 seriousness of the paper-work situation, the Committee secured 
 the services of Mr. W. R. DeField about November 16th, who 
 made a study of the subject in several camps and reported 
 to the Committee late in December. The report was consid- 
 ered by Colonel (later Major-General) P. C. Harris who was 
 engaged at that time in a serious endeavor to relieve com- 
 pany commanders of some of their paper work. On April 
 29th, General Order No. 42 was issued appointing personnel 
 officers for each regiment, separate or detached battalion, or 
 similar unit, etc., who would handle the pay rolls of the 
 several companies. This order also discontinued muster rolls. 
 
 By the first of February, however, the general policy had 
 developed in the Adjutant General's Office, under Col. Har- 
 ris' leadership, to relieve company commanders of paper work,
 
 246 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 as far possible. This policy had a profound effect upon per- 
 sonnel work, for it very definitely set the tide toward increas- 
 ing the functions of the personnel officer through his taking 
 over one paper work assignment after another. 
 
 CONSOLIDATION OF STATISTICAL, INSURANCE 
 AND PERSONNEL WORK 
 
 The Statistical Section. A statistical organization was 
 ordered for each division which should maintain a file of statis- 
 tical cards upon which a record would be kept of each enlisted 
 man and officer as to organizations, transfers, discharges, 
 deaths, desertions, etc. The cards were to be filed alphabetic- 
 ally for the division, so that if the name was supplied of any 
 soldier he could immediately be located. It was further con- 
 templated that the statistical organization would handle casual- 
 ties overseas. Three lieutenants were assigned to this duty 
 together with certain enlisted men at headquarters and in 
 each regiment or similar separate unit. 
 
 The Insurance Section. On November 20th, 1917, telegram 
 of A. G. O. authorized the appointment of a captain and 
 lieutenant in the Adjutant General's Department as insurance 
 officers. An enlisted force of eight men was also authorized 
 in this telegram. In General Orders No. 149, November 28, 
 1917, this force was specified as consisting of one regimental 
 sergeant major, two battalion sergeants majors, three 
 sergeants and two privates, first class. 
 
 Plans for Consolidating Statistical, Insurance and Personnel 
 Work. As early as December 1st, a memorandum was ad- 
 dressed to the Adjutant General recommending that the Statis- 
 tical, Insurance and Classification work be combined and that 
 a second assistant to the Division Adjutant, with the grade of 
 Major, be placed in charge. Under him would be two cap- 
 tains and two lieutenants. Intimation of this coming consoli- 
 dation was given to the Camp Commander in a telegram of 
 December 7th: 
 
 "The matter of consolidation of personnel classification, 
 
 I
 
 RISE OF PAPER WORK 247 
 
 statistical and insurance work and provision of officers and 
 men to take care of all three branches of work is under con- 
 sideration and early action will be taken. The personnel 
 and statistical work must not be prejudiced or the services 
 of officers and men who have rendered good service be lost 
 through temporary lack of permanent status." 
 
 On January 2, 1918, telegram of the A. G. O. authorized 
 eight additional enlisted men in Division Adjutant's office, 
 which were to be provided for in Tables of Organization. The 
 grades were, one regimental sergeant major, two battalion 
 sergeants major, three sergeants and two privates, first class. 
 The telegram continues: 
 
 "The above in addition to the one regimental sergeant 
 major and two battalion sergeants major heretofore author- 
 ized under Table of Organiatiozn. Select the eight new 
 men from those who have been engaged in the personnel 
 classification, statistical, and insurance work, and in order 
 to give the statistical and personnel men all an equal chance 
 give no preference in making selection by reason of any 
 appointments for the insurance work that may have been 
 made. Insurance men rendered extra by reason of not 
 being chosen for permanent positions will be continued as 
 assistants at Division Headquarters. It is appreciated that 
 the above is not sufficient to conduct the work but until it is 
 determined how far the combined work can be simplified 
 and duplication prevented it has not been deemed best to 
 provide for more in Tables of Organization. You will con- 
 tinue to assign as many men in addition to the above as are 
 necessary for the work and the permanent personnel will be 
 increased later if shown to be essential. Instructions as to 
 additional permanent commissioned personnel will follow 
 shortly." 
 On January llth the following telegram was sent: 
 
 "The following additional permanent commissioned per- 
 sonnel is authorized as assistants to Division Adjutant: 
 One Major or Captain, one First Lieutenant and one Second 
 Lieuten.-mt. These are in addition to the one Major or 
 Captain now authorized as assistant adjutant. Tables of 
 organization of August nineteen seventeen, series A, 
 
 amended accordingly, Name .... and .... Name .... 
 
 recommended by you for insurance work will be immediately
 
 248 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 commissioned as and 
 
 respectively in Adjutant General's Department and your 
 personnel officer Captain .... Name .... will be immediately 
 commissioned in same rank Adjutant General's Department. 
 You also have statistical officers commissioned as lieutenants 
 Adjutant General's Department. From this group select 
 three to fill the new permanent positions on your staff 
 wiring names to this office. Those not selected for per- 
 manent positions will be retained on duty in Division Adju- 
 tant's office and when division goes overseas will, if suitable, 
 remain as assistant adjutants of new divisions or be assigned 
 to other duty. Co-ordinate to the utmost practicable extent 
 physically and administratively all work relating to enlisted 
 personnel, including the vocational classification, statistical 
 and insurance work, in order to prevent duplication of 
 records and to reduce files and paper work. It is recognized 
 that the additional commissioned personnel may not be ade- 
 quate to accomplish all the work at present required but it 
 is deemed inadvisable to embody a larger permanent force 
 in the Tables of Organization at present. You will continue 
 to detail as many additional officers as may be necessary to 
 handle the work thoroughly and expeditiously." 
 
 These two telegrams ordered the administrative union of 
 Statistical, Insurance and Personnel Work under the direction 
 of three officers and eight enlisted men. They also recognized 
 that additional officers and enlisted men might be necessary to 
 the carrying on of such work and authorized such temporary 
 details. Apparently there is no ambiguity in this wording. 
 But many different interpretations did arise in the camps and 
 for several months letters and telegrams were sent out to cor- 
 rect misconstructions and to effect the organization outlined 
 above. On February 9th a summarizing letter was issued 
 which sets forth very clearly the organization and functions 
 of the then existing Personnel Office. 
 
 "1. The purpose of this letter is to summarize previous 
 orders regarding the personnel work of your division and to 
 clear up any uncertainties relative to it. 
 
 "2. Telegram from this office of January 11 stated 
 'Co-ordinate to the utmost practicable extent physically and 
 administratively all work relating to enlisted personnel, in-
 
 RISE OF PAPER WORK 249 
 
 eluding the vocational classification, statistical and insur- 
 ance work, in order to prevent duplication of records and 
 to reduce files and paper work.' The same telegram pro- 
 vided for three new commissioned assistants to the division 
 adjutant in the grades of one major or captain, one first 
 lieutenant and one second lieutenant, respectively. Those 
 three new commissioned assistants were directed to be 
 selected from those engaged on the insurance, classification 
 and statistical work. Those officers so engaged on this work 
 and not selected for the three permanent positions were 
 directed to be attached to division headquarters for such 
 duty as required. If not already so commissioned these 
 extra officers were also to be commissioned in the Adjutant 
 General's Department. 
 
 "3. By telegram of December 31, 1917, eight additional 
 enlisted men in grades of one regimental sergeant major, 
 two battalion sergeants major, three sergeants, two privates, 
 first class, all in Infantry, were authorized to be selected 
 from those engaged on the above three classes of work, for 
 duty in the division adjutant's office. There had previously, 
 by Section III., General Order No. 149, War Department, 
 1917, been authorized eight enlisted men for the insurance 
 work alone. Those of the eight men selected for the insur- 
 ance work under the prior authority and not chosen for 
 permanent positions were directed to be continued as assist- 
 ants at division headquarters. 
 
 "4>. By telegram from this office of January 19, 1918, it 
 was directed that the statistical work theretofore directed 
 by the War Department to be carried on in the divisions be 
 discontinued. It was intended thereby that the system of 
 . statistics and information based on a distinct statistical com- 
 missioned and enlisted personnel, etc., should be abolished 
 and discontinued. It was not intended to prevent the keep- 
 ing of the necessary files for information purposes. Such 
 records and files as are found essential by division com- 
 manders will be maintained in the personnel office. 
 
 "5. The net result of these three orders is as follows: 
 
 First: In addition to the one major or captain 
 previously authorized under the Tables of Organization, 
 August, 1917, as assistant division adjutant, three new 
 commissioned assistants to the division adjutant are 
 created by the telegraphed order of January llth as fol- 
 lows:
 
 250 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 One major or captain (to be known as division per- 
 sonnel officer), one first lieutenant and one second 
 lieutenant. 
 
 Second: In addition to the one regimental sergeant 
 major, and one battalion sergeant major, authorized on 
 The Tables of Organization, August, 1917, as enlisted 
 assistants to the division adjutant, eight more enlisted 
 men were provided in the telegram of December 31, 1917; 
 these eight to be selected from the eight theretofore 
 authorized for insurance work and from those engaged in 
 the statistical and classification work. 
 
 Third: The result of this arrangement is to leave out 
 of the permanent positions certain officers and certain 
 enlisted men previously engaged in one department or 
 another of the work. These are to be treated as follows : 
 Commissioned Officers, not selected for permanent posi- 
 tions to be retained on duty if desired, as additional tem- 
 porary assistants to the division personnel officer, their 
 ultimate assignment to be determined later: Enlisted 
 Men, not selected for permanent positions to be likewise 
 retained if desired. 
 
 "6. The one major or captain to whom is given the title 
 and authority of division personnel officer, will have general 
 charge under the division adjutant of the administration of 
 the vocational classification and insurance work and other 
 matters relating to enlisted personnel. The importance of 
 this duty and the necessity of having an officer fully capable 
 of handling it are emphasized. 
 
 "7. It is appreciated that the above restrictions on the 
 selection of officers may in some cases have resulted either 
 in the appointment of officers not entirely suitable for the 
 work or in the non-appointment of officers whose services 
 would be desirable. Accordingly, if due to the restrictions 
 prescribed in the telegram of January llth or for any other 
 reason, the officers selected as assistants to the division adju- 
 tant and the extra officers above referred to are not well 
 fitted for their duties or if they are otherwise not satisfac- 
 tory, you will so report to this office with recommendation 
 as to disposition to be made of them and as to the appoint- 
 ment of their successors. 
 
 "8. Every effort should be made to reduce the number of 
 card files at division headquarters. Two card files will be 
 maintained at division headquarters under the charge of the
 
 RISE OF PAPER WORK 251 
 
 division personnel officer; first, an alphabetical file on three 
 by five cards of all officers and enlisted men in the division, 
 giving the grade, company and regiment or arm or corps 
 or department, and Army serial number of each; second, a 
 file of personnel qualification cards (CCP-1) filed by regi- 
 ments. It is believed that no other files of record cards 
 should be necessary. 
 
 "9. The file of officers' qualification cards (CCP-1 101- 
 R-l) will be kept in the custody or under the direct super- 
 vision of the division commander in order to preserve their 
 confidential nature. The regimental commander may keep 
 in his personal custody duplicates covering the officers of 
 his regiment if he so desires. 
 
 "10. A plan is under consideration for relieving company 
 commanders of paper work by transferring a substantial 
 part of it to a regimental personnel officer. This will, if 
 approved, involve considerable changes in present procedure 
 but will not interfere with the organization of the personnel 
 work at division headquarters as above outlined. 
 
 By order of the Secretary of War." 
 
 On March llth still another letter was sent in order to cor- 
 rect misunderstandings in the field which were affecting the 
 efficiency of the work. It read as follows: 
 
 "1. It appears that there is a misunderstanding of the 
 duties of the senior officer of the three officers of the Adju- 
 tant General's Department recently added to the staff of 
 the division commander. 
 
 "2. The senior of these is called the 'Personnel Officer,' 
 but such designation is not intended to indicate that the 
 duties of this officer are identical with those of the officer 
 who was previously known as the personnel classification 
 officer, or that they relate solely or principally to classifica- 
 tion work. 
 
 "3. These three officers are charged with duties relating 
 to the enlisted personnel of the division, such as classifica- 
 tion war risk insurance, allotments, allowances, assignments, 
 transfers, discharges, etc., and it is as much the duty of the 
 senior personnel officer to see that the work in connection 
 with insurance, allotments, etc., is properly performed as it 
 is for him to insure the proper handling of the work relating 
 to classification.
 
 252 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "4. As a rule, the personnel officer should not take per- 
 sonal charge of the vocational classification or the insurance 
 Avork at division headquarters, but should exercise general 
 supervision over all work relating to enlisted personnel." 
 
 The development of this consolidation has been related in 
 detail as it played a very great part in personnel work. Dur- 
 ing the period covered by this correspondence there was great 
 unrest because of the many misunderstandings and rivalries 
 of officers in the three lines of work. Due to the consolida- 
 tion, the personnel officer became charged with a large amount 
 of paper work relating to the handling of enlisted men. Once 
 the tendency was established of adding paper work to the per- 
 sonnel officers' duties, it was most natural that it should con- 
 tinue indefinitely until either all such paper work should be 
 located there or the efficiency of the work in the personnel 
 office should become seriously impaired because of the too 
 great load. 
 
 In the next chapter on Receiving the Draft, another impor- 
 tant development in personnel work is reviewed. This new 
 function brought to the personnel office an enormous increase 
 in paper work; in fact, so great that classification and place- 
 ment of men became only one of the many functions instead 
 of the one important duty to be accomplished.
 
 CHAPTER 20 
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 
 
 HOW THE PERSONNEL OFFICER BECAME 
 CHARGED WITH RECEIVING THE DRAFT 
 
 In most national army camps a Mustering Officer was 
 appointed with the rank of lieutenant colonel or colonel who 
 was responsible for the checking of selective service men 
 against their Local Board forms, and the preparation of their 
 Enlistment and Assignment Cards (Form 22-2, A.G.O.). The 
 camp or division surgeon conducted the physical examination 
 of the men, and the company commander handled the remain- 
 der of the forms incident to their enlistment into the service. 
 There was very little or no co-ordination of the work and the 
 whole process covered a considerable space of time. Each 
 step was prepared for separately and required that the men 
 should be marched to some building, there handled and then 
 marched back. All this caused a great deal of interference 
 with the regular drill for which the company commander was 
 responsible. As most of the officers were new to this work 
 there resulted inevitably a great many mistakes and oversights 
 so that many papers were incorrectly made out and many not 
 made out until some one caught the oversight possibly months 
 later. 
 
 The Upton Plan. In only one camp, as far as now known, 
 was there a really systematic attempt during September to 
 December, 1917, to co-ordinate all this work into one well- 
 knit organization. This was Camp Upton, N. Y., where the 
 personnel officer, Captain F. W. Perry, was an engineer of 
 large business experience. It was most natural for him to see 
 the possibilities of such co-ordination and to attempt its organ- 
 ization. He built up there a system, whereby: 
 
 253
 
 254 HISTORY OP PERSONNEL 
 
 1. All physically deficient men were paid off and sent 
 home within twenty- four hours after arrival. (Paper work 
 was greatly reduced on this class of men because no records 
 were created other than medical record and Final State- 
 ment.) 
 
 2. All accepted men were definitely assigned according 
 to occupation within 48 hours after arrival. All records 
 created for these men in one central office. 
 
 3. A catalogue card was created and on file in the divi- 
 sion catalogue within two hours after a man arrived in 
 camp. 
 
 About the middle of December, Mr. DeField visited Camp 
 Upton and became much interested in the work Captain Perry 
 had accomplished as a phase of his problem of cutting down 
 unnecessary paper work. Mr. DeField in a 12 page type- 
 written report described in detail just how the plan was car- 
 ried out. 
 
 The Letter of February 23, 1918. Dr. Strong, fresh 
 from visits in several camps, appreciated the value of the 
 whole plan. He realized that there was great need for just 
 such a co-ordination as outlined by Mr. DeField and that 
 much of this work inevitably would be put upon the personnel 
 officer. Moreover, unless the latter did do such work in an 
 efficient manner it was going to react unfavorably upon the 
 classification work. In other words, due to the camp organ- 
 ization, there was no possibility of keeping personnel work 
 and paper work apart. Consequently the quicker they were 
 consolidated the better for personnel work proper. 
 
 Work was immediately commenced upon a revision of 
 DeField's report which would eliminate local features and 
 make it applicable to all camps. During the next seven 
 weeks a good deal of time was devoted to this subject. A 
 good many things had to be straightened out before any gen- 
 eral instructions could be issued. There were certain points 
 on which rulings were necessary. For example, under wliat 
 conditions should a soldier be rejected and discharged on
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 255 
 
 Form 638, A.G.O., and when should he be discharged under 
 the provisions of Army Regulations and given a discharge 
 certificate on Form 525, 526, or 527, A.G.O.? Then, too, it 
 was necessary to obtain authority for the issuance of such 
 instructions, for they prescribed details of procedure in a camp 
 which was considered entirely within the jurisdiction of the 
 Camp Commander and it was not the general policy of the 
 War Department to issue instructions of that sort. Finally 
 it was agreed with Brigadier General (later Major General) 
 Harris that the letter could be issued provided that it did 
 not go into too great detail as to procedure and that it was 
 made clear that the instructions were not orders but only s.ug- 
 gestions. In consequence, the letter was issued on February 
 23rd over Brigadier General P. C. Harris' signature, with a 
 1st Indorsement by The Adjutant General. The introductory 
 paragraph was as follows: 
 
 "1. Various plans for receiving and assigning new men 
 have been established and carried out in the cantonments. 
 This letter outlines a successful method of handling these 
 men as they come from the local boards. All of the prac- 
 tices here suggested have been thoroughly tried out and are 
 known to be successful. These suggestions are not intended 
 as definite orders since local conditions and circumstances 
 must be taken into account and it is intended to allow all 
 possible latitude for the division commander to exercise his 
 discretion." 
 
 This letter set up an ideal toward which personnel officers 
 worked, sometimes under the guidance of higher ranking offi- 
 cers, but more often only as the personnel officer secured per- 
 mission for a new step after many conferences. The effect 
 of the letter, however, was disappointing viewed in the light 
 of such changes as took place in the camps. Careful study 
 of the situation showed very clearly that most officers were 
 unable to plan out the details necessary in order thoroughly 
 to coordinate the work of receiving men into camp. If the 
 coordination was to be accomplished, it could only be done 
 through supplying personnel officers with a concrete definite
 
 256 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 plan which they could adapt to local needs and then present 
 to their commanding officer for his approval. 
 
 In consequence, a detailed plan was prepared and issued 
 April 20th as Chapter IV. of the Personnel Manual. It was 
 expressly stated in connection with the issuance of Chapter I. 
 of the Manual (April 5th) and also of this Chapter that the 
 contents of the Manual were not to be construed as War 
 Department Regulations, but merely as suggestions as to how 
 such regulations might be carried on in the most effective 
 manner. Great care was exercised, however, that nothing 
 should be included but what was according to regulations or 
 clearly to be inferred from regulations. (A later revision of 
 this Chapter is given in Volume II., Chapter IV.). 
 
 Commencing almost from the time the Chapter was issued 
 there developed a noticeable drift toward the plan outlined 
 in it, but practically nowhere did any one attempt to set up 
 the whole scheme at one time. Rather one detail at a time 
 was taken up and carried through, and then another. 
 
 The Funston Plan. One direct result of the letter of Feb- 
 ruary 23rd was a reply letter signed by Colonel M. O. 
 Bigelow, commanding officer of the 164th Depot Brigade, 
 Camp Funston. This outlined in detail the procedure followed 
 there in receiving the draft, which had been developed under 
 the direction of Major F. C. Reilly, and showed that this 
 camp, like Camp Upton, had evolved a well coordinated plan. 
 It reported a new feature, namely the issue of Q. M. and 
 Ordnance articles in the Recruit Examination Building. The 
 recruit undressed and turned his old clothes over to the ex- 
 press company for shipment home. His barrack bag was 
 issued to him, in which he placed private possessions he might 
 keep. After his physical examination he passed through a 
 department under the direction of the Camp Quartermaster 
 in which he was completely outfitted with clothing, shoes, etc. 
 Such coordination of Quartermaster work with Medical and 
 Personnel had not taken place up to this time at any other 
 camp.
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 257 
 
 This letter did not reach The Committee on Classification 
 of Personnel until some time after April 20th. Attention was 
 called to the feature by letter to the Committee's supervisors 
 and in a personal way to personnel officers who visited Room 
 526, War Department. The innovation was, however, a radi- 
 cal one and no result followed. In the second revision of 
 Chapter IV on June 1st two pages were devoted to the plan. 
 
 This revision emphasized the advantages of still greater 
 coordination with the Camp Medical Officer, the Depot Bri- 
 gade Supply Officer, the Psychological Examiner and the 
 Depot Brigade Commander to the end that every detail inci- 
 dent to the receiving of selective service men might be accom- 
 plished promptly, accurately and with the minimum of effort. 
 Particular attention was called to the necessity of completing 
 the papers of men rejected by the camp surgeon and his 
 prompt shipment home. 
 
 Effect of Personnel Schools upon Receiving the Draft. A 
 very important factor in the further development of the per- 
 sonnel office and its closer coordination with other offices in 
 the camp was the Schools for Personnel Officers. Up to the 
 time of the signing of the armistice eleven such schools were 
 held commencing at Camp Meigs, Washington, D. C., April 
 25-May 4. The Schools were held in different sections of 
 the country, as follows : Camps Bowie, Gordon, Grant, Lewis, 
 Kearney, Travis, Meigs (8th, 9th and 10th schools) and 
 Sherman. In these schools great stress was laid upon the 
 plan of receiving men into camp as described in Chapter IV 
 of the Manual and the officers and men were expected thor- 
 oughly to understand all of the steps involved. The value of 
 the schools was quickly demonstrated in the rapid develop- 
 ment of the personnel office in camps represented at the 
 schools. What had not been accomplished by the letter of 
 February 23rd nor by Chapter IV was achieved through per- 
 sonnel instruction for a few hours. This was true of nearly 
 all the camps as shown by visits of supervisors.
 
 258 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 RECOGNITION OF PERSONNEL OFFICERS AS 
 RESPONSIBLE FOR RECEIVING THE DRAFT 
 
 For a considerable period of time there was no real recogni- 
 tion by the War Department of the fact that personnel officers 
 were charged with any duties besides the handling of qualifi- 
 cation cards, insurance and allotments and such statistical 
 work as still remained over from the old Statistical Division. 
 It is true that the letter of February 23rd suggested that the 
 personnel officer might handle the paper work incident to 
 receiving the draft, but it did not prescribe that it should be 
 done and at most camps little attention was paid to the sugges- 
 tion. The first real recognition of the situation occurred in 
 connection with increasing the force of the personnel office. 
 
 Authorization of Enlarged Force. In connection with 
 Table 400-Headquarters, Depot Brigade, a letter from The 
 Adjutant General's Department of May 15th was issued which 
 authorized 3 officers and 79 enlisted men for the Camp Per- 
 sonnel Office. Since January 3rd only 8 enlisted men had 
 been authorized for the personnel office, notwithstanding the 
 large amount of work then being carried on. And, in fact, 
 by the time the new additional force was authorized it was 
 clearly inadequate, so fast had grown the work in the camps. 
 
 Three important points were brought out in this letter. 
 First, it was emphasized that "while the Personnel Office is 
 an adjunct of the Adjutant's Office it must be definitely under- 
 stood that the personnel force is not to be charged with any 
 of the routine work of the Adjutant's Office" and again "these 
 men are for personnel work only and it must be em- 
 phatically understood by all concerned that these men will 
 not be assigned to, or placed upon, any duty that will inter- 
 fere in any way with their personnel work." This provision 
 was necessary in order to keep separate the work of the Per- 
 sonnel Officer and the Adjutant. As the latter ranked the 
 former, it was natural for him to encroach upon the former's 
 prerogatives unless specifically forbidden.
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 259 
 
 Second, it was pointed out "that one lieutenant will have 
 charge of insurance work, the other of personnel work, with 
 the captain in general supervision over the whole, but it is 
 expected and intended that all three officers be familiar with 
 all phases of personnel work and able to act in any capacity 
 therein." The quoted sentence emphasized by lack of refer- 
 ence to statistical work the complete absorption of this work 
 in the personnel organization and it also emphasized the co- 
 ordination of insurance and personnel work but also their 
 relative independence, which continued until the signing of 
 the armistice. 
 
 And third, the letter made clear that depot brigades were 
 to become "the great receiving centers for men drafted into 
 military service" and emphasized "the importance of the 
 proper functioning of the Personnel Officer." Continuing it 
 added: "the accurate classification of all men as received, the 
 proper preparation of all initial papers, and the expeditious 
 and proper operation of this office will do more than anything 
 else to properly utilize the man power of the country called 
 into military service. To secure this result, the intelligent 
 and earnest cooperation of all concerned is vitally essential." 
 
 Up to this time one of the greatest obstacles to efficient per- 
 sonnel work lay in the fact that there was no reservoir to 
 which skilled men could be assigned and kept until needed and 
 also that all drafted men could not be held in a temporary 
 organization until properly classified, examined, clothed, etc., 
 and then be assigned according to their individual qaulifica- 
 tions. Table of Organization No. 400 and this letter of May 
 15th made just such a reservoir possible. From this time on 
 criticism of personnel work in that it took good men away 
 from the companies died down and practically disappeared. 
 Such a practice was no longer necessary as now there was 
 time in which to arrange for a scientific placement of men. 
 
 General Orders No. 60. On June 24th, General Orders No. 
 60 was printed. This order changed the title of Personnel 
 Officer to that of Personnel Adjutant. It classified the work
 
 260 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 of all adjutants and designated what was to be accomplished 
 by camp, station, or unit adjutants as distinguished from per- 
 sonnel adjutants, and further distinguished between the duties 
 of a camp or division personnel adjutant (primarily a classi- 
 fication officer) and the regimental personnel adjutant (pri- 
 marily a pay-roll officer). Camp or Division Personnel Adju- 
 tants were here charged with: 
 
 "b. (1) Records and correspondence relating to induction of 
 selective service men, vocational classification, allot- 
 ments, and insurance. 
 
 (2) Preparation of payrolls, pay cards, reports of 
 changes, rosters of officers, rosters of troops, duty 
 rosters, strength reports, and other periodical reports 
 and returns of personnel. 
 
 (3) Assignments, transfers, ratings, promotions, reduc- 
 tions, and other matters relating to enlisted person- 
 nel not included in class A(l) i. e., 'instruction, 
 training, discipline and equipment.' " 
 
 Letter of July 30th, (A.G.O.) authorized the assignment of 
 "an assistant personnel adjutant to perform the duties speci- 
 fied in paragraph b (2), or so much thereof as relates to the 
 preparation of pay-rolls and pay cards for headquarters de- 
 tachments and organizations for which no personnel adju- 
 tants are appointed under the provision of General Orders 
 No. 42, War Department, 1918." Thus such pay-roll work 
 was definitely excluded from the duties of a Camp or Divi- 
 sion Personnel Adjutant. 
 
 This order established the .personnel office as the office 
 which was responsible for handling drafted men as far as 
 their papers were concerned, including assignment and 
 transfer. 
 
 The order, however, was not free from ambiguity so far as 
 concerned the smaller camps of the country, such as Flying 
 Fields, Coast Artillery Defenses, etc. And for several months 
 considerable trouble was experienced by the personnel organ- 
 ization in effecting well coordinated personnel work in such
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 261 
 
 camps. (See the following chapter for further consideration 
 of this point.) 
 
 Seven Officers and Two Hundred Enlisted Men. Table of 
 Organization, Camp Headquarters No. 411, dated July 15, 
 1918, but not issued until about August 15th, authorized a 
 further increase of officers and enlisted men, totaling 7 officers 
 and 200 men in camps with Depot Brigades and 5 officers and 
 16 men in camps without Depot Brigades. In detail, the 
 authorized force consisted of 
 
 Camp with Camp without 
 Depot Brigade Depot Brigade 
 
 Major or Captain 1 1 
 
 Captain or 1st Lieutenant 3 2 
 
 1st or 2nd Lieutenant 3 2 
 
 Regimental Sergeant Major 8 2 
 
 Battalion Sergeant Major 12 2 
 
 Sergeant 40 3 
 
 Corporal 40 3 
 
 Private, first class 70 3 
 
 Private 30 3 
 
 Experience has shown that the force for the Camp with a 
 Depot Brigade was sufficient, but not in the case of the Camp 
 without a Depot Brigade. The force of enlisted men in this 
 case should have been at least double that allowed. And in 
 camps without a Depot Brigade with a Replacement Camp, 
 a still larger force was essential. 
 
 Personnel Force for Trade Test Work. In addition to 
 the above there was needed an additional force of officers and 
 enlisted men for trade test work. Such a force was never 
 authorized but probably would have been if the war had con- 
 tinued a short time longer. The following is the estimate 
 recommended by Maj. Gen. H. Jervey of the General Staff: 
 
 1 Captain or First Lieutenant especially trained in Trade 
 
 Testing. 
 1 1st Lieutenant or 2nd Lieutenant especially trained in 
 
 Trade Testing'.
 
 262 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 1 Regimental Sergeant Major. 
 
 2 Battalion Sergeants Major. 
 6 Sergeants. 
 
 2 Corporals. 
 30 Privates, first class. 
 
 General Orders No. 86, dated September 18, 1918. This 
 order called attention to indiscriminate transfers of enlisted 
 men and that "the Adjutant General's Department has on file 
 records of the qualifications of all enlisted men, and is pre- 
 pared to fill all positions in the service in so far as they can 
 be filled by enlisted men." The order goes on to prescribe 
 rules for such transfers, and then adds, "when an organization 
 of Class 1 requires enlisted men, its commanding officer will 
 submit to the division or camp commander, as the case may 
 be, a requisition showing the qualifications of the men desired. 
 The personnel adjutant, under the direction of his commander, 
 will fill the requisition in so far as the enlisted personnel 
 of Class 1 allows. If the requisition cannot be filled locally, it 
 will be forwarded to the Adjutant General of the Army show- 
 ing vacancies still unfilled " 
 
 This general order recognized fully the personnel system 
 as then operating both as to the camp office and the central 
 allotment office at Washington. 
 
 A poem written by George A. Flesh, a private in one of the 
 personel offices, tells the story of this period and from an 
 angle not otherwise recorded here. 
 
 THE RIME OF THE PERSONNEL 
 
 l 
 
 Yes they took me in the Army, 
 Gave me shoes and uniform; 
 Made a dummy soldier of me, 
 Far from where the battles storm, 
 I ain't got no gun or bay'net, 
 Never seen a cannon yet 
 Why, they won't let me go marchin' 
 Do you wonder that I fret?
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 263 
 
 But I write, write, write, 
 
 Gee the beggars keep me workin' half the night; 
 
 And there ain't no blood and thunder 
 
 'Ceptin' when you make a blunder; 
 
 Lord I wisht I had a gun so's I could fight. 
 
 2 
 
 All the blessed livin' daytime, 
 
 On a hard and narrow seat, 
 
 We just sit and write up so'jcrs 
 
 And it's awful in the heat. 
 
 While the sun beats down like fury, 
 
 While the dust is everywhere, 
 
 We just sit and write up rookies, 
 
 Prayin' for a breath of air. 
 
 We just write, write, write, 
 
 Gee the beggars keep us workin' half the night; 
 
 And they laugh at us and jeer us 
 
 For no enemy ain't near us; 
 
 Lord I wisht I had a gun so's I could fight. 
 
 We just sit and ask 'em questions: 
 Where they live and what's their age? 
 Was they ever in the Service? 
 Why the answers fill a page. 
 If they croak, where should we send 'em? 
 Where's their birthplace, who they keep? 
 And some's so bloomin' ign'rant 
 That their dumbness makes you weep. 
 
 We just write, write, write, 
 
 Gee the beggars keep us workin' half the night; 
 
 Yep we're in the Personnel, 
 
 If you ask me why, its hell; 
 
 Lord I wisht I had a gun so's I could fight. 
 
 For we'll stay here till it's over 
 And the boys come marchin' back,
 
 264 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Tellin' how they licked the Germans, 
 How they gave Wilhelin the sack. 
 But even then they'll keep us, 
 Lettin' out what we let in, 
 Then they'll send us back to home folks, 
 Who will greet US with a grin. 
 
 For we wrote, wrote, wrote, 
 
 No we didn't cross no ocean in a boat; 
 
 And we didn't see no fightin', 
 
 We was too damn busy writin'; 
 
 Do you wonder that I think I am the Goat? 
 
 Conclusion. During the period from February 23rd to 
 about August 15th the personel office gradually developed from 
 a small office handling only classification work, insurance, 
 allotments and miscellaneous paper work to a very large office 
 responsible for all paper work incident to the receiving of 
 drafted men. This development was mainly due to influences in 
 the camps themselves. The work of the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel as it affected this development was 
 almost entirely to speed up a coordination which it appre- 
 ciated inevitably must come. As each step was thoroughly 
 established the War Department recognized it and made pro- 
 vision for its continuance. 
 
 Following the Camp Gordon School for Personnel Officers, 
 Major (then Captain) G. T. Wilhelm, Camp Personel Officer 
 of Camp Jackson, drew up plans for a Personnel Building 
 which would include the work of the Medical Officer, Quar- 
 termaster Officer and Personnel Officer. The plans were 
 received by the War Department early in June, but no action 
 resulted. They were used, however, as an exhibit in all the 
 schools for personnel officers held thereafter and helped appre- 
 ciably in spreading the idea of such a building throughout the 
 camps. From a number of camp commanders during the
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 265 
 
 next six months requests for such a building were received 
 by the War Department. 
 
 Camp Funston from early days had practically such a build- 
 ing utilizing several adjoining barrack buildings for this work. 
 Camp Travis later did the same. By August 1st Major Luther 
 Hoffman, Camp Personnel Officer of Camp Travis, had sub- 
 mitted a set of drawings in which all details were carefully 
 considered. 
 
 Following the return to Washington of Dr. Strong a con- 
 ference was held there, September 16 to 21, of seven of the 
 Personnel Adjutants most interested in such a building. They 
 were Major C. L. Abel of Camp Sherman, Major C. R. Coffin 
 of Camp Wadsworth, Captain (later Major) T. R. Elkins of 
 Camp Funston, Major E. B. Hawks of Camp Dix, Major 
 Luther Hoffman of Camp Travis, Major O .C. Lloyd of Camp 
 Jackson and Major G. T. Wilhelm, formerly of Camp Jack- 
 son, but then engaged in installing trade tests in the camps. 
 Several supervisors were also in attendance. As a result of 
 this conference the whole procedure of handling drafted men 
 was thoroughly standardized. (See Chapter IV. of Vol. II. 
 for the final write-up of this plan.) And plans for a building 
 to accommodate the work were roughly drawn up. 
 
 Following the conference Mr. D. J. O'Connor and Dr. 
 Strong completed the write-up of the plan and the drawings 
 of the building. Majors Elkins and Hoffman aided materially 
 in this work. Before the final details could be completed it 
 was necessary to obtain the official O. K. of the Surgeon Gen- 
 eral's Office and the Quartermaster General's Office. This 
 took considerable time. An appropriation for $1,250,000 was 
 authorized by the Secretary of War on October 14th and the 
 plans were finally approved a few days before the armistice 
 was signed and actually in the mail on that day. This author- 
 ization provided for the construction of one of the Recruit 
 Examination Buildings in each of the 16 Depot Brigade 
 Camps. The plans are shown in connection with Chapter IV 
 of the Personnel Manual (Volume II.).
 
 266 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Large as the appropriation seems, it was felt by all those 
 intimately concerned with the work that the buildings would 
 pay for themselves in three or four months. They would have 
 permitted a smaller force of officers and enlisted men to per- 
 form all the work incidental to receiving drafted men. They 
 would have insured rejected men being returned home more 
 promptly than in the past. The saving here alone would be 
 great. For example, at one camp rejected men were kept on 
 the average seven days in camp. A conservative estimate of 
 the cost to the government for maintenance and pay is $2 
 a day. The new plan would make possible the shipping of 
 such men home on the second day, saving five days's time or 
 $10 apiece. Two thousand such men were sent home a month, 
 representing a loss to the government of $20,000 per month 
 at this one camp, to say nothing of the loss to the nation in- 
 curred by the non-employment of 2,000 men for five days. 
 The buildings with their thoroughly standardized procedure 
 would undoubtedly have secured a still more accurate prepara- 
 tion of enlistment papers thereby cutting down materially 
 clerical work and correspondence concerning mistakes, not to 
 mention down-right losses to the government or the soldier 
 due to such mistakes. 
 
 SHIPPING MEN OUT OF THE DEPOT BRIGADE 
 
 One of the great problems incident to paper-work is the 
 thorough enforcement of orders requiring that papers relating 
 to the soldier shall always accompany him when he is trans- 
 ferred and that they shall have been properly prepared. Chap- 
 ter 37 discusses this problem as it related to the shipment of 
 men overseas and relates how a thorough inspection was made 
 of all papers before the men boarded ship. The same prob- 
 lem existed at each point where enlisted men (and officers too) 
 were transferred from one organization to another. 
 
 After the personnel adjutant became charged with the 
 responsibility of receiving men into camp, it naturally followed 
 that he should likewise be charged with checking the soldier's
 
 RECEIVING THE DRAFT 267 
 
 papers as they were shipped out of cainp. This added duty 
 developed all the sooner because the qualification card was the 
 most likely paper not to be sent with the soldier. This was 
 due to the fact that it was kept at Camp Headquarters and 
 the company commander knew little of its existence. A great 
 deal of trouble was experienced in this respect. Letter after 
 letter was sent out from The Adjutant General's Office insist- 
 ing that the cards must go with the men. But the matter was 
 never thoroughly carried out until the personnel adjutant per- 
 sonally saw to it that qualification cards went with the men. 
 Later when it was fully realized that the other papers were 
 not made out nor endorsed properly and not always sent with 
 the men the personnel adjutant commenced checking them also. 
 As this work progressed, one after another of the camps 
 issued orders that all men leaving camp should report to the 
 personnel office where the papers were checked. In this way, 
 the shipping section came to be an integral part of the camp 
 personnel office. When the armistice was signed and demo- 
 bilization commenced there already existed a good machine in 
 terms of which to organize the checking force necessary in 
 order that all discharge papers could be certified as properly 
 made out.
 
 CHAPTER 21 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN STAFF CORPS CAMPS 
 
 From the time personnel work was introduced into the Na- 
 tional Army Camps in September, 1917, until the armistice, 
 November, 1918, there was a steady progression in its develop- 
 ment within the larger camps. All this has been traced in 
 preceding chapters. The development of personnel work in 
 the smaller camps under the direction of the various staff corps 
 and departments of the army was not so satisfactory. Up to 
 the summer of 1918, and even later in many cases, little real 
 personnel work had been done in these camps. The history 
 of such work, on the whole, can be summarized by saying, a 
 personnel supervisor visited the camp, installed the system 
 and trained some officers and enlisted men. Sometime later a 
 second visit would reveal very little or nothing of the office 
 that had been established. Nearly always some qualification 
 cards could be found but the men to whom they referred might 
 be in France and the men then in camp might have had no 
 cards made out for them. In other camps the office had con- 
 tinued but the supervisor would find an entirely new set of 
 officers and enlisted men in charge with no training for the 
 work and no real insight or enthusiasm. 
 
 Two striking exceptions to the general run of such experi- 
 ences were the Quartermaster Corps, Camp Joseph E. John- 
 ston at Jacksonville, Florida, and the Ordnance Dep't., Camp 
 Hancock at Augusta, Georgia. At the former Major Claude 
 M. Fuess was placed in charge of personnel work and at the 
 latter Lieutenant N. L. Hoopingarner. Both of these men 
 were enthusiastically interested in the work, were commis- 
 sioned from civil life to carry it on and were allowed to do 
 good work. 
 
 268
 
 PERSONNEL WORK 269 
 
 Two main reasons may be assigned for this general lack of 
 efficient personnel work in the smaller camps: first, rapid 
 shifting of officers in the camps, and second, lack of real per- 
 sonnel organization in the staff corps offices at Washington. 
 And in many respects this second cause was likewise due to 
 the rapid shifting of officers at Washington. Repeatedly super- 
 visors reported on visiting one of these camps a second time 
 that there wasn't an officer nor enlisted man there whom he 
 had previously met and trained. Naturally, little of a con- 
 structive nature could be expected. It should be explained in 
 fairness to the Washington offices that all officers wanted to 
 go to France; in consequence, competent officers for personnel 
 work secured an opportunity and were ordered overseas. 
 This was very trying for the Committee as it had to spend a 
 great deal of time in making such contacts, in interesting 
 ranking officers, securing the appointments of competent offi- 
 cers and then training them, only to have to do it all over 
 again in a short time. 
 
 Just as personnel work developed almost entirely in the line 
 through demonstrating its value in the camps and then having 
 the new features recognized by the War Department through 
 official orders, so it likewise developed in the smaller camps 
 first and then was authorized later. Traveling supervisors 
 accomplished much in this way. But the Schools for Per- 
 sonnel Adjutants did much more. Permission was obtained 
 from the Staff Corps offices to send selected officers to these 
 schools and then at the schools they were enthused and 
 equipped for their work. After they had attended the per- 
 sonnel schools, it was also easier to make arrangements where- 
 by they would be kept on the job. 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN THE COAST ARTILLERY 
 
 CORPS 
 
 The Coast Artillery Corps may be taken as an example, as 
 showing some of the difficulties encountered and the final out- 
 come.
 
 270 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 There are twenty-seven coast defenses (comprising about 
 one hundred forts), five Coast Artillery Districts, and the 
 Coast Artillery Training Center (comprising Reserve Officers' 
 Training Camp, Enlisted Specialists and Motor Transport 
 Schools, and the school of Fire at Camp Eustis). 
 
 In November, 1917, qualification cards were sent to all 
 Coast Defenses. Some few were filled out, a smaller number 
 were used, but nothing of value resulted from this trial. 
 Numerous attempts were made by supervisors of the Com- 
 mittee to install a system of classification in the various coast 
 defenses, but without marked result until the issuance of Gen- 
 eral Orders, Nos. 42, 46 and 60, W. D., 1918. Under author- 
 ity given in these orders personnel adjutants were detailed by 
 Coast Defense commanders, and an effort was made to do the 
 work pertaining to records. As yet, however, no effort was 
 made to use the qualification cards for making assignments 
 in the formation of units. 
 
 During June and July, 1918, an attempt was made to pre- 
 pare tables of occupational needs for overseas units. Due to 
 lack of time and insufficient help, these preliminary tables 
 proved of little use. A very common error was made, in that 
 these tables called for an unduly large number of technically 
 educated, or very highly skilled men. By the end of July, it 
 became evident, that, if any good results were to be obtained 
 by the personnel system in the Coast Artillery, officers must 
 be trained and used for that work exclusively. Captain (later 
 Major) D. W. K. Peacock was detailed for duty in the office 
 of the Chief of Coast Artillery, and on reporting July 25, 
 1918, was instructed to study the system, become acquainted 
 with officials in Washington, and later to submit recommenda- 
 tion. This officer attended the eighth personnel school held 
 at Camp Meigs, August 7 to 14, then made a tour of impor- 
 tant nearby coast defenses. A detailed recommendation was 
 submitted by him on August 30 and was tentatively approved. 
 
 After a thorough canvass of the situation regarding the 
 rapid shifting of officers and its deleterious effect on personnel
 
 PERSONNEL WORK 271 
 
 work, authority was granted on August 16, 1918, to commis- 
 sion coast artillery officers, then engaged in personnel work, in 
 the Adjutant General's Department, and assign them to coast 
 defenses as personnel adjutants. Such officers were then under 
 orders from the Adjutant General's Department and could be 
 kept permanently at personnel work. About fort} r selected 
 Coast Artillery officers and enlisted men were ordered to 
 attend the tenth personnel school at Camp Meigs in Septem- 
 ber. From this number those particularly qualified were 
 selected, transferred to the A. G. D. ,and sent to the more 
 important coast defenses as personnel adjutants. 
 
 These officers were charged with a considerable amount of 
 paper work incident to the handling of enlisted men, including 
 receiving them from draft boards, mustering them into the 
 service and their eventual assignment. 
 
 Provision was made for the assignment of one Coast Artil- 
 lery officer as Assistant Personnel Adjutant at each Fort, his 
 duties being to make payrolls, reports of changes and do other 
 strictly paper work pertaining to the enlisted men of that fort. 
 The Coast Defense personnel adjutant was responsible that 
 these assistants did proper work, and was the sole officer 
 chargeable with the assignment of men within the Coast 
 Defenses. As a result of these requirements, the personnel 
 adjutants were chosen from those men who had considerable 
 experience in handling men in civil life, together with tech- 
 nical knowledge, when possible. 
 
 It became evident that some centralized authority would 
 necessarily be charged with securing the kinds of specialists 
 needed and with their proper distribution to the various Coast 
 Defenses, where they would be used in the formation of 
 tactical units. Consequently, two officers and several enlisted 
 men were assigned to duty at Washington. Each coast defense 
 was required to submit semi-monthly reports showing the 
 number and classification of enlisted men in the coast defense. 
 Based upon these reports and the tables of occupational needs 
 for units to be formed at a given coast defense, it became pos-
 
 272 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 sible to requisition for the exact number and kind of men 
 needed at that Coast Defense. It occasionally was possible 
 to transfer men from various Coast Defenses and balance 
 organizations within the Coast Artillery without the necessity 
 of requisitioning for additional specialists. 
 
 Upon the completion of the tenth Personnel School at Camp 
 Meigs in September, six of the best qualified officers were 
 retained in Washington and detailed to prepare Tables of 
 Occupational Needs for the Coast Artillery. These six officers 
 carefully investigated the duties of each enlisted man called 
 for by tables under which Coast Artillery units were organ- 
 ized. A specification was prepared for each job, and these 
 personnel specifications were then assembled into book form, 
 including therein consolidated tables for each type of organ- 
 ization. The preliminary manuscript of these tables of occu- 
 pational needs proved of very great value in the formation of 
 certain units during the two or three weeks prior to the sign- 
 ing of the Armistice. The completed tables, unfortunately, 
 were not in print until later. 
 
 During the last half of October a considerable draft in- 
 crement was received at the Coast Defenses and handled in a 
 creditable maner. This occurred within six weeks from com- 
 pletion of the Personnel School at which practically all the 
 Coast Artillery personnel adjutants received their instructions. 
 
 It is believed that the Coast Artillery presented about as 
 serious difficulties as any of the other staff corps and bureaus 
 of the War Department. It proved possible, however, to plan, 
 select and instruct men, and put the whole system in opera- 
 tion within a period of three months. Some difficulties still 
 remained at the signing of the armistice, but current work was 
 being carried on in a very satisfactory manner and units des- 
 tined for overseas were properly balanced, and required a 
 minimum of training. Possibly the greatest difficulty encoun- 
 tered was that due to the very limited number of specialists 
 available, and the necessity of using semi-skilled men for im- 
 portant jobs in these units.
 
 PERSONNEL WORK 273 
 
 Conclusion. The system as installed in the Coast Artillery 
 provided that one officer in Washington had at all times an 
 accurate knowledge of the number and trade ability of men 
 in all Coast Defenses in the United States. By compiling 
 this information on master lists, requiring very little clerical 
 work, it was possible at any time to locate men of specific 
 ability and order them to the point at which needed. At the 
 same time in each Coast Artillery fort or defense there was 
 a qualified office force which handled all paper work incident 
 to enlisted personnel and saw to it that men were assigned in 
 accordance with their qualifications.
 
 CHAPTER 22 
 
 PLANS FOR SEPARATION OF PERSONNEL 
 WORK AND ADJUTANT'S WORK 
 
 We have now seen how the Personnel Office developed from 
 a small office handling only the qualification cards and inter- 
 ested primarily in the assignment and transfer of enlisted 
 men until it became the largest office in the camp. And in 
 that office were prepared most of the papers incident to a 
 drafted man's enlistment in the army, including insurance, 
 allotments, classification, etc. We have also seen that this 
 development took place because personnel work suffered if 
 all this was not done efficiently and, as it was not well done, 
 took it over in order that the strictly personnel work would 
 prosper. The transfer of the larger part of the paper work 
 into one office undoubtedly did strengthen personnel work and 
 made for it many friends. 
 
 REASONS FOR SEPARATING PERSONNEL WORK 
 FROM ADJUTANTS' WORK 
 
 About the time, however, that the work was becoming thor- 
 oughly coordinated and standardized the leaders in personnel 
 work commenced to realize that the duties of a camp personnel 
 adjutant were too much for one officer. It is true that a num- 
 ber of the personnel adjutants handled the whole job in good 
 shape, but there were other officers who could not oversee it 
 all, and their places could not be supplied with men who 
 could. 
 
 The work was also so complex that it was equally difficult 
 to obtain supervisors who could oversee all the activities in 
 an office. And without such a grasp of the whole work, super- 
 visors could not very well direct changes or make proper 
 
 274
 
 PLANS FOR SEPARATION 275 
 
 recommendations. For these reasons it was felt that the work 
 suffered to some extent compared with what would be accom- 
 plished if the officer in charge was responsible for fewer 
 details. 
 
 Another reason for separating personnel work from the 
 strictly adjutants' work lay in the organization of the Adju- 
 tant General's Department. Personnel and insurance work 
 was under the direction of Colonels A. M. Ferguson and D. Y. 
 Beckham in Room 528, War Department. The handling of 
 all other papers was directed from other divisions of the 
 Adjutant General's Department. There was every reason for 
 not further coordinating the work of these offices. In con- 
 sequence, the natural thing was to separate their respective 
 organizations in the field. 
 
 The most important reason for effecting a separation of 
 the two types of work was the transfer of personnel work to 
 the General Staff. General Orders No. 80 of August 26, 1918, 
 provided that "the appointment, promotion, transfer, and 
 assignment of the commissioned personnel of all branches of 
 the Army" should be a duty of the Operations Division, Gen- 
 eral Staff. In order to carry out this provision, General 
 Orders No. 86, September 18, 1918, further provided that 
 "there is established the Commissioned Personnel Branch, 
 Operations Division, General Staff, which will be formed by 
 consolidation of (a) the Commissioned Personnel Section, Gen- 
 eral Staff, and (b) the Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel of the Adjutant General's Office, " 
 
 This General Order created an anomalous situation. The 
 Committee was now in the General Staff, the officers that car- 
 ried on personnel work in the camps were all commissioned 
 in the Adjutant General's Department, and most of their 
 functions had to do with paper work which was strictly adju- 
 tant's work.
 
 276 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 PLANS FOR SEPARATING PERSONNEL WORK 
 FROM ADJUTANTS' WORK 
 
 In consequence, a movement was immediately started to 
 establish a Central Personnel Division of the Operations Sec- 
 tion, General Staff, and to include all strictly personnel work 
 therein. On November 5th a memorandum from the General 
 Staff was directed to The Adjutant General directing that a 
 general order be issued on the subject, as follows: 
 
 "The Secretary of War directs that the following general 
 order be issued: 
 
 1. The classification, assignment and placement of per- 
 sonnel in the Army are placed under the supervision of the 
 General Staff. These functions embrace measures necessary 
 to provide for the utilization, to the fullest extent, of the 
 man power of the nation in relation both to the military 
 establishment and to industry. As regards the Army, they 
 include the procurement of men from all sources, their 
 classification by trades and occupations, and their assign- 
 ment and placement in such a way that the Army will obtain 
 full advantage of their occupational ability, training and 
 experience. They include matters pertaining to the placing 
 of men according to their abilities and their reassignment 
 or transfer to positions where their services can best be 
 utilized, when such transfers become available. As regards 
 industry, these functions include matters concerning the 
 effect of the withdrawal of large numbers of men from 
 industrial pursuits and their retention in, or return to, essen- 
 tial war industries. 
 
 2. Routine administration, and record and account keep- 
 ing form no part of these functions, except in so far as they 
 pertain to the collection of information, statistics and data 
 relating to them and the records and reports connected 
 therewith. 
 
 3. Instructions and orders to carry out policies and 
 action pertaining to classification, assignment and place- 
 ment, will be issued as heretofore by The Adjutant Gen- 
 eral's Department. 
 
 4. In camps and tactical divisions, and in other places 
 and units specially authorized, an officer designated as clas- 
 sification officer of the place or unit, will be in charge of the
 
 PLANS FOR SEPARATION 277 
 
 functions prescribed in Paragraph 1. The classification 
 officer will be assisted by such other officers and enlisted 
 men as are authorized by the War Department. In tactical 
 divisions the classification officer will be an assistant of the 
 Chief of Staff of the division; in camps he will be an assist- 
 ant of the executive officer; in specially authorized places 
 and units he will be a staff officer of the commander of the 
 place or unit. Classification officers will be designated by 
 the War Department from officers selected and specially 
 trained for this duty. In places and units not provided 
 with classication officers, as indicated above, the duties pre- 
 scribed for such officers will be under the charge of the 
 Statistical Adjutant, or, if there is no Statistical Adjutant, 
 of the Unit Adjutant. 
 
 5. Classification officers, in the performance of their 
 duties, will, under the direction of the commander of the 
 place or unit, be specifically charged with the following: 
 
 (a) Recommendations pertaining to the preparation, 
 use and preservation of qualification cards of officers. 
 
 (b) Classification, qualification, trade testing, assign- 
 ment and transfer of enlisted men, handling of requisi- 
 tions for enlisted personnel and recommendations for the 
 balancing of organizations in accordance with Tables of 
 Occupational Needs and the requirements of the service. 
 
 (c) Preparation of special and periodical reports and 
 returns pertaining to the functions prescribed herein, and 
 the preparation, use and preservation of qualification 
 cards for enlisted men. 
 
 6. The duties prescribed in G. O. No. 60, War Depart- 
 ment, 1918, which are not herein assigned to classification 
 officers, will be performed by the Adjutant Genral, Adju- 
 tant or Statistical Adjutant as directed in that order. Statis- 
 tical adjutants and mobilization camps or places receiving 
 newly inducted men. will have supervision over the receiving 
 of such men, and are charged with the preparation of the 
 initial records required by the Adjutant General's Depart- 
 ment for record or file at the War Department or at camp, 
 division or other unit headquarters, except those relating to 
 the functions transferred by this order to the General Staff. 
 
 Statistical adjutants are also charged with the correspon- 
 dence relating to induction of drafted men.
 
 278 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 7. The officers and enlisted men necessary to perform 
 
 the duties required by this order will be those given in 
 
 Tables of Organization. 
 
 The necessary changes in the Tables of Organization are 
 
 in course of preparation and will soon be published. 
 
 In places or units not covered by Tables of Organization, 
 
 the necessary force will be that already authorized or such 
 
 as may hereafter be authorized by instructions from the War 
 
 Department. 
 
 This order was not issued due to the signing of the armistice. 
 
 The order would have resulted in so reorganizing the Per- 
 sonnel Office as in large measure to carry on the functions first 
 assigned it in the National Army Camps in September, 1917. 
 But the office would have been under the direction of the Gen- 
 eral Staff, instead of the Adjutant General. Details as to the 
 size of the office in the different camps, as contemplated, were: 
 
 Cainp Ports 
 Without of Em- 
 Camps with Depot Tactical Dept. barka- Recruit 
 Depot Brig-. Brig. Division Hdqrs. tion Depots 
 
 Major or Captain 111110 
 
 Captain or First Lt. 2 1 1 1 
 
 First I A. or 2nd Lt. 100000 
 
 Total Comni. 
 
 Rgt. Sgt. Mjr. 
 Bn. Sgt. Mjr. 
 Sergeants 
 Corporals 
 Pvts. 1st Cl. 
 Pvts. 
 
 Total F.nl. 
 
 The authorization for "Camp with Depot Brigade" includes 
 the following officers and enlisted men of the Trade Test 
 Sections: 1 Captain or First Lieutenant; 1 Regimental Ser- 
 geant Major, 2 Battalion Sergeants Major, 5 Sergeants, 2 
 Corporals, 12 Privates (first class), 8 Privates. Total en- 
 listed, 30. 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 12 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 

 
 PLANS FOR SEPARA TION 279 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Had the war continued several months more the following 
 changes would undoubtedly have taken place. First, all per- 
 sonnel work would have been centralized in a Personnel Branch 
 of the Operations Division, General Staff. Commissioned per- 
 sonnel work had already been so centralized. Second, strictly 
 personnel work dealing with the classification and assignment 
 of both officers and enlisted men would have been placed under 
 a Classification Officer (a new title for the old Personnel Offi- 
 cer) who would be an assistant to the Chief of Staff of a divi- 
 son, to the Executive Officer of a camp, or a staff officer re- 
 porting to the commanding officer of smaller units. All other 
 paper work incident to commissioned or enlisted personnel 
 work would be concentrated under a Statistical Adjutant, as 
 assistant to the unit or station adjutant. 
 
 This plan would have provided a unified organization by 
 which officers and enlisted men could be placed according to 
 their qualifications and transfers easily be made between (a) 
 units within a camp or unit, (b) between camps and (c) be- 
 tween the several staff corps or departments of the army. 
 Little had been accomplished in the case of (c) up to the 
 signing of the armistice, although there were many cases on 
 record when skilled men had been found in organizations 
 where their specialized experience could not be utilized.
 
 SECTION VI 
 PLACEMENT 
 
 The proper placement of men is dependent upon 
 
 (1) a careful analysis of the man's qualifications, 
 
 (2) a careful study of the job to be performed, and 
 
 (3) the placing of the right man in the right place. 
 The first two factors have been discussed at some 
 length in Sections III and IV. The third is the 
 subject of this Section. 
 
 If we had but a dozen men to be considered and 
 an equal number of jobs, it would be relatively easy 
 to place the men where they would be most useful. 
 But when several thousand men are so to be dis- 
 tributed it becomes necessary to handle men, as 
 merchandise is handled, and ship them on the 
 basis of requisitions. Record of the transactions 
 must be carefully kept; else mistakes and confu- 
 sions are bound to arise. 
 
 Chapter 23 presents the administrative measures 
 utilized in handling requisitions for men. In the fol- 
 lowing chapter the further phases of this subject as 
 they relate specifically to the organization of a 
 military unit are discussed. And in Chapter 25 a 
 corollary to this is taken up; i. e., the methods em- 
 ployed to interest officers in the proper placement 
 of men. Two special phases of "placement" are 
 also considered: i. e., methods of selecting men for 
 officers' training schools (Chapter 26) and the use 
 of limited service men (Chapter 27) ,
 
 CHAPTER 23 
 
 During the first two months of personnel work, very few 
 records were kept of the placements of men. Verbal and 
 written requisitions were received and they were filled as soon 
 as possible. If they could not be filled promptly, because of 
 lack of men of the desired qualifications, they were quite likely 
 to be forgotten until the officer concerned renewed his request. 
 Such oversights eventually forced a better bookkeeping sys- 
 tem. In the camps with capable personnel officers there finally 
 developed a thoroughgoing procedure. Unfortunately, in 
 some of the other camps sufficiently good systems were not 
 developed and much confusion still reigned even up to the 
 signing of the armistice. This was one phase of supervision 
 of personnel work which was not emphasized by the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel until about October, 1918. 
 Then several were assigned this duty. By November llth 
 they had prepared the copy for Chapter VII. of the Personnel 
 Manual whch gave in detail just how all records should be 
 maintained. The installation of this system would have done 
 much toward improving personnel work in the camps with 
 weak or inexperienced officers and it would have effected a 
 standard method in all camps. 
 
 LOCAL REQUISITIONS 
 
 The Personnel Adjutant handled requisitions for specially 
 qualified men both from local officers within the camp and 
 from the War Department. The handling of requisitions from 
 
 283
 
 284 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the former will be considered first and then those from the 
 War Depatrment later on. 
 
 Several local requisitions are given here to illustrate the 
 kind of service rendered by the personnel office. In the early 
 days, a fire department had to be organized at each canton- 
 ment. Accordingly upon receipt of this information asking for 
 25 men for the Fire Department, the personnel officer selected, 
 as at' Camp Taylor, seventeen men with experience in fire 
 departments and one good clerk and reported their names and 
 organizations to the Chief of Staff. A note at the bottom 
 stated that they were all the qualified men in camp and that 
 the remainder could probably be furnished from the next 
 draft due the following Friday. Later seven more men were 
 furnished. 
 
 At one of the Flying Fields the Colonel came into the per- 
 sonnel office one morning very much flustered and said he had 
 lost his keys. One of the keys opened the inner compartment 
 to the safe. He explained that he had become so much upset 
 at the affair that now he couldn't even remember the com- 
 bination to the safe and after working at it for some time had 
 been unable to open it. Could the personnel officer with his 
 much talked of system do anything. Turning to his file, the 
 latter said, "Certainly." In a minute he called to his orderly 
 and requested that Privates Smith and Jones report imme- 
 diately. Private Smith, formerly employed by a safe com- 
 pany, quickly opened the safe by listening to the tumblers and 
 Jones, a good locksmith, soon after had a new key. Whereat 
 the Colonel ejaculated, "What the is the use of a safe?" 
 
 Not only were the qualification cards found useful in the 
 regular camps but even in the S. A. T. C. detachments they 
 proved their value as is shown in the following incident. 
 During the influenza epidemic it was necessary to provide for 
 a temporary hospital. By the usre of the cards a group of 
 students was selected and organized to construct a hospital, 
 and within forty-two and a half hours from the time the lum- 
 ber was delivered, the building was completed and patients
 
 FILLING REQUISITIONS 285 
 
 were installed therein under the supervision of the medical 
 officer and nurses. Prior to the erection of this hospital accom- 
 modations were provided for only ten cases. After its erection 
 a peak-load of ninety-two cases was handled without a single 
 loss. During the construction of the hospital it was neces- 
 sary to have day and night shifts at work and to serve six 
 messes every twenty-four hours. A complete crew of cooks 
 was secured through the use of the cards, and every meal was 
 served on time. Under normal conditions no men of such a 
 unit serve as cooks. When the medical officer needed addi- 
 tional nurses he was given five men with some experience and 
 sufficient qualifications to carry out his orders properly. 
 
 In filling these requisitions, the man's occupational skill was 
 primarily considered. If the company commander had 
 reported him as "Preferred", this was taken into account and 
 he was not recommended for transfer, if any other could be 
 substituted. The man's physical qualifications as to height 
 and weight were frequently noted, also his intelligence and 
 primary preference. When there was time all these were 
 given due consideration, but more often there was very little 
 time, and the requisition was filled mainly on the basis of 
 occupational skill. If the war had continued another six 
 months and personnel work had been separated from adju- 
 tant's work, a very noticeable increase in proficiency of place- 
 ment would have taken place. This is so stated here because 
 many personnel officers realized the situation and were en- 
 deavoring to correct it. 
 
 WAR DEPARTMENT REQUISITIONS 
 
 Reports on Occupational Classfications of Drafted Men. 
 The personnel organization was not planned for the purpose 
 of transferring specialists from camp to camp or for the pur- 
 pose of supplying men for the staff corps. It was planned to 
 have local clearing offices in each camp for meeting the supply 
 and demand in that camp. But almost immediately the need 
 arose to supply staff corps units with skilled men and a little
 
 286 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 later for transferring men from camp to camp. Requisitions 
 for 5,000 skilled men were issued in October, 1917, to National 
 Army Camps and they increased rapidly until the close of the 
 war. 
 
 Not expecting requisitions, when they did come, they found 
 the personnel organization without any information as to 
 where such specialists could be found. Fortunately, however, 
 the requisitions called for only a few men at a time and con- 
 sequently most of them could be filled by the camps which 
 were called upon to furnish them. The next step was to call 
 upon the camps for reports, known as Periodic Reports 
 (CCP-9), as to the total number of men, green (skilled) and 
 orange tabbed (partly skilled) under each occupational head- 
 ing, showing number of machinists, blacksmiths, carpen- 
 ters, etc. Here a count of tabs, not men, was called for. This 
 was done for two reasons, first, it was easier for the personnel 
 officer to count all the tabs than to evaluate each card and 
 report the man under his main usefulness. And, second, it 
 was thought that it would enable the central office to determine 
 how men could best be used instead of leaving this matter to 
 the local officers. The plan worked all right as long as there 
 was an ample surplus of specialists over the demand. But as 
 soon as supply and demand commenced to approximate each 
 other, it became evident that only a count of men would meet 
 the needs. For if a man was tabbed green as blacksmith and 
 machinist and orange tabbed as draftsman, then when a black- 
 smith was ordered transferred, the camp also transferred a 
 machinist and apprentice draftsman. But the central office had 
 no way of knowing this additional fact. 
 
 The Periodic Report of February 1st, 1918, edition shows 
 this change from counting tabs to counting men very clearly. 
 For it calls for a count of green tabbed men, and then for a 
 count of all black (second best journeymen) and orange tab- 
 bed men (apprentices) by tabs. From such a report one 
 knew definitely how many journeymen could be transferred 
 out of camp. One also knew how many substitutions were
 
 FILLING REQUISITIONS 287 
 
 possible. In terms of the illustration given above, one knew 
 that the blacksmith could be transferred, and also that there 
 was a machinist and apprentice draftsman in that camp and 
 also that these two had been counted somewhere else already. 
 If, then, this machinist was requisitioned, the figures in the 
 main (green) column would have to be lowered by one man. 
 This system was maintained until March 27th when the new 
 form, entitled "Special Report of Occupational Classification" 
 (CCP-15) was issued in lieu of Periodic Reports. This report 
 called for a count of men, not tabs. If a man was given more 
 than one tab than he was to be reported under, that tab which 
 seemed to the local officer as his main usefulness to the army 
 was used. 
 
 Here arose a new problem. If the local officer was to judge 
 at what occupational specialty the man was to be employed, 
 how was he to know which of two or more possibilities to 
 favor. This was answered in two ways. 
 
 Through visits of supervisors, properly coached, and the 
 issuing of special letters local personnel officers were cautioned 
 to study the requisitions received each month and to note which 
 occupations were most frequently called for and to favor 
 them in classifying men. Thus, if blacksmiths were more fre- 
 quently called for than machinists, per number received in 
 the draft, then whenever a man qualified under both groups 
 he was to be reported as a blacksmith and not a machinist. 
 In addition to this method of acquainting local officers as to 
 how to classify men, the central office commenced with the 
 March 27th report to designate certain occupations as of 
 greater importance than others ; "Greater" in the sense of 
 rarer in terms of supply and demand. For example, in this 
 report there are two parts. If a man can be classified under 
 one of the occupations in the first part he is to be placed there 
 in preference to occupations listed in the second part. If he, 
 however, falls under two occupations in part one, then the 
 judgment of the local officer had to be employed as to which 
 one of the two to list him under.
 
 288 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 In June a long list of preferred occupations was issued as a 
 guide to the local officer in determining how to classify men 
 under their main occupation. The next month commenced 
 the system continued until the signing of the armistice of 
 listing all the occupations on which reports were needed but 
 to star those of primary importance. Thus, automatic screw 
 machine operators and bakery machinists were starred be- 
 cause of excessive demands as compared with the supply, while 
 machine assemblers and bench hands were not starred. Com- 
 mencing with the October report the subdivision of occupa- 
 tions as to their importance to the army was extended. In 
 addition to starred occupations there appeared occupa- 
 tions followed by a star and the figure 3 (*3). In such 
 cases Form CCP-3, letter to former employer, was to 
 be used. Many of these men would be furloughed to industry, 
 if their records were satisfactory, or used in special units in 
 the army. Besides this new group there also appeared other 
 occupations marked "R R." Such men were to be transferred 
 immediately to the Engineer Corps, Fort Benjamin Harrison. 
 
 Another development in these Reports on Occupational 
 Classification needs to be noted. Up to the time of the March 
 report, men were reported under the main group heading, 
 such as, machinists, blacksmiths, carpenters, etc. By that 
 time it became apparent that the differences between carpen- 
 ter, e.g., as to whether they were house, bridge or ship car- 
 penters was more important than as to whether they were 
 journeymen or apprentice carpenters, grouping all carpen- 
 ters together. In consequence, with that report men were 
 to be reported in terms of the sub-divisions of the main groups 
 listed in CCP-4. This report called for men to be reported 
 under 234 different headings. The number of these headings 
 gradually increased so that in the last report used before 
 the armistice 469 headings were recognized. 
 
 War Department Requisitions. While the above refine- 
 ments in reporting men to Washington were being developed 
 there was a corresponding increase in the definiteness and
 
 FILLING REQUISITIONS 289 
 
 completeness of the requisitions transmitted to the camps. 
 Gradually better and better forms were developed upon which 
 the Staff Corps had to render their requisitions. And at the 
 same time experience showed the best method of preparing 
 telegrams or letters whereby requisitions could be transmitted 
 to the camps. Definite forms were developed and each requi- 
 sition written according to the appropriate form. 
 
 The following letter addressed to the Personnel Officer, 
 Camp Upton, on July llth, 1918, illustrates how well many 
 of these War Department requisitions were handled. 
 
 "1. Please permit me to express my appreciation of the 
 prompt and efficient manner in which you personally and your 
 organization arranged for the selection of 42 experienced 
 railroad men for the operation of the Terminal here, in accord- 
 ance with authority from Washington, D. C. 
 
 "2. In accordance with instructions from the Storage Officer 
 of the Port of New York, I went to Camp Upton on June 17th 
 to select 42 men experienced in railroad operation. Cards 
 for 60 men were given me. After analyzing the cards and 
 interviewing the men, I secured 18 men. You informed me 
 that a new draft would be in soon after June 1st. After 
 making proper arrangement I returned to Camp Upton on 
 July 8th to select the remaining 24 men. I found your organi- 
 zation had analyzed the possibilities very carefully and had 
 selected 36 cards. I personally examined all of the 36 men, 
 selecting 24 of them I deemed best qualified for our service. 
 I feel sure the other 12 could have been used if we had needed 
 that many. 
 
 "3. This letter is written as I did not have the opportunity 
 of seeing you personally before leaving Camp Upton on July 
 8th, and I want you to know we appreciate very much the 
 manner in which you handled the whole matter." 
 
 Transfer Reports and Transfer Lists. In order that Wash- 
 ington could keep track as to when requisitions were filled 
 and to what extent they were filled a Transfer Report blank 
 (CCP-8) was issued. The personnel officer reported each 
 day on this form the requisition number filled, the date of 
 shipment, the number of men per occupation and whether
 
 290 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 journeymen or apprentice; also whether in case the requisition 
 was not completely filled, it could be or not, and if so, when. 
 
 Soon after requisitions commenced to be filled, complaints 
 began coming in to Washington that the specialists called for 
 had not been received and that men not needed had been re- 
 ceived in their place. This often was true: the system did 
 not work perfectly, particularly in the early days. But often, 
 after investigation it was found that the trouble lay in the 
 receiving officer. For example, a man had been a telegraph 
 operator ten years, during the last four years he had studied 
 law at night and then had commenced the practise of law. 
 This man quite properly was transferred as a telegraph oper- 
 ator. But he didn't know why he was shipped and on being 
 asked by the Signal Corps receiving officer what his occu- 
 pation was, he said, "Lawyer." Hence the complaint that a 
 telegraph operator was missing and a lawyer had been re- 
 ceived who was not wanted. In other words, poor interview- 
 ing by the receiving officer could nullify to a considerable 
 extent the efficiency of careful personnel work elsewhere. 
 And there was a great deal of such hasty interviewing in the 
 early days, because all were rushing at top speed. In con- 
 sequence, Transfer Lists (CCP-11) to serve as a bill of lad- 
 ing were prepared by the personnel officer whenever he 
 shipped men. On them were listed all the enlisted men in- 
 cluded in the transfer with their army serial number, their 
 occupation and their degree of skill. A receiving officer could 
 then look at the list and know exactly what he was supposed 
 to receive. 
 
 The transfer list also served another very good purpose. 
 It forced the personnel officer to record in detail what he had 
 shipped and so made it impossible for him to cover up any 
 transfers which were not according to specifications. Often 
 this served as a club for him to use over higher ranking 
 officers who did not want him to ship men out of certain units 
 in the camp from which only such specialists could be ob- 
 tained but nevertheless knew that the requisition had to be
 
 FILLING REQUISITIONS 291 
 
 filled. The fact that a report in detail had to be rendered to 
 the man receiving the men helped force full compliance with 
 orders. 
 
 Camp Procedure, The details of the procedure followed 
 in the camp in filling requisitions are given in Chapter VII 
 of Vol. II. In that chapter, there are also illustrated the 
 forms used in keeping track of each requisition.
 
 CHAPTER 24 
 BALANCING A UNIT 
 
 By "balancing a unit" is meant supplying it with just the 
 men it needs in accordance with Tables of Personnel Speci- 
 fications so that it will function most efficiently. Three con- 
 siderations must be taken into account. The unit must be 
 supplied with men of those types of occupational experience 
 which will be employed in the unit. Otherwise time will be 
 required to train them in occupational work in addition to 
 purely military duties. The unit must, second, have assigned 
 to it sufficient men of leadership qualifications so that from 
 the group the company commander may select his non-com- 
 missioned officers, and third, the unit must be given its pro 
 rata share of superior, average and inferior men to fill its 
 quota of "unclassified" men. In other words, an excess of 
 poor men should not be placed in any organization. 
 
 If the personnel adjutant is called upon to balance a unit 
 at the time men are to be transferred into it then his task is 
 reasonably simple; for he needs only to select men needed in 
 the organization and have them transferred. But if the or- 
 ganization already has a large number of men in it and then 
 he is called upon to balance the unit he has a much more diffi- 
 cult duty. He must first of all make an inventory of the 
 men in the unit. Those specialists not needed in the unit 
 must be transferred to some unit where they are needed, and 
 he must secure specialists from some other place to fill up the 
 unit with what is needed there. Moving men already "an- 
 chored" in a unit requires great tact because in the majority 
 of cases both men and officers resent such changes. 
 
 292
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 293 
 
 USE OF TABLES OF OCCUPATIONAL NEEDS 
 
 The use of Tables of Occupational Needs and Personnel 
 Specifications in balancing units has already been discussed 
 in Chapter 1-1 at considerable length. A word or two at this 
 point will refresh the reafltr's memory of the whole situation. 
 
 From September until March the personnel officer had no 
 other guide in balancing units than Chart B. This chart 
 simply stated the total number of tradesmen needed in each 
 major unit of a combat division. There were no figures as 
 to how the tradesmen within an infantry regiment, for ex- 
 ample, were to be distributed among its companies. In con- 
 sequence, the personnel officer attempted to supply each regi- 
 ment, separate battalion, etc., with the totals specified in 
 Chart B. 
 
 With the appearance of the Tables of Occupational Needs 
 the whole scope of the work broadened. The personnel adju- 
 tant was then supplied with information as to how men 
 should be distributed not only between the major units of a 
 division but also between their sub-divisions, i.e., companies or 
 batteries. 
 
 The Personnel Specifications which appeared actually after 
 November llth would have still further broadened personnel 
 work as they would have enabled the personnel adjutant to 
 select men specifically for definite duties within the company. 
 This does not mean that the personnel adjutant would have 
 actually so assigned them but that he would have seen to it 
 that the company commander was supplied with the needed 
 men in terms of the individual duties to be performed by 
 that company. 
 
 BALANCING A NEW UNIT 
 
 After the drafted men have been interviewed and their 
 qualification cards classified they are assigned in accordance 
 with their qualifications and the specifications in the tables 
 of occupational needs. All this was comparatively easily 
 carried out when the men were first assigned to the depot
 
 294 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 brigade and afterwards transferred to their permanent unit. 
 During the first few months, however, selective-service men 
 were assigned on a geographical schedule to units both in 
 the combat division and depot brigade. As this plan did not 
 consider the man's individual fitness at all, many men were 
 misplaced necessitating a re-assignment later, or else their 
 greatest value was not utilized. Such re-assignments, how- 
 ever, caused endless trouble, as once a man "takes root" in a 
 company, ordinarily neither he nor his officers want to have 
 him moved. Gradually, the geographical assignments fell into 
 disuse and more and more men were originally assigned to the 
 depot brigades where they were held until needed. By the 
 middle of 1918 the new plan of using depot brigades as 
 reservoirs was operative throughout the camps in this country. 
 A Typical Order Authorizing the Balancing of a Unit. 
 The following telegram gives a clear idea as to just what 
 kind of orders were issued concerning requisitions for en- 
 listed men and for the balancing of two infantry brigades. It 
 was dated, July 20th, 1918. 
 
 "After all requisitions of date previous to July twenty-third, 
 on June draft increment your Depot Brigade have been filled 
 you will from the remainder unassigned in your Depot Bri- 
 gade complete authorized strength of all organizations at your 
 Camp of Nineteenth and Twentieth Infantry Brigades. If 
 additional men are required you are authorized to transfer 
 number needed from those to be received in your Camp about 
 twenty-second instant of the July Draft Increment. You 
 will transfer under above authority only such classified men 
 as are called for by tables of occupational needs of above 
 organizations (see form CCP Four Hundred Fifty) 
 or logical substitutes therefore. You will attach to your 
 occupational report Form CCP-15 of July draft increment 
 previously ordered a statement showing number and classifica- 
 tion of those transferred, also show same data for men of 
 previous drafts transferred under this authority. You will 
 use especial care to fill occupational needs of these organiza- 
 tions with men of qualifications specifically called for. 
 
 McCain."
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 295 
 
 Method Followed in Balancing a Unit. The procedure for 
 balancing units such as referred to in the above telegram is 
 well described in the following official report, dated October 
 22, 1918. 
 
 "2. Our Occupational Chart in this office is 8'x8'; and 
 shows all units in the division, all occupations needed in the 
 division, the number of specialists each unit is authorized to 
 have, what each has and what each needs. The authorized 
 number of specialists are painted on the board, yellow being 
 used for the main group, blue for the less essential. Chalk 
 is used for the second and third columns so that they may 
 be readily changed. Each man on his CCP 1 in the files is 
 given a vocational assignment and a ledger system is kept, 
 debiting and crediting each organization as the men are 
 moved out or in. This is posted on the large board each 
 evening. 
 
 "3. To facilitate the proper placing of men within the 
 regiments, each Regimental Personnel Adjutant has a board 
 showing by companies what specialists each is authorized, 
 has, and needs. The regiments check their boards against 
 our board weekly so that they will correspond. 
 
 "4. To carry the board one step further, each headquarters 
 company has a small board showing the different sections and 
 just what specific duty each specialist is performing. 
 
 "5. This system of vocational charts insures this office that 
 when a specialist is sent to an organization he will be used 
 in his proper line of work. Before being transferred each 
 man is trade tested and only experienced men are taken from 
 old units. Once a man has been found qualified and efficient 
 in his vocation, then his vocational assignment appears as part 
 of his name, the same as his army serial number. Upon re- 
 ceipt of an order the Regimental Personnel Adjutant knows 
 immediately what the man is to be used as and places him 
 accordingly." 
 
 Chapter IX of Volume II goes into still greater detail as to 
 procedure and gives the operating instruction furnished per- 
 sonnel adjutants covering the subject. 
 
 Use of Psychological Intelligence Ratings. The report re- 
 ferred to above does not mention intelligence ratings. This 
 was an oversight as they were utilized to advantage in that 
 camp.
 
 296 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 In the early days it was found that units varied enormously 
 in the percentage of each of the different grades of intelli- 
 gence possessed by the enlisted men, (i.e., A, B, C-J-, C, C 
 and D) some companies had a high percentage of A and B 
 men good officer and non-com, material ; others had prac- 
 tically none. In the same way, some companies, had a large 
 proportion of D men and some had practically none. The 
 following chart presents this fact very clearly. 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 It 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 hi 
 
 1 
 
 7 
 
 
 hi 
 
 RATED 
 
 COMPAMYA BCDEFCH IKL 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 | 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 ILLITERAT] 
 
 [ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 OR 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 14 
 
 
 
 
 FOREIGN 
 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 
 t 
 
 "P T 1 9 
 
 
 
 
 Inequality in Terms of Intelligence of Companies in an Infantry 
 Regiment, Due to the Men Being Assigned on Geographical Basis
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 297 
 
 The colonel of this regiment naturally expected the same 
 results from all of his company commanders. But that was 
 an impossibility. Tor Company E had 29% of its men of 
 high intelligence and only 9% of low intelligence as con- 
 trasted with Company M with 8% of high intelligence and 
 42% of low intelligence. 
 
 The procedure followed by personnel adjutants in order to 
 make use of intelligence tests was first of all to assign men 
 on the basis of their occupational experience. When that 
 was done, the remainder of the men were assigned in terms 
 of their intelligence ratings so that each company would re- 
 ceive its pro rata share of superior men, average men, and 
 inferior men. This resulted in making each company prac- 
 tically alike as far as its ability for training was concerned 
 and gave to each company commander equal opportunity to 
 warrant good men. For example, if such balancing of intelli- 
 gence had been carried out for the above regiment, each com- 
 pany would have had 12% of A and B men and 27% of illiter- 
 ates and foreigners, with the exception of the headquarters 
 company which would have been assigned a large proportion 
 of good men. Probably a considerable number of the poorer 
 men would never have been assigned the regiment but re- 
 served for labor units. 
 
 Balancing in Terms of Supply and Demand. So far the 
 subject of balancing has been discussed on the supposition 
 that the supply of specialists was equal to the demand. 
 Actually, this situation was the exception to the rule. Letter 
 of March 29, 1918 from The Adjutant General states the 
 situation at that time. 
 
 "From: The Adjutant General of the Army. 
 To: Commanding General of Divisions. 
 
 Subject: Apportionment of Available Skilled Personnel. 
 
 1. The accompanying Tables of Occupational Needs of 
 Units in an Infantry Division (Combat) show (a) the per- 
 sonnel provided for in the Tables of Organization; and (b)
 
 298 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the trades or occupations most apt to qualify a man for the 
 duties indicated. 
 
 2. A comparison of these tables with the'data in your Divi- 
 sion Personnel Office will show the extent to which the avail- 
 able skilled men of your division have been apportioned among 
 the various companies and batteries and trains where their 
 abilities are most needed. 
 
 3. Where such an analysis reveals serious shortages, three 
 means of remedy are suggested: 
 
 (a) Transfer from unit to unit, to effect a well-balanced 
 organization. 
 
 (b) Assignment of new arrivals, in filling up skeleton- 
 ized units, only after careful determination of their quali- 
 fications. 
 
 (c) Special training within the division for the develop- 
 ment of needed motor mechanics, topographers, farriers, 
 telegraphers and other specialists. 
 
 At a later date it may be possible to honor requisitions 
 from divisions for specialists of various kinds, to fill them 
 to authorized strength. At present the supply of certain 
 much needed specialists is inadequate even for the completion 
 of units soon to join the Expeditionary Forces. Consequently, 
 in order to meet demands for skilled personnel, recourse must 
 be had for the present to specialized training within your 
 own organization, and to the proper distribution of skill 
 already available." 
 
 Balancing was then a matter of compromising between what 
 was specified in the Tables of Occupational Needs and what 
 was available. Because of this the personnel adjutant was 
 required to use great judgment so as to place his small stock 
 of specialists to the greatest advantage, and wisely to make 
 use of all possible substitutes. 
 
 In some cases an organization could not possibly be sup- 
 plied with its necessary share of specialists, and sometimes a 
 requisition for the needed men was honored by the War 
 Department notwithstanding the letter of March 29th. One 
 example of this is reported by the commanding officer of an 
 ammunition train in a letter from France addressed to the 
 personnel supervisor that engineered the transfer.
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 299 
 
 "Just a few lines in the deuce of a hurry to express my 
 sincere thanks to you for your good offices with regard to the 
 personnel of my Motor Battalion. 
 
 "The men did not reach us until after our arrival here, but 
 when they did come, it did not take me long to become con- 
 vinced that you had made good your promise in fine shape, 
 and believe me, I am grateful. 
 
 "This is a country where you have got to deliver the goods. 
 Reasons for failure and explanations, however valid, are 
 next door to useless. They figure, and very necessarily, that 
 you should have put it over somehow. 
 
 "You can judge then what these specialists mean to me. 
 With the outfit I have now, I miss my guess if I shall not 
 soon have the fastest team of its kind in. France. (I know 
 that sounds big but I mean it literally.) 
 
 "If I 'make it home after the war, I shall drop in on you 
 in Washington and give you all the dope on the whole outfit 
 you deserve it and it will be a pleasure to me. In the 
 meantime I want to say again that I surely do appreciate 
 what you have done for me and mine." 
 
 Use of Regimental Personnel Adjutants. Because the sup- 
 ply of men available for transfer was practically never equal 
 to the number required in units authorized to be formed, 
 units were filled from two or more large transfers. Some- 
 times these transfers would be a month apart, so that by the 
 time the second was ready to be made the first lot of men 
 had been pretty well placed in their units. This resulted 
 in many a man assigned as an occupational specialist being 
 used for some other purpose by the company commander. 
 For example, a cook may have been made into a sergeant, 
 or an unclassified man made into a cook. It was consequently 
 very desirable for the division personnel adjutant to be ac- 
 quainted with these changes in order to make the new assign- 
 ments in terms of what the companies actually needed. In 
 the early days this was accomplished by calling on organiza- 
 tion commanders to render requisitions for the men they 
 needed. An example of such a requisition is shown in chap- 
 ter 25. The personnel adjutant compared these requisitions 
 with his tally of what should be needed and if the two agreed
 
 300 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 fairly well would work from the requisition on the ground 
 that each officer had special ways of accomplishing the same 
 end and that it was better to supply him with exactly what 
 he wanted, even if it was not exactly the best, than to give 
 him the ideal selection and not satisfy his desires. If the requi- 
 sition and the tally did not agree a conference was held 
 resulting in a compromise. 
 
 On April 29, 1918 personnel officers were authorized for 
 each regiment, separate battalion or similar unit, (G. O. 
 No. 42, 1918). His primary function was to handle the 
 pay rolls. But the General Order stated that he "will have 
 charge of all matters relating to the enlisted personnel of the 
 command, except instruction, training, discipline, equipment, 
 supply and sanitation." And this was interpreted to mean 
 that he should have charge of the balancing of his own units. 
 Division and camp personnel officers in consequence called 
 upon these regimental personnel officers to aid them in the 
 work. Such cooperation was mutually advantageous. It gave 
 the division personnel officer some officer with whom he could 
 deal in balancing that officer's unit. And it gave the oppor- 
 tunity to the regimental personnel officer to see it that his 
 unit was properly supplied with good men, thereby increasing 
 his usefulness and prestige. Frequently a transfer of 10,000 
 men would all be worked out on paper so that every man was 
 definitely assigned not only to the regiment but to the company 
 in the regiment. How well this worked out is shown by the 
 following letter. 
 
 September 9, 1918. 
 "FROM: The Commanding General, 
 
 TO: The Personnel Adjutant, Camp 
 
 SUBJECT: Personnel Work. 
 
 1. The Commanding General desires to express to you his 
 appreciation of the great improvement in the Personnel work 
 of this camp during the past three months. 
 
 2. It is believed that the system in vogue in this camp has 
 brought about a much clearer understanding on the part of 
 all officers of the value of personnel work, and has convinced
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 301 
 
 both officers and men that when the work of the Personnel 
 Adjutant is efficiently performed, through him, and through 
 him only should newly drafted men be assigned, especially 
 when new units are being organized. 
 
 3. As a result of putting all matters affecting personnel, 
 both commissioned and enlisted under the Personnel Adjutant, 
 and as a result of making 1 the Personnel Adjutant a compo- 
 nent part of the Headquarters Staff, the th Division re- 
 cently organized at this camp received, without the slightest 
 friction, approximately twenty thousand men within four 
 hours, each man having been assigned to his proper place in 
 accordance with the table of occupational needs. The value 
 of this work was conclusively proven when, within fourteen 
 days after its organization, the entire division was reviewed 
 by the Commanding General and presented a most creditable 
 appearance. 
 
 BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL W 
 
 S. M. W. 
 
 Major, General Staff, Executive Officer." 
 
 Requisitions on the War Department. As already stated 
 very few requisitions were rendered the War Department by 
 combat division commanders for occupational specialists and 
 fewer still were honored. On the other hand, requisitions 
 for specialists for staff corps units totaling over a million 
 men were filled. That personnel supervisors were most alive 
 to the need of supplying divisions with specialists is attested 
 by the many reports on this subject forwarded to Washing- 
 ton. Such a letter, dated April 3, 1918, reflects the condition 
 at that time very accurately. 
 
 "During the formative period of the nd Division, its 
 Commander has been repeatedly assured that if requisitions 
 upon him for skilled men were honored in the spirit of patri- 
 otic service, when the time arrived for his Division to depart 
 overseas, there would be no question of his unit being filled 
 up with men equally as skilled as those he had relinquished 
 to other outfits. 
 
 "On February 28th, the Personnel Officer put in a requi- 
 sition for about forty-eight hundred men, giving in detail the 
 desired skills. This was done, as apparently the time had 
 arrived when the nd Division should be recruited to strength
 
 302 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 and prepared for foreign duty. The requisition was prepared 
 in detail and set forth the number of men needed, with their 
 specific occupational skills. 
 
 "Approximately ten days later a telegram was received, 
 asking that the needs of each unit be immediately wired to 
 Washington. This being impracticable, the Adjutant General 
 was wired that the information was coming forward by mail. 
 It was sent in chart form on March the 15th. Two days 
 later (March the 17th) the Adjutant General's telegram, 
 marked 'A', was received. 
 
 "For the sake of emphasis, I quote in part: 'MEN WILL 
 BE TAKEN FROM THE GENERAL RUN OF DRAFT 
 COMMA IT BEING IMPRACTICAL TO HAVE CON- 
 SIDERED OCCUPATIONAL REQUIREMENTS.' This 
 simple sentence at once cancels and makes void the field-work- 
 ers' principal "Sales" argument, and robs the Personnel Sys- 
 tem of its chief claim to enthusiastic support. As a clincher, 
 on March the 19th telegrams copies marked "B," "C" and 
 "D," were received. These telegrams ordered forty-eight 
 hundred men to the nd Division, whose only qualification 
 was that they were to be 'white.' 
 
 "I witnessed on yesterday the receipt of the 'white' men 
 
 from Camp , and I judge that the Personnel Officer 
 
 there considers that Mexicans and Indians fall under this 
 elastic classification. I examined one group of one hundred 
 and six cards, on which there were four occupational green 
 tabs, two of which were for "handling horses." Ninety-five 
 were classified as farmers, thirty-two spoke German and, judg- 
 ing from their names, there was about 10% Mexicans or 
 Indians. As an estimate, I must say that 85% of the nine 
 hundred men received from Camp Travis were farmers, and 
 while they looked stalwart and hardy, they were hopelessly 
 devoid of the occupational skills needed in the nd Division. 
 
 "Having witnessed the spirit with which the nd Division 
 filled requisitions for overseas service and other units, which 
 they had been told would precede them abroad, can you 
 
 wonder that General B , Major B , Chief 
 
 of Staff, Major M , Adjutant and Major B , 
 
 Personnel Officer, as we stood watching the receipt of the 
 Camp Travis troops, failed to enthuse over the personnel 
 work as a whole and my suggestions for its improvement?" 
 
 Gradually as time went on, however, the War Department 
 was increasingly filling requisitions for combat divisions and
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 303 
 
 had the war progressed another three months it is safe to 
 predict such requisitions would have been handled in the 
 same way that staff corps requisitions were. The situation 
 as it existed on October 22nd at a Field Artillery Replacement 
 Camp is described in the following letter from the camp 
 commander. 
 
 "From: Commanding General. 
 
 To: The Adjutant General of the Army, Washing- 
 
 ton, D. C. 
 Subject: Occupational Needs for this Depot. 
 
 "1. This Depot has been running short of late of needed 
 Specialists for our enlisted men's training school, and on in- 
 vestigation it is found that this organization is on the same 
 basis, regarding the obtaining of men from Depot Brigades, 
 as a Division, that is, men are received from the Depot Bri- 
 gades only after all starred specialists have been ordered else- 
 where. 
 
 "2. In view of the fact that one-third of our enlisted per- 
 sonnel are to be turned out as Specialists, it is very evident 
 that it will be necessary to receive a better class of men than 
 a Division would ordinarily get, since we find that out of every 
 thousand men from the Depot Brigade only about one-sixth 
 are qualified to enter the Specialist Schools. Had it not been 
 for five thousand men, trained in Army Vocational Schools, 
 who were received the latter part of July and the first of 
 August, it would have been impossible to turn out the proper 
 proportion of Specialists. 
 
 "3. Following is a list of the twenty-three schools that are 
 now organized: 
 
 Motorcyclists # Saddlers 
 
 Motor Truck Drivers Machine Gunners 
 
 Tractor Drivers J Painters 
 
 Chauffeurs # Telephone Men 
 
 Chief Mechanics (light) Carpenters 
 
 Battery Mechanics (light) # Clerks 
 
 Machine Mechanics ( Heavy )# Typists 
 
 Chief Mechanics (Heavy) # Stenographers 
 # Motor Sergeants Stable Sergeants 
 
 Auto Mechanics # Topographers 
 
 Bandsmen Instrument Men and Scouts. 
 
 Horseshoers.
 
 304 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "4. The schools marked J are at present very short of 
 men, and it is impossible to get a sufficient number of quali- 
 fied men from the present class that are being transferred 
 from the Depot Brigade. 
 
 "5. It is suggested that a starred list of the following 
 civilian occupations be made for the F.A.R.D., and furnished 
 the Depot Brigade, so that our present shortage will in time 
 be remedied: 
 
 200 per month (Blacksmiths (7L7g) For Horseshoers' 
 
 School. 
 
 100 per month (Leather Workers (47,49L) (Canvas Work- 
 ers (76a.76s) For Saddlers' School. 
 75 per month (Painters (13) For Painters' School. 
 50 per month (Carpenters (8cl,8c,8g,8h,8wh,) For Carpen- 
 ters' School 
 
 125 per month (Electricians (10ee,10es,10g,10su,10st,10u) 
 (Telephone Men 32t,33) 
 
 For Telephone School. 
 
 200 per month (Clerical Workers (38) (Accountants (37ac,- 
 37au,37g,37s) 
 
 (Stenographers (39s,39st,39t) For Clerks' 
 School. 
 
 150 per month (Draftsman (29) 
 
 (Surveyors (30) For Topographers' School. 
 150 per month (Musicians (44) For Bandsmen 
 150 per month (Machinists and Mechanics (6g,6o,6ms, Fore- 
 man Preferred) For Motor Sergeants' School." 
 
 The main reason such conditions arose was that the supply 
 of men coming into the camps was always less than that 
 immediately needed. Conditions in Europe kept speeding up 
 the army program and the capacity of the camps was stretched 
 to the utmost to keep up at all. In consequence, plans for 
 assigning men had to be more of a "hand to mouth" program 
 than any one desired. All officials were straining every 
 nerve to secure a surplus of men in order that units could be 
 organized more freely but the ideal was never reached.
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 305 
 
 BALANCING OF UNITS ALREADY PARTIALLY 
 FORMED 
 
 The National Guard divisions are good examples of organi- 
 zations that were already partially formed when the person- 
 nel officer started to balance them. Most national guard regi- 
 ments were composed of infantry before the war. But a com- 
 bat division is less than half infantry. When the division was 
 formed it was necessary to remake infantry regiments into 
 artillery or engineer regiments or even trains. Moreover, 
 since national guard regiments totalled far less than the 3000 
 men of a war strength infantry regiment it was necessary 
 to combine two or more of them to make up a new regiment. 
 The result of such reorganization was to have many men 
 improperly placed when their best individual usefulness to 
 the service is considered. 
 
 Each enlisted man was interviewed and his qualification 
 card made out. An assistant personnel officer then went over 
 each card with the company commander and additional infor- 
 mation was added in the light of the latter's knowledge of 
 the soldier. The cards were checked in the space marked 
 "Preferred" of those men whenever the company commander 
 stated that they were key men in the organization. Very 
 few company commanders took advantage of this procedure 
 to insist on having a large number of men checked, even though 
 it was understood that all unchecked men were available 
 for transfer without consulting the company commander. An 
 expert classifier next marked the cards to indicate in terms 
 of what trade he should be classified. 
 
 Following this an inventory was made as to how many men 
 of each trade there were in each company and through combin- 
 ing these company totals how many there were in each regi- 
 ment or separate battalion; and last of all how many in the 
 entire division. These totals were compared with Chart B 
 (and at a later date with the tables of occupational needs) 
 in order to see where there were shortages as compared with 
 the actual requirements.
 
 306 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The personnel officer then proceeded to supply these short- 
 ages as best he could from the available supply, first attempt- 
 ing to obtain them from companies within the same battalion or 
 regiment and if this was impossible from some other regi- 
 ment. Gradually the needs of each organization would thus 
 be provided for as far as it was possible. 
 
 In most divisions one unit would be balanced at a time, 
 surplus men being transferred to a unit where they were 
 needed and the shortages supplied. In other divisions most 
 of the transfers would be worked out on paper and when 
 all was ready, all would be transferred at the same time. 
 
 This sounds simple. Actually, the task of balancing a divi- 
 sion already partially formed is an extremely complicated 
 one. There is no way of escaping making all sorts of excep- 
 tions in order to please individual officers. For example, a 
 colonel will object to men being transferred out of his regi- 
 ment and unless appeased make such a fuss that many of 
 the transfers will be revoked. But if his attention is 
 called to the good men he is going to receive in return he 
 may be mollified, particularly if an exception is made in the 
 case of some one man in his own regiment whom it is appar- 
 ent he is particularly interested in keeping. Such negotia- 
 tions, however, take time and constantly upset the plans 
 already formulated. 
 
 Another difficulty is that after the plans are practically com- 
 pleted, it is discovered for example, that there is a consid- 
 erable shortage of auto repairmen, and a surplus of car- 
 penters and electricians. A few of these, particularly the 
 electricians, may have had auto repair experience. They can 
 be so used. The remainder are studied and among them are 
 men who are useful at another occupation, say machinist. 
 An attempt is made to substitute them for machinists who 
 have auto repair experience. If this is successful, the person- 
 nel adjutant has just so many more to be used against the 
 shortage. And so it goes. But each substitution causes
 
 BALANCING A UNIT 307 
 
 changes in the totals and upsets possibly other schemes for 
 filling all the positions with well qualified men. 
 
 Experience has shown that an already formed division can 
 thus be balanced to the very great advantage of the division. 
 But such balancing as can be accomplished under the circum- 
 stances can not be so thorough as would have been the case 
 if all the men had been originally assigned from a depot 
 brigade by the same personnel adjutant.
 
 CHAPTER 25 
 
 METHODS EMPLOYED TO INTEREST OFFICERS 
 IN THE PROPER PLACEMENT OF MEN 
 
 Personnel work in its real meaning was unknown to the reg- 
 ular army when war broke out and it was likewise unknown to 
 most business houses in the country. Only in a comparatively 
 few corporations was there an employment manager and not 
 in all of these was real personnel work prosecuted, for many 
 employment managers did little else than hire new employees. 
 It is no wonder then that officers looked askance at personnel 
 work when it was introduced into the Army and that many 
 were slow to show any interest in it. 
 
 In this chapter are recounted some of the difficulties that 
 were experienced in educating such officers to a full apprecia- 
 tion of what personnel work meant; and also some of the 
 methods used in accomplishing this. 
 
 ANIMOSITY IN NATIONAL ARMY CAMPS TOWARD 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK BECAUSE OF WAR 
 
 DEPARTMENT REQUISITIONS 
 
 As has been stated previously, the leaders in personnel work 
 had not planned an organization which should bring about 
 transfers of enlisted men between camps. The only organiza- 
 tion originally planned and put into operation provided for 
 one captain in each camp with supervisors traveling between 
 camps so as to co-ordinate and standardize the work. And 
 this captain was made an assistant to the adjutant as it was 
 felt that his work would be a help to that officer. 
 
 Due, however, to the shortage of men and the demands of 
 General Pershing and the Staff Corps for all sorts and kinds 
 of specialists it was most natural for the War Department to 
 
 308
 
 PLACEMENT OF MEN 309 
 
 requisition the national army camps for the needed men. 
 There is no question whatever that this would have been done 
 whether a personnel organization existed or not. The men had 
 to be obtained and these camps were the most available source 
 of supply. The remarks of a captain of the French Army are 
 apropos, "I lined my company up fully forty times a month 
 and ordered all butchers, or carpenters, or accountants, or 
 what not, to step two paces to the front. And then I turned 
 them over to some officer and I never saw them again." It is 
 a fair question actually whether the personnel system as it was 
 organized was not more favorable to company officers than 
 the French system. 
 
 Putting conjecture aside, it is a fact that many officers came 
 to feel very strongly against the personnel system because 
 through it they lost many of their good men. And because of 
 this fact it was much more difficult to get them to see the real 
 value of the work, if not to themselves, at least to the army 
 as a whole. 
 
 The general attitude of officers toward transferring men 
 became so critical in December due to these many transfers 
 that a letter was issued on the subject, dated December 8, 
 1917, as follows: 
 
 "From: The Adjutant General of the Army. 
 To: The Commanding General, th Division. 
 
 Subject: Transfer from National Army Cantonments to 
 Regular Army, National Guard and Special and 
 Technical Organizations. 
 
 "The Secretary of War directs that the following be com- 
 municated to each National Army Division Commander: 
 
 "1. Frequent, and for the present, continuous calls must 
 be made upon the Commanding General of National Army 
 Cantonments for the transfer of men under their command 
 for the purpose of organizing special and technical units, 
 urgently needed for the service of the rear with our Ameri- 
 can Expeditionary Forces. It is absolutely essential that 
 this service be organized at the earliest possible date in 
 order that as combatant organizations arrive, they may be 
 expeditiously transported and supplied.
 
 310 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "2. It is also necessary to call upon National Army Can- 
 tonment Commanders for transfer of men to some of the 
 Regular Army and National Guard Divisions to complete 
 their organization for early shipment overseas. 
 
 "3. In order to supply these demands from forces now 
 available, it is necessary to transfer men from National 
 Army Cantonments, even if it results in the reduction of the 
 National Army Division below their authorized organized 
 strength. The only other solution possible would be the 
 entire disbandment of some National Army Divisions in 
 order to keep others at their organized strength. This is 
 deemed a most unwise policy, as it is considered of advan- 
 tage to all the divisions concerned to maintain their organ- 
 ization, continue their training, and be filled to full strength 
 at the earliest practicable date. 
 
 "4. All Division Commanders therefore, are called upon 
 to fully cooperate in furnishing promptly the number of 
 men required, and men with the special qualifications 
 required when such are requested, in order that there may 
 be the least delay in furnishing to our forces in France the 
 service urgently needed. 
 
 "5. Future drafts will be continuous, keeping pace with 
 the supplies of clothing and equipment available. In order 
 to prevent disorganization within the Divisions, all future 
 drafts received will be first assigned to Depot Brigades. 
 There occupational classifications of the men will be com- 
 pleted as quickly as possible, and reports forwarded thereon 
 to The Adjutant General of the Army in accordance with 
 the instructions covering the semi-monthly reports on the 
 printed forms (CCP-9). Depot Brigade Commanders will 
 then supply on requisition from Division Commanders such 
 numbers of men as are required to fill up as fast as prac- 
 ticable, organizations within the divisions. Division Com- 
 manders in making these requisitions will call for only the 
 numbers of specially qualified men that are needed for 
 service within their divisions. This will leave in the Depot 
 Brigades the remaining men of special qualifications to fill 
 requisitions for special units and other organizations out- 
 side the Divisions." 
 
 This letter had a marked effect on some officers, but on the 
 whole the grumbling continued as before. Officers are human 
 beings and it was most natural for complaints, when good
 
 PLACEMENT OF MEN 311 
 
 men were taken from them upon whom they had spent time 
 in drilling with the expectation of developing them into a prize 
 organization. 
 
 This condition has only been reviewed here as it must be 
 understood in order to appreciate much of the criticism leveled 
 at personnel work in the early days and still echoed occasion- 
 ally by officers whose only contact with it was in the early 
 months of the National Army Camps. 
 
 STOPPING THE "PASSING OF CULLS" 
 
 Another condition which seriously affected the efficiency of 
 personnel work was the "game" of "passing culls." Many offi- 
 cers considered it a huge joke to transfer inferior men to an- 
 other organization when opportunity arose. But any such prac- 
 tice injured personnel work for it was essential that men 
 would be selected and transferred according to specifications. 
 If this was not done, personnel work would be impossible 
 except on a very limited scale. 
 
 No better description can be given of the way in which 
 requisitions were handled by some officers than that of Ring 
 W. Lardner in the Saturday Evening Post of June 8, 1918: 
 
 "Camp Grant, Nov. 4. 
 
 "Friend Al: Well Al they have begin to bust up our regt. 
 and take men away from it and the men they take will get 
 to France before the rest of us the lucky stiffs but they don't 
 send them right to France from here but they send them 
 down south to the national guards camps and fill up the 
 national guards with them and the national guards are going 
 to get across the pond first because Secty. Daniels wants 
 to save good regts. for the finish. 
 
 "Well Al they can't send me to France too soon but it looks 
 like they wasn't a chance for a man like I to get sent with 
 the national guards because the men we are sending down 
 south is the riff and raff you might say who we want to get 
 rid of them so when Secty. Daniels sends word that the 
 national guards at such and such a place want 7 or 800 men 
 the officers here picks them out from amidst the kitchen 
 policemen and the guard house."
 
 312 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "Passing Culls" and keeping the good men was most natural. 
 Such action came from officers who looked upon their own or- 
 ganization with great pride and did not realize that the Army 
 as a whole merited chief concern and not their own small com- 
 pany, battalion, regiment or even division. Coupled with this 
 restricted view of what was important was the normal selfish- 
 ness of man. To counteract such a point of view it was neces- 
 sary to educate officers to a broad vision of what the whole 
 army or even the nation must accomplish. Very few officers 
 failed to respond in a most remarkably unselfish way once 
 they had this point of view. An incident at Camp Taylor 
 illustrates all this. Two weeks after a private by the name 
 of Alexander had been received in camp he was ordered trans- 
 ferred from an infantry company to the Signal Battalion as 
 he was an expert electrician. Both the Company Commander 
 and the Colonel protested most vigorously. Finally it was put 
 to them this way, "Supposing your company was going over 
 the top, would you rather have this private as your first 
 sergeant or behind the lines as an electrician looking after 
 signalling? Would he be of greater value to you helping lead 
 your men or seeing to it that you were properly protected by 
 barrage fire?" As they pictured their relation to the rest of 
 the division they saw that all units must be properly equipped 
 or they would suffer. And they withdrew their protests. 
 Moreover, the Colonel shook the officer's hand most effusively 
 several days later and thanked him for presenting this truer 
 point of view. 
 
 The personnel organization early realized that this narrow 
 point of view was one of the great obstacles to its success. 
 And again and again in varied ways it emphasized the need 
 for morale work directed at the officers that they might appre- 
 ciate their true responsibility to the Army as a whole. Various 
 methods were used to accomplish this which are mentioned in 
 the next section. One factor may be given here as it is pecu- 
 liarly related to this particular subject of "passing culls." 
 
 At one camp, the commanding general ordered the officers
 
 PLACEMENT OF MEN 313 
 
 in the depot brigade to select the best one-third of their men 
 and transfer them into the division. This order was obeyed 
 by only a few officers with a resulting transfer of inferior 
 men into the division. A few days later the War Department 
 ordered all the men in the depot brigade transferred to another 
 camp. When it became known throughout the camp that they 
 had the inferior men and another camp had the superior men 
 there were many informal indignation meetings. And through 
 this experience many an officer came to see that the best in- 
 terests of all lay in sending good men when they were called 
 for. From that time on this particular camp was singularly 
 free from the charge of "passing culls." 
 
 By July, 1918, it was a decided exception to the rule to 
 find "culls" being deliberately shipped when good men were 
 called for. The change was not due entirely to the personnel 
 organization, of course, but it is certain that it did play an 
 important part in this change. 
 
 EDUCATING OFFICERS AS TO THE MEANING OF 
 PERSONNEL WORK 
 
 Personnel work, as has already been pointed out, was an 
 innovation in the Army. War Risk Insurance was also an 
 innovation. But all officers understood insurance and realized 
 its benefits. In consequence, it experienced little of the anta- 
 gonism experienced by those engaged in personnel work. 
 This proves most conclusively that it was not because person- 
 nel work was an innovation that it was opposed, but rather 
 because it was unknown and not understood. 
 
 A number of different methods were employed more or less 
 consciously to educate officers up to a realization of what per- 
 sonnel work really meant. 
 
 From the beginning it was emphasized that "service" should 
 be the keynote. At conferences and through supervisors the 
 personnel officer was urged to do anything he was called upon 
 to do whether it was related to personnel work or not, and to 
 do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. It has already been
 
 314 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 pointed out in Chapters 19 and 20 how this policy resulted 
 in the transfer of much of what was strictly adjutant's work 
 to the office of the personnel officer. Much emphasis was put 
 upon 'the information section of the office. Here officers and 
 civilians alike were informed as to where Tom Smith from 
 Keysport, Kentucky, or any other soldier could be found. And 
 from the same section were furnished to the Y. M. C. A. and 
 similar organizations lists of men who could teach English or 
 who could furnish entertainment. The needs of officers for 
 enlisted men of special qualifications were studied and often 
 these soldiers were brought in even before the officer had asked 
 for them. An illustration of this sort is worth noting as it 
 resulted in the winning of a heretofore hostile Chief of Staff. 
 The personnel officer overheard this officer utter the exclama- 
 tion, "I wish I had a real private secretary, that's what I 
 need." On investigation, it was found the officer was poor in 
 French and was much bothered with the handling of French 
 officers and particularly with their reports. The personnel offi- 
 cer found a soldier who had had several years' experience in 
 the United States Consular Service in South America, who 
 spoke French and Spanish fluently, was a college graduate 
 and had recently acted as private secretary to a railroad offi- 
 cial. When called in it was found, moreover, that he was a 
 man of fine personal appearance and bearing. The personnel 
 officer then broached the subject to the Chief of Staff, only to 
 be told there wasn't such a man as he wanted in the division. 
 But when he was produced and it was found that he was only 
 a "buck" private, the Chief of Staff melted and apologized 
 for his previous unfriendly action. 
 
 In some camps lectures were used to advantage. At one 
 camp where the proper spirit was particularly lacking, a 
 supervisor secured permission to address all the officers, a 
 group at a time. On the surface the topic was "Qualification 
 Cards," but really it was "The Needs of your Division, over 
 against your Company." Many officers not connected with 
 personnel work testified to the value of the talks.
 
 PLACEMENT OF MEN 315 
 
 The weekly letters sent out by the Committee to personnel 
 officers frequently called attention to the bad effects of poor 
 team-work. More often they portrayed the good results of 
 good work. Two paragraphs from such a letter read as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "The receipt of a detachment of good men on one of his 
 recent requisitions, prompted the Major General receiving 
 the men to write the following to the Major General who 
 supplied them: 
 
 'I am writing to express my great appreciation of your 
 care in selecting the three hundred men that were for- 
 warded from your division last week. They are certainly 
 a refreshing change from the culls shipped to me by the 
 regular cavalry regiments to form the division trains. 
 After looking them over, the train commander reported 
 to me that he was now prepared to break every non-com- 
 missioned officer in his command, in view of the good 
 material sent by you.' " 
 
 Frequent conferences of personnel officers helped greatly 
 in this respect. They afforded a good opportunity for the 
 officers from different camps to get acquainted with one an- 
 other. Thus they came to see that they were part of a 
 great army organization, and that they were working for 
 the best interests of the Army as a whole, and they could not 
 help but preach the same doctrine to other officers with whom 
 they came in contact. Moreover, it made it practically impos- 
 sible for them to allow the shipment of inferior men when 
 they personally knew the personnel officer who would receive 
 them. 
 
 Requisitions were frequently called for from organization 
 commanders when their units were to be balanced. Often 
 there was no real need for requisitions as the personnel officer 
 knew the qualifications of the men in the units and the total 
 needs. But by calling for such requisitions officers had to 
 think out what they actually did need, and in so doing came 
 to appreciate the value of personnel work. Following is one
 
 316 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 such requisition, dated November 27, 1917, and prepared 
 when the only guide to the needs of the engineer regiment 
 for occupational specialists was Chart B., and the Colonel's 
 own knowledge of the situation. 
 
 "1. Following are a number of men of various trades re- 
 quired to bring an engineer regiment up to a typical standard : 
 Topographical surveyors and sketchers, at least 10 of 
 
 whom should be good instrument men 24 
 
 Draftsmen, topographical and mechanical 14 
 
 Photographers 4 
 
 Lithographers and zincographers 8 
 
 Quarry men (skilled in explosives) 5 
 
 Miners 14 
 
 Skilled Carpenters 50 
 
 Bridge Carpenters 62 
 
 Blacksmiths 10 
 
 Electricians 20 
 
 Enginemen, steam 4 
 
 Masons 7 
 
 Calkers 17 
 
 Riggers 16 
 
 Expert Axmen 25 
 
 Horseshoers 4 
 
 Farriers 9 
 
 Saddlers 3 
 
 Musicians 3 
 
 Signal men, as required by Regulations 13 
 
 Wheelwrights 1 
 
 Linemen 15 
 
 Sign Painters 6 
 
 Steam Shovel Men 2 
 
 Stenographers 10 
 
 "2. In addition to the above, we could use as Master Engi- 
 neers suitable men of following vocations. These should all 
 be high grade men of Construction Superintendent type. 
 We desire to interview such men before transfer. 
 
 Lithographer 1 Timber Bridge Man ... 1 
 
 Quarryman 1 Electrical Engineer. ... 1 (college) 
 
 (Explosives expert) Rigger , . 1 
 
 Hard Rock Miner.. . 1 Building Superintendent 1 (concrete) 
 Steel Bridge Man.. . 1 Boiler and tank maker.. 1 (heavy 
 
 plates)"
 
 PLACEMENT OF MEN 317 
 
 After a colonel had prepared such a requisition he was 
 much more of a supporter of personnel work, provided he 
 received the men later on; and he helped to educate others. 
 
 The use of civilian supervisors was a very great help in 
 that they met high ranking officers on a more informal basis 
 and had greater opportunity to explain the working of the 
 system. The military supervisor was forced much more 
 often to prepare a report on conditions as he found them, 
 and furnish the commanding officer a copy for his comment 
 before he had a real opportunity to explain just what was 
 wanted and why it should be done. 
 
 But all these methods were after all, subordinate to that 
 of the influence of the personnel officer himself in the camp 
 Capable personnel officers required very little help from the 
 outside in order to establish cordial relations with the officers 
 of the camp and to carry out the provisions of effective per- 
 sonnel work. Inferior personnel officers, on the other hand, 
 could not win admiration for the system even when coupled 
 up with all the methods outlined above. Personnel work 
 lived and prospered where its local representative demon- 
 strated day by day that it was a valuable adjunct to the mili- 
 tary machine. Such service as illustrated below could not 
 fail to have favorable results. A personnel adjutant 
 compiled a little book containing all the forms used 
 by his office, together with an explanation of the function 
 and value of each one, and a brief resume of the work of 
 his office. About four days after a new commanding officer 
 arrived in the camp he added to this little book a concise 
 and up-to-the-minute summary of the exact status of the per- 
 sonnel of the camp. He then placed the book upon the desk 
 of the Commanding Officer. Naturally, the latter was 
 appreciative of so complete a statement of the facts he needed 
 to know about the camp, and was interested in the processes 
 by which the figures were obtained. It was an easy matter 
 after that to secure his hearty cooperation in the necessary 
 activities of personnel work.
 
 CHAPTER 26 
 
 SELECTION OF MEN FOR OFFICERS' 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 A quite distinct phase of placement was encountered in con- 
 nection with the Officers' Training Shools. Here emphasis 
 had to be placed upon those qualifications which pertain to 
 an officer as distinguished from qualifications which fit a man 
 to do civilian work within the Army. In other words, in 
 selecting officer material such qualifications, as "physical qual- 
 ities", "intelligence", "leadership", "personal qualities", etc., 
 had to be considered rather than whether the man was a 
 "carpenter" or "blacksmith", etc. 
 
 That there was a real problem here is apparent to all. 
 
 "At the time of the armistice the strength of the Army 
 was in round figures 3,500,000 men and 180,000 officers. The 
 mobilization of this great force for the rank and file, so 
 largely accomplished through the successful application of 
 compulsory service, has naturally excited more general inter- 
 est than the organization of the officer personnel. But it is 
 no disparagement of the achievement of the recruiting service 
 arid the draft administration to express the opinion that the 
 selection and training of the officers' corps was an equally dif- 
 ficult and an equally important task. An experienced French 
 officer, engaged in a study of the American mobilization, re- 
 cently remarked: 'I know you recruited 3,500,000 men in 
 18 months. That is very good but not so difficult. But I 
 am told also that although you had no officer reserve to start 
 with yet you found 160,000 new officers, most of them com- 
 
 318
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 319 
 
 petent. That is what is astonishing and what was impos- 
 sible. Tell me how that was done ' 
 
 "At the outset it is necessary to understand and appreciate 
 the scope and effect of the "Plattsburg Idea" before the war, 
 because, so far at least as the line of the Army is concerned, 
 it was the preliminary work of the Plattsburg camps in 1915- 
 16 that made at all possible the prompt recruitment and train- 
 ing of officers on a large scale. Our French observer was 
 only partially informed when he commented on the lack of 
 an officers' reserve, for, in truth, the "Plattsburg Idea" had 
 created a potential officers' reserve of high quality and sub- 
 stantial numbers ready to respond at need. It was not simply 
 that 20,544 men had attended "Plattsburg Camps" prior to 
 April, 1917, and were ready almost unanimously to respond 
 to the call to the colors; it was that a great moral force had 
 been active in the land and that a powerful and effective civil 
 organization, in the shape of the Military Training Camps 
 Association, had been created in 1915-1916, ready to meet 
 an emergency for which no machinery of the government was 
 available." 1 
 
 The work of securing this officer material carried on by the 
 Military Training Camps Association is not a part of this 
 history, except that it must be noted here in the work of 
 the Committee to make the whole matter clear. 
 
 In selecting candidates for the first series of Officers' Train- 
 ing Schools, reliance was placed upon three things : the physi- 
 cal examination, the candidate's application blank, and let- 
 ters of recommendation. All of this was largely directed 
 and carried on by the military Training Camps Association. 
 Commencing with the third series of camps a fourth instru- 
 ment was employed, namely, the Scott Rating Scale. (This 
 scale is discussed in detail in Chapter 43 of this volume and 
 in Chapter XII of Volume II.) 
 
 After the candidates were assembled in the Training 
 
 1 From "The Emergency Officers," by Lieut. Col. Grenville Clark in "National 
 Service" of April, 1919.
 
 320 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Schools a second problem of selection arose. Who should be 
 commissioned and who should be rejected. The Scott Rating 
 Scale was used extensively in this connection. 
 
 Commencing with the third series of Training Camps selec- 
 tions for the camps were taken almost entirely from the 
 ranks. That good material could be found there is shown in 
 the following table. 
 
 Intelligence Rating Percent of Enlisted Men Percent of Officers 
 A 5.2% 47.5% 
 
 B 9.9 85.2 
 
 C+ 18.3 14.3 
 
 C 28.7 2.8 
 
 C 21.3 0.2 
 
 D 7.4 0.0 
 
 D 9.2 0.0 
 
 These figures mean, for example, that 5.2% of enlisted 
 men are superior in the intelligence test to 52.5% of officers. 
 Expressing them in another way we have: 
 
 2.4% of enlisted were superior to 75% of officers in the 
 
 intelligence test 
 6.4% of enlisted were superior to 50% of officers in the 
 
 intelligence test 
 10.2% of enlisted were superior to 25% of officers in the 
 
 intelligence test 
 
 Success in these psychological tests does not mean certain 
 success as an officer. But intelligence is undoubtedly an im- 
 portant factor, and it was so demonstrated in connection with 
 the officers' training schools. 
 
 The problem of selecting officer material was to discover 
 who the enlisted men were who were equal to or superior to 
 the average, or slightly below average officer, and give him 
 the opportunity to become an officer. Not only was it neces- 
 sary to consider the factor of intelligence but also all other 
 factors essential to an officer. 
 
 The following pages present some of the methods and re- 
 sults obtained in selecting personnel for the training camps
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 321 
 
 and in selecting those to be commissioned after their three 
 months' training. 
 
 SELECTING CANDIDATES FOR THE OFFICERS' 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS 
 
 The First and Second Reserve Officers' Training Camps. 
 On April 17th the details of the First Officers' Camps were 
 announced by the War Department calling for 16 camps to 
 consist of 2,500 men each. It was originally planned to have 
 the camps open on May 5th, but this date was changed later 
 to May 15th. In this emergency the Military Training Camps 
 Association took hold of the matter. Through their efforts 
 approximately 90,000 men were selected from 150,000 appli- 
 cations and physically examined. Seventy thousand were 
 certified as being satisfactory officer material and from this 
 number 40,000 were finally selected. The number actually 
 commissioned was over 27,341. All this was a rush job 
 order and it is most gratifying that such a very capable group 
 of men were finally commissioned. 
 
 On the basis of this experience the Military Training Camps 
 Association, in cooperation with the War Department, pre- 
 pared new application blanks. After filling out the blanks 
 the selected candidates were called upon for a personal inter- 
 view and physical examinations, and upon this basis the 
 candidates were finally selected. 
 
 The Third Officers' Training Schools. These schools 
 marked a change in the general policy of officer training 
 schools. In the first two schools men were selected from 
 civilian life. Hereafter the great majority of men were to 
 be obtained from enlisted men already in the Army. The 
 same general policy of selecting men on the basis of a physi- 
 cal examination, an application blank and letters of recom- 
 mendation was continued. But now these blanks and letters 
 were handed by the enlisted men to their company commander 
 and upon his recommendation the men were then considered
 
 322 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 by his superior officers and finally by a special board convened 
 for the purpose. 
 
 To aid in standardizing such recommendations of company 
 officers the rating scale was introduced as an element in the 
 whole procedure. Up to this time it had been used exclusively 
 in selecting candidates within the officers' training camps for 
 commissions. As the rating scale had not been used before 
 except within the training schools it was necessary to instruct 
 officers in its use. For this purpose representatives of the 
 Committee visited each camp and lectured on the subject 
 to the officers in groups of 100 to 200. The printed instruc- 
 tions were given in "Instructions for Selection of Candidates 
 for Officers' Training Camps" (Form CCP-201). Extracts 
 from it are repeated. 
 
 "Each platoon commander will, not later than November 
 24th select a group of his men who may possibly qualify 
 as candidates for the Officers' Training Schools. It will, 
 perhaps, happen that about one-fifth of the men will fall 
 in this group. In making this selection there should be con- 
 sidered those general military qualifications which .-ire most 
 essential for an officer, such as commanding presence, strong 
 voice, loyalty, capacity for leadership and high intelligence. 
 
 "Special Records will be made as frequently as prac- 
 ticable of the men in this selected group. Pocket Rating 
 Cards (Form No. C. C. P. 202) for making these records 
 are herewith supplied, and additional copies may be re- 
 ceived at the Division Adjutant's Office. The method of 
 using the card is explained below. 
 
 "Not later than December 22nd the Company, or Bat- 
 tery Commander, making use of the reports of his platoon 
 commanders, his own knowledge of the men and their edu- 
 cational and occupational history as shown by the Qualifica- 
 tions Record Cards (Form No. C. C. P.-l) will select to be 
 recommended not to exceed 10 per cent of the men in his unit. 
 If any of the men on this list have not applied previous to 
 November 30th, they should be encouraged to do so. The 
 names of the candidates will be arranged in order of merit on 
 Form No. C. C. P. 203. These recommendations will pass 
 through Regimental Headquarters and thence after any 
 necessary revision through Brigade channels to Division
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 323 
 
 Headquarters. In accordance with the Memorandum of 
 October 1st, 1917, paragraph 6, referred to above, the Divi- 
 sion Commander will call a Board of three officers to con- 
 sider all applications and select and designate to attend 
 not to exceed 1.7 per cent of the enlisted men in the Divi- 
 sion Cantonment. The application of any man disapproved 
 by any intermediate authority before reaching the Division 
 Commander will not be considered by the Board." 
 
 The instructions continue with an explanation of how to 
 make out a rating scale and how to rate candidates with it. 
 
 A sample copy of Form CCP-203 as used in this connection 
 is reproduced here, see Figure 14. Accompanying it were 
 applications from the seven enlisted men together with letters 
 of recommendation. 
 
 Advantages and Disadvantages of the Rating Scale. The 
 rating scale provided for a uniform method of recommending 
 candidates. And it focused attention upon the five principal 
 qualifications to be considered. Too often men are considered 
 only in terms of some outstanding quality which may or may 
 not be favorable. With this method all men had to be rated 
 on the same qualities and these were what the Army considered 
 most important. The rating scale also provided a method 
 by which the inequality in number of excellent men in dif- 
 ferent organizations could be taken into account. For ex- 
 ample, if company A had ten excellent men and company B 
 had but five then, if twenty were recommended in both com- 
 panies, the first ten in company A could receive higher scores 
 than the last fifteen in company B. 
 
 One disadvantage of the rating scale as used in this con- 
 nection was that it did not entirely counteract the tendency 
 to rate favorites high and others low. It is probable that no 
 scheme in existence today can be made "fool-proof" so that 
 "playing favorites" can be absolutely eliminated. A second 
 disadvantage was that the ratings were not so uniform as was 
 expected. In other words, a rating of 70 did not represent 
 an equally good man to two different captains. That is, of 
 course, the weakness of all rating systems. It is now recog-
 
 324 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 nized that sufficient attention was not given to instructing 
 these officers and from experience it is known that if such had 
 been done a more uniform result could have been obtained. 
 
 Further Procedure in Selecting Candidates. In several 
 camps, because of the above difficulties, candidates were per- 
 
 REPORT OF COMPANY AND BATTERY COMMANDERS OF CANDIDATES 
 ^." FOR OFFICERS TRAINING SCHOOLS 
 
 Company o B.imy_. ..C/! Sputureof 
 
 /(/}. /&yrre.*&<, Jf. 
 
 4**, */* 'ZL^S 
 
 tt 
 
 2Z 
 
 /K,,~,/~4*J <rr,J*A?. X-ttS 
 
 7T7^ 
 
 FIG. 14 
 Rating Scale for Candidates, O.T.C. (CCP-203) 
 
 sonally examined by the final board. In the words of one 
 commanding general "the Divisional Board was directed to 
 base its determination as to soldierly appearance, bearing, etc., 
 upon an actual inspection of the candidates whose names were 
 submitted by the units. The inspection consisted of having 
 each candidate approach the Board, halt at six paces, salute 
 and remain at attention until the fate of the candidate was 
 determined. The candidates were formed, for this purpose, 
 in line and were told off from the right. The practice was to 
 determine that the candidate was qualified in the inspection 
 mentioned, was disqualified or that his case was doubtful. The 
 doubtful cases were constituted of those men concerning whom 
 the Board was not unanimous. In that manner cases No. 1
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 325 
 
 and No. 2 were very promptly disposed of. The doubtful cases 
 were directed to form in another part of the field. It was 
 found that these cases consisted, for -the most part, of men 
 who might be classed as follows: 
 
 (a) Regimental and battalion rion-commissioned offi- 
 cers of long service, but who were disqualified by reason 
 of lack of force, military bearing or other martial qualities 
 and whose names were evidently submitted in recognition 
 of their faithful service. 
 
 (b) Men of insufficient general education, the ear- 
 marks of which were evidenced in their deportment, bear- 
 ing or speech. 
 
 (c) Those possessing shortcomings of phjsique, pres- 
 ence or manners which would constitute serious defects 
 in an officer. 
 
 "Of the doubtful cases some were promptly disqualified 
 upon closer observation; others were promptly qualified upon 
 such observation, and, as to the remainder, the Board con- 
 tinued its work the following day." 
 
 This procedure undoubtedly resulted in weighting the item 
 "Physical Qualities" of the rating scale far more than any 
 other. Possibly this was wise. Judging, however, from ex- 
 perience in employment work, particularly in selecting sales- 
 men, one's estimate of a man on the basis of his appearance is 
 not so reliable as to hire him on the basis of an intelligence 
 test. And this fact was realized in the officers' training camps 
 when it was found that most men of "A" and "B" intelligence 
 were commissioned while considerably less of "C-(-" men, only 
 half of "C" men and very few of "C " men were commis- 
 sioned. So impressed were several commanding officers of 
 training camps of this fact that they refused to accept men 
 for the fourth series who did not grade "C" or better in the 
 intelligence test. 
 
 In some camps the rating scale was used much more as the 
 basis for selection than indicated in the above report. For 
 example, "in the observation batteries, the Scott rating scale 
 was- the main basis for determining whether a candidate en-
 
 326 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 tered the School; the one additional requirement was satis- 
 factory work in the mathematics course." 
 
 Summing up this discussion it may well be questioned 
 whether any other plan of weighing qualities for a prospective 
 officer is superior to that outlined in the rating scale where 
 ph3'sical qualities, intelligence, leadership, personal qualities 
 and general value to the service are all considered. 
 
 Selecting Civilians for the Central Officers' Training 
 Schools. In order to select civilians "in as careful manner as 
 possible the rating scale was introduced into the procedure." 
 "Civilians possessing the requisite qualifications as to educa- 
 tion, character and physique, who desire to attend an Officers' 
 Training School will apply for information and necessary 
 blank forms to the army officer on duty as professor of military 
 science and tactics at the educational institution nearest the 
 residence of the applicant. This may be done either in person 
 or in writing. The application and other blank forms fur- 
 nished must be filled out in detail and must be accompanied 
 by at least three testimonials by reputable persons as to good 
 character, and a record of the physical examination of the 
 applicant, submitted on prescribed form and made by a reput- 
 able physician. The application and accompanying papers 
 will then be forwarded to the officer of the Army on duty as 
 professor of military science and tactics at an educational 
 institution nearest the residence of the applicant. Upon 
 receipt of the application and necessary papers, each appli- 
 cant will be notified to appear in person at his own expense, 
 at an appointed time, before such professor of military science 
 and tactics, for a preliminary examination, regarding the 
 applicant's qualifications to attend an Officers' Training 
 School." (Letter from The Adjutant General, June 27, 1918.) 
 The results of this personal examination were expressed by 
 use of the rating scale. Letter of The Adjutant General 
 (April 18, 1918) explains that "some of the applicants may 
 be strangers to you. In such instances you will, of course, 
 make use of the judgments of those who know the candidates
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 327 
 
 in estimating Physical Qualities, Intelligence, Leadership, 
 etc." 
 
 Patriotism as a Factor in Selecting Candidates. The fol- 
 lowing extract of a report from a personnel supervisor illus- 
 trates another interesting phase of the problem of selecting 
 candidates for an officers' training school. "One of the most 
 significant indications of the spirit of the command that I 
 found at Camp Wadsworth was that many of the most promis- 
 ing enlisted men would not commit themselves to entering the 
 Third Training Camp for Officers unless they were assured 
 that the Training Camp would accompany the Division if it 
 moved for foreign service, preferring to remain as enlisted 
 men with active service abroad to remaining home as possible 
 officers. This was very pleasant to note, and in consequence 
 of it I telegraphed to you in reply to which I received from 
 Major Clark of the War Department a telegram assuring me 
 that the Training Schools formed an integral part of the Divi- 
 sion and would go or stay with the Division. This met the 
 situation and was received with much satisfaction." 
 
 Selecting Candidates from The Students' Army Training 
 Corps. The procedure to have been followed in the units of 
 the Students' Army Training Corps by which college students 
 would have been selected for officers' training camps and also 
 the method by which they would have been distributed among 
 the various corps and branches of the service is outlined in 
 Chapter 4*1 of this volume and Chapter XIII. of Volume II. 
 
 SELECTING CANDIDATES AT OFFICERS' TRAINING 
 SCHOOLS FOR COMMISSION 
 
 Use of Rating Scale. As has been brought out already in 
 Chapter 4, the rating scale was introduced into the Army first 
 of all in connection with eight of the Reserve Officers' Train- 
 ing Camps of the first series. It was used in all the camps 
 and schools for rating candidates thereafter.
 
 328 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 General Procedure. Instructions, dated October 16, 1918, 
 concerning the grading of candidates at the Field Artillery 
 Central Officers' Training School are as follows: 
 
 "1. The candidate is graded on Technical subjects upon 
 a percentage basis of 100, with 75 as a weekly passing 
 mark, and 70 as a minimum average for the course for 
 graduation. He is judged monthly under the Officers' Rat- 
 ing (Scott) Scale upon the five essential qualities of an offi- 
 cer. The minimum rating for graduation is 50. 
 
 "2. The relative numerical rank of the graduate in the 
 entire class is based upon the average of his Technical sub- 
 jects grade and his Essential Qualities rating. 
 
 "3. A basis of weighting each of the fifteen Technical 
 subjects was worked out, to be applied in computing the 
 candidate's grade for graduation. This was fixed primarily 
 upon the number of hours devoted to the subject, with modi- 
 fications dictated by consideration as to the relative impor- 
 tance of the subjects as field artillery essentials. 
 
 "4. Upon, a count of 100, the weighting is as follows: 
 Administration, 2 ; Care and Training of Horses, 5 ; Com- 
 munication, 6; Conduct of Fire, 12; Dismounted Drill, 4; 
 Driving, 6; Field Gunnery, 10; Fire Discipline, 10; Gun 
 Squad Drill, 2; Materiel, 7; Pistol Drill and Guard Duty, 
 2; Reconnaissance, 10; Re-drill, 12; Riding, 2; Topography 
 and Artillery Boards, 10. 
 
 "5. The School uses a combined qualification and final 
 record card, 8^x14 inches. The qualification form on one 
 side of this card is an adaptation of one of the CCP forms. 
 It is filled out by each candidate early in his course, under 
 the supervision of an officer who is responsible for its accur- 
 acy. On the other side of the card is the final record of the 
 candidate upon which entries are made from the grade and 
 rating sheets weekly in the Registrar's office. This form 
 presents on one page ratings for the five essential qualities 
 of an officer and grades in Technical subjects." 
 
 The above deals with the method of grading candidates for 
 scholarship, military training and personal qualities. They v< 
 were also physically examined at the time of entering the 
 school and also at the close. Any candidate "who evidences 
 unfitriess for his duties by reason of habits, lack of character,
 
 OFFICERS' TRAINING SCHOOLS 329 
 
 inefficiency, or who is guilty of misconduct" was promptly con- 
 sidered by proper officers, a board of officers and the com- 
 manding officer before whom the candidate was given an oppor- 
 tunity to appear personally. Those considered failures were 
 promptly transferred from the school. 
 
 At the close of the school the names of the candidates recom- 
 mended for commission were arranged in order of merit from 
 best to poorest and placed upon the eligible list.
 
 CHAPTER 27 
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PROBLEM 
 
 In Industry. A considerable percentage of all workers are 
 physically impaired in one or more respects. A casual inspec- 
 tion of the working force of any large factory shows a sur- 
 prisingly large percentage of older men, those lame or maimed 
 through loss of fingers, eyes, feet or limb, or defects resulting 
 from birth, accident or disease, and there are others equally 
 handicapped by chronic sickness or organic troubles not out- 
 wardly apparent, and still others handicapped by inability to 
 speak or read and write English or who may unfortunately 
 be of low intelligence. When such defects were very apparent, 
 or where the character of work was severe in various ways, 
 the failure of such men to hold up quickly developed their 
 defects. 
 
 For ages the practice has been to give a man a job and a 
 tryout to a considerable extent irrespective of his physical 
 condition. If he failed to perform to the satisfaction of his 
 boss or foreman he was fired, when only too frequently his 
 failure could be traced to physical or mental limitations un- 
 suiting him for the particular work, yet not preventing his 
 working if assigned to other work within his limitations. 
 
 With this hit or miss method there was usually no court of 
 appeal, and the man moved on to the next job, which by pure 
 luck might be suitable. In this manner the man and his depen- 
 dents were made to suffer, and the shop or factory was out 
 of pocket to the extent of the time and expense involved in an 
 effort to train the man as well as the loss of total product and 
 the possible inferiority of what the man had been working on. 
 
 330
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 331 
 
 There has been a growing feeling that this system was de- 
 fective and in recent years industry has come to recognize that 
 a better method could and should be employed. Scattered 
 efforts have been made to utilize scientifically men who are not 
 of the highest physical condition or are of low mental -stan- 
 dards ; but generally the old system prevails. 
 
 Many large concerns have operated Industrial Services or 
 Employment Departments for some years. These began in a 
 small way and have grown rapidly, until in some cases they 
 are one of the most important departments in such factories. 
 Experience in such instances has shown material benefits in 
 direct returns which permeate the entire organization, and 
 has resulted in a smoother operation, reduction in production 
 costs with increased output that would be impossible with the 
 crude methods of labor procurement formerly employed by 
 nearly every one. 
 
 In fact the advantage of intelligent or plain common sense 
 methods of procurement, classification, placement and promo- 
 tion for the human elements of the machinery of manufacture 
 are so self-evident that it is difficult to understand why they 
 were not adopted generally long ago, or why they are not now 
 universally employed. 
 
 In the United States Army. The American Army was a 
 small one and accepted only physically fit men who could read 
 and write. When war broke out, the part our country would 
 play before a settlement could be reached was under-estimated. 
 
 Starting with the idea that we were to have a relatively 
 small army of 2,000,000 there seemed to be such an unlimited 
 supply of men to draw from, that in the early stages we 
 started to use only men of an exceptionally high physical stan- 
 dard, i. e., the Regular Army standard. 
 
 With the Selective Draft system in full swing, it began to 
 be realized that our physical standards were too high and we 
 were falling short in numbers. Again the highly technical 
 character of modern warfare was not realized. This increased 
 specialization almost daily through the introduction of vastly
 
 332 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 extended use of airplanes, motor transport, new and heavy 
 types of ordnance, gas warfare and other novel elements. Plans 
 based on the experience of previous wars fought by infantry 
 and a limited artillery of small calibre no longer held. We 
 had to learn it all over and continually modify views and 
 change plans while under way. 
 
 Through all this, however, was an undercurrent and growing 
 feeling that we were not utilizing man power to the best ad- 
 vantage, and that sooner or later our seemingly unlimited sup- 
 ply of men would give out and we must begin to adopt the 
 French and English experience of conserving our man power 
 in every way. Even if our supply had been truly unlimited, 
 growing industrial needs at home, and the extravagant plan of 
 retaining tens of thousands of strapping, perfectly fit men in 
 non-combat positions in this country or behind the lines over- 
 seas became more and more apparent. 
 
 The idea was new to many, however, and while here and 
 there this urgent need was recognized, and individuals in 
 various army organizations were earnestly advocating action, 
 it took time to work through the mass and produce a majority 
 sentiment in favor of a broad general policy. 
 
 It was, therefore, June, 1918, before a draft call was 
 issued for limited service men. The real beginnings of the 
 deviation from a general service physical standard, however, 
 date from the opening of a camp at Syracuse, N. Y., on 
 July 29, 1918, and the three draft calls in August and Sep- 
 tember issued to fill that camp with limited service men. 
 
 In the British Army. It is a curious commentary on the 
 American psychology to note that the British had a fully 
 developed and successful system for the use of partially unfit 
 men in operation all this time. While it was not completely 
 applicable to the condition in the United States, yet it could 
 have been adopted in large part, thereby utilizing the prac- 
 tical experience of others without the necessity of going 
 through it all ourselves with the incident expense and delay. 
 
 In the British system, from an early date all men on their
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 333 
 
 first medical examination, and from time to time subsequently 
 as necessity arose, were classified in accordance with a definite 
 graded standard. At first, the volunteers were held up to a 
 very high physical standard, but as call after call came, -and 
 munition production began to be affected, it was evident some 
 system of economizing man power must be adopted. Looking 
 ahead, those responsible for furnishing enlargements and 
 replacements realized that complete failure would follow, un- 
 less something were done to increase the number of effective 
 men at the front. 
 
 A careful study of the whole subject was made by the 
 various arms of the British service in close co-operation, and 
 a very complete system of physical classification was per- 
 fected. With its application increasing thousands of men were 
 drawn into the service from civil life and put to work in a 
 multitude of places on a wide variety of work, thereby liberat- 
 ing an equal number of physically fit men for combat service in 
 the trenches. Still others found duties immediately behind the 
 line, or in the service of supply where physical strength or 
 fitness was less essential. 
 
 These exchanges and transfers extended over a considerable 
 period and caused some confusion and many complaints, but 
 the system was ultimately worked out and was operating per- 
 fectly over a considerable period of the war. 
 
 The English system of classifying men for combat or other 
 service depending upon their physical condition and use in in- 
 dustry or specialized units was well worked out. Eventually 
 when the American classification had been developed, the two 
 showed striking points in common The system proved of 
 inestimable value in enlarging the army to an impressive extent 
 and prevented an industrial chaos so far as Great Britain was 
 concerned. 
 
 DEFINITE NEED FOR USING LIMITED SERVICE 
 
 MEN 
 
 Rapidly succeeding events began to carry home the fact 
 that we were involved in identical problems with those out-
 
 334 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 lined above. And the need for ever increasing numbers of men 
 forced us to lower the bars of physical limitations. The effect 
 of calling men from industry began to be felt. All this com- 
 bined pressure forced a more economical use of man power. 
 
 Almost from the appearance of the first draft men at the 
 camps, notwithstanding most explicit instructions to Draft 
 Board medical examiners, a considerably large number of men 
 of decidedly low mental order slipped through the various 
 checks and began to arrive at the camps. There were several 
 causes for this, the principal ones probably being the varia- 
 tion in human judgment in the case of about 5,000 physicians 
 scattered over the entire United States and possessions, the 
 impossibility under the stress of the large numbers to be 
 handled to be as thorough as desired; for like reason the 
 impossibility of standardizing the methods of all the examining 
 physicians involved; and finally the frequent changing or sub- 
 stitution of new examining physicians to take the places of 
 those who had finally acquired a thorough working knowl- 
 edge of the established physical standards. Such substitutions 
 became increasingly frequent as more and more doctors volun- 
 teered, or were themselves inducted to serve in medical units 
 here and abroad. 
 
 As the physical standards furnished to the Draft Boards 
 were lowered to meet the increasing demand for men, more 
 of such partially defective and unsuitable men began to ac- 
 cumulate. Such men being unfit for overseas service, and 
 there being no adequate nor standard plan for handling them, 
 a serious problem arose. Housing space was being occupied, 
 subsistence consumed and training was being retarded, be- 
 sides the lowering effect on the general morale of the camps. 
 Further, as divisions were completed and moved out for trans- 
 portation overseas, it became common practice to discard 
 everyone not physically fit for any class of overseas service. 
 This inheritance of "lame, halt and blind," figuratively speak- 
 ing was left to occupy necessary barrack space and eat its 
 head off.
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 335 
 
 PHYSICAL CLASSIFICATION OF MEN IN SELECTIVE 
 SERVICE REGULATIONS 
 
 Fortunately the men responsible for framing the Selective 
 Draft Law appreciated the possibility of ultimately using men 
 of less than the highest physical type, and wrote into that 
 law a section providing authority which afterwards formed 
 the basis of a plan which solved many of the vexatious ques- 
 tions, and would have ultimately proven a complete remedy. 
 The law reads as follows: 
 
 Section 128^ The Selective Service Draft Law pro- 
 
 See also Special provides for the physical classifica- 
 
 Regulations No. 65 tion of all registrants under two 
 general headings "Accepted" or "Rejected." Under Ac- 
 cepted there are three subdivisions termed Group A, B, and 
 C. Group D applies only to those rejected for any or all 
 physical or mental causes. 
 
 In broad classification, apart from the many details re- 
 quired for a clear selection of men, these several groups 
 are outlined thus. 
 
 Group A Accept the registrant as physically qualified for 
 general military service. 
 
 Group B Accept the registrant as physically qualified for 
 military service when cured of (naming remediable defect 
 for which acceptance is authorized). Remediable Group. 
 Group C Accept registrant as physically qualified for spe- 
 cial or limited military service in a named occupation or 
 capacity. 
 Group D Reject the registrant. 
 
 Until about June, 1918, all Group B and C men appearing 
 at camps on general draft call were ordered returned to 
 Local Boards and presumably only Class A men were retained 
 and credited against the quota of Local Boards sending de- 
 fective men. Such Boards were then required to send addi- 
 tional Group A men to complete their quotas. 
 
 This was the theory at least in practice. But, as already 
 explained, many physically defective men got to camp and 
 were retained. Later, orders were issued permitting camp 
 commanders to retain in camp men of Group C classification,
 
 336 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 provided such men of limited physical ability were needed 
 and could be profitably employed. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN IN 
 THE ARMY 
 
 Authorization of Development Battalions. Classification 
 of all phases of partially unfit men was accomplished in con- 
 nection with the authorization of development battalions. This 
 subject is discussed at some length in Chapter 40. 
 
 Original System of Classification. The Committee on Clas- 
 sification of Personnel in the Army was early drawn into the 
 problem through its functions of interviewing recruits and 
 classifying recruits as to trade or other ability. To the Com- 
 mittee it had long been evident that a mere physical classifica- 
 tion of men other than those fit for any character of service, 
 Group A, was inadequate, as in like manner the mere cold 
 statement of a man's trade experience and occupational classi- 
 fication was equally incomplete without a statement as to his 
 physical make-up. 
 
 Industrial experience in civil life preceding the war had 
 shown that a man physically or mentally deficient was a three- 
 sided being made up of three factors: physical, mental and 
 trade ability. These factors differed in each individual. Two 
 men of equal physical make-up would differ in mental and 
 trade ability or both, and conversely two men of equal trade 
 and mental ability would differ physically. In other words, 
 all three factors must be carefully considered in selecting a 
 Limited Service Man. Still further the ultimate assignment 
 of such a man was affected by the particular service or branch 
 of the Army to which he was to be assigned. To illustrate, 
 simply patrol guard duty in the capacity of a watchman 
 could readily be performed by men of relatively low physical 
 status, but if the patrol service were to be in connection with 
 a warehouse or dock in a low wet location, men with rheumatic 
 tendencies would quickly fail and become hospital patients, 
 and hence a dead load and expense. However, had men with
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 337 
 
 other defects, such as fingers missing, faulty sight in one eye 
 or the like, been selected for this particular service they could 
 perform their duties properly and continuously. Like in- 
 stances could be multiplied, but this one brings out the neces- 
 sity of close cooperation between the medical department and 
 those handling the personnel phases. These latter include 
 determining trade ability and other phases not distinctly 
 medical such as draft evaders, conscientious objectors, morally 
 unfit, etc. 
 
 Apparent economy in man power will be decidedly decep- 
 tive, however, if an offsetting expense is required to collect, 
 investigate, train, or insure and take care of a largely in- 
 creased volume of hospital or convalescent cases. The Army 
 could not afford to take on the character of a "sanitarium" 
 for rebuilding the entire manhood of the country no matter 
 how desirable this might be. 
 
 It is of first importance that no men be retained whose 
 limitations are such as to cause frequent breakdowns under 
 normal assignments. Many men can work at their trades 
 under civil conditions but fail utterly under the rougher con- 
 ditions of actual field service, yet these very men could work 
 in a base shop. 
 
 A physical examiner might find that a man had serious flat 
 feet. Unquestionably such a man could not carry a pack and 
 stand long marches, therefore, he would be rejected. But 
 the personnel officer would find he had been earning his living 
 for several years in civil life as a truck driver, a clerk, or a 
 machinist. And there are many places in the Army where such 
 men could be used. There are many organizations requiring 
 clerks, but in some of these marching is required; in others, 
 such as for instance the quartermaster warehouses, no march- 
 ing is to be expected, hence the above described man could 
 be assigned to this organization with the assurance that he 
 could function continuously. To make these examinations and 
 assignments requires the work of competent personnel men. 
 
 From the foregoing it is very evident that a mere physical
 
 338 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 classification by surgeons or medical officers is inadequate. 
 In addition and equally important, is the personnel side in- 
 cluding such phases as careful investigation of kind, character 
 and location of previous work, actual trade ability, and the 
 character and condition of service where the man will be ulti- 
 mately assigned. 
 
 Investigations and studies by the Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel in the Army, in cooperation with the Surgeon 
 General's Office and the Operations Division of the General 
 Staff, resulted in a graded physical classification which was 
 adopted for classifying Limited Service men. This was pro- 
 mulgated as part of General Orders No. 45, 1918, establish- 
 ing Development Battalions (see instructions concerning oper- 
 ation of Development Battalions, Circular, War Department 
 No. 812, of July 12, 1918.) 
 
 In this an effort was made to embody the Physical Classifi- 
 cation of the Surgeon General for general Army use, the 
 "Grouping" used by the Provost Marshal in selecting men 
 through the draft, and such features of the British system and 
 other elements as seemed desirable. The classification adopted 
 is as follows: 
 
 CLASS A : Fit physically for general military service. 
 
 CLASS B: Not quite fit physically for general military, 
 but free from organic diseases ; able to do an average day's 
 work ; able to walk 5 miles ; to see and hear well enough 
 for ordinary purposes; able to perform duty equivalent to 
 garrison duty; labor battalion, shop work (in a trade) at 
 home or abroad, or combat service at home (U. S. Guards.) 
 
 CLASS C: Fit only for duty in a selected occupation or 
 a restricted capacity to which they must be limited. 
 
 Soldiers in Class C have more serious disabilities and 
 must be considered individually. When it is clear that the 
 physical disability of a soldier is of sufficient severity to 
 exclude him from Class A or B, yet the surgeon believes that 
 this disability is not of too great severity to prevent his re- 
 tention in the service for duty in a special capacity, he will 
 consult the soldier's "qualification card," note the occupa- 
 tions in which qualified, and direct the personnel adjutant,
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 339 
 
 as custodian of all personnel records, to indorse on the 
 card in the case of each named occupation, the medical 
 officer's opinion as to whether or not the soldier can safely 
 be employed in the named occupations, and whether the 
 disability prevents the soldier being 100 percent physically 
 efficient in the occupations named on the card. If not 100 
 percent physically efficient the percentage of efficiency will 
 be noted. Unless a soldier is 80 percent or more efficient 
 in at least one trade he should not be retained in the serv- 
 ice. For example, a man might have asthma and previous 
 civil experience showed he lost on an average of five or six 
 days per month from work. On this account he could be 
 regarded as only 80 percent efficient. 
 
 CLASS D: Physically unfit for any military service. 
 
 It will be noticed that the classes outlined refer to the 
 physical side only. To combine and include purely per- 
 sonnel and other essential phases such as mentality, intelli- 
 gence, and moral aspects, a system of rating was added. 
 
 RATING 1 is the designation employed to indicate that 
 a man is physically classed by the surgeon as "A" and that 
 he is considered by the commanding officer satisfactory 
 mentally and morally, and from all other standpoints is 
 regarded as acceptable for any character of general mili- 
 tary service. 
 
 RATING 2 is used to designate those whom the com- 
 manding officer regards as hardly suited for Rating 1. 
 This includes men classed by the surgeon as physically "A", 
 yet found lacking in other respects ; as, for instance, of 
 uncertain ability to speak, read and write English, or of 
 slow mentality. It also includes men classed physically 
 as "B", i. e., "not quite fit for general military service", 
 and free from serious organic disease, but otherwise com- 
 petent and most desirable. These may be used for any 
 domestic and any but the heaviest combat service (overseas). 
 
 RATING 3 designates all those clearly unsuited for 
 ratings 1 and 2, yet of such physical classification ("B" or 
 "C") that they could be utilized, and whose other charac- 
 teristics may or may not be of the highest, yet are such as 
 to warrant the retention of these men for restricted limited 
 domestic service. 
 
 Revised System of Classification. Subsequent experience 
 developed a close cooperation between the medical and per-
 
 340 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 sonnel officers affecting desired results and this combined 
 form of classification or rating was superseded by Circular No. 
 7, War Department, 1918, as follows: 
 
 "1. For the purpose of making the physical classifications 
 used in Development Battalions correspond, as far as pos- 
 sible, with groups as established under Special Regulations 
 No. 65, the following revision of Physical Classification for 
 Development Battalions is hereby established. 
 
 CLASS A : Fit for general military service. 
 
 CLASS B: Deferred remediable; fit for general military 
 service when cured of . 
 
 CLASS C-l: Limited service, general; not quite fit 
 physically for general military service, but fit for military 
 service in the Service of Supplies overseas, or general mili- 
 tary service in the United States only. 
 
 CLASS C-2: Limited service, special; fit only for re- 
 stricted military service in the United States in special 
 capacity approved by medical officer. 
 
 CLASS D: Unfit for any military service. 
 
 "2. Tables indicating correspondence of various physi- 
 cal classes or groups between that employed by the Provost 
 Marshal in selecting the draft, the system first employed 
 in Development Battalion and the revised system in force 
 on Nov. 11, 1918. 
 
 Physical 
 groups as 
 
 Physical classes established Previous physical classes and given in 
 
 herewith ratings in development Special 
 
 battalions, Document 812 Regula- 
 
 tions No. 65 
 
 Class A Physical Class A, Rating 1 Group A 
 
 Class B Group B 
 
 Class C-l Physical Class B, Rating 2 or 3 Group C 
 
 Class C-2 Physical Class C, Rating 2 or 3 Group C 
 
 Class D Physical Class D Group D 
 
 "3. From the foregoing it will be seen that former phys- 
 ical Class B men will hereafter be classified as C-l, and 
 former physical Class C men will hereafter be classified as 
 C-2. 
 
 "4. A new Class B is established, which is identical 
 with Group B described in Special Regulations No. 65.
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 341 
 
 "5. Former ratings will no longer be used, and those 
 portions of War Department Document 812 relating there- 
 to are hereby revoked. Form CCP-601 will be continued 
 in use, and will be modified in accordance with the above 
 instructions. 
 
 "6. The classification of all men in development bat- 
 talions will be done by the closest co-operation between the 
 medical and personnel officers, and will be based on the 
 physical, mental and occupational qualifications of each 
 man." 
 
 Paragraph 5 above discontinued the use of Ratings. The 
 idea back of this plan to combine physical, mental and moral 
 disqualifications and rate the men in accordance with all three 
 was excellent. But in practice the man had to be transferred 
 in terms of all three phases and the rating covered them up. 
 For example, a physically fit man but unable to speak English 
 must be handled very differently from a chemist with a bad 
 heart although both would have been rated the same. 
 
 This plan constituted the basis for selection and assignment 
 of Limited Service men on November llth, when mobilization 
 operations ceased. 
 
 PERSONNEL SPECIFICATONS, OUTLINING THE USE 
 OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 
 
 In the practical use of men for Limited Service duties there 
 still continued difficulties in assignment and come-backs be- 
 cause of a lack of understanding of the actual conditions under 
 which men could be called upon to work. Men physically 
 faulty, yet able to work under certain conditions, were fre- 
 quently assigned to other tasks or proper tasks, but under 
 wrong conditions. This resulted in some dissatisfaction and 
 break-downs, and hence, to some extent, defeated the purpose 
 of the use of limited service men. 
 
 It became increasingly evident that a more definite guide 
 was needed to insure proper assignment. To correct this de- 
 fect the Committee on Classification of Personnel started the 
 preparation of Personnel Specifications which would show
 
 342 
 
 every position in each organization of the Army which could 
 be filled by limited service men and the limiting physical dis- 
 abilities. 
 
 With these tables, the personnel adjutant could at once 
 select a limited service man who was within the limitations, 
 or while of lower physical class yet did not have defects 
 which would certainly cause failure, for a particular job. 
 For instance ; in the case of the Headquarters and Supply Sec- 
 tion of a Field Signal Battalion there are specified by the 
 Tables of Personnel Specifications (No. 23). 
 
 2 Sergeants, First Class: 
 
 1 as Sergeant Major General Clerical Worker 
 
 1 Jour. 38g 
 
 Chief Clerk of battalion office. Supervises preparation 
 and filing of reports, returns, correspondence, and orders. 
 Knowledge of typewriting preferred. 
 
 To this would be added the following: 
 
 Limited Service permissible. Must have use of both 
 hands and be able to walk. Should have fair eyesight 
 and good hearing, and free from serious functional dis- 
 order, etc. (these paragraphs being carefully worked up 
 . by trade specialists in conference with medical officers). 
 
 The same method would be followed throughout all organiza- 
 tions. Where it was not specified that limited service men 
 could be used it would be understood that only men fit for 
 general military service could be utilized. 
 
 This plan would materially assist personnel adjutants and 
 unit commanders in placing men, and would tend to reduce 
 errors of judgment or wrong assignments due to inexperience 
 and ignorance of conditions to be encountered under service 
 conditions. 
 
 Another form suggested is an assignment chart based on 
 the British forms, but simplified to a more compact and work- 
 able form.
 
 USE OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN 343 
 
 PLACEMENT OR ASSIGNMENT CHART 
 
 for 
 LIMITED SERVICE MEN 
 
 
 <a 
 I 
 
 z 
 
 "5 
 
 Character of Service 
 
 o 
 ft 
 
 E S 
 
 >> m 
 
 Specifications 
 
 
 
 D 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 h 
 O 
 
 e 
 O 
 a 
 
 ecu patio 
 
 O 
 
 d 
 
 ombat 
 
 
 <o 
 
 m 
 
 1 
 
 t Home 
 
 "5 *^ 
 
 o d 
 
 SI 
 
 ersonnel 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 si 
 
 & 
 
 O 
 
 < 
 
 O 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Pi d 
 
 Hi 
 
 p 
 
 Accountant CPA 37ac - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 10, 15, 22, 
 
 service, able 47, etc. 
 to walk 
 
 Auditor 37au - - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 10, 15, 22, 
 
 service, able 47, etc. 
 to walk 
 
 Comptroller 37c - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 12, 15, 20, 
 
 service, able 49, etc. 
 to walk 
 
 Cost Accountant 37co - - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 12, 15, 20, 
 
 service, able 49, etc. 
 to walk 
 
 General 37g - - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 1,2,3,4, 
 
 service, able 8, 10, etc. 
 to walk, no 
 functional defects 
 
 Statistician 37-s - - C-2 C-2 Like civilian 4,5, 6, 
 
 occupation 7, etc. 
 Acetylene Gas 
 
 Comp. Operator 69c - C-l C-2 C-2 Both hands 10,11,12, 
 
 able to work, etc. 
 around 
 machinery 
 Airplane cloth 
 worker 76ai A C-l, etc. 11, 14, 17, etc. 
 
 Under the several columns grouped under "Character of 
 Service" will be inserted the minimum physical class possible 
 to be used for the respective service, i.e., combat at the actual
 
 344 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 front; behind the front but reasonably close thereto; at base 
 shops, headquarters well behind the lines ; and at home, mean- 
 ing for the several varieties of service in the United States 
 or possessions not involved in actual conflict. 
 
 Under the heading "Physical Limitations" should be a 
 carefully prepared list in cooperation with field medical 
 officers and personnel trade specialists. By this is meant such 
 defects, partial or complete, as would prevent reasonable and 
 normal functioning at the particular trade and under the con- 
 ditions usual with the organizations. The samples given are 
 only suggestive. This would require careful study by trade 
 experts and medical officers. 
 
 In the last column under "Personnel Specifications Table 
 Number" would be listed the number of the table of all or- 
 ganizations wherein men of the trade and physical class listed 
 would be included. The numbers listed in this suggestive 
 table have no reference to any existing tables. 
 
 Copies of this chart would be furnished to all personnel 
 adjutants, medical officers, and those responsible for procure- 
 ment, classification of men, and organization of units. In this 
 way. selection and permanent and successful assignments could 
 be made in the first instance by the Personnel Organization 
 of receiving or recruiting depots, camps, or training stations. 
 
 USE OF INTELLIGENCE RATINGS 
 
 A start was made to determine the minimum intelligence 
 rating which would warrant the army in retaining (a) Eng- 
 lish-speaking men who could not read or write and (b) non- 
 English speaking illiterates. Generally, no "D" or possibly 
 no "C-" could learn to read and write within two months. 
 
 There are many other phases of the relationship of intelli- 
 gence to low physical classification which should be deter- 
 mined in order that men who could not possibly qualify for 
 service in some capacity within two months would not be 
 permitted to clog up the training program, but would be 
 immediately discharged.
 
 SECTION VII. 
 TRADE TESTS 
 
 This section relates the events leading up to the 
 development of thoroughly standardized trade tests 
 (Chapters 28 and 29) and their installation and 
 operation in the camps (Chapter 30.) In Chapter 
 VI of Volume II, the Personnel Manual, are given 
 the operating instructions for their use in the camps, 
 and reproductions of three tests, representing the 
 three different types of tests developed.
 
 CHAPTER 28 
 FORERUNNERS OF TRADE TESTS 
 
 TRADE TESTS AS PART OF SCHEME FOR 
 OCCUPATIONAL CLASSIFICATION 
 
 The need for trade tests of some sort was apparent from 
 the beginning of the Committee's work. The classification of 
 soldiers, when they first came into the National Army canton- 
 ments on September 6, 1917, indicated the importance of occu- 
 pational information for judicious placement. In order to 
 secure a high degree of accuracy in this information it was 
 necessary that interviewers be trained to question recruits 
 intelligently and to judge from the answers received just 
 what the recruits had done in civil life. This procedure was 
 begun at once. The Committee, however, hoped to create an 
 even sounder basis for placement. Even in those early days, 
 therefore, consideration was given to the introduction of trade 
 tests whereby interviewers might determine not only the 
 civilian occupation of each recruit, but also the degree of skill 
 which the recruit possessed in that occupation. 
 
 There was another early problem besides that of increasing 
 the accuracy of the interview which had a direct bearing upon 
 the later work of the Trade Test Division. This was the nec- 
 essary definition and description of army jobs. What kind 
 of skilled workers were needed in the various military units, 
 and how should they be distributed? Until questions like 
 these were answered until there was a definite idea of the 
 nature of the army's needs for skilled workers the results of 
 the use of standardized interviews and trade tests would be of 
 questionable value. Out of this need grew two important 
 works of the Committee: (1) The tables of occupational 
 
 347
 
 548 . HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 needs for various military units, and (2) the trade specifica- 
 tions and occupational index. The first of these is described 
 in Chapter 14 and the second in Chapter 13. Since the latter 
 was an integral part of trade test work, certain phases of it 
 will also be taken up here. 
 
 While the germ of the trade test idea was present in the 
 army personnel system from the start, its development was a 
 gradual process. The very first steps taken were in the direc- 
 tion of preparing trade information and typical questions to 
 be put in the hands of interviewers. 
 
 The main sources of information for the preparation of 
 these aids were five in number: Information in the United 
 States Department of Labor, Bureau of Statistics and the 
 United States Employment Service; information obtainable 
 from employment managers and supervisors of training in 
 large industrial and commercial concerns ; the Civil Service 
 Commissions, particularly in a few of the large cities and in 
 such states as New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois, 
 which have been more progressive than others ; officials of 
 Trade Unions which had standardized the examinations for 
 membership in the unions ; and the experience of the Trade 
 Test officers of the Canadian and British armies. 
 
 The assembly and preparation of this material for the Inter- 
 viewer's Aids was first assigned to Mr. Frederick T. Fisher, 
 who worked as a volunteer assistant without pay. In Sep- 
 tember, Dr. Scott, Prof. R. B. Perry and Mr. Fisher had a 
 conference with Department of Labor Officials including the 
 Assistant Secretary Mr. L. F. Post, Mr. T. V. Powderly, Mr. 
 C. T. Clayton, and Mr. C. F. Osborne. These representa- 
 tives of the Department of Labor expressed the most cordial 
 attitude of cooperation, and undertook to supply the Com- 
 mittee with detailed information which would make possible 
 the preparation of suitable sets of questions to be asked
 
 FORERUNNERS OF TRADE TESTS 349 
 
 drafted men in order to determine their relative ability in their 
 respective trades. Considerable material was furnished by 
 information accumulated in this way, and also by information 
 supplied by Mr. A. J. Berres, of the American Federation of 
 Labor. In addition some progress was made toward devel- 
 oping questions for use in interviewing band musicians, navi- 
 gators, instrument makers, and machinists. Mr. Fisher 
 withdrew from the work on September 22, and in the pressure 
 of other duties no one was given a further assignment on this 
 work for about three weeks. 
 
 The Committee felt keenly the need, not merely for the 
 assembly of this information and its preparation for use in 
 c.-imps, but also for the development of actual trade test prac- 
 tice; consequently at a meeting of the Committee on October 
 14, the whole situation was thoroughly canvassed. Five days 
 later Mr. Max Watson was given the definite assignment of 
 accumulating additional information. He had had considerable 
 experience in the State Civil Service Department in California 
 and fully appreciated the importance of improved methods of 
 determining the actual ability of tradesmen. Manufacturers, 
 trades union officials, civil service officers and others were cir- 
 cularized for information, sample questions and answers being 
 included in the letters so as definitely to illustrate what was 
 desired. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF THE TRADE TEST DIVISION 
 
 It had become increasingly evident that this work was of 
 such magnitude and of such vital importance that it was nec- 
 essary to approach it in a large way. Consequently, a Trade 
 Test Division was organized and on November 1 Mr. Mark 
 M. Jones, Director of Employment of Thomas A. Edison, 
 Inc., Orange, New Jersey, was placed in charge. Mr. Jones 
 had already served as one of the civilian supervisors in in- 
 stalling personnel work at Camp Upton. It was thought that 
 the establishment of a Trade Test Division with headquarters 
 at Orange would be extremely advantageous in that it would
 
 350 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 enable the men at work on the development and standardiza- 
 tion of Trade Tests to use the facilities of Mr. Edison's own 
 laboratory and the advice of his staff. There were also sev- 
 eral thousand employees at hand for trying out the suggested 
 tests. 
 
 The men employed to help Mr. Jones in Orange were 
 Mr. John R. Field, in charge of the office work, and Mr. J. M. 
 DeBlois, who was to work on test compilation. Mr. Watson 
 arrived in Orange on November 6 with the material which he 
 had gathered while in Washington. 
 
 On November 8, at Mr. Jones' suggestion, a meeting of 
 Civil Service men was called in Washington to discuss trade 
 test problems. At this meeting the comparative merits of 
 oral and performance tests were thoroughly discussed. The 
 one outstanding result of the meeting was the utter lack of 
 any definite information or suggestions as to the form or 
 method of administration of such tests. It was very evi- 
 dent that the field was one entirely outside of the experi- 
 ence of Civil Service Commissions, largely because of the 
 conditions under which trade tests would have to be adminis- 
 tered. The suggestion was seriously considered at this time 
 of establishing a centralized testing station at the point of 
 embarkation so that men would be tested at a centralized 
 place and not at the various camps. The discussion also 
 covered the question of the value to be put upon an experience 
 rating and also whether or not any trade test could be ad- 
 ministered successfully by men unfamiliar with the trade. 
 The general concensus of opinion of those present seemed to 
 be that any examination which was not administered by an 
 expert would be of questionable value. No consideration 
 was given to the form of either oral or performance tests. 
 
 The first work taken up by the Orange Office was the col- 
 lection of data from all sources which would possibly be of 
 value in the building of examinations. Circular letters were 
 sent out to Civil Service Commissions in all parts of the 
 country asking them to submit examination questions together
 
 FORERUNNERS OF TRADE TESTS 351 
 
 with their answers on all subjects for which the Army had 
 need of examination. Circular letters were also sent out to 
 manufacturing concerns in various parts of the country asking 
 them through their employment departments to furnish 
 material. 
 
 THE FIRST TESTS 
 
 Mr. Albert D. Fell joined the office force on November 15 
 and Mr. John A. Balcom on November 19. Both of these men 
 spent most of their time out in the field collecting data from 
 all possible sources. As this material was turned in to the 
 Central Office sets of questions for examinations were com- 
 piled. The oral sets were composed of thirty questions divided 
 into three groups of apprentice, journeyman and expert with 
 ten questions in each group. The questions which were 
 selected were the best available and were arbitrarily put into 
 the various groups based upon their apparent difficulty. Little 
 attempt was made to control the form of questions and no 
 attempt was made to standardize the questions or to try them 
 out by administering them to men actually working in the 
 trade covered by the examination. The main object at this 
 time was to make these sets available for the use of inter- 
 viewers in the camps. 
 
 During the latter part of November, at the request of Major 
 J. B. Watson, work was started on compiling question sets in 
 fifteen trades, to be used by the examining boards of the Signal 
 Corps. About the same time a suggestion was received from 
 Mr. Clothier that the office should furnish as quickly as pos- 
 sible sets of questions and answers on all available trades to 
 be used in the camps as emergency examinations. The first 
 suggestion was that these examinations be composed of about 
 six questions for each trade, divided on the basis of two 
 apprentice, two journeyman, and two expert questions. This 
 work was the beginning of the "Aids For Interviewers" 
 The questions which were used for these sets were gathered 
 together from all sources, but no attempt was made to stan-
 
 352 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 LINEMAN 
 
 (GENERAL) 
 
 STANDARD PAGE 1 2.12.18 
 
 . . . AH reports or communlca- 
 Not to be copied, quoted or tlons concerning this test 
 reproduced in any form. should refer to 
 
 32-G-l 
 
 v_y 
 
 o 
 
 1:A 
 
 Q. Name four kinds of tools that are commonly 
 used for handling and raising poles. 
 
 A. (1) Cant hook, (2) tamping bars, (3) tongs, (4) 
 pike, (5) "dead man." 
 
 2: A 
 
 Q. What is a "gain?" 
 
 A. The notch in a poie where the cross-arm is 
 fastened. 
 
 3: A 
 
 Q. When Is it necessary to "guy" poles? 
 
 A. (1) Whenever a pole is not .in line with the 
 poles behind and ahead, r (2) an end pole. 
 
 1:J 
 
 Q. What should be the spacing (under ordinary 
 conditions) of wooden poles supporting a line of 
 number "ought'? to number "four ought" wire 
 or cable? 
 
 
 A. One hundred and fifteen to one hundred and 
 twenty-five feet apart, and at least forty-five 
 poles to the mile. 
 
 2:J 
 
 Q. How are wires attached to the Insulators? 
 
 A. (1) All wires should be tied by means of tie 
 wires to the side of the insulators toward the 
 pole, except on the insulators next to the pole, 
 where they are to be attached on the opposite 
 side. (2) On a turn the wires should be at- 
 tached so strain is on insulator and not on 
 tie wire. 
 
 3:J 
 
 Q. What should be clearance between wires and 
 center of poles on a line carrying not more 
 than five thousand volts? 
 
 A. Not less than fifteen inches. 
 
 
 FIG. 15 
 Sample Page Aids for Interviewers (TT-1)
 
 FORERUNNERS OF TRADE TESTS 353 
 
 dardize them or to put the questions in such a form that they 
 could be standardized. In almost every case the answer was 
 much longer than the question. In making up the sets the 
 number of questions and answers was increased from six to 
 twelve or fifteen, depending upon their length. The final issue 
 comprised questions and answers upon ninety-one different 
 occupations, and was known as "Aids For Interviewers/' 
 (TT-1), issued on February 12, 1918; (see Figure 15). All 
 these questions and answers were carefully checked for accu- 
 racy and the whole contained a large amount of information. 
 In many ways the sets were used to decided advantage ; but the 
 whole work was unstandardized, so that it was not certain how 
 skilled a man was in terms of the answers he gave to the ques- 
 tions listed. An earlier edition restricted to twenty trades of 
 interest to the Signal Corps was issued on December 15, 1917, 
 and was known as "TT-2." 
 
 While these preliminary tests were being compiled the 
 accumulation of miscellaneous trade information progressed 
 rapidly. A number of conferences were held during the win- 
 ter at which Mr. Jones brought together business executives, 
 large employers of labor, and trade and technical school offi- 
 cials. Practically everyone approached on the subject of trade 
 tests immediately sensed the importance of the undertaking 
 and volunteered full co-operation. 
 
 Most of the information sent in was, however, applicable 
 only to oral tests. There was a general opinion that per- 
 formance tests ought to be used in the Army but definite ideas 
 concerning the best forms of such tests were not forthcoming. 
 The first performance test plan conceived by the Trade Test 
 Division departed little from that for oral tests. For each 
 trade it was proposed to find various simple operations which, 
 like the questions in the oral tests, might be arranged into 
 three degrees of difficulty, i. e., apprentice, journeyman, and 
 expert. Later on the idea of having a performance test 
 graded upon a single complex operation was adopted. Mr. 
 J. A. Balcom and Mr. J. H. Sengstaken spent most of their
 
 354 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 time on performance test problems, but none of these tests 
 was ready for use before the reorganization of the division in 
 April. 
 
 Towards the end of January, Mr. T. R. Stocksdale and Mr. 
 Alfred C. Rader joined the Division. Mr. Stocksdale gave 
 most of his time to the compilation of a form of test which 
 required the recruit to name and tell the use of various pic- 
 tured tools, machines and appliances of his trade. It was not 
 until a number of months later, however, that the first picture 
 tests, greatly modified in form, were ready for use. 
 
 During this time there had been considerable discussion 
 concerning the necessity of actually trying out the tests which 
 had been made. Numerous plans for such try-outs were sug- 
 gested and on two or three occasions attempts were made to 
 try the tests on workers. Since the trials were conducted 
 without definite plan they were not very satisfactory. 
 
 OCCUPATIONAL INDEX AND TRADE 
 SPECIFICATIONS 
 
 By November 6, Mr. John J. Swan, a mechanical engineer 
 of New York City, had joined the Trade Test Division. He 
 soon saw that the whole trade test program implied, first of 
 all, an adequate classification of the trades and definitions of 
 the trade terminology to be used. In cooperation with Dr. 
 Strong, he finished revising the Index of Occupations and 
 Trades in the Army, which immediately became standard in 
 all personnel offices. Mr. Swan's main work, the preparation 
 of the volume of Army Trade Specifications, was completed 
 shortly afterwards. 
 
 A study of the general situation developed the fact that 
 previously an examination of the various organizations and 
 units in the Army had been made and a list of trades or voca- 
 tions prepared under certain group headings. Since these 
 group headings and the list of trades were at that time being 
 used in certain of the camps for classification of the enlisted 
 men, it was necessary to continue the original scheme of
 
 FORERUNNERS OF TRADE TESTS 355 
 
 classification even though some minor defects had developed 
 in the system. 
 
 In order that the trade specifications might be comprehen- 
 sive, Mr. Swan studied the various organizations in the entire 
 Army as then made up, and accumulated data as to the trade 
 names and actual duties of men. This work was undertaken 
 in the early stages of the formation of our Army, when things 
 were changing very rapidly. There were hundreds of new 
 officers in charge of important work, and many of these men 
 were so new that they had very little information about what 
 was required. Furthermore, the general plan of the Army as 
 to what new organizations would have to be formed, and the 
 make-up of such as had been started in name at least, was 
 very incomplete and uncertain. In many cases the actual in- 
 formation needed could not be obtained from those higher up 
 but only from men in minor positions. In other cases prac- 
 tically no information was obtainable. 
 
 For a period of five weeks Mr. Swan devoted himself to 
 searching out the men with the most information and inter- 
 viewing them individually or in groups. In many cases it was 
 necessary to drive such individuals or groups into completing 
 the organization plans for which they were responsible. Dur- 
 ing this period he obtained additional occupations and more 
 or less complete specifications of individual jobs, so far as the 
 lists went. 
 
 As fast as these specifications were obtained, they were 
 transcribed on to a sheet and forwarded to the Orange office 
 from Washington. Here they were assembled so that the 
 various definitions of carpenter, submitted by different organ- 
 izations of the Army, were all brought together, those for 
 blacksmith together, and so on. They were then edited with 
 the army needs in mind. In this way the general duties and 
 detailed qualifications of each man filling a position requiring 
 special skill or training were stated. For each position there 
 was also included a list of substitute occupations. 
 
 To avoid duplication and in order that the definitions or
 
 356 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 specifications might be limited to the smallest possible number, 
 it was deemed best to make each definition a description of 
 what might be termed "the maximum man" so that the defini- 
 tion would be a standard to measure even the highest type of 
 man in that particular trade or profession. It was arranged 
 that, in the event of such a definition being too explicit or 
 describing too high a type of man, the term "apprentice" 
 applied to the definition would indicate automatically a man 
 of lesser ability. Without this restricting statement, it was 
 understood in every case that the specifications covered a 
 "journeyman" unless "expert/' "superintendent," or some 
 qualifying term were used in connection with the actual occu- 
 pation named. 
 
 As fast as the galley proofs were received they were sub- 
 mitted to the various army organizations which were con- 
 cerned, with requests for corrections and comments. The first 
 corrected proofs were returned with so few and such minor 
 changes, and the comments on them were of such favorable 
 character that it was considered safe to go ahead. The first 
 edition of "Trade Specifications and Occupational Index" 
 (Form CCP-504) was issued on March 21, 1918. 
 
 The edition was distributed to personnel officers in cnmps 
 and overseas, and to a number of other departments of the 
 Government and civilian industries which expressed a desire to 
 adopt the system. The first edition being exhausted, a reprint 
 was undertaken and an edition of 15,000 issued about October 
 1, 1918. On the request of the Labor Department 800 copies 
 were sent to them. Copies were also supplied to the Navy 
 Department and to the Marine Corps. A considerable number 
 were distributed to Governmental Employment Agencies and 
 to personnel or instruction executives in large civilian indus- 
 tries and elsewhere, and a further supply was sent abroad for 
 personnel use in the A. E. F. The total number printed 
 amounted to 17,500. Five thousand copies were supplied to 
 the Provost Marshal General, one for each Local Board.
 
 CHAPTER 29 
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 
 TWO CONCEPTIONS OF TRADE TESTS 
 
 The early history of trade test work in the Army was 
 marked by a discussion of two conceptions as to what a trade 
 test should be. One view was that trade tests should be made 
 up of carefully prepared and reasonably checked questions 
 and answers for each trade and graded into three groups, for 
 apprentices, for journeymen, and for experts. Moreover, 
 such questions should be asked by experts or at least trades- 
 men in the trade, who would be able to gather from the 
 answers given in the test how skilled the applicant was. 
 The determination as to what sets of questions and answers 
 should be included in a trade test, and the grading of 
 their relative difficulty would naturally be decided by experts 
 in the trade. Coupled with this point of view was the desire 
 to get out something as soon as possible, even if it were not 
 perfect, which would be of aid to interviewers. This was to 
 be applied at once and generally, meanwhile the work of im- 
 provement and changes suggested by experience would be 
 carried on continuously towards ultimate perfection. 
 
 The other conception of trade tests emphasized that such 
 sets of questions and answers were of little, or possibly no 
 use, until they had actually bee'n tried out and it was known 
 that novices, apprentices, journeymen, and experts could be 
 differentiated through their use. And the emphasis was placed, 
 moreover, upon an actual try-out, not upon the opinion of 
 experts as to how good the questions were. 
 
 Mr. Mark M. Jones, who was placed in charge of the Trade 
 Test Division, supported the first point of view. With some 
 
 357
 
 358 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 exceptions the Committee, on the other hand, supported the 
 second point of view. Mr. Jones had the advantage in the 
 early days as he had a definite program, which eventually pro- 
 duced the two books, Army Trade Specifications and Aids for 
 Interviewers, as reported in the preceding chapter. The 
 Committee, on the other hand, did not know exactly how 
 their plan should be carried out but were confident that an 
 intelligent attack would very shortly result in a clearly de- 
 fined program. 
 
 FIRST ATTEMPT AT STANDARDIZATION OF TRADE 
 
 TESTS 
 
 As has already been pointed out, the Committee assumed 
 that the trade tests developed by the Trade Test Division at 
 Orange would be standardized. This standardization would 
 take the form of trying the tests out on tradesmen of known 
 ability to discover whether the tests did separate skilled from 
 unskilled men and to discover just what score in a given test 
 separated "poor" men from "good" men. While none of the 
 original members of the Trade Test Division was trained as 
 a psychologist or statistician, the Committee felt that the 
 Orange group would quickly appreciate the necessity for 
 standardized tests. In order that this point of view might 
 be represented, Dr. T. L. Kelley was assigned in November, 
 1917, to the Orange office. He had had considerable training in 
 psychology and statistics and was experienced in the prac- 
 tical work of a number of trades. After a week at Orange 
 Dr. Kelley believed that the following principles had been 
 agreed upon as fundamental bases for trade test work: (1) 
 trade tests should be uniform and not dependent upon the 
 individual choices of the experts or others who were trade 
 testers; (2) job analyses were necessary before it was pos- 
 sible to devise tests strictly appropriate to army needs; (3) 
 all tests should be standardized by actual try-outs. The 
 exact nature of the try-outs was not considered at that time. 
 
 Leaving Orange November 6, Dr. Kelley went to Texas
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 359 
 
 where, since fall, trade tests introduced by British and Cana- 
 dian officers had become prominent in the aviation camps. 
 Here he made a careful investigation of the British trade 
 tests as he found them in Texas. He reported considerable 
 activity in the use of performance tests, but very little in the 
 way of standardized procedure. 
 
 After his return from Texas, Dr. Kelley tried to push 
 further at Orange his ideas on performance tests and stan- 
 dardization. It then became clear that Mr. Jones and Dr. 
 Kelley held decidedly contrary points of view. Because of 
 this the latter soon after left the Orange office and returned 
 to Columbia University. 
 
 Meanwhile Dr. Thorndike and Dr. Bingham we're becom- 
 ing concerned about the necessity for greater speed in the 
 preparation of performance tests and for the systematic try- 
 out of all tests. Both had conferences with Mr. Jones and 
 on December 17, 1917, Dr. Bingham forwarded him a memo- 
 randum in regard to trade tests which Dr. Thorndike had 
 prepared. The following excerpts from this memorandum 
 will be seen to contain the gist of a standardization proce- 
 dure: 
 
 "Mr. Jones and Mr. Swan are eager to have the Trade 
 Tests tried out, but they are both too busy to do any more 
 in this line now than they have already done. I would 
 help, but I am trying to push through a report for Colonel 
 Bingham. I can help on the matter later; for the present 
 it seems best for Dr. Kelley to give whatever time he has 
 to spare from work for Major Yerkes, as soon as he finishes 
 his report on the essential facts about army schools, to this 
 work. If Mr. Jones can provide the men of known ability 
 and inability to be tried out, Dr. Kelley could act substan- 
 tially as a trade tester in a camp would do except that h< 
 will give as complete a test as time allows, and will record 
 all answers and preserve all products produced so far as 
 possible.
 
 360 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "To complete as far as 
 
 possible, the 
 
 following program: 
 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 Auto Machinist 
 
 
 
 Rep. 
 
 
 Test 
 
 Test Test 
 
 10 good carpenters 
 
 10 
 
 2 2 
 
 
 
 
 10 poor carpenters 
 
 10 
 
 2 2 
 
 10 good auto repairers. . . 
 
 2 
 
 10 2 
 
 10 poor auto repairers. . . 
 
 2 
 
 10 2 
 
 10 good machinists 
 
 2 
 
 2 10 
 
 10 Door machinists.. 
 
 2 
 
 2 10 
 
 "Any other test will do in place of one or more of these 
 three in case they are not all ready. 
 
 "The point is to have each test tried out with approxi- 
 mately 28 men, 10 good at the thing, 10 poor, etc., and 8 
 who are good or poor at other things. The point of this 
 latter is to give a second check on whether the tests are 
 diluted by a general ability to pass examinations distinct 
 from special ability in the trade in question. 
 
 "The above will take, roughly, 200 hours of Dr. Kelley's 
 time in testing and as much more in working up results ; 
 Mr. Jones to supply: 
 
 4 good carpenters for 4 hours each 
 4 poor carpenters for 4 hours each 
 6 good carpenters for 2 hours each 
 6 poor carpenters for 2 hours each, 
 
 and similarly for each of the other trades, and to supply 
 the materials for the practical side of the tests; and in 
 general to give Dr. Kelley facilities for the testing. 
 
 "From this study Dr. Kelley will approximately deter- 
 mine: 
 
 (1) How long it takes to give each separate example. 
 
 (2) Points in connection with the wording of a question 
 and of the reported answer. 
 
 (3) The reliability of the test as a measure of the trade 
 which it is attempting to measure. 
 
 (4) The. degree to which the separate questions are 
 tests of general knowledge or of specific trade 
 knowledge."
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 361 
 
 FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN STANDARDIZATION 
 
 While in Texas observing the British trade tests, Dr. 
 Kelley had given some oral tests to mechanics of known abil- 
 ity. The results had been sent to Orange, but were neglected 
 in the rush of other work. About January 1, however, Dr. 
 Kelley was given an assignment to work on the try-out of 
 trade tests in New York under the direction of Dr. Thorn- 
 dike. He concentrated first of all on tests for telephone 
 repairmen, electricians, (power plant, linemen and inside 
 wiremen), carpenters, (general), and automobile repairmen. 
 Taking the sets of questions prepared at Orange which 
 seemed to be most promising as indicators of ability, he went 
 from garage to garage and from shop to shop and gave them 
 to workmen whose ability was vouched for by the superinten- 
 dents. He also gave these same questions to college students 
 and to men who purported to be skilled in other trades, his 
 point in doing this being that those questions should be 
 eliminated which could be correctly answered on the basis of 
 general education or intelligence. The number of tradesmen 
 examined varied with the different trades, but averaged about 
 fifteen. A smaller number were tested with questions for 
 machinist (toolmaker), mechanical draftsman, and chauffeur. 
 The results of this first experiment showed how impossible it 
 is to predict in advance the degree of reliability which is to 
 be attached to the answers to an apparently good question. 
 Localisms had to be discovered and eliminated, such as the 
 "come-along" in the lineman's test. The try-out also brought 
 out very clearly the fact that the trade of automobile repair- 
 man, for example, is, to a certain extent, a group of more or 
 less distinct trades; and that power plant electricians are of 
 two distinct sorts, according to whether their experience has 
 been in a direct current or an alternating current plant. It 
 demonstrated the necessity for (1) trade analysis, and (2) 
 standardization of examinations through try-outs on a suf- 
 ficient number and variety of tradesmen whose skill was 
 known.
 
 362 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The minutes of the Committee meeting of January 15 
 record the activities of the group at that time. 
 
 "1. The Trade Test Division, through M. M. Jones 
 and J. J. Swan, reported that the first draft for the volume 
 of Personnel Specifications would be completed in one 
 week; that rapid progress was being made on the prepara- 
 tion of the Aids for Intervewers; and that the trade tests 
 proper, or performance tests, had reached a stage of devel- 
 opment where adoption of a policy regarding installation 
 is essential. Mr. Jones estimated that the cost of buildings, 
 equipment, supplies and salaries for installing the Trade 
 Test System in sixteen cantonments would be $300,000.00. 
 It was deemed advisable to first undertake an installation 
 at a National Army Cantonment such as Camp Dix, and a 
 staff corps camp, such as the one at Raritan, New Jersey. 
 These would serve both as try-outs of the methods and as 
 demonstrations to the Army. Mr. Clothier was requested 
 to arrange the necessary introduction for Mr. Jones to 
 Commanding General Scott and the Personnel Officer at 
 Camp Dix. 
 
 "2. Plans were discussed for testing both the Inter- 
 viewers' Aids and the Performance tests. It was deemed 
 of the utmost importance to determine mathematically by 
 actual trial as early as possible, just how little or how 
 much reliance may be placed on the results of the inter- 
 view, independent of the performance tests ; and what is 
 the degree of reliability of the performance tests proper. 
 The difficulty of getting, at Orange, enough good and poor 
 workmen of one trade to give the hours necessary was 
 pointed out. Tentative try-outs by Thurstone at the Car- 
 negie Institute of Technology, and elsewhere, were author- 
 ized and Mr. Jones undertook to ascertain what arrange- 
 ments would be necessary to permit of adequate try-outs 
 at Orange as soon as the necessary equipment is assem- 
 bled." 
 
 However, the thought and efforts of everybody at Orange 
 were concentrated upon the work already at hand, including 
 plans for Trade Test Buildings in the camps. The Com- 
 mittee became convinced that the only way to make progress 
 with the task of determining the reliability of the projected 
 methods was to bring into the organization someone whose
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 363 
 
 primary responsibility would be to test the tests. It was for 
 this purpose that Dr. Beardsley Ruml became an associate 
 of the Committee on February 2. The division of respon- 
 sibility was as follows: The Trade Test Division, under Mr. 
 Jones, was to be responsible for devising and preparing the 
 tests. That work was not to be interrupted, but was to go 
 steadily forward. Meanwhile Dr. Ruml was to be respon- 
 sible for trying out the tests, determining their relative reli- 
 ability, and standardizing the procedure and the scoring. 
 
 THE STANDARDIZATION STAFF 
 
 The division of the work was more clearly expressed a 
 month later in the following statement written on March 1 1 : 
 
 "1. It is the function of the Trade Test Division to 
 devise suitable tests, both oral and performance; to work 
 out specifications of equipment, building and materials 
 needed, and to submit the general plan under which it 
 seems advisable to install the Trade Tests in the army. 
 
 "2. The Try-Out Group, working under Dr. Ruml, is 
 responsible for evaluating these tests by actual trial on a 
 sufficient number of tradesmen whose degree of skill is 
 known. Ambiguities will be discovered, alternative an- 
 swers formulated, localisms of terminology pointed out and 
 suggestions for modification of questions or answers trans- 
 mitted back to the Trade Test Division, at Orange. Here, 
 also, Dr. Ruml will undertake a statistical determination 
 of the relative weight which should be attached to the dif- 
 ferent questions and the grade that should be assigned to 
 them as apprentice, journeymen or expert journeymen. 
 
 "3. Responsibility for installing the Trade Tests in the 
 Army divisions: The arrangements for introduction of 
 the Trade Test methods into the Army, including the 
 securing of suitable space, equipment and personnel, will 
 be made by the Washington office, working in closest co- 
 operation with Mr. Jones, Mr. Reilly and all the officers 
 who have to do with supervision of the personnel work. 
 
 "To recapitulate: Mr. Jones is responsible for devising 
 and preparing the tests; Dr. Ruml is responsible for try- 
 ing them out, evaluating them, or calibrating them, and the
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Washington Office is responsible for making them available 
 
 for Army use." 
 
 Because of the close affiliation between the Committee and 
 the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the try-out work began 
 in Pittsburgh. During March, 1918, a group, including Dr. 
 J. C. Chapman, Mr. R. F. Evans, Dr. Thomas J. Kirby, Mr. 
 W. P. Shatts and Dr. L. L. Thurstone, attempted to stan- 
 dardize the oral tests devised by the Orange staff by using 
 them upon groups of tradesmen of known ability. 
 
 Pittsburgh as the trade test standardization center lasted 
 but a few weeks. But the experience gained there was of 
 great value. Possibly the principal point learned was that 
 trade test questions must be so devised as to bring out easily 
 scored answers. Many of the questions, up to that time sup- 
 plied from Orange, resulted in long and involved answers, 
 and often in a great variety of answers, all approximately 
 correct. Such answers could not be scored by an examiner 
 who was not an expert in the trade. As it was felt that it 
 would be impossible to secure sufficient experts in all trades 
 for all the camps, it was contended that the tests must be 
 developed so that non-tradesmen examiners could be used. 
 
 As a result of this experience Mr. Max Watson of the 
 Orange group, who had been putting together many of the 
 oral tests, saw the need for standardization and commenced 
 experimenting in framing questions with scorable answers, 
 much to the benefit of the standardization work. In fact, 
 with the square facing of this problem began the really valu- 
 able work of the Trade Test Division in shaping a scienti- 
 fically sound technique for measuring trade ability. 
 
 About March 20 the headquarters of the standardization 
 group was moved from Pittsburgh to Newark, N. J., where 
 the Orange group would be within easy reach. By this time, 
 however, the Edison interests, whose employment problems 
 were multiplying, were making greater and greater demands 
 upon the time of Mr. Jones. It became evident that he must 
 give up his work with the trade tests or with Edison. The
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 365 
 
 Edison interests finally won him. He severed his connection 
 with the Trade Test Division on April 8. Through his 
 efforts the work in trade tests was organized, a large number 
 of important persons were interested, and the Aids for Inter- 
 viewers were issued. 
 
 REVISED METHODS OF TEST MAKING 
 
 Upon the retirement of Mr. Jones, Dr. Ruml was put in 
 charge of all matters concerning the devising and standardiz- 
 ing of trade tests, while Mr. L. B. Hopkins of the Pittsfield 
 plant of the General Electric Company was asked to install 
 trade tests in the camps. At this time the center for devising 
 tests was transferred to the Newark standardization office, 
 then located with the Newark Board of Trade at 800 Broad 
 Street. 
 
 There still remained to be worked out the details of a 
 thorough-going program of standardization which would 
 result in the production of the greatest possible number of 
 reliable tests in the shortest possible space of time. 
 
 The analysis of this production problem revealed three 
 necessary characteristics of the tests to be made: (1) They 
 must differentiate between the various grades of trade skill; 
 (2) they must produce uniform results in various places and 
 in the hands of different examiners; and (3) they must con- 
 sume, in the giving, a small amount of time, energy and 
 material. 
 
 In order to check up the capacity of the tests to separate 
 various degrees of trade ability, it was necessary to choose 
 just what degrees of ability the tests were to mark off. Since 
 the terms, "apprentice," "journeyman/' and "expert" had 
 already been used as expressive of certain ranges of trade 
 ability, these terms were retained and given arbitrary defini- 
 tion. The apprentice was said to be a tradesman who, while 
 master of certain aspects of his trade, could not yet be en- 
 trusted with an important task. The journeyman was a 
 tradesman who could perform practically any job in his
 
 366 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 trade. The expert could perform quickly and with superior 
 skill any work done by men in his trade. To these classifisa- 
 tions was added that of "novice," or one who had had no 
 trade experience. The differentiating capacity of the trade 
 tests was to be measured by the accuracy with which men of 
 the above kinds were separated. 
 
 Practically all of the thought of the Division had been con- 
 fined to two methods of testing, namely oral and performance, 
 so it was decided to push forward along these two lines, leav- 
 ing the development of other possible techniques till a later 
 time. 
 
 The experimental procedures used in the development of 
 these two kinds of tests were practically the same, though 
 one resulted in a list of questions and the other in a specified 
 job. 
 
 A discussion of the development of oral tests alone will be 
 . sufficient to indicate the main features of the development of 
 standardized trade tests in general. The reader will simply 
 remember that while the single question and answer was the 
 element of the oral test; an aspect of a job, such as the level- 
 ness of a planed surface or the tightness of a bolt, was the 
 element of the performance tests. For all practical purposes 
 questions and answers on the one hand and aspects of a job 
 on the other, were open to the same sort of quantitative 
 treatment. 
 
 To go on to test development, then, each oral test passed 
 through the following seven stages: (l) Priority; (2) Com- 
 pilation; (3) Preliminary Sampling; (4) Revision; (5) Final 
 Sampling; (6) Evaluation; (7) Calibration and Editing. 
 
 The trades for which tests should be developed first were 
 selected by the Committee in Washington in terms of the 
 priority of needs and submitted to the Newark office where 
 assignments were made to the field staff. 
 
 The field staff then investigated: (a) Whether the trade 
 named really existed (it was found for example that there 
 is no longer a gunsmith trade although there is a trade of gun
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 367 
 
 repairer) ; and (b) what were the elements of the trade 
 what peculiar sort of facts and habits of behavior were 
 possessed by tradesmen in this line. After the field staff 
 had gathered together all possible information about a trade, 
 that information was incorporated into from sixty to ninety 
 questions whose answers were known only to men in the 
 particular trade for which the test was being devised. 
 
 This set of questions was then taken out for preliminary 
 sampling. During this process from nine to twelve trades- 
 men from different plants answered all of the questions. 
 Their answers showed whether the questions were unambigu- 
 ous to the ordinary tradesman and whether the possible cor- 
 rect answers to each question were few in number and short 
 in length. 
 
 In the light of these results of this preliminary sampling, 
 some of the original questions were thrown out and others 
 were modified in form. The test thus revised and reformu- 
 lated was ready for the final sampling process. 
 
 During final sampling the revised list of questions was 
 given to eighty men whose trade ability was known, There 
 were usually twenty novices, twenty apprentices, twenty 
 journeymen and twenty experts. In this connection it should 
 be noted that many industrial concerns in Newark and the 
 vicinity cooperated most heartily by donating the time of 
 their employees for this testing of the tests. 
 
 The scores of each man in the various questions were then 
 turned over to the statistical department of the Trade Test 
 Division. Here a quantitative study of evaluation was made 
 of each question. The questions turned out to be of several 
 types (See figure 16.) Some of the questions were answered 
 correctly by practically all of the experts, by most of the 
 journeymen, by fewer of the apprentices and by fewer still 
 of the novices. (See question 11, figure 16.) Other ques- 
 tions were answered correctly by almost all tradesmen and 
 incorrectly by practically all non-tradesmen (Question 3, 
 figure 16). There were still others which experts and jour-
 
 368 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 neymen answered with similar success, and apprentices and 
 novices with similar failure (Question 38, figure 16); and 
 finally there were questions which only experts could answer 
 
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 FIGURE 16 
 
 This chart shows graphic representations of four type questions 
 and four rejected questions. Each question is scored from 4 to 0: 4 
 for correct, for incorrect, and other scores for partial credit. 
 
 The dotted lines indicate ideal types; the solid lines show the aver- 
 age scores of answers actually given in this test. 
 
 Question 11 approximates a gradual differentiation of groups. 
 
 Question 3 is a "Trade" Question, differentiating rather sharply 
 between Novice and Tradesman. 
 
 Question 38 is an "Apprentice-Journeyman" Question, differen- 
 tiating between Novice and Apprentice on one hand and Journey- 
 man and Expert on the other. 
 
 Question 21 is an "Expert" Question, its most marked differentia- 
 tion being between Journeyman and Expert. 
 
 Question 5 is a poor trade question, Novices scoring high and 
 Experts relatively low. 
 
 Questions 10, 31 and 42, are also poor questions which were finally 
 rejected.
 
 STANDARDIZED TRADE TESTS 
 
 369 
 
 (Question 21, figure 16). Questions of all of these types 
 were useful since all tended to divide those of lesser from 
 those of greater trade ability. It was simply a matter of 
 selecting from the types available that combination which 
 
 FIGURE 17 
 
 This chart shows the distribution according to individual total 
 scores of the 80 subjects used in standardization. Each square 
 represents one man. The first row gives the distribution of 20 
 novices, i.e., 9 novices scored zero in the test, 7 scored four, 3 scored 
 eight and 1 scored sixteen. The second row gives the distribution of 
 20 apprentices, the third row 20 journeymen, and the fourth row 
 20 experts. The three vertical heavy lines show the limits of the 
 various groups as determined by the distribution of the men used 
 in standardization. The limits shown are the ones finally used in 
 Army testing, i.e., 0-19 for novices, 20-43 for apprentices, 44-67 for 
 journeymen and 68-80 for experts. 
 
 would make the best discrimination between novices and 
 apprentices, apprentices and journeymen, and journeymen 
 and experts. 
 
 Of course, there were questions (See Nos. 5, 10, 31 and 
 42, figure 16), which did not differentiate between "poorer" 
 and "better" men. These were immediately thrown out. 
 
 After the evaluation of the individual questions and the 
 selection of a final set, it was necessary to determine what
 
 370 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ranges of scores in the test as a whole would include novices, 
 apprentices, journeymen and experts. Using only the scores 
 in the final list of questions the men tested were grouped as 
 in Figure 17. Most of the experts scored higher than the 
 journeymen, most of the journeymen higher than the appren- 
 tices, etc., although there was always some slight overlapping. 
 The test was calibrated by determining those scores (the 
 critical scores) at which there was the least overlapping. 
 Knowing these scores the camp examiner could judge accur- 
 ately the trade status of a soldier making any given score 
 in the test. 
 
 These steps of test development were not modified to any 
 great extent from April, 1918, till the armistice was signed 
 in November. In fact, throughout the work the standardiza- 
 tion program seemed to have been thought out with remark- 
 able foresight, so well did it stand up under the attacks of 
 the critically-minded and the demands for quantity produc- 
 tion from the Armv.
 
 CHAPTER 30 
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 
 FIRST PLANS FOR INSTALLATION 
 
 As has already been stated, examining boards of the Signal 
 Corps began to use the lists of questions in TT-2 as early 
 as December 15, 191 7, and by February 12, 1918, the Aids 
 to Interviewers was in the hands .of all personnel officers. 
 These early tests, however, were never intended to be final, 
 so even while they were being put together the Committee 
 was at work upon plans for the installation in the camps of 
 a much more elaborate trade test machinery. Although up to 
 this point no performance tests had been produced, it was 
 felt that a considerable number of these tests would be pre- 
 pared during the spring months. An attempt was made, 
 therefore, to secure an appropriation which would make pos- 
 sible the immediate introduction into the camps of all tests 
 as fast as they were ready for use. On February 15, 1918, 
 three days after the publication of Aids to Interviewers, the 
 following memorandum prepared by Major (later Lt. Col.) 
 Grenville Clark, was addressed by The Adjutant General 
 to the Chief of Staff. 
 
 "SUBJECT: Installation of Trade Test System in Can- 
 tonments. 
 
 "1. Beginning in September, 1917, there has been in- 
 stalled in all National Army and National Guard Camps in 
 the United States a system of occupational and vocational 
 classification of enlisted men. This classification is now in 
 progress in Regular Army Divisions. Samples of the cards 
 used and index of occupations under which the men are 
 classified are attached. These cards are filed by com- 
 panies or regiments at Division Headquarters, in the Per- 
 
 371
 
 372 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 sormel Office in charge of the Division Personnel Officer. 
 The system has been established under the jurisdiction of 
 this office with the advice and assistance of the Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel, appointed by the Secretary 
 of War. 
 
 "2. The system has been used in two principal ways, 
 (a) for the selection of men within the Division for special 
 purposes and the 'balancing' of units of the Division, (b) 
 for the selection of men for transfer out of the Division. 
 
 "3. For both of the above purposes the system has been 
 valuable and in many respects indispensable. Experience 
 has shown, however, that the results are necessarily imper- 
 fect. No matter how intelligently the man may be inter- 
 viewed and his qualifications recorded and analyzed, 
 selection on a mere paper record does not give fully satis- 
 factory results. On the other hand the necessity for accur- 
 ate selection has been proven to be extremely important. 
 The demands of various branches of the service for skilled 
 men are both large in number and varied in kind. Some 
 75jOOO men have been selected from National Army canton- 
 ments for special purposes, in the Engineer Corps, Quar- 
 termaster Corps, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps and 
 Medical Department. The great bulk of these men are 
 called for in accordance with vocational qualifications cov- 
 ering a wide range, from farriers and blacksmiths to engine 
 repair and instrument repair men. There is every reason 
 to believe that this process of selection and transfer will 
 go on indefinitely. Ineffective selection must have serious 
 consequences. For example, an attempt is now being made 
 to obtain 2,400 locomotive repair men and 2,400 car repair 
 men for immediate duty in France. It is certain that no 
 such number of men with actual experience in car and loco- 
 motive repair can be found, so that it will be necessary to 
 take skilled men of allied trades. The degree of useful- 
 ness of men in France will depend on the accuracy of selec- 
 tion. Such accuracy cannot be obtained except by actual 
 test of qualifications. 
 
 "4. To achieve the best results it is necessary to supple- 
 ment the card classification system by a system of trade 
 tests to determine by oral and practical examination the 
 actual vocational skill of the man. 
 
 "5. The above conclusion was arrived at in an early 
 stage of their work by the Classification Committee and
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 373 
 
 they were authorized to investigate carefully the whole 
 subject of trade tests. This has now been done in an 
 elaborate research and series of experiments during the 
 last three months through Mr. M. M. Jones of Thomas A. 
 Edison, Inc., of New Jersey, and Mr. J. J. Swan, Con- 
 sulting Mechanical Engineer of New York City. A series 
 of oral tests prepared by them is already in use by the Sig- 
 nal Corps. There is submitted herewith a report on the 
 subject by Mr. Jones. 
 
 "6. It is believed that the advisability of trade tests in 
 the Army has been sufficiently demonstrated and that it is 
 now time to install such a system in a comprehensive way 
 and as soon as possible. It is also believed that no half- 
 measures should be adopted, but that the system should be 
 installed and equipped in such a way as to insure thorough- 
 ness and good results. 
 
 "7. Mr. Jones recommends the use of a standard two- 
 story barracks building in each cantonment and the pro- 
 vision of equipment at an estimated cost of $17,000 per 
 unit. In many cases it is believed that a building could be 
 made available without building a new one. The cost 
 should not be a deterrent, for the value of effective selec- 
 tion of men for special purposes is far greater in dollars 
 and cents than the expense here involved, not to speak 
 of the military value that cannot be measured in dollars. 
 The trade tests, it is believed, will be of even more direct 
 and practical value in the Army than the psychological ex- 
 aminations which have been authorized and buildings pro- 
 vided for to cost $12,000 at each camp. 
 
 "8. It is recommended that authority be given to install 
 a trade test system in all permanent or semi-permanent 
 camps and cantonments having accommodations for 10,000 
 men or more (excluding embarkation camps, camps to be 
 vacated within six months) and to expend an average of 
 not more than $17,000 on buildings and equipment for 
 each of the various stations; buildings already built to be 
 used where available; the system to be installed under the 
 advice and with the assistance of the experts associated 
 with the Committee on Classification of Personnel and 
 when the system is installed and the proper military organ- 
 ization completed to be turned over to it. 
 
 (Signed) "H. P. McCxiN, 
 
 "The Adjutant General."
 
 374 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The recommendations of this memorandum were not ac- 
 cepted immediately. The work was new and while the pro- 
 posal seemed sound the General Staff hesitated to adopt it 
 without some sort of preliminary trial. The Committee de- 
 cided to change its plans somewhat in the face of this atti- 
 tude. The Trade Test Division was therefore instructed to 
 push forward the installation of trade tests gradually, camp 
 by camp. 
 
 Shortly after this Mr. Jones left the Trade Test Division 
 and responsibility for drawing up concrete plans of installa- 
 tion fell largely upon the shoulders of Mr. L. B. Hopkins, 
 assisted by Mr. S. B. Mathewson, a former personnel super- 
 visor. 
 
 One of the first problems to be settled concerned the selec- 
 tion of camps in which trade tests were to be installed. It 
 seemed probable at this time that arrangements could be made 
 to have all drafted men come into the Army through the depot 
 brigades of the sixteen National Army cantonments. It was 
 planned, therefore, to establish trade test stations only in the 
 sixteen cantonments. Observation of camp conditions showed 
 certain practical limitations which must be considered in pro- 
 ducing trade tests for the Army. Because of the great num- 
 bers of men passing through the depot brigades it was neces- 
 sary to deal quickly with each one. It was, therefore, decided 
 that no oral or picture tests should be produced which could 
 not be given in ten minutes or less. It seemed impractical to 
 try to use any performance tests which could not be given 
 in thirty minutes. At the same time $5.00 was set as the 
 average cost of equipment for performance tests, and 15 cents 
 as the cost of material to be used in giving a performance 
 test to any single individual. 
 
 Early Work at Camp Dix. Permission having been ob- 
 tained from Colonel W. C. Johnson, Chief of Staff of the 
 78th Division, an experimental automobile test course was 
 completed at Camp Dix on April 22, 1918. Here Messrs.
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 375 
 
 J. A. Balcom and E. S. Robinson developed and standardized 
 a performance trade test for auto drivers. 
 
 From April 22 on, oral and picture tests were given at 
 Camp Dix to selected groups of men, more as tests of the 
 tests than of the men. This was perhaps the first applica- 
 tion of trade tests in camp, but the results were particularly 
 gratifying. P'or example, a soldier who had represented him- 
 self upon interview to be a "theatre electrician" failed mis- 
 erably on the picture test and under cross examination ad- 
 mitted his experience to be confined to switching on and off 
 the various theatre lighting effects. On the whole the results 
 obtained from the oral and picture tests at this time gave 
 great impetus to the enthusiasm of the test building group 
 at Newark. 
 
 Installation at Camp Johnston. Late in April authoriza- 
 tion was obtained from the Quartermaster General and the 
 Chief of Ordnance to establish trade test stations at Camp 
 Johnston and at the Ordnance Training Camp, Camp Han- 
 cock. 
 
 Mr. Hopkins, accompanied by Mr. Mathewson, arrived in 
 Jacksonville, on May 8, to look over the ground at Johnston. 
 Mr. W. S. Field, a special representative of the Quarter- 
 master General's Office, was at Camp Johnston, studying 
 plans for increasing the capacity and usefulness of this camp. 
 Colonel Charles Willard was Camp Commander and Mr. 
 Cooley of the University of Wisconsin was in charge of the 
 training division. Mr. Hopkins' problem was to convince 
 these three gentlemen of the need for trade tests. This was 
 no small task as he had only nine oral, two picture and 
 three performance tests, and these did not appear to meet 
 the greatest need at Camp Johnston. For example, the selec- 
 tion of truck drivers was among their important problems and 
 there was a trade test only for light car chauffeurs. 
 
 A hurry call was wired to Newark requesting increased 
 production, and within the next ten days 10 oral and 4 
 performance tests, including the truck driver's test, were
 
 376 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 received. On May 12, the first trade tests, the results of 
 which were to be used in assigning soldiers, were given in 
 a tent at the Camp Johnston Receiving Station. 
 
 At a formal meeting on this date, attended by Colonel 
 Willard, Mr. W. S. Field, Mr. Cooley, Mr. (later Major) 
 H. W. Jerremanus, Mr. J. W. Broadhead and a number of 
 other camp authorities, a demonstration of the simplicity, 
 value, accuracy and the uniform results obtainable from tests 
 impressed the camp authorities to such an extent that they 
 were willing to recommend permanent installation at Camp 
 Johnston. Mr. Field accordingly incorporated this recom- 
 mendation in a letter to the Quartermaster General. This 
 letter marked an epoch in the history of trade tests because 
 it resulted in the first concrete recognition of trade test work 
 an appropriation of $18,000 for the Camp Johnston trade 
 test station. 
 
 An interesting feature of the Camp Johnston work was the 
 fact that no hill was available for the auto or truck courses ; 
 also, the sandy soil made it impossible to drive machines on 
 anything but prepared roads. To overcome these handicaps 
 it was necessary to expend about $6,000 in the preparation 
 of a shell-road which ran down into a steep ravine, thereby 
 securing the hill effect from the sides of the water-course. 
 
 Trade test work at Camp Johnston was subsequently so 
 well established that every man claiming trade ability was 
 assigned from the Receiving Camp to the proper training 
 organization on the basis of the results of trade tests. 
 
 Early Work at Camp Hancock. Following the work at 
 Camp Johnston, Mr. Mathewson, who had been fortified 
 with a letter from the Chief of Ordnance to the Command- 
 ing Officer of the training camp at Camp Hancock, reported 
 there on May 18, and proceeded with the installation of oral, 
 picture and performance tests. Owing to the proximity of 
 the Augusta Arsenal and the cooperation of Major R. L. 
 Gaugler. commanding the Ordnance Camp, a building, per- 
 sonnel, equipment and supplies were easily obtained, and
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 377. 
 
 trade testing was started May 22, under Captain D. C. 
 Detchon, Personnel Adjutant. Personnel and trade test work 
 was later firmly established and continued under Lieutenant 
 Newman L. Hoopingarner. 
 
 NEWARK TRAINING SCHOOL FOR TRADE TEST 
 OFFICERS 
 
 From June 10 to 15 a training school for trade test officers 
 was held in Newark with 42 officers and enlisted men in at- 
 tendance. From this school 16 enlisted men and 5 officers 
 were selected and sent to Camp Dix, New Jersey, for further 
 training under supervision of Mr. Mathewson. Nine of the 
 16 enlisted men were subsequently commissioned in The 
 Adjutant General's Department. The training at Camp Dix 
 was designed to give them actual camp experience in the ap- 
 plication of the various theories taught them at the Newark 
 School. It was planned to distribute these men in groups 
 to the various camps, gradually spreading them over the en- 
 tire United States to all camps having Depot Brigades. 
 
 TESTING DIVISION TRAINS 
 
 On June 20, Mr. Hopkins received a request from the 
 General Staff to trade test the personnel of the motorized 
 units of the divisions at Camps Devens, Meade, Custer, Dodge 
 and Sevier. The necessity for speed was apparent as the 
 divisions at these camps were being prepared for overseas 
 duty as rapidly as possible. Compliance with this request 
 required a complete change of plans by the Trade Test Divi- 
 sion. The training at Camp Dix was cut short, and an officer 
 and enlisted man were transferred from the training group at 
 Camp Dix to each of the five (and later eleven) camps. Test- 
 ing commenced on June 24, and was continued until prac- 
 tically every truck drivQr or mechanic under training in the 
 trains was given a trade test rating. 
 
 The following are copies of telegrams from the Contmand- 
 ing Generals of the 79th Division at Camp Meade; 76th,
 
 378 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Devens; 85th, Ouster; and 88th, Dodge. These telegrams, 
 sent to The Adjutant General from the field, showed con- 
 clusively the value of trade tests in preparing an organiza- 
 tion for overseas duty. 
 
 "July 2, 1918. 
 "The Adjutant General of the Army, 
 
 "Washington. 
 
 "Retel July first, the trade test given the Ammunition 
 Train Engineer Train and Sanitary Train was satisfac- 
 to'ry in that it revealed conclusively the number of men who 
 were fit for assignment as well as those unfit for assign- 
 ment and permitted those trains to be filled properly by 
 qualified men from the recent draft upon the results of the 
 test. The test is considered highly satisfactory by the 
 train commander. The final result can be known only 
 after actual experience in the field. The Motor Supply 
 Train is absent on convoy duty and cannot be tested. 
 
 "KENNEDY." 
 
 "Retel first reference trade testing enlisted personnel of 
 motor units of our train. Results of these tests highly 
 satisfactory. Men now serving as truck drivers in trains 
 are well qualified for this work. 
 
 "BEACH." 
 
 "Six eighty seven retel July first, reference to report on 
 results of trade testing. Train commanders advise tests 
 very satisfactory in every respect, showing conclusively 
 the men who are fitted and those unfitted for their 
 assignment. "HODGES." 
 
 "Retel first, results of trade testing have been very sat- 
 isfactory, showing some non-commissioned officers not as 
 well qualified as some privates and in many cases uncover- 
 ing talent that would have been produced only after long 
 service. With more time than is available in present 
 emergency most satisfactory results can be expected. 
 
 "NICHOLSON." 
 
 Many men already assigned to motorized units of the divi- 
 sions- who failed on the test were replaced with new men from 
 the June draft who qualified on the test. The special test-
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 379 
 
 ing of motorized units continued until 18 divisions were cov- 
 ered. This work, supervised by Capt. E. O. Buhler, unques- 
 tionably prepared these divisions for better service overseas. 
 The following letter, under date of October 17, 1918, 
 shows very clearly the appreciation of Major General Hoi- 
 brook, commanding the 9th Division at Camp Sheridan, of 
 the value of trade tests in the organization of the division. 
 
 "From: Commanding General, Camp Sheridan, Ala. 
 
 "To: The Adjutant General of the Army, Washington, 
 D. C. 
 
 "Subject: Trade Test Division. 
 
 "1. First Lieutenant Joseph F. Haas, Adjutant Gen- 
 eral's Department, has been conducting a trade test school 
 here during the last two weeks. In that time he has 
 thoroughly trade tested the Ninth Division Supply and 
 Sanitary Trains and the motorized Machine Gun Battalion. 
 The results of the test have been highly satisfactory. Many 
 men assigned as truck drivers have been disqualified as 
 such and replaced by others suitably qualified. It is essen- 
 tial that skill of this kind be definitely determined especially 
 since motorized equipment for training purposes is not 
 available here. The motorized units of the Division are 
 now completely formed and contain all the skilled men 
 called for in the Tables of Occupational Needs of an In- 
 fantry Division. 
 
 "2. Trade Tests are indispensable to the efficient organ- 
 ization of units requiring a large number of men with 
 specialized skill. The system of Classification of Person- 
 nel is not complete without the trade test work. 
 
 "3. In view of the fact that this camp is soon to receive 
 several thousand draft recruits for the formation of two 
 field artillery brigades, it is strongly recommended that 
 arrangements be made to establish a permanent Trade 
 Test Station here to supplement the System of Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel. The scale of operation for trade test- 
 ing will necessarily be less extensive than in camps where 
 there are depot brigades, but camps without depot brigades 
 should not suffer the handicap of being without this useful 
 work. A section commensurate with the plan of the camp 
 and its accommodations is greatly needed.
 
 380 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 "4. Request information if a permanent trade test sec- 
 tion is contemplated for Camp Sheridan. 
 
 (Signed) "W. A. HOLBROOK, 
 "Major General, U. S. A." 
 
 TRADE TESTS IN THE NATIONAL ARMY 
 CANTONMENTS 
 
 From the middle of June till the latter part of August, 
 the field workers of the Trade Test Division were gradually 
 opening up trade test sections in the personnel offices of the 
 National Army Cantonments. The last of these sections, 
 that at Camp Travis, was installed on August 27, 1918. 
 
 Trade Tests at Garden City. At the Newark School there 
 were in attendance, Captain D. S. Seton of the Department of 
 Military Aeronautics and two enlisted men from Garden City, 
 Aviation Field, No. 2. Captain Seton, who was personnel 
 adjutant at the above camp, became so convinced of the im- 
 portance of trade tests in the selection and placement of 
 airplane mechanics that he attempted to interest the Depart- 
 ment of Aeronautics to the extent of having trade tests adopted 
 at all of their stations. This was never accomplished; but due 
 to Captain Seton's unfailing devotion to the ideal there was 
 ultimately established at Garden City a most complete and 
 successful trade test station. 
 
 THE PRODUCTION OF TESTS 
 
 From the beginning of the work in the camps till the sign- 
 ing of the armistice, the call directed to Newark was for 
 faster and faster production of tests. The automobile and 
 machine trades alone, with their many sub-divisions, required 
 a great many tests and little really effective work could be 
 done until these two fields were thoroughly covered. 
 
 The result was a hurrying of the test building process. 
 The oral tests from the first were put out on a time schedule 
 and even in the case of performance tests, where a much less 
 standardized production process was possible, no time was
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 381 
 
 lost in non-essential experimentation. Some chances to im- 
 prove technique were undoubtedly lost with this rapid for- 
 ward movement, but on the whole the results were probably 
 much better than they would have been under lighter 
 pressure. For one thing, there certainly was no opportunity 
 for the test makers to indulge in laboratory dallying even of 
 the best intended sort. 
 
 In April when production was just getting under way, 
 there were about a dozen men in the office at 800 Broad 
 Street, Newark, and four in Pittsburgh. Dr. Rural directed 
 the early meetings which settled for all time many of the 
 problems of trade test method. R. F. Evans, Max Watson, 
 Dr. P. J. Kruse, P. N. Golden and S. V. Boyd worked on 
 oral tests in Newark. These tests were tried out and 
 checked by Dr. J. C. Chapman, Dr. L. L. Thurstone, Dr. 
 T. J. Kirby and H. A. Toops of Pittsburg. All of the per- 
 formance test work was done in Newark. J. A. Balcom and 
 J. H. Sengstaken, who had been on performance tests in 
 Orange, continued in the same line when they joined the 
 Newark group. F. Meine and E. S. Robinson, both of whom 
 had up to this time been working in the Washington office of 
 the Committee, joined the performance test work about 
 April 1. W. P. Shatts was assigned to performance tests for 
 a short time, after which he was directed to organize a con- 
 tact and information department. The early statistical work 
 in connection with oral tests was done by Dr. Ruml. This 
 work was later taken over by Miss Harriet E. O'Shea. The 
 performance test statistical work was done by members of 
 the performance test group. 
 
 During the early days of the Division Dr. Kelley had 
 investigated certain British trade tests in use in Texas avia- 
 tion camps. The Committee now thought it wise to make a 
 closer examination of British trade tests which was possible 
 only by seeing those tests operating in England. Accordingly 
 it was decided that Dr. Ruml should join a party of the 
 Committee about to look into certain personnel problems
 
 382 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 overseas, his own specific task being to collect all possible 
 information about British trade tests. On July 1, E. S. 
 Robinson became acting head of the Newark office and on 
 July 8 Dr. Ruml sailed from Hoboken. He returned October 
 15, having been employed in France on personnel work for 
 some time. His report on British trade tests showed that 
 their work differed from that in this country in that (1) their 
 administration was more centralized; (2) their scoring was 
 unstandardized ; (3) their examiners were trade experts, and 
 (4) their tests, being longer and more elaborate, made a more 
 analytical measurement of the trade ability of each candidate. 
 The armistice was signed too soon after for the effect of this 
 report to have made any change in procedure here, if such 
 change would have resulted. 
 
 About July 15, another oral standardization center was 
 established at Cleveland and Dr. J. C. Chapman and Mr. 
 G. F. Parsons were placed in charge. The great advantage 
 in having centers at Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Newark lay 
 in the greater variety of industries that could be reached and 
 also that provincialism and local regulations could be dis- 
 covered and so eliminated from the tests. 
 
 Dr. L. L. Thurstone, who had been giving trade tests half 
 time in Pittsburgh, came on to Newark for the summer. He 
 made a careful study of picture test technique and aided by 
 Dr. C. K. Lyans and Mr. F. Schuchman turned out a number 
 of very successful tests of this kind. 
 
 During the first few months of the work little or no dis- 
 tinction had been made between the functions of devising and 
 standardizing tests. With the increasing of the staff, how- 
 ever, this distinction was made. Those men who had been 
 at the work from the beginning now put more and more of 
 their time on the devising of tests, while the newer and less 
 experienced men took over most of the standardization. For 
 the standardization of performance tests a special group was 
 organized with First Lieutenant J. F. Haas, and later First
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 383 
 
 Lieutenant Harrison J. Ryon, at its head. Many members 
 of camp trade test organizations sent to Newark to learn how 
 trade tests were made, were assigned during their stay to 
 this performance standardization group. 
 
 Detailed instructions as to operation of trade tests in the 
 camps, together with several sample tests, are given in 
 Chapter VI of the Personnel Manual Volume II. 
 
 The Trade Test Conference. On Saturday, August 10, 
 and Sunday, August 11, a conference was held at the Hotel 
 Robert Treat in Newark. At this conference the field work- 
 ers and test makers discussed, to the profit of both, the gen- 
 eral trade test situation. Mr. Hopkins presided at this con- 
 ference and centered most of the talk about the manuscript 
 for the trade test chapter of the Personnel Manual which 
 had just been prepared under Mr. Mathewson's direction. 
 
 Establishing a Permanent School. During the summer it 
 had become more and more apparent that the welfare of trade 
 tests demanded above all carefully trained trade test officers 
 in the camps. The pressure of events had rather pushed this 
 training problem into the background after the first school in 
 June, although there was a general appreciation of the need 
 for a regular training course. When, however, the trade test 
 staff at Newark, on September 1, moved into their first 
 adequate quarters, it was decided to start a permanent school 
 immediately. Accordingly, a large room in the new quarters 
 was set aside and equipped with all the tools and materials 
 necessary for training purposes. Mr. Hopkins at the same 
 time arranged for the temporary transfer of Captain (later 
 Major) J. W. Hayes of the Sanitary Corps who was to take 
 charge of training problems connected with trade tests. 
 Captain Hayes arrived in Newark early in October, and, 
 with Lieutenant Tornquist as his assistant, started what 
 promised to be a very successful training course for trade 
 test officers.
 
 384 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 LIST OF TRADES ON WHICH SOME FORM OF 
 TRADE TEST HAS BEEN DEVELOPED 
 
 Name of Trade 
 
 Auto Repairer Carburetor 24c 
 
 " General 24g 
 
 " Magneto 24m 
 
 " Motorcycle 24mo 
 
 " " Radiator 24r 
 
 Baker & Cook Cook 40c 
 
 Blacksmith Forger, drop 7d 
 
 " Forger, hammersmith 7ha 
 
 " General 7g 
 
 " Horseshoer 7h 
 
 Wagoner 7wa 
 
 Boilermaker General 63g 
 
 " Locomotive 631 
 
 Bricklayer General . / 26g 
 
 Butcher Butcher 41b 
 
 Canvas Worker General 76g 
 
 Carpenter Boat builder 8b 
 
 Bridge 8br 
 
 " Cabinet Maker 8cb 
 
 " General 8g 
 
 " Patternmaker 8p 
 
 Ship 8s 
 
 Chauffeur Au.to Driver 22a 
 
 " Motorcycle 22m 
 
 " Truck Driver 23t 
 
 Chemist & Chemical Worker 
 
 Chemical Laboratory 67g 
 
 Clerical Worker General Office.. . 38e 
 
 O 
 
 Electrician Armature Winder lOar 
 
 " Generator & Switchboard 
 
 Tender AC lOgt 
 
 " Generator & Switchboard 
 
 Tender DC lOgt 
 
 Inside Wireman lOw 
 
 Storage Battery lOst 
 
 Engineman & Fireman Engineman, 
 
 Portable... 17p 
 
 Test Developed 
 Oral Perform- Pic- 
 ance ture
 
 TRADE TESTS IN OPERATION 
 
 385 
 
 Name of Trade 
 
 Foundryman Cupola Tender 20cu 
 
 Melter, brass 20mb 
 
 Moulder, iron & brass. . 20m 
 
 Horseman Stable Boss 27h 
 
 Instrument Maker and Repairer 
 
 Electrical 72e 
 
 Typewriter (Remington) 72t(R) 
 
 " (Underwood) 72t(U) 
 
 Leather Worker Cobbler . . 47c 
 
 Test Developed 
 Oral Perform- Pic- 
 ance ture 
 
 x 
 x 
 x 
 x 
 
 " Harness Maker 47h x 
 
 Lineman & Cableman Cableman, 
 
 Tel. & Tel.... 32tc x 
 Lineman, 
 
 General 32p x 
 
 Lineman, 
 
 Tel. & Tel.... 32t x 
 Machinist and Mechanic. 
 
 Automatic Screw Mche. Oper. . . . 6aw x 
 
 Boring Mill Operator 6bo 
 
 Die Sinker 6di x 
 
 Drill Press Operator 6d 
 
 General 6g x 
 
 Grinding Machine Operator .... 6gr 
 
 Lathe Hand Operator 61 x 
 
 Locomotive, General 61o x 
 
 Milling Machine Operator 6ml 
 
 Planer Operator 6pl 
 
 Toolmaker 6to x 
 
 Turret Lathe 6t 
 
 Painter General 13g x 
 
 Photographer Developer, Motion 
 
 Picture 84md x 
 
 Motion Picture 34mp x 
 
 " Still (Commercial) ... 34p(C) x 
 
 Pipefitter Ammonia 14a x 
 
 " Plumber 14p x 
 
 " Steamfitter 14s x 
 
 Printer Compositor 46c x 
 
 " Pressman (Cylinder) 46p(C) x
 
 386 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Test Developed 
 Oral Perform- Pic- 
 Name of Trade ance ture 
 Printer Pressman (Lithograph). 
 
 Stone and Offset 46p(SO) x x 
 
 " Pressman (Platen) 46p(P) x x 
 
 Rubber Worker Tire Repairer 94t x 
 
 Sheet Metal Worker Coppersmith 19c x 
 
 Sheet Metal Worker General 19g x x 
 
 Stenographer & Typist Stenographer. 39s x 
 
 " " Typist 39t x 
 
 Structural Steel Worker Erector 21e x x 
 
 " " " Riveter & 
 
 Driller, 
 
 Pneu 21rp x 
 
 Surveyor General 30g x 
 
 Tailor Tailor 48t x 
 
 Telegraph & Wireless Operator Radio 
 
 Operator 31w x x 
 
 Telephone Man Operator 33o x 
 
 " Telephone Repairer 
 
 (Instrument) 33t x 
 
 " Telephone Repairer 
 
 (Switchboard) 33s x 
 
 Welder Gas Expert 96a x 
 
 Welder Oxi- Acetylene Operator 96c x 
 
 Total 83 trades 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The services of about thirty-five men were required. Be- 
 fore mobilization ceased, they had prepared and standard- 
 ized tests in eighty-three of the more essential trades. This 
 work cost about a thousand dollars a trade; but the saving 
 to the War Department through the resulting economics of 
 pay and subsistence of otherwise misplaced soldiers was 
 several times that amount every month; and the still more 
 valuable economy, not measurable in dollars, is found in the 
 resulting facilitation of training, through correct initial place- 
 ment.
 
 SECTION VHI. 
 THE CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 
 
 The earliest plans in connection with the classi- 
 fication of enlisted men did not provide for a clear- 
 ing office to equalize supply and demand for skilled 
 men between camps. All that was provided were 
 personnel officers in each camp to place men to the 
 best advantage within the camp. But almost im- 
 mediately following the arrival of the first drafted 
 men in the camps the need for a central distributing 
 office made itself felt. 
 
 Chapter 31 traces the development of this office 
 and outlines its various functions, with the excep- 
 tion of the main one which was the distribution of 
 occupational specialists. An account of this work 
 is given in Chapter 32. The statistical studies of 
 this office and their relationship to personnel prob- 
 lems are next discussed in Chapter 33; followed in 
 Chapter 34 with an account of certain special prob- 
 lems, such as supplying chemists, railroad men, 
 furloughing men to industry, etc.
 
 CHAPTER 31 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTRAL 
 DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 
 
 FUNCTION OF CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 
 
 In September, 1917, when the need for a central distribut- 
 ing office first became apparent, it was planned that each 
 camp should report at stated intervals to Washington, the 
 number of specialists on hand at a given date. Then when 
 a shortage appeared it would be noted and an attempt would 
 be made to supply the need. This office was on the one hand 
 to receive the "requisitions" for men from various organiza- 
 tions of the Army, and on the other, the reports of the quali- 
 fications of men in camp. These reports were the supply 
 from which to order men to fill these requisitions. Two fac- 
 tors very materially changed the plans in connection with 
 this office. The first was that it was found there never would 
 be a surplus of skilled men, and the second, that the majority 
 of requests for specialists came from the Staff Corps. The 
 problem of the Distributing Office then included not only 
 the shortages in the camps, but the very pressing needs of 
 the Staff Corps for men of special skill. 
 
 The purposes of the Central Distributing Office included 
 the control of occupational specialists. All specialists were 
 reported to that office, and were distributed from there to fill 
 the most urgent needs for men of any particular qualifica- 
 tions. Great care was taken in the placing of rare special- 
 ists, or "rare birds" as they were called. An excellent ex- 
 ample of this was the finding and reporting of three thou- 
 sand chemists to the Chemical Warfare Service for their 
 use. This particular problem will be discussed in a later 
 
 389
 
 390 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 chapter. Another purpose of the Central Distributing Office 
 was to afford some place which should not only receive all 
 the requests for men of special qualifications, but also analyze 
 these requests as to the actual needs and the comparative 
 urgency of each. That both the supply and the demand 
 should meet in one office was natural, and the task of assign- 
 ing men reported in this manner to fill places where they 
 were most needed and which they were best fitted to occupy 
 became the whole work of this office. To the personnel adju- 
 tants and their staff in the camps fell that part of fitting 
 the "Right Man in the Right Place" which dealt with the 
 individuals themselves, but to the Central Distributing Office 
 fell the task of visualizing the needs of the Army as a whole 
 and the ordering of men by occupations to fill that need. 
 
 DETERMINING PRIORITY OF SPECIALISTS 
 
 All problems relating to priorities and the general sources 
 of supply of men belonged to the Operations Division of the 
 General Staff. To aid in determining the relative impor- 
 tance of the various requisitions, and to pass on their eligibility 
 to receive men, a Priority Committee composed of Colonel, 
 (later Brig. Gen.) R. I. Rees of the General Staff, Major 
 (later Lt. Col.) Grenville Clark of the Adjutant General's 
 Office, and Col. (later Brig. Gen.) H. S. Johnson of the 
 Provost Marshal General's Office, was formed. This Com- 
 mittee passed on all requests for a small number of men 
 without any further action being necessary. In the case of 
 requests for a large number of men it was necessary to have 
 the approval of the Director of Operations before the requisi- 
 tion could be acted upon. The order establishing the pro- 
 cedure in the Depot Brigades made it necessary for the con- 
 nection with the Operations Division to be closer, and the 
 Priority Committee became obsolete. It is interesting to note 
 that this Priority Committee became the Committee on Edu- 
 cation and Special Training.
 
 CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 391 
 
 EARLY ACTIVITIES OF THE CENTRAL 
 DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 
 
 In September, 1917, the Central Office began to function. 
 Mr. H. L. Gardner organized the Central Office and upon his 
 departure in November, 1917, A. C. Robinson III took 
 charge of the work until Mr. W. B. Hale became director of 
 the enlarged office in April, 1918. The first report called for 
 from the camps was ordered by a telegram on September 14-, 
 1917. This asked for a report on the number of cooks avail- 
 able. The first order transferring men from one camp to an- 
 other was sent out on October 5, 1917. This was in response 
 to a cable from General Pershing for bookbinders and press- 
 men to be sent overseas. Shortly after this a standard form 
 of report was adopted, and this was sent out to the camps for 
 a report to be made as of October 15, 1917. This report in- 
 cluded the total supply of men in camp, or rather a count of 
 the occupations in camp, the figures being secured by a count 
 of the tabs on the cards in file. This gave an inflated report, 
 as a man might be reported for more than one occupation, but 
 it was believed at that time that allowances could be made for 
 this inflation in ordering from the supply so reported. 
 
 In the early days of the National Army the Depot Brigades 
 were not the receiving depots for men that they later became. 
 Upon arrival in camp the men were assigned to more or less 
 permanent organizations without any regard to their fitness or 
 qualifications. Most of this assigning was based on the locality 
 from which the men came ; that is, men from the same section 
 of the country were assigned to the same companies. The 
 work of classifying the men as they arrived was not provided 
 for, and the men were interviewed and classified some days 
 after they had been in camp and had already become attached 
 to some organization. In order to have any figures that could 
 be relied upon it was necessary to report each time, the num- 
 ber of men that had been classified to date. In counting tabs 
 instead of men, a man who was an expert electrician and had
 
 392 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 also had experience in driving a car sufficient to warrant his 
 being tabbed for a chauffeur as well, would be counted twice 
 in the report, once as an electrician and once as a chauffeur. 
 It was necessary to do this, as it was thought that there might 
 be some secondary occupations that would be of great value 
 to the Army which would be discovered by this means. With 
 the standardization of the Index of Occupations and the 
 Tables of Army Needs this became unnecessary, as the job 
 that would be most useful to the Army was obviously the only 
 one to report. 
 
 As the occupational reports were received in Washington 
 they were posted on cards, each occupation having a card. It 
 was thus possible to condense the summary of the whole Army 
 into a file about eighteen inches long. There were three entries 
 on each occupational card for each camp, the number of 
 green tabs or "main occupation," the number of black tabs or 
 "secondary occupation," and the total number of orange tabs. 
 This system of reporting men was satisfactory as long as the 
 men were being sent to the camps in comparatively small in- 
 crements and were not being held in a temporary organization 
 like the Depot Brigades. 
 
 The early requisitions for men were mostly "feelers" or 
 attempts to see how this new system would work in supplying 
 men of special qualifications. The first requests were for com- 
 paratively small numbers of men. No one imagined at that 
 time that the demand for skilled men would increase to such 
 a degree that on November 11, 1918, there were in the files 
 of the Central Distributing Office unfilled requests for over 
 half a million men. The process of allotting men at first was 
 very simple. The cards in the file were examined to see where 
 the available supply was. If any camp showed a surplus of 
 the occupation needed or a sufficient number to warrant with- 
 drawing some of them, an order was sent to that camp to ship 
 those men. There was no system for keeping a record of the 
 balance of any occupation remaining in camp after issuing an 
 order, as new men were constantly arriving and being classified,
 
 CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 393 
 
 thus changing the figures. All orders for the transfer of men 
 for numbers less than fifty were written and signed in the Cen- 
 tral Distributing Office. Larger orders had the informal ap- 
 proval of the Operations Division, and were then written and 
 signed in this office. The relative merits of the different 
 requisitions were most particularly investigated at first, and 
 there were a great number of them that were disapproved in 
 entirety. Later on, as the plans for the Army were stan- 
 dardized by Pershing's 6-phase schedule, only such organiza- 
 tions as had been authorized and were on the priority list were 
 considered at all in supplying men. As the number of requests 
 for men increased and the orders that had to be issued multi- 
 plied, the system became more complex and new methods were 
 devised for handling requisitions. 
 
 As the receiving o-f reports and requisitions progressed, 
 changes were made to accommodate the new conditions. It 
 was soon evident that merely counting tabs in making the 
 reports to Washington was not sufficient, but that in order to 
 keep an accurate account of the men in the camps the count 
 of men, not tabs, and the reporting of a man for one occupa- 
 tion only was necessary. This necessitated determining a 
 man's main occupation; that is, taking into account the man's 
 greatest skill and his greatest usefulness to the Army. The 
 early report forms were changed to meet this requirement. 
 Black tabs were adopted for a man's "secondary skilled occu- 
 pation." As the black tabs did not do away with the duplica- 
 tion in count they were finally abandoned, and a man was 
 reported as being either a journeyman or apprentice for one 
 occupation, the occupation for which he was reported being 
 determined by the personnel adjutant in the camp, taking into 
 account those occupations for which there was a special need. 
 This meant that in some cases a man might not be reported 
 for that occupation in which he was most skilled, as some other 
 trade with which he was familiar was of far more value to the 
 Army. An excellent example of this would be a man who was 
 a skilled carpenter, and also had been experimenting in wire-
 
 394 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 less telegraphy. As wireless men were very scarce and car- 
 penters comparatively numerous, it would be of greater value 
 to the service to use that man as a wireless operator. 
 
 With the increase in number and complexity of requisitions 
 for men it became necessary to establish a standard form for 
 making requisitions. After some experimenting a form was 
 finally adopted which has proved very satisfactory. This form 
 gave all the information necessary concerning the number and 
 kind of men wanted, the organization and destination to which 
 they were to be sent, and the authorization for that organiza- 
 tion. Also statements as to clothing and accommodations were 
 made, together with the suggested methods of securing the 
 men. The adoption of this form has done much to standardize 
 the terminology of the requests, and has made it possible to 
 examine the requisitions more thoroughly as to questions of 
 priority and actual needs and the urgency of the various 
 requests. In addition, the use of this form has expedited the 
 handling of the requisitions in the Central Distributing Office. 
 
 SPECIALISTS SUPPLIED THROUGH PROVOST 
 MARSHAL GENERAL'S OFFICE 
 
 A source of supply of men for filling requisitions that was 
 much used in the first days of the Central Office was the Pro- 
 vost Marshal General. When the questionnaire was issued by 
 the Provost Marshal it contained information concerning the 
 registrant's qualifications in civil life. At this time the plan 
 was that there would be a file in Washington containing cards 
 which would make it possible to locate men of special qualifica- 
 tions when necessary. This proved to be an enormous under- 
 taking, and at the time of the armistice the file had not been 
 completed. However, arrangements were made whereby requi- 
 sitions for men of special qualifications could be sent to the 
 Provost Marshal General from this office, and have him locate 
 the men and order them to their proper destinations. Special 
 requests were made in this manner for some 56.000 men. One 
 of the drawbacks to this method of securing men was the delay
 
 CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 395 
 
 caused by the cumbersome form that had to be made out for 
 transmittal to the Provost Marshal General's Office, and also 
 the length of time involved in locating and getting the men into 
 the camps after the requisition had been filed in his office. 
 Moreover, due to the fact that the card catalogue of men was 
 not complete, the method of locating the men which was 
 adopted was similar to that which the various staff corps were 
 using at that time for locating men whom they were authorized 
 to obtain by voluntary induction. It was seen that there were 
 two competing agencies who were using the same methods of 
 advertising to induce the men to be inducted, and that there 
 was an unnecessary duplication of effort. As a result the use 
 of the Provost Marshal General's Office to obtain men of 
 special trade ability was discontinued in March, 1918, with 
 the exception of a draft of stenographers which was made in 
 August, 1918. It was found that the authority to individually 
 induct men which was granted to the various staff corps from 
 time to time would relieve the Provost Marshal General of the 
 burden of carrying on an advertising campaign to locate the 
 men, but left the actual inducting of the men in his power, as 
 the Staff Corps, after locating the men, filled out the necessary 
 blanks and turned them over to the Provost Marshal General 
 for action. Late in October, just before the signing of the 
 armistice, plans were being made to have the Provost Marshal 
 General furnish men of special qualifications, but in this 
 case the men were to be sent to the regular camps and be dis- 
 tributed there instead of being sent direct to the organizations 
 needing the men as was the case formerly. 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT OF DEPOT BRIGADES AS REAL 
 RECEIVING DEPOTS 
 
 
 
 Due to the scarcity of skilled men in the draft it soon be- 
 came evident that in order to supply the Staff Corps with even 
 a small portion of the men that they asked for, it would be 
 necessary to take men from existing organizations. As a result, 
 all of the National Army divisions that were then forming and
 
 396 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 beginning their training programs had to be robbed of a large 
 portion of their skilled men. Moreover, this policy of taking 
 men from the divisions was not confined to the National Army. 
 As soon as the National Guard had been classified, reports 
 were called for from all of their divisions, and men were 
 drawn from their organizations. Even the Regular Army was 
 not excepted, and when it was found that there were men of 
 rare qualifications in any organization they were ordered out 
 to fill positions where those qualifications were specially 
 needed. As would be expected, there arose a universal wail 
 from all of the camps about this "Personnel" system that had 
 been imposed upon them in order to hunt out their good men 
 and take them away from them. Altogether about 72,000 
 specialists were taken from these organizations before a new 
 plan was adopted. The training program for the divisions was 
 seriously handicapped in practically all cases. On December 
 8, 1917, it was necessary to issue a letter to all of the com- 
 manding officers explaining the urgency of the calls being 
 made upon them, and asking their cooperation in furnishing 
 the men needed. By far the most important part of this letter 
 was the outline of the system that was to be adopted of receiv- 
 ing men into the Depot Brigades upon their arrival in camp 
 and their retention there until they had been classified and 
 assigned to a permanent organization. A general order issued 
 by the Adjutant General in February, 1918, established this 
 system, and made it necessary for orders to be issued from 
 Washington for the transfer of men from the depot brigades 
 to any other organization. 
 
 This letter put a stop to the despoiling of existing organiza- 
 tions, "although in some cases it was necessary to continue it 
 until the depot brigades were in running order. It necessitated 
 a reorganization in Washington of the method of handling the 
 orders transferring these men, as all men were to be assigned 
 by the Central Distributing Office instead of merely specialists 
 as formerly. 
 
 The results of this early system of taking men from the
 
 CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 397 
 
 division then forming was the saving of a large number of 
 valuable men and placing them where the need was greatest. 
 This system made it possible to supply men urgently needed 
 in staff corps organizations which were wanted overseas even 
 before the infantry. The delay in the training programs and 
 the getting of the men overseas was more than balanced by the 
 numbers of valuable men that were given to the staff corps 
 who would have otherwise been entirely lost in infantry divi- 
 sions. Had it been possible to classify the men as they arrived 
 and assign them properly, as was done when the depot 
 brigades were reorganized, there would have been no delay or 
 inconvenience. The experience gained in filling these requisi- 
 tions made it possible to handle the draft supply more effi- 
 ciently when the new system of depot brigades was organized. 
 About February 1, 1918, the order establishing the depot 
 brigades as receiving depots was issued. The men were to be 
 classified as they arrived, and reported to Washington. Orders 
 were then to be issued by the War Department assigning these 
 men to the organizations where it was deemed that they were 
 most urgently needed. The report forms called for two items 
 for each occupation listed; the number of journeymen and the 
 number of apprentices for that occupation. The list of occu- a 
 pations in the report did not cover the whole number in the 
 Index of Occupations, but only those for which there was an 
 urgent demand at that time, or for which there was a great ^ 
 shortage of skilled men as shown in former reports. This 
 method of reporting changed the system of handling the men 
 in the Central Distributing Office. Supply books were sub- 
 stituted for the card file that was formerly used, and accurate 
 count was kept of the men that had been ordered out and the 
 balance remaining in the camp. The system as finally used 
 is described in detail in the next chapter. The improvement 
 brought about by this new order was very great. It made it 
 possible for the camps to examine the men more thoroughly, 
 and also for the War Department to distribute them with more 
 intelligence and dispatch.
 
 CHAPTER 32 
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF OCCUPATIONAL 
 SPECIALISTS 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF CENTRAL DISTRIBUTING 
 OFFICE 
 
 With the final establishment of the depot brigades as receiv- 
 ing depots in all the camps, the work of the Central Distribut- 
 ing Office was greatly enlarged. All the orders distributing 
 men had to pass through that office, as well as orders for occu- 
 pational specialists to fill special needs. 
 
 About this time the requisitions from all sources were pour- 
 ing in at an enormous rate. In March, 1918, four men and 
 two clerks were handling the work. In April, Mr. Wm. B. 
 Hale took charge of the Central Distributing Office. By Sep- 
 tember the force had expanded to over fifty. It was found 
 necessary to divide the office in two sections : first, the Requisi- 
 tion Demand Section; and second, the Supply Section. The 
 functions of the Requisition Demand Section were the receiv- 
 ing, classifying, and editing of all requisitions and the prepar- 
 ation of them for action by the Operations Division, Gen- 
 eral Staff. The Supply Section received all the reports of 
 men that had been received in camp, and allotted them to fill 
 the requisitions that had been approved for action. This divi- 
 sion of the office aided greatly in expediting the requisitions, 
 and made more sure that the proper men were supplied. 
 
 Another section of the office, which is described in more 
 detail in another chapter, was the Industrial Furlough Section, 
 where men of rare qualifications were selected to be furloughed 
 back to industry. This work was under the supervision of 
 Mr. L. R. Frazier. 
 
 398
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 399 
 
 THE REQUISITION DEMAND SECTION 
 
 The Requisition Demand Section was the receiving office for 
 all requests for men, and was in charge of Mr. A. C. Robinson 
 III and Mr. R. T. Bickell. These requests were made on the 
 standard requisition blank CCP-14, which was made out in 
 quadruplicate, a white original, and yellow, pink and blue 
 copies. All four were numbered upon receipt in this office and 
 the blue copies so numbered were returned to the sender as an 
 acknowledgement of the receipt of the requisition and for his 
 reference. The numbers that were assigned to the requisitions 
 were given serially by Staff Corps, the thousand digit indicat- 
 ing the particular branch of the service from which the requisi- 
 tion came, as for instance, number three was the Engineer's 
 thousand digit and all the Engineer requisitions were then 
 numbered in the order of their receipt, thus 3001, 3002, 3003, 
 etc. In like manner, four indicated Field Artillery requisi- 
 tions; five the Medical Department requisitions; and six the 
 Air Service requisitions, and so on. As soon as the requisitions 
 had been numbered they were entered in the Record Book. 
 This book gave all necessary information as to the organization 
 to which the men were to be sent, the destination, the number 
 of men, and furthermore, all action that was taken in the Cen- 
 tral Distributing Office as affecting that requisition. The white 
 copy of the requisition was then filed in Reference Books, each 
 staff corps having a book of its own. A working sheet, known 
 as the Allotment Sheet, was then made out from the yellow 
 copy. At this point the personnel officer of the staff corps 
 that submitted the requisition was consulted as to the details 
 of his particular requisition. Such matters as the number 
 and qualifications of the men requested, the urgency of the 
 requisition, and other points of vital interest were taken up. 
 The requisitions were also edited, in order to have them con- 
 form with the Army Trade Specifications and with the exact 
 supply of men in the camps. Substitutions in occupations were 
 indicated when necessary; that is, when the exact occupation
 
 400 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 requested was not available, the occupation that most nearly 
 filled the need was substituted, as indicated in Trade Specifica- 
 tions. When this operation was complete, the requisition and 
 the working sheet were then ready for the approval of the 
 officer who represented the Operations Division of the General 
 Staff. The various requisitions were submitted to this officer, 
 and his approval or disapproval were indicated thereon. If 
 the requisition was to be filled that fact was noted in the 
 Record Book, the requisition was dated, the yellow copy 
 removed, and the working sheet sent to the Supply Section to 
 be filled from the sources available as indicated by the Opera- 
 tions Division. The yellow copy was then filed in a book by 
 staff corps, each staff corps having a book for this purpose. 
 Order Sheets were filed with each requisition, and on these 
 Order Sheets summaries of, all orders were briefed, and all 
 reports of men transferred or shortages were posted thereon. 
 At the same time that the yellow copy was being worked on, 
 the Occupational Demand File was being made up from the 
 pink copy of the requisition. This file consisted of a set of 
 cards, one card for each occupation. On this was posted the 
 demand for that occupation which had been made by each of 
 the staff corps. This file was of great value in determining 
 which occupations should be reported on by the camps. It 
 also served as a very handy reference in placing men; thus, 
 if a supply of a certain occupation existed anywhere, the 
 organization needing men of that kind was immediately evident 
 by extracting that particular occupational card from the De- 
 mand File. Copies of all orders that were written by the 
 Supply Section were briefed in the Order Book, as indicated 
 above. The progress of a requisition could thus be traced at 
 any time. The Record Book would tell whether or not the 
 requisition had been approved, and if so, when and for what 
 sort of men ; while the Order Book would give at a glance, the 
 action that had been taken by the Supply Section, as well as 
 the transfer report from various camps. 
 
 It was one of the functions of the Requisition Section to
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 401 
 
 furnish information to the various Personnel Officers of the 
 Staff Corps as to the status of their requisitions. This was 
 readily done from the sources mentioned above. Another ex- 
 tremely important function was the tabulating of requisitions 
 on hand, in order that the questions of priority might be deter- 
 mined, and also to indicate the character and size of the drafts 
 of men that would be necessary to fill the demands on hand. 
 
 THE SUPPLY SECTION 
 
 The reports of men received in the camps were sent to the 
 Supply Section after each draft increment. The final form 
 of this report, known as CCP-15, was quite different from the 
 early Periodic Reports which were required of the camps. The 
 occupations on which a report was desired were determined by 
 the demand on hand for that occupation. The report blanks 
 were mailed out at stated intervals, to be filled in by the camps 
 and returned. The number of occupations in this new form of 
 report was much greater than in the older reports. An inno- 
 vation which proved very valuable was that of placing a star 
 opposite those occupations that were especially valuable or 
 rare. By releasing only unstarred occupations to organiza- 
 tions in urgent need of men not requiring any special trade 
 ability, men of especially valuable qualifications were saved for 
 particular positions in the army. It was also used extensively 
 in locating men who were to be furloughed to industry. The 
 reports were made up in three parts, one for general service 
 men, one for limited service men, and one for colored men. As 
 a result the Supply Section of the Distributing Office was di- 
 vided into three parts to correspond to the sources of supply. 
 To these three sources must be added an additional source of 
 supply, namely, the men from the National Army Training 
 Detachments, who were also distributed by this office. The 
 actual methods of handling the distribution of these men dif- 
 fered in the cases of the general service and the limited service 
 men, due mainly to the difference in the character and number 
 of the men to be distributed. However, the methods of filling
 
 402 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the requisitions were practically identical. In handling the 
 general service men the reports were posted in the regional 
 supply books as soon as received. The country was divided 
 into sections, and the camps falling within a particular section 
 were entered in one supply book, and those for another section 
 in another book, and so on. These books had the occupations 
 entered on the right-hand side of the page, about nine occupa- 
 tions to the page, and the camps were entered along the top. 
 The supply for each occupation for any camp was thus posted. 
 Any withdrawals to fill requisitions were entered in these 
 books. The number of men taken and the number of the 
 requisitions which they were to fill were entered and the bal- 
 ance remaining was calculated ; thus information as to the sup- 
 ply of any occupation at any camp was immediately available. 
 
 As men were allotted from the camps, entries were made on 
 the Allotment or Working Sheet of each requisition. These 
 allotment sheets were filed in books to correspond to the 
 regional supply books; thus, in filling a requisition in the 
 Southeast section of the United States the Southeastern Sup- 
 ply Book was first consulted, and allotments made from it as 
 far as possible. If there were no men of the qualifications 
 desired to fill a particular requisition in the supply book for 
 that section of the country, the supply book of an adjoining 
 section was consulted. In making out these allotments care 
 was taken to give the shortest railroad journey possible, and 
 to make the general trend of all movements of men from the 
 west to the east. When the allotment sheets had been filled 
 as far as possible they were given to the typist who wrote the 
 actual orders to the camps for men. Throughout all this proc- 
 ess, great care was taken to insure accuracy, and a constant 
 checking was necessary to avoid errors. Mr. John C. Burg 
 was responsible for the development of the Supply Section. 
 
 The limited service supply was handled in a slightly dif- 
 ferent manner. The methods employed were developed by 
 Mr. Hathaway Watson. The occupational reports were posted 
 on cards instead of in supply books. There was a card for
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 403 
 
 each occupation which had a place for entries from any of the 
 camps which made reports. Each supply of men was thus 
 entered under the proper heading. Due to the fact that there 
 were two kinds of limited service men, namely C-l and C-2, 
 it was necessary to indicate the particular variety on each 
 card. In order to simplify matters it was found advisable to 
 have cards of two colors for each occupation, one for the 
 apprentices and one for the journeymen. Any withdrawals 
 were posted on these cards by entering the requisition number, 
 and keeping a running balance of the supply remaining after 
 the men were withdrawn to fill the requisition. Due to the 
 smaller number of men that had to be handled as compared 
 with the general service men, and also due to the nature of 
 men supplied, it was found that this card file worked quite as 
 well as the supply book, and in most cases the time required 
 to fill a requisition was much less than that required by the 
 other system. The writing of orders from the allotment sheet 
 was similar to that on the general service orders. 
 
 Due to the smaller numbers of men involved in the Colored 
 and the National Army Training Detachments' reports, the 
 actual distribution of these classes constituted less of a prob- 
 lem than either of the two just described. The method of 
 distributing, however, was the same as for the general service 
 men. 
 
 COOPERATION WITH OPERATIONS DIVISION, 
 GENERAL STAFF 
 
 Throughout all of the operations above described, the Opera- 
 tions Division of the General Staff was in the closest coopera- 
 tion with this office. In fact, the Central Distributing Office 
 was functioning for the Operations Division. It was the 
 vehicle which carried out the programs of the General Staff, 
 as all orders for the moving of men were written there. Each 
 requisition had to have the approval of the Operations Division 
 before it could be filled. From time to time the Central Dis- 
 tributing Office would present the Operations Division with
 
 404 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 statements of the number and character of the requisitions on 
 hand, and of their relative importance as determined in con- 
 ferences with representatives of the Staff Corps. Suggestions 
 as to the best method of filling the requisitions were made. 
 Lt. Col. R. H. Kimball of the Operations Division would 
 direct, in a general way, the policies to be followed in filling 
 these requests, and the Central Distributing Office would pro- 
 ceed to carry them out in detail, seeing that a particular organ- 
 ization requesting men not only got the number of men asked 
 for but the right kind as well. All orders were written in the 
 Central Distributing Office, and had to have the signature of 
 the Director of Operations before they could be signed and 
 sent out by the Adjutant General. This insured a final check 
 by the Operations Division that the work was being carried 
 out in accordance with their wishes. So close were the con- 
 nections between the Central Distributing Office and the 
 Operations Division that Maj. H. M. Rayner of the Opera- 
 tions Division was detailed to duty in the Central Distributing 
 Office. 
 
 COOPERATION WITH THE STAFF CORPS 
 
 In a like manner, the Central Distributing Office was in 
 close connection with the representatives of the Staff Corps. 
 Conferences were held frequently to go over the problems in 
 each of the corps. At these conferences matters such as the 
 relative importance and urgency of the various requisitions, 
 the character of the men needed, and the type of men received, 
 were discussed. Frequent attempts were made to obtain a 
 definite program from each of the staff corps which would 
 cover their future needs. This was felt to be of vital impor- 
 tance, as it would be a basis for deciding upon the number and 
 character of drafts that would be necessary in the future. It 
 would also be of great value in determining just what training 
 should be given to the men in the National Army Training 
 Detachments in order to supply the deficiency of skilled men 
 in the draft. The only program that had been available was
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 405 
 
 the Pershing 6-phase schedule, which was outgrown almost as 
 soon as received. The result was a sort of hand-to-mouth ex- 
 istence in the Staff Corps, as many of the requisitions were 
 based on cabled demands for certain organizations. By Octo- 
 ber, 1918, however, matters had begun to shape themselves 
 somewhat better, and at the time of the armistice orders had 
 been issued to all staff corps to furnish the Central Distribut- 
 ing Office with their programs up until June, 1919. Special 
 forms were prepared for these reports. Conferences had been 
 held to discuss the whole problem and to get all of the esti- 
 mates on a uniform basis. Besides these conferences to dis- 
 cuss general problems, there were almost daily informal con- 
 ferences concerning the requisitions themselves and their 
 status. An even closer liaison was being arranged for at the 
 time of the armistice, when it was planned to have a represen- 
 tative of each of the staff corps detailed to work in connection 
 with the Central Distributing Office. 
 
 DISTRIBUTION OF DRAFT INCREMENTS 
 
 The methods employed in filling requisitions for various 
 sources of supply have been discussed. It now remains to 
 look at the whole situation from a different angle, namely, that 
 of distributing the various draft increments as they were sent 
 into the camps. As each type of draft had its special prob- 
 lems they will be discussed separately. 
 
 The general service draft was the largest and most frequent. 
 One problem was to get one increment distributed and out of 
 the way before the next arrived in camp. Speed was essential, 
 but at the same time men of qualifications that were needed 
 could not be overlooked. There was rarely any difficulty in 
 disposing of the general service men. The need for men was 
 so great that the larger part of the draft was swallowed up 
 without leaving any trace behind. There were, however, occa- 
 sional occupations which were in excess of the demand, and in 
 placing these men some difficulties were experienced. 
 
 The limited service supply, on the other hand, furnished
 
 406 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 many complexities. This supply was composed of two sorts 
 of men ; first men from the Development Battalions in camps ; 
 and second, the limited service drafts. The Development Bat- 
 talions were organized with the idea of refitting as many men 
 as possible of those who had been rejected as unfit. They 
 were to undergo a special course of training in camp, and as 
 they finished these courses they were to be reported to Wash- 
 ington for distribution. It was soon seen that to give only*' 
 Class A men to fill all requisitions would be impossible due to 
 the scarcity of men, and the whole problem of the Army was 
 gone over to see where limited service men could be used. 
 Every organization which was for domestic service only was 
 thereupon authorized to have limited service men only. This 
 immediately put a great demand on the supply of limited serv- 
 ice men, and the product of the Development Battalions was 
 not sufficient to fill these needs. Special drafts of limited serv- 
 ice men were then called, and as the use of these men grew 
 the problems increased, as it was found that certain overseas 
 organizations could use limited service men as well. In the 
 light of these developments, the Central Distributing Office 
 had to arrange all of its operations ; requisitions had to be 
 carefully inspected to see whether they should have general or 
 limited service men, and if limited service, whether they were 
 to be Class C-l or Class C-2. As in the case of general service 
 men, the chief concern was not so much disposing of the supply 
 as trying to make it fill all requisitions. One of the plans was 
 to have limited service men replace general service men when- 
 ever possible, in order that the latter might be used for combat 
 service, and owing to the scarcity of general service men due 
 to lack of legislation in raising the draft ages and the epidemic 
 of Spanish influenza the problem became very acute in Octo- 
 ber. Moreover, there was difficulty in obtaining men who had 
 been sent to camp in the limited service drafts, as they were 
 so urgently needed that they were appropriated before orders 
 could be issued covering them. An example of this was the 
 limited service draft of stenographers and typists, a large por-
 
 OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS 407 
 
 tion of which was never recovered, as a result of the acute 
 need for men of these special qualifications in the camps. An- 
 other problem that presented itself was the inability to be sure 
 that in ordering C-2 men they would not be so poor physically 
 that they could not perform the work required of them. An 
 order for C-2 men occasionally brought all the "leftovers" in 
 camp, and organizations receiving these men naturally com- 
 plained and demanded better treatment. 
 
 The colored draft problem was perhaps the simplest of all. 
 The percentage of skill in the colored draft was very low, and 
 the organizations of colored men did not require as large a 
 number of specialists as the other organizations. The reports 
 from the camps were very brief. Few occupations were listed. 
 Most of the colored organizations were engineer service bat- 
 talions, stevedore regiments, labor companies, etc., which 
 required few men of skill. There were, however, cases where 
 skilled men were needed and needed badly, and cafe was taken 
 to place them. As can be readily seen, most of the orders 
 issued were comparatively simple as compared with those for 
 white men. Also, the colored drafts were not so large as the 
 white, which made the work of the Central Distributing Office 
 in this particular branch much less. 
 
 The National Army Training Detachment became one of 
 the most difficult of all of the sources of supply to distribute. 
 The men who had been trained in these schools were available 
 for distribution after a six weeks' course. The Central Dis- 
 tributing Office controlled the distribution of these men, using 
 them to fiH requisitions in the same manner as the other sources 
 of supply. Here the problem was to distribute a highly spe- 
 cialized group of men as compared with those in the draft, 
 and to misplace a man who had been trained was especially to 
 be avoided. The difficulties, however, were that there were 
 cases where the training program did not entirely agree with 
 the most urgent demand, and it was not very unusual to have 
 a surplus in one occupation and a very great shortage in an- 
 other. This apparent lack of co-ordination was due, in a large
 
 408 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 measure, to the failure of the Staff Corps to state a definite 
 program. As has previously been stated, Pershing's 6-phase 
 schedule was the last that was available, and it was out of date 
 by May, 1918. The new report which was called for from the 
 Staff Corps in November, 1918, would have straightened out 
 all of this tangle, and it would have been possible to train 
 men for places for which there was a great need. 
 
 While the primary functions of the Central Distributing 
 Office were the distribution of occupational specialists, large 
 numbers of unskilled men were sent to fill requisitions. In 
 all, 1,191,000 men were ordered out to fill various organiza- 
 tions, while requisitions for 1,600,000 had been received. 
 
 Further details as to the procedure followed in distributing 
 men, not only in the Central Distributing Office but also in 
 the Camp Personnel Offices, is presented in Chapter VII of 
 Volume II.
 
 CHAPTER 33 
 
 DRAFT STATISTICS AND THEIR RELATION 
 TO THE ARMY PROGRAM 
 
 The two preceding chapters of this section have traced the 
 development of the Central Distributing Office and described 
 the principal steps in the process of distributing from the 
 draft those specialists who are required in the various branches 
 of the Army. The present chapter is concerned with what 
 might be termed the research end of the work, as it had no 
 active part in the allotment of men, except insofar as its 
 investigations and recommendations guided the activities of 
 the operating end of the office. 
 
 ASSISTANCE TO THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 
 AND SPECIAL TRAINING 
 
 Most of the draft statistics took the form of the occupational 
 yield of past drafts as a basis for estimating what might be 
 expected from future drafts. This type of information proved 
 very valuable and was applied in a diversity of ways. For 
 instance, although it had early become apparent to those who 
 were in close touch with the personnel problem that the supply 
 of certain types of specialists received in the ordinary run of 
 the draft would soon prove far too small for the Army's needs, 
 it was necessary to have concrete, figures to demonstrate to the 
 officials in authority that the early establishment of Army 
 Trade Schools was imperative. Accordingly, in January, 
 1918, under the direction of Dr. Bingham, figures were com- 
 piled from the occupational reports from divisions to indicate 
 the available supply of specialists and these figures were bal- 
 anced against the estimated needs of the thirty divisions then 
 authorized and the Staff Corps until May 1, 1918, 
 
 409
 
 410 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The appalling shortages in most of the occupations demon- 
 strated conclusively the necessity of taking prompt action to 
 increase the number of specialists in the National Army as 
 well as to conserve, by correct placement, those already there. 
 The result was the establishment, early in February, of the 
 Committee on Education and Special Training, charged, as is 
 explained more in detail in a later chapter, with taking what- 
 ever measures might be necessary to guarantee an adequate 
 supply of specialists. 
 
 The receipt shortly afterwards of General Pershing's six- 
 phase project for the systematic building of America's Army 
 in France, and the summary of that program on an occupa- 
 tional basis which was prepared by this office, completely jus- 
 tified the establishment of this new educational committee 
 and guided it in its development. At various times throughout 
 the year conferences were held with its representatives at 
 which the present needs of the Army were discussed with a 
 view to shaping the product of the schools to satisfy those 
 needs. But with the exception of a few general recommenda- 
 tions, subsequent to the first figures based on General 
 Pershing's original program, the assistance rendered to the 
 Committee on Education and Special Training along this line 
 was not as substantial as might have been desired, due largely 
 to the rapidly changing and increasing army program. Just 
 at the signing of the armistice, however, when, fortified by its 
 knowledge of the actual military superiority of the Allies, the 
 General Staff had begun to hit its stride in the scientific and 
 orderly construction of a crushing war machine with its essen- 
 tial components divisions, corps and army troops, replace- 
 ments and supply troops geared up to each other in proper 
 ratio and with but slight prospect that a repetition of the 
 German drive of 1918 would again necessitate an emergency 
 shifting of gears, a comprehensive plan was about to be put 
 into operation for summarizing the monthly occupational 
 requirements of each and every military unit to be organized 
 up to July 1, 1919. It was contemplated that this informa- 

 
 DRAFT STA TISTICS 41 1 
 
 tion, in addition to facilitating the efficient manipulation and 
 assignment of personnel from the draft, would enable the edu- 
 cational authorities to determine with an exactitude heretofore 
 impossible what courses ought to be given in the Army 
 Schools. A more detailed description of the proposed occupa- 
 tional summary of the army program from November 1, 1918, 
 to July 1, 1919, is given later in this chapter. 
 
 From the foregoing illustration it has perhaps become evi- 
 dent that the statistics section of the Central Distributing 
 Office was mainly concerned with forecasting (a) the occupa- 
 tional requirements of the Army, and (b) the probable supply 
 of occupational specialists from the draft, with a view to see- 
 ing to it that the necessary steps were taken to save from 
 blanket assignment to combat organizations every specialist 
 who was more urgently needed in his own trade in a technical 
 organization than as a fighting man, and also, by foreseeing 
 shortages in specialists, not only to prevent their loss through 
 mis-assignment, but also to advise upon the necessity of secur- 
 ing them through special agencies voluntary induction, 
 special draft, or army schools. 
 
 PERSONNEL SUPPLY AND DEMAND STATISTICS 
 FOR THE PROVOST MARSHAL GENERAL 
 
 The most formidable piece of statistical work which was 
 undertaken by the Distributing Office was a comprehensive 
 summary, primarily for the information of the Provost Mar- 
 shal General, of the prospective occupational requirements of 
 the Army from May 1, 1918, to January 1, 1919, with esti- 
 mates as to the occupational shortages which might be encoun- 
 tered if the only supply were the ordinary run of the draft. 
 It was undertaken at the request of the Operations Division, 
 General Staff, for the purpose of enabling the Provost Marshal 
 General to determine approximately to what extent it might 
 be necessary lor the Army to make inroads upon industry 
 through special drafts or individual inductions in order to 
 secure its necessary quota of specialists, and to assist him in
 
 412 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 making early preparation for these drafts and inductions. It 
 was to prepare this statement that Mr. William B. Hale, later 
 the Director of the Central Distributing Office, was called by 
 the Committee on Classification of Personnel from his work 
 with the National Research Council, and he was assisted in 
 his task by Mr. L. R. Frazier. 
 
 The preliminary survey of the problem indicated that many 
 difficulties would be met and that it would be several weeks 
 before anything of value could be evolved from the mass of 
 miscellaneous and incomplete information which was available. 
 General Pershing's partially completed six-phase project and 
 what was then the plan of the General Staff to draft 1,000,000 
 men between May 1 and January 1 formed the bases upon 
 which the statement was constructed. There were no tables 
 of occupational needs for other than divisional organizations 
 and it was necessary to rely on the rather rough occupational 
 interpretations which the Staff Corps concerned made of their 
 particular parts of the program. This fact, coupled with the 
 necessity of determining by occupations the extent to which 
 each organization had been completed on May 1, prolonged 
 the work considerably. The questions of what allowance to 
 make for replacements, and of what should be the proportion 
 of combat to supply troops, offered further obstacles. The 
 former was settled arbitrarily by allowing three per cent, per 
 month of the actual strength for replacements. This was done 
 upon the advice of the General Staff as being the best informa- 
 tion available at the time. The second question was handled 
 by assuming that General Pershing's project for the Services 
 of Supply would be carried out and that the balance of the 
 1,000,000 men would be available for combat units. 
 
 When the statement had been completed and all the sources 
 of error and unavoidable inaccuracies had been explained to 
 the Operations Division, it was decided that although the 
 statement was as complete and accurate as was* possible with 
 the information available, it would be inadvisable to formally 
 submit it to the Provost Marshal General. The rapid increase
 
 DRAFT STATISTICS 413 
 
 in the Army program, and the extreme emphasis which had 
 come to be laid upon the organization and shipment of combat 
 troops during the late spring and summer, had made a rather 
 dangerously unreliable document on the first of June of what 
 might have been a fairly accurate one on the first of May. 
 Although never formally presented, the figures were con- 
 sidered sufficiently accurate to be used in a general way in 
 determining in what general types of occupations shortages 
 might be expected and whether such shortages would be large 
 or small. With these limitations in mind the figures were used 
 to some slight extent by men in the Provost Marshal General's 
 office and perhaps more extensively by the Committee on Edu- 
 cation and Special Training in planning the general layout 
 of its courses and by the Central Distributing Office in its 
 work of filling requisitions equitably and efficiently. 
 
 Index of Personnel Demand. It was perhaps natural after 
 the difficulty which had been experienced in determining not 
 only the future but the current occupational needs of the Army 
 that some system should have been set up to summarize that 
 information and to make it easily available. This system took 
 the form of a card index, one card for each occupation. On 
 each card were entered in appropriate Staff Corps columns 
 the numbers of men of that occupation for whom requisitions 
 were received. When filed according to symbol number these 
 cards afforded a summary of occupational demand that was 
 of assistance in various ways. For instance, one of the uses to 
 .which the index was first put was to assist in the proper place- 
 ment of very rare and valuable- specialists, who, although they 
 would undoubtedly have been of considerable value in any one 
 of several units, were perhaps most urgently needed in only 
 two or three highly specialized ones. An expert electrical 
 instrument repairman, symbol 72e, might be reported from 
 Camp Sherman. On first thought he would appear to be a 
 very handy man around almost any Signal Corps organization, 
 or again, he might very well be sent to an Air Service radio 
 school where he could, with a month or two of training,
 
 414 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 develop into a pretty fair radio electrician. But a glance at 
 card "72" would show that three of these men were required 
 in a signal corps repair shop which was being organized at 
 Camp Vail to repair valuable electrical instruments. This, 
 then, was the logical assignment for the electrical instrument 
 repairman from Camp Sherman, for there he would be con- 
 tinuously engaged on the identical work in which his civilian 
 experience had made him an expert. 
 
 But even more important than .this use of the "Index of De- 
 mand" was the service which it began to render early in July 
 when there was put into operation a system of starring on the 
 Occupational Report form, CCP-15, those occupations for 
 which there was at the time a strong demand from staff corps 
 organizations. In the developments and changes which took 
 place in the Occupational Report form from the time when 
 drafted men first began to be sent to depot brigades early in 
 1918 until the end of the war one may trace many of the 
 developments in the policies of the General Staff relative to 
 the distribution of the draft, and of the methods employed by 
 the Distributing Office to interpret those policies. 
 
 RELATION OF PERSONNEL STATISTICS TO DRAFT 
 DISTRIBUTION 
 
 One of the difficulties continually encountered in the attempt 
 to place each man correctly on an occupational basis arose 
 from the necessity of assigning large numbers of men on an 
 almost entirely non-occupational basis to combat organiza- 
 tions. During February and March this difficulty had not 
 assumed the proportions of later months because particular 
 attention was then being paid to the building up of the Serv- 
 ices of Supply whose growth had been somewhat stunted by 
 the lack of men, the only supply other than volunteers having 
 been combat divisions. So for the first three or four months 
 of 1918 occupational reports were received covering all the 
 men who were drafted and the Staff Corps received a goodly 
 percentage of men of all kinds. But the German drive on
 
 DRAFT STATISTICS 415 
 
 the Western front and the absolute necessity of sending 
 across fighting men as fast as transports could carry them 
 put a different face on the situation. Durifig May and 
 June only the most valuable specialists could be spared to 
 the Staff Corps. Men of all kinds were poured into com- 
 bat divisions and replacement troops in a steady stream. 
 During that period many lesser specialists, who would ordin- 
 arily have been promptly assigned to some special unit, 
 found themselves in the ranks of the fighters where their 
 civilian skill was of little value. But the American Expedi- 
 tionary Force needed men who could carry a rifle more 
 than it needed construction and supply men, so that for 
 about two months most of the men assigned occupationally 
 by the Distributing Office were what were known as 'Rare 
 Birds.' For most of the camps the Occupational Report form 
 consisted of a comparatively short list of occupations, in which 
 skill was so valuable as to outweigh ability as potential fight- 
 ing men even at that critical time. 
 
 In July when the comparative importance of line troops 
 was beginning to diminish somewhat it became evident that 
 it would be the part of wisdom to once more obtain occupa- 
 tional reports covering all the men who were drafted into 
 camp. How to do this and yet provide for the exceptional 
 cases when the General Staff, without waiting for an occu- 
 pational report, would find it necessary to take all but a few 
 specialists from a camp for assignment to combat organiza- 
 tions was the next problem. It was solved by adopting the 
 system of starring those occupations which the "Index of 
 Demand" indicated were in current demand by the Staff 
 Corps, and then instructing the camps whenever it did become 
 necessary to move large numbers of drafted men without regard 
 to occupations, to omit starred men from the shipment. In 
 this way, at camps from which most of the men had been 
 transferred! for combat duty, the valuable specialists re- 
 mained and the Distributing Office knew just what kind of 
 specialists they were. At camps which were not affected by
 
 416 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 these large movements not only were all the men available 
 for assignment on requisitions, but the Distributing Office 
 knew also just what kind of men these were. 
 
 A month's experience in the use of the starred Occupational 
 Report appeared to justify a still further refinement. Orig- 
 inally when an occupation was starred, the star referred to 
 all the men classified in that occupation regardless of whether 
 they were journeymen or apprentices. It was soon dis- 
 covered that in certain occupations a larger number of men 
 than was necessary were being reserved in this way for the 
 Staff Corps. Accordingly in the October edition of the Occu- 
 pational Report form, discrimination was made between 
 journeymen and apprentices in starring, i.e., certain occupa- 
 tions were starred both for journeymen and apprentices and 
 others only for journeymen. This distinction was made on the 
 basis of the 'Index of Demand,' and the probable occupational 
 supply from the next draft to meet that demand. Further 
 modifications having to do with certain types of specialists 
 and with the selection of expert industrial workers for fur- 
 lough are described in the next chapter. 
 
 PROPOSED FORECAST OF ARMY PROGRAM ON 
 OCCUPATIONAL BASIS 
 
 Previous mention has been made of a contemplated occupa- 
 tional forecast of the army program from November 1, 1918, 
 to July 1, 1919, on which the actual work was just about to be 
 started as the armistice was signed. The necessity for such 
 a summary of a definite army program, particularly for the 
 Staff Corps, which would be supplementary to General Per- 
 shing's six-phase project, was being felt more keenly all the 
 time, but all of the four or five men in the office who were 
 qualified by experience in personnel work and familiarity with 
 army organization to undertake such a tremendous task were 
 so burdened with the more immediate work of assigning hun- 
 dreds of thousands of recruits that it was delayed until addi- 
 tions to the office force could be broken in. The Committee
 
 DRAFT STATISTICS 417 
 
 on Education and Special Training, as above stated, required 
 a knowledge of the prospective occupational shortages to 
 enable it to select the right courses of training for the Voca- 
 tional Section of the Students' Army Training Corps. The 
 Central Distributing Office had to be able to plan ahead in the 
 distribution of the draft, to know what the Staff Corps were 
 going to require two or three months hence and to lay its 
 lines accordingly. If the Engineer Corps intended to organize 
 several pontoon companies within a couple of months, it would 
 be necessary to discontinue furloughing boat builders to the 
 shipyards and mariners and boatmen to the merchant marine 
 because they would soon be needed in the pontoon companies. 
 Or if there was to be a great increase in motor transport, due 
 perhaps to the prospects of a "Spring Drive" with a resultant 
 longer haul from the base of supplies, special steps would 
 have to be taken at once to save from Infantry Replacements 
 the apprentice as well as the journeyman truck drivers and 
 mechanics who otherwise might have found their way to the 
 trenches. 
 
 The Distributing Office had in many respects been living 
 from hand to mouth had been unable to see more than a 
 month or two ahead. After the six-phase project had ex- 
 pired during the summer, the Office had but a very general 
 knowledge of what demands to expect until the actual requisi- 
 tions were received, usually with the request that the men be 
 supplied at once. This was ordinarily quite impossible because 
 the men were not available, and the delay which resulted un- 
 doubtedly caused more or less dissatisfaction. The contem- 
 plated occupational summary by months, therefore, of the 
 units to be organized in the various Staff Corps would have 
 been of material assistance to all concerned. It may not be 
 amiss to describe briefly the method by which it was proposed 
 to compile this summary. 
 
 The plan for securing and compiling this information was 
 worked out by Mr. Hale, assisted by Mr. S. E. Wright, with 
 the collaboration of the Operations Division. The letter of
 
 418 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 instructions to the Chiefs of all Staff Corps and Staff Depart- 
 ments which had been drawn up and virtually approved at 
 the time the armistice was signed, was to be accompanied by 
 two sets of forms, which were designated as Form A and 
 Form B. These forms were to be filled out and returned by 
 a specified date. On each of seven copies of Form A, one 
 for each month, were to be entered the numbers of each kind 
 of unit to be organized during the month in question, indicat- 
 ing the number of men required in the unit, its table of organi- 
 zation and whether or not its organization had been author- 
 ized. This would constitute the tentative program of the Staff 
 Corps. These various programs would have to be approved in 
 general by the Operations Division before they could be used 
 as a basis for computing the occupational needs of the Army. 
 On sheets called Form B were to be entered the occupational 
 requirements of each kind of organization appearing on Form 
 A. These occupational requirements would have to be scrutin- 
 ized by the Central Distributing Office with a view to eliminat- 
 ing over-estimates. By applying a little multiplication and 
 addition to this information, the office could quite easily de- 
 termine the occupational requirements of the Staff Corps for 
 the months in question. In order to make the estimate complete 
 it would have been necessary to take into consideration the oc- 
 cupational needs of the combat troops during the seven-month 
 period. The Operations Division could have supplied the re- 
 quired information concerning the number and kind of combat 
 units to be organized, and from the Tables of Occupational 
 Needs could have been derived the occupational requirements 
 of these units. A combination of these two estimates would 
 then have given a summary of the future occupational needs 
 of the whole Army which would have been complete except for 
 special units for which need might arise from time to time. 
 
 The next step would then have been to forecast the num- 
 bers of occupational specialists to appear in each of the 
 monthly draft calls and to match this prospective supply 
 against the estimated requirements. The numbers of special-
 
 DRAFT STATISTICS 419 
 
 
 ists found in past drafts would have been used as a basis 
 
 for forecasting the numbers to be found in future drafts, al- 
 though the estimates of occupational supply would have been 
 revised monthly as the character of the draft was changed by 
 the induction of men below twenty-one and over thirty-one. 
 
 The resulting summary would then have enabled the Cen- 
 tral Distributing Office to work with its eyes open, to intelli- 
 gently and accurately advise the Committee on Education and 
 Special Training as to the courses of study which must be 
 initiated monthly, to advise the Operations Division upon the 
 necessity of calling special drafts to supplement the work 
 of the Army Schools, and to cut to a minimum the requests 
 for those specialists among which the shortage was most acute.
 
 CHAPTER 34 
 
 SPECIAL TASKS OF THE CENTRAL 
 DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 
 
 At intervals throughout the life of the Central Distributing 
 Office various special tasks and problems arose which had to 
 be taken care of outside of the regular routine of filling re- 
 quisitions for men although they all related more or less 
 directly to the occupational distribution of the draft. Many 
 of these special tasks became, after a time, routine operations 
 which were not, however, carried on by the main office or- 
 ganization, but by special agencies set up for that purpose. 
 
 SUPPLYING CHEMISTS TO THE CHEMICAL 
 WARFARE SERVICE 
 
 The chemist problem is a case in point. Early in May, 
 1918. officers of the Chemical Service Section (later the Chem- 
 ical Warfare Service) asked the Central Distributing Office 
 to assist them in their emergency by securing the names and 
 former addresses of all the chemists who were drafted into 
 camp, and by holding them in camp until investigations could 
 be made and recommendations for their disposition submitted. 
 It was at that time thought that the names of practically all 
 the chemists would be found in the immense file of 16,000 
 chemist questionnaires which the Chemical Service Section 
 had collected from all parts of the country, and that by ref- 
 erence to these questionnaires it could be determined whether 
 a man was really a chemist, and if so, the particular branch 
 of chemical work for which he was fitted. It was very soon 
 discovered, however, that there were a large number of chem- 
 ists being drafted into the army whose questionnaires were 
 not in this file, so it was decided to have all the men claiming 
 
 420
 
 TASKS OF DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 421 
 
 to be chemists fill out questionnaires in camp and forward 
 them to Washington. Accordingly, on July 1, supplies of 
 chemist questionnaires, prepared by the Chemical Service 
 Section with the assistance of the Distributing Office were 
 forwarded to all the camps where drafted men were received 
 with instructions to have each drafted chemist who came to 
 camp fill out a questionnaire. When received in the Dis- 
 tributing Office they were forwarded to the Chemical War- 
 fare Service, but a card file was kept so that it might at all 
 times be known just what chemists were being held in camp. 
 The communications of the Chemical Warfare Service to 
 the Adjutant General requesting the assignment of these in- 
 dividual chemists passed through the Central Distributing 
 Office and notation of the action taken was made on the proper 
 cards. The questionnaire system proved thoroughly satisfac- 
 tory to all concerned. 
 
 In addition to the chemists who came into the Army through 
 the draft after the installation of this system there was a 
 considerable number of chemists scattered throughout the 
 Army who were not engaged upon chemical work. An order of 
 May 28, 1918, directed that no enlisted graduate chemist go 
 overseas unless he were engaged upon chemical duties, and 
 that the names of all such men already in the service be re- 
 ported to Washington. The Central Distributing Office under- 
 took the task of securing questionnaires from these men and 
 of keeping a record of them in practically the same manner 
 as that described above. After the establishment of the sys- 
 tem of transferring individual chemists by name, this office 
 forwarded to the Chemical Warfare Service the questionnaires 
 (or names) of 2916 chemists. Action was taken on them as 
 follows : 
 
 Ordered transferred for duty as chemists 1990 
 
 Furloughed 26 
 
 Released for other duty or rejected by C.W.S 471 
 
 No action taken (largely due to armistice) 429
 
 422 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 SUPPLYING RAILROAD MEN TO THE ENGINEER 
 
 CORPS 
 
 Another shortage in skilled personnel which became acute 
 in the early summer of 1918 was the shortage in railway men 
 of all kinds. Not only was there an Army shortage, but the 
 lack of men on the domestic railways made the situation quite 
 serious, because to have attempted to make a special draft 
 of railway men would have been to place a load upon the 
 railways of the country which they would have had great 
 difficulty in bearing. Accordingly, late in June, a request 
 from the Chief of Engineers to the effect that all skilled rail- 
 way men drafted into National Army camps be transferred to 
 the Engineer Corps and sent to Ft. Benjamin Harrison for 
 assignment to Military Railway organizations was approved 
 by the General Staff and put into operation. A long and 
 somewhat confusing list of railway occupations, not taken 
 from the Index of Occupations, was included in the order. 
 The Central Distributing Office had previously made it a 
 policy to send all railway men not imperatively needed else- 
 where to Ft. Benjamin Harrison, ordering them by specific 
 occupations. The general letter referred to made this un- 
 necessary. It was thought for some time that this order had 
 been sent to all camps receiving drafted men, and it was not 
 until the draft of July 22nd had been almost completely dis- 
 tributed that it was discovered that there were several National 
 Guard camps which had never received the order and were 
 continuing to hold their railway men for orders. There re- 
 sulted a revision of the original order, addressed to all camps 
 and posts receiving drafted men and giving in standard occu- 
 pational terms and symbols the men who were to be sent 
 to Ft. Benjamin Harrison. This revision was prepared by 
 the Central Distributing Office and thereafter no difficulty 
 was experienced either by the camps in knowing exactly 
 which men to send, or by the Distributing Office in knowing 
 exactly what men had been sent.
 
 TASKS OF DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 423 
 
 Along in September the shortage of railway men became 
 still more acute, so acute in fact, that it was decided to sift 
 through all the troops in the United States proper and trans- 
 fer from their present assignments all skilled railway men who 
 were not imperatively needed in their present organizations. 
 Accordingly, about October 1, a general letter was sent by 
 the Distributing Office to all Department Commanders and to 
 Camp Commanders not under the jurisdiction of Department 
 Commanders to report the name, grade, organization, length 
 of service, physical class, specific occupation and degree of 
 skill of each man under their command who qualified in one 
 of a given list of occupations. These reports were to be 
 mailed by October 20, 1918. The names of approximately six- 
 teen thousand men, largely apprentices, were reported and 
 a portion of these were tabulated in order to determine ap- 
 proximately how many of each classification might be expected 
 among the whole number. Another summary was made by 
 units and occupations without regard to the other factors. 
 The signing of the armistice eliminated the necessity of 
 assigning any of these men to the Engineer Corps, but had the 
 war continued a large percentage of them would have found 
 their way into railway organizations. 
 
 FURLOUGHING MEN TO INDUSTRY 
 
 The selection from the draft of industrial specialists for fur- 
 lough to essential industry was yet another task of the Central 
 Distributing Office. The system of deferred classification for 
 necessary industrial employees which was put into operation 
 by the Provost Marshal General in connection with the opera- 
 tion of the draft succeeded in keeping most of the necessary 
 industrial specialists from being drawn into the Army, but the 
 size of the machine and the speed with which it was forced to 
 operate made one hundred per cent, efficiency out of the ques- 
 tion. In addition to these draftees from necessary industries 
 there were a large number of skilled men, who, because they 
 were engaged in non-essential industries were not given defer-
 
 424 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 red classification, but who were well qualified to do specialized 
 work in essential industry. 
 
 Mr. Darragh de Lancey, at that time in the office of the 
 Second Assistant Secretary of War, but later Chief of the 
 Industrial Furlough Section, requested the Distributing Office 
 to comb out such of these specialists as were not actually re- 
 quired in their trades in the Army and to secure certain infor- 
 mation about them. Originally the list of occupations in which 
 Mr. de Lancey was interested was limited to about a dozen of 
 the most rare and valuable. For the May 25th draft this list 
 was extended to thirty and a month later to fifty-five. Mr. 
 de Lancey's request having been duly approved, these occupa- 
 tions were included with those occupations for which there 
 was an army demand and reports were secured from the camps 
 as to the numbers of men in these occupations who arrived in 
 a given draft. Then, after orders had been drawn up for the 
 assignment to army organizations of those men for whom there 
 was an Army demand, further instructions were issued to 
 report the names and addresses of the former employers of 
 the remaining men who qualified in occupations on Mr. de 
 Lancey's list. Duplicate card files containing this information 
 were then prepared. One was forwarded to the Industrial 
 Furloughs Section and the other to the Distributing Office. 
 On the basis of this information that section, acting through 
 the production departments of the War and Navy Depart- 
 ments, communicated with the former employers of the men 
 and made other investigations, preparatory to issuing fur- 
 lough orders. 
 
 It soon became evident that a great deal of time was being 
 taken in obtaining satisfactory information from the. former 
 employers. The Distributing Office, therefore, suggested that 
 some kind of form letter be adopted which would be sent 
 directly from the camp to the former employer and, when 
 properly completed, forwarded directly from the employer to 
 the War Department. This letter, known as Form CCP-3, 
 was prepared and the system put into operation for the draft
 
 TASKS OF DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 425 
 
 of June 25, 1918. The letter of instructions, besides explain- 
 ing the purpose of the form letter, provided that whenever 
 these letters were sent out, a report should be submitted giving 
 the men's names and occupations and the names and addresses 
 of their employers, so that the Distributing Office might have 
 a definite statement from the camp commander against which 
 to check the letters that came from the employers. The sys- 
 tem proved to be generally satisfactory, particularly because 
 the Industrial Furloughs Section could easily cull out those 
 men whose questionaires showed them to be incompetent. 
 These rejects were then assigned at once to some Army organi- 
 zation. 
 
 One source of considerable delay in the selection of men for 
 furlough still remained. This delay amounted to three or four 
 weeks for every man and was occasioned by the fact that after 
 receiving the complete occupational reports from the camps it 
 was necessary to supply the Army needs before it could be 
 determined which men would be left available for furlough. 
 Although recognized from the first, it had been considered that 
 to attempt a solution of the problem would only complicate 
 matters. So by the time the Forms CCP-3 were really started 
 on their way, most of these skilled men who were so badly 
 needed in industry had been idle in camp for at least three 
 weeks. A study of the "Index of Demand" which was men- 
 tioned in the preceding chapter, showed that there were several 
 occupations on the industrial furlough lists for which the 
 Army demand was very small, and that, as far as those occu- 
 pations were concerned, there was no logical reason for defer- 
 ring the sending of Forms CCP-3 until the Army need had 
 been supplied. If, then, a week or two prior to each draft, 
 the occupational needs of the Army to be supplied from that 
 draft could be balanced against the probable occupational 
 supply from the draft, it would be possible to pick out a 
 considerable number of industrial occupations for which the 
 Army need was immaterial. The personnel adjutants in the 
 camps could then be instructed to start the machinery of in-
 
 426 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 vestigation (Form CCP-3) as soon as men of these particular 
 occupations arrived in the camps. Accordingly the Occupa- 
 tional Report form, CCP-15, was revised with this end in 
 view, and the occupations in which the men were to be 
 "mortgaged" for furlough were indicated by the sign "*3" 
 and were spoken of as "star-three men." It was estimated 
 that approximately one per cent, of the draft would be re- 
 served under this authority. 
 
 The letter of instructions by which this new system was 
 instituted was sent out under date of October 5, 1918, and the 
 system was used in the draft of October 21. In addition to the 
 provision that Forms CCP-3 should be sent out as soon as the. 
 men in designated occupations had arrived in camp and been 
 interviewed, the letter also provided that duplicate qualifica- 
 tion cards, Form CCP-1, containing the trade-test rating and 
 the personnel adjutant's recommendation for or against indus- 
 trial furlough should be forwarded to the War Department. 
 There was really no opportunity to try the system out in actual 
 operation because the signing of the armistice shortly after- 
 wards put an end to all furloughs and completely disor- 
 ganized the work. It was evident, however, that although 
 generally satisfactory, further explanation of its procedure 
 through additional letters and particularly through the field 
 supervisors would have been necessary to its efficient operation. 
 It must be clearly understood that the actual furloughing of 
 the men was not done by the Central Distributing Office, but 
 by the Industrial Furlough Section through the Enlisted Divi- 
 sion of the Adjutant General's Office. The Distributing Office 
 merely recommended to the Operations Division, General 
 Staff which groups of men in the occupations needed by indus- 
 try could be spared from the Army and undertook the task of 
 reserving and securing detailed information about these men 
 for the use of the Industrial Furlough Section. In addition it 
 was, of course, necessary to keep a record of all the men who 
 were being reserved in order to insure that some action was 
 taken with respect to each of them. Considerable difficulty
 
 TASKS OF DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 427 
 
 was experienced by the Industrial Furlough Section in obtain- 
 ing expeditious action on the part of the various production 
 departments and for some time there was a great deal of delay 
 in actually accomplishing the furloughs, but as the system be- 
 came more firmly established this delay was gradually reduced. 
 
 RETENTION OF LIMITED SERVICE MEN APPEAR- 
 ING IN GENERAL SERVICE DRAFTS 
 
 In addition to the foregoing problems which had been, in a 
 sense, thrust upon the Distributing Office for solution and 
 application, there were others which arose from within the 
 organization itself but which were not so directly concerned 
 with the process of the distribution of the draft. For instance, 
 much time and study was given to the question of the wider f 
 utilization of limited service men. In connection with this 
 subject there arose the suggestion that some method of retain- 
 ing limited service men found in general service draft calls be 
 established. A detailed investigation of the subject was made 
 and a report prepared. A draft of a proposed general order 
 on this subject was worked out with great care through co- 
 operation with the various officers and individuals charged 
 with personnel work in the camps, those in charge of the 
 operation of development battalions, representatives of the 
 Surgeon General and of the Provost Marshal GeneHal. The 
 report and draft of order were submitted to the Director of 
 Operations on or about October 3, 1918, but the adoption of 
 the plan was at that time rejected by him, in view of the fear 
 expressed that retention of limited service men would, if en- 
 couraged, result in a lack of enough general service men to 
 supply the then very pressing needs of combat organizations, 
 especially for infantry replacements. 
 
 Another general problem which had as its purpose the sav- 
 ing of time and transportation in getting the men from their
 
 428 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 draft boards to their final organizations was one for which no 
 definite method of solution had been presented at the time the 
 armistice was signed. The problem itself was somewhat vague 
 and consisted largely in a feeling that there ought to be some 
 way to shortcut the paths of certain types of specialists in 
 reaching their permanent organizations. The "standing order" 
 method which was used in connection with railway men has 
 already been described. This was the only case in which this 
 method was readily applicable, however. There was no other 
 group or classification of men which were all required only at 
 one camp. Telegraph, telephone and wireless men were needed 
 in the largest numbers by the Signal Corps at Fort Leaven- 
 worth (later at Camp Meade), but they were also needed in 
 divisions and combat units of all kinds. A modification of the 
 "standing order" method might have been adopted to fit the 
 type of cases mentioned, which would provide that only a cer- 
 tain percentage of the men of certain occupations who were 
 found in the draft would be sent immediately to Fort Leaven- 
 worth, the balance to be assigned to organizations in the camps 
 to which they had been drafted. Extensive statistical studies 
 would have been necessary before such a system could have 
 been put into operation but it would have added a week or 
 two to the training period of several thousand men each month. 
 The British had a similar system of operation which was sim- 
 plified considerably by the comparatively small size of the 
 British Isles, and which consisted in the circulation of monthly 
 schedules which detailed the camps to which men of certain 
 occupational and physical qualifications who entered the army 
 or became available for duty were to be transferred or 
 "posted." Various other plans were discussed, some of which 
 provided for more or less radical changes in the method of get- 
 ting men to camp from their local boards, but all of these 
 plans and ideas were in such a nebulous state that it is hardly 
 worth while to discuss them at length here.
 
 TASKS OF DISTRIBUTING OFFICE 429 
 
 DEMOBILIZATION 
 
 Immediately following the signing of the armistice there 
 arose the very important question as to the method to be fol- 
 lowed in demobilization. The Central Distributing Office was 
 particularly interested in determining the practicability of 
 several forms of occupational or industrial demobilization, and 
 cooperated with other sections of the Classification Division, 
 Adjutant General's Department, the Operations Division, Gen- 
 eral Staff, and the "Labor Department on this subject. It was 
 thought that if it should be decided to demobilize on the basis 
 of the industrial needs of the country, the Central Distributing 
 Office, with reversed machinery, might well be the agency to 
 select the men for discharge. It having been decided, however, 
 that demobilization would not be carried out upon an industrial 
 basis the office force diminished swiftly until a personnel of 
 fifty-eight had decreased on January 1 to five. Aside from 
 assistance rendered the Fuel Administration in securing 
 authority for the early demobilization of anthracite coal 
 miners, and advice and assistance in a few similar cases, the 
 Distributing Office took no active part in demobilization. For 
 a few weeks, records were kept of the numbers of men dis- 
 charged and estimates made of the numbers of men affected 
 by discharge authority, but both of these functions were soon 
 transferred to offices which were more directly concerned with 
 them.
 
 SECTION IX 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL WORK 
 
 Supervision of Personnel Work was manifested 
 principally in three ways. There was first direct 
 supervision from the Washington office through 
 traveling supervisors (Chapter 35). Second, 
 weekly letters, followed later by the publication of 
 a weekly paper, accomplished much toward stan- 
 dardizing and consolidating the work in the many 
 camps and offices (Chapter 36) . And, third, a care- 
 ful check was established at ports of embarkation to 
 see if units had all their papers made out correctly, 
 particularly the qualification cards (Chapter 37).
 
 CHAPTER 35 
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL WORK IN THE 
 
 CAMPS 
 
 Following the installation of the personnel system in the 
 National Army camps (described in Chapter 6), and the with- 
 drawal of the trained employment men who organized it, the 
 necessity for some method of supervision was immediately 
 recognized in order that the work might be standardized, im- 
 proved and enlarged and the personnel officers uniformly 
 trained in the constantly increasing duties which were assigned 
 to them in the handling of all matters pertaining to the classifi- 
 cation and placement of personnel. In addition, new camps 
 were being established where it was necessary to install the 
 personnel system. The work had no sooner been completed in 
 the National Army camps than the Central Office was in- 
 structed by War Department order to install the system in the 
 National Guard camps. Some time later, the system was put 
 in all the Coast Defense stations and many of the Staff Corps 
 camps, such as the Ordnance Department, at Camp Hancock, 
 the Quartermaster Corps, at Camp Joseph E. Johnston, and 
 other places. 
 
 CENTRAL OFFICE AND SUPERVISING 
 ORGANIZATION 
 
 The organization formed for the purpose of supervising'the 
 work in the camps consisted of a civilian Director in the Cen- 
 tral Office, Mr. R. C. Clothier, and later Mr. P. J. Reilly, and 
 eight civilian supervisors with three military inspectors. In 
 this conection the Director worked in close co-operation with 
 the army officer detailed to the Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel. In the early days this officer was Major (later Lt. 
 
 433
 
 434 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Col.) Grenville Clark. When he was transferred to the Com- 
 mittee on Education and Special Training, Lt. Colonel (later 
 Colonel) A. M. Ferguson took his place. As the number of 
 camps increased and the work grew, an assistant to the Direc- 
 tor, Mr. J. F. Page, Jr., was appointed and four additional 
 civilian supervisors were added to the field force. Between 
 the Central Office and the personnel officers in the camps, a 
 large volume of direct correspondence was carried on regard- 
 ing every phase of the work. This was essential, since there 
 were constant changes in procedure and additional duties 
 placed upon the shoulders of the personnel officers by War De- 
 partment orders. This was supplemented very effectively by 
 letters known as "Daily Letters," dealing with special subjects 
 or matters of special interest concerning the personnel work. 
 Furthermore, the officers in new camps and divisions which 
 were constantly being organized required special attention and 
 instructions in their duties. Improvements in the work were 
 constantly being made and many of the orders referred to 
 above were initiated by the Central Office. 
 
 The Central Office handled all questions with reference to 
 camp office equipment, printed forms, buildings, camp trans- 
 portation for the personnel officers, etc. 
 
 Training and Promotion of Personnel Officers. From time 
 to time, as necessity required, schools were held for the train- 
 ing of personnel officers, arrangements being handled through 
 the office of the director. Final selections of officers were made 
 by the officer in charge of the Committee and the director 
 from the candidates at these schools who were recommended 
 by the instructors. Promotions and commissions given to offi- 
 cers and civilians from these schools were put through upon 
 recommendation of the officer in charge to The Adjutant 
 General of the Army, and the officers were assigned 
 to new posts or to the camp or division from which they had 
 come to the school. The officers and enlisted men who were 
 sent to these schools for special instruction were recommended 
 by the commanding officer of the camp or division with the
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL 435 
 
 co-operation of the personnel officer, and were endorsed by the 
 supervisor after a personal interview. The Central Office then 
 issued orders for such men as the commanding officer and di- 
 rector finally decided should attend the school to report at the 
 proper time and place. The complete record of each man 
 attending the schools was kept on file in the office of the direc- 
 tor, and promotions or commissions given subsequently to men 
 whose work in the personnel offices entitled them to favorable 
 consideration were based also on their work at the school, as 
 noted on these record cards. There were, of course, men who 
 succeeded in personnel work without attending a school, and 
 their promotions were based solely on their records in the field. 
 
 Applications were continually being received from civilians 
 desirous of entering the personnel officers' school with a view 
 to becoming supervisors or being commissioned as officers in 
 personnel work. All such applications were required to be 
 made on a standard blank, which was filed in the Central 
 Office, and selections were made from them of a few of the 
 best qualified men for training at the schools. 
 
 The transfers and assignments of all personnel officers com- 
 missioned in the Adjutant General's Department were made 
 from the Central Office by orders issued through the officer in 
 charge of the Committee. 
 
 Direct Correspondence with Personnel Officers. In addi- 
 tion to the files in the Central Office containing school records 
 and Personnel Officers' Qualification Cards, there were files of 
 correspondence for each camp, cross-indexed for reference in 
 connection with special subjects or with reference to the cor- 
 respondence with individual officers. Other files contained cor- 
 respondence with the supervisors and their reports on field 
 conditions. Copies of all general and special orders were 
 available in the Central Office, and the office of the director 
 was familiar with every action of the War Department affect- 
 ing the work of personnel officers and, through familiarity with 
 these orders, the office of the director was in a position to inter- 
 pret the meaning of any point in such orders which was not
 
 436 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 entirely clear to the men in the camps and there was a mul- 
 titude of such questions continually being asked. 
 
 Direction of Personnel Supervisors. Through the Central 
 Office, orders to travel from camp to camp were issued to the 
 military inspectors, while the civilian supervisors were fur- 
 nished with letters of introduction and special travel orders. 
 
 PERSONNEL SUPERVISOR'S REPORT 
 
 VIS*T|O 11-1-18 su PERVISOR Mr . 
 
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 i cbuif b properly dow> 
 
 Tan 
 
 II other equipment 
 nSdntr TeB 
 
 Are met.'i ardl Wall done 
 ubbed properly? raTl ^.B^ 
 
 end being 
 
 S-* i " 
 
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 If" 
 
 An there proper Tea , in nuibera but man conetant- 
 
 uber of clerk.' ly. baing crwngrf. 
 
 rUnoSctn 
 
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 EM 
 
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 Have embark regulation* 
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 Tee 
 
 li rVnonae) Oficc 
 
 tha naw Paraonnnl OfflfAl- nflnignorl fn trijn '-lir._ 
 
 while I as at.-. 
 
 and he eaaae to have created a fenorbl< 
 
 impression. Propgr- hundlnga for ParHonnal WnrV iinri iirtic.1 P T ain<r..t<r.n ..- 
 badly naadad. Sufflriant an to handle the work with the incoming draft are 
 in Bight and gchoola are halng eonfhif.t.nri ftt. 1t tnty .rMitjnn.? M^i"Bl 
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 eonnel work hare baan claaratl up alnr.o ay 1t. r<lt. On the nbol, there i 
 
 __ general laproTeaent. - 
 
 FIG. 18 
 Personnel Supervisor's Report 
 
 The Central Office received reports from the supervisors on 
 the conditions at each camp, and appropriate action was taken 
 on each report before it was filed. The form of report 
 inches) used for this purpose is shown in Figure 18,
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL 437 
 
 and when necessary was supplemented with more complete in- 
 formation and suggestions in letter form. 
 
 It was always advisable that the director be in close touch 
 with conditions in the receiving camps while the large drafts 
 were being received and classified. Consequently, the field 
 supervisors were given advance information as to the camps at 
 which the draft would be received and were instructed to be 
 present in those camps, particularly where it was believed 
 their assistance would be needed. The following telegram is 
 a sample of the information and instructions sent to super- 
 visors before the receipt of a new draft: 
 
 "Mr 
 
 Care Commanding Officer, 
 
 Fort Caswell, N. C. 
 
 Draft men will report to camps in your territory Octo- 
 ber twenty-first as follows: 5,000 each to McClellan, 
 Wheeler, Shelby, and Forrest; 12,000 to Wadsworth and 
 
 15,000 to Greenleaf. Arrange so that either Mr 
 
 or you are able to cover Wadsworth, Shelby, Wheeler, 
 Greenleaf, and Forrest, since this will be more important 
 
 than for Mr to divide time at Gordon and 
 
 McClellan as indicated in telegram October ninth. 
 Acknowledge and advise new itinerary. 
 
 , Director." 
 
 Likewise, through advance information received by the 
 Director regarding the establishment of new camps, he was 
 able to advise the supervisor of the district, in order that he or 
 his assistant could be on the ground long enough to assist in 
 forming a personnel organization. The following letter to the 
 senior supervisor in the southern district illustrates the instruc- 
 tions given in such a case: 
 
 "Mr 
 
 Care Personnel Adjutant, 
 Camp Gordon, Georgia. 
 
 Dear Mr : 
 
 Notice was received in the office of the Director to-day, 
 advising of the establishment of a new camp which will 
 be known as Camp Polk, at Raleigh, North Carolina.
 
 438 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 This is a tank corps camp and will be ready to set up a 
 personnel organization on October 10th. 
 
 Please either go yourself to Raleigh or send Mr , 
 
 so that this work will be set up under your direction under 
 the standardized methods of procedure. Write or wire 
 this office when you expect to be in Raleigh, whereupon a 
 wire will be sent advising of your visit, which will result 
 in getting better cooperation on your first trip." 
 
 The Director himself made frequent short trips among the 
 camps, in order to maintain that close touch with field condi- 
 tions which could be obtained in no other way. Thus, by direct 
 correspondence, reports of supervisors and personal visits, the 
 Central Office was kept very closely posted concerning the 
 functioning of personnel work in the camps. 
 
 FIELD SUPERVISORS 
 
 The director and the supervisors were men with experience 
 in employment and personnel work in industry, the original 
 eight supervisors having been selected from the group which 
 had already had the experience of installing personnel work in 
 the camps. The personnel supervisors were directed and 
 routed from the office of the director, being sent to those 
 camps from which reports received at the Central Office indi- 
 cated that assistance was needed by the personnel officer, or 
 that the work was not functioning entirely satisfactorily. In 
 the absence of definite calls from the field, the supervisors 
 arranged their own itineraries but kept in daily touch with the 
 Central Office. 
 
 The supervisor of longest service in each district was de- 
 signated as the "Senior," and his assistants as the "Junior" 
 Supervisors, the latter being directed by the senior and report- 
 ing to him. The senior supervisor, in turn, reported in writing 
 to the director, giving an accurate account of the conditions 
 in each of the camps and the efficiency or shortcomings of the 
 personnel officers, together with suggestions and recommenda- 
 tions to the end that personnel work might be made to function 
 more perfectly. In the event of some development requiring
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL 439 
 
 detailed instruction or explanation, the senior supervisors 
 would be called to Washington and carefully instructed, after 
 which they would return to their respective districts, instruct 
 their assistants and, through them, the personnel officers. In 
 addition to the conferences of the supervisors in the Central 
 Office, the director was usually accompanied by the senior 
 supervisor of the district when he made his occasional trips 
 into the field. 
 
 In order that each camp might be visited frequently and the 
 supervisors become thoroughly familiar with conditions at each 
 place and acquainted with commanding officers, the United 
 States was geographically divided into five districts, following 
 very closely the military "Departments" into which the coun- 
 try is divided for purposes of Army administration. Roughly 
 the divisions were as follows: District No. 1, New England 
 and Middle Atlantic States; No. 2, Southern States west to the 
 Mississippi River; No. 3, Middle States; No. 4, Southwestern 
 States from the Mississippi River west to California, and Dis- 
 trict No .5, the Pacific Coast States. 
 
 As finally allotted, there were two personnel supervisors in 
 District No. 1, two in District No. 2, two in District No. 8, 
 four in District No. 4, where distances were great, with many 
 camps, flying fields and isolated posts such as those along the 
 border; District No. 5, while large in extent, contained but 
 very few camps and one supervisor was found to be able to 
 satisfactorily inspect the work in this territory. 
 
 Duties of Personnel Supervisors. The duties of the field 
 supervisors covered a wide range and a multitude of details 
 requiring an intimate knowledge of all phases of the work and 
 a high degree of initiative, self-confidence and organizing abil- 
 ity. Being one of the few officials forming a liaison between 
 Washington and the field, the supervisor was asked questions 
 and requested to obtain action on many matters not directly 
 touching on personnel work. By his ability to accomplish 
 often what was requested, he obtained the respect and co- 
 operation of the commanding officers, which was so essential
 
 440 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 in the accomplishment of his own work. In fact, it might be 
 said that one of the supervisor's chief functions was obtaining 
 cooperation from commanding officers and coordination be- 
 tween the personnel officer and the organizations affected by 
 the activities of the personnel work. Upon visiting a camp, 
 the supervisor first called upon the commanding officer or his 
 chief of staff, through the adjutant. Matters pertaining to 
 personnel work were discussed and the supervisor then pro- 
 ceeded to the personnel office, going over all details of the 
 work with the personnel officer. 
 
 The supervisors were expected to assist the personnel offi- 
 cers when assistance was asked and to offer suggestions where 
 room for improvement was evident. Moving from camp to 
 camp, many very good suggestions for improvement were car- 
 ried and passed on from one to another of the personnel offi- 
 cers by the supervisors. An especially good suggestion, upon 
 being reported to the director's office, was often made the 
 subject of one of the "Daily Letters" to all personnel officers 
 or was inserted as a news item in "Personnel," the weekly 
 news publication of the Committee. Supervisors were largely 
 responsible for standardization of procedure in all the per- 
 sonnel offices, together with proper organization and equipment 
 of the offices. It was also essential that personnel officers, 
 interviewers and classifiers should receive uniform instruction, 
 in order to accomplish uniform results. During the receiving 
 of drafts, the supervisors inspected the work of the inter- 
 viewers, to see that they understood correct methods of han- 
 dling the recruit and the right kinds of questions to ask in 
 interviewing, in order to exhaust the possibilities of skill in 
 occupations useful to the Army. Particular attention was 
 called to the placement of those men holding certificates from 
 the Federal Board of Vocational Education and those men who 
 had graduated from Army Training Schools. 
 
 In the case of personnel work in divisions, it was the special 
 duty of the supervisors to determine whether the placement 
 and distribution of personnel was being done in such a manner
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL 441 
 
 as to utilize fully the available man power and to balance 
 properly the different units and one unit in relation to other 
 units, with reference to the intelligence and skill of the men 
 assigned to them. Permanent camp organizations, such as the 
 personnel office, Depot Quartermaster, Ordnance Depot, Base 
 Hospital, etc., furnished a large field for the utilization of 
 limited service men in place of physically fit Class A men, who 
 were needed in the overseas forces. Supervisors made sure 
 that the personnel officers were giving this matter of utilizing 
 limited service men their closest attention. 
 
 During the visit in a camp, the supervisors examined the 
 qualification cards of officers and enlisted men and all records 
 pertaining to personnel work. Regulations were carefully ex- 
 plained regarding preparation of records for units going to 
 ports of embarkation and from station to station, and the great 
 importance of having every man accompanied by his proper 
 records was pointed out and obedience to regulations insisted 
 upon. In order that the Allotment and Supply Sections of the 
 Central Office might have the necessary reports of men avail- 
 able for assignment and transfer, it was necessary for the per- 
 sonnel officers to prepare all reports called for promptly and 
 accurately. Insistence upon this was a duty of the supervisor. 
 
 Since trade tests were a function of the personnel office, it 
 was necessary to have the closest co-ordination in the work 
 and the supervisors were expected to see that the work was 
 operating smoothly. 
 
 A very important function of the personnel supervisors was 
 the selection of officers and enlisted men for instruction in the 
 personnel officers' schools or for promotion. In selecting the 
 men to be recommended, the supervisors were of course in- 
 fluenced largely by the statements of the personnel officers but, 
 in addition, the supervisor endeavored to interview personally 
 each prospective candidate. As a result of the interview and 
 the statements of superior officers, the supervisor endorsed the 
 names of those men selected for schooling by the personnel 
 officer, whom he considered qualified for such special training.
 
 442 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Trade Test Supervisors. Upon the preparation of trade 
 tests for the Army, an organization was formed for the instal- 
 lation and supervision of the work in those camps selected to 
 have trade test stations. The Director of Trade Tests, Mr. 
 L. B. Hopkins, was responsible for supervising and directing 
 the preparation of trade tests, installing the tests in the camps, 
 coordinating the work as one of the functions of the personnel 
 office, and finally for the procurement and training of sufficient 
 officers and men to conduct the tests and supervise the work in 
 the camps. Trade testing was a function of personnel work, 
 therefore the Director of Trade Tests worked in close co- 
 operation and constantly consulted with the Director of Per- 
 sonnel Work. The trade test supervisors, working under the 
 director, were all men equipped for this work by industrial 
 training and specialized instruction. There were five in all: 
 three civilians and two commissioned officers, the latter 
 selected from camps where they had already been in personnel 
 work and had shown special fitness for the trade test work. 
 Through the commissioned officers, the director was enabled to 
 maintain the necessary military liaison with the officers and 
 men in the trade test offices in the field. The duties of the 
 trade test supervisors were: 
 
 1. To make all detailed arrangements for space and 
 equipment for trade test stations wherever it was decided to 
 install the work. 
 
 2. To form a competent organization at each station to 
 conduct the tests, maintain the necessary records and pre- 
 pare reports for the director. 
 
 3. To coordinate the work of the trade test and per- 
 sonnel offices, since trade tests were a function of the latter 
 and under the general supervision of the camp personnel 
 officer. 
 
 4. To follow closely the work of the trade test officers 
 and enlisted men and make recommendations, for those 
 qualified, for further training at trade test schools or for 
 commissions or promotions. 
 
 Military Inspectors. Three military inspectors were main- 
 tained under the direction of the Commanding Officer of the
 
 SUPERVISION OF PERSONNEL 443 
 
 Committee, who worked in close cooperation with the civilian 
 Director of Personnel Work in the camps. The purpose in 
 having these commissioned officers as inspectors was to main- 
 tain a close military liaison between the Central Office and the 
 field, and to enable the office to have carried out certain orders 
 and regulations of a purely military nature. Also, it was the 
 thought that certain corrections in the procedure in the camps 
 and recommendations dealing with promotion of officers could 
 be better carried out through these officers. One of these in- 
 spectors concerned himself almost entirely with the question of 
 proper preparation of records of men or organizations going 
 to ports of embarkation for service overseas. Regulations 
 were drawn up by him describing exactly how every form 
 should be arranged and these regulations were usually ex- 
 plained by him in person, or by one of the supervisors-, before 
 any division was ordered to the port of embarkation, so as to 
 make sure that the orders were complied with that every officer 
 and soldier must have a qualification card to accompany him 
 overseas. (See Chapter 37 for further details.) The military 
 inspectors were not restricted to any given district, but 
 traveled over the whole country under the direction of the 
 Central Office.
 
 CHAPTER 36 
 
 "PERSONNEL" 
 
 NEED OF KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE FIELD 
 
 The Personnel System of the Army was at no time static. 
 It was continually growing and developing. Week by week 
 additions were made to the scope of the work and to the 
 responsibilities carried by the personnel adjutants. With more 
 than a hundred minds continually focused on personnel prob- 
 lems it was inevitable, also, that improvements in methods 
 should be frequent. 
 
 All this was in the highest degree desirable. Scientific per- 
 sonnel work in the Army was so recent it would have been a 
 distinct misfortune to allow it to be bound by precedent or to 
 crystallize it into a hard-and-fast procedure. One of the great 
 advantages enjoyed by the Committee during the first year of 
 its existence was its freedom from the fetters of red tape and 
 its ability to put into operation new plans as fast as these plans 
 were developed and found practicable. 
 
 All during 1917 and during the early part of 1918 this rapid 
 development brought with it no serious dangers. The organ- 
 ization was still small enough to enable the central office at 
 Washington to keep in fairly close touch with the officers in 
 the field. It is true that occasionally some difficulties were 
 experienced through the lack of standardization which enabled 
 various camps handling the same kind of work to use entirely 
 different methods. On the other hand this gave a practical try- 
 out for several methods as a basis for selecting the best among 
 them. Most commonly the excellent features of several dif- 
 ferent methods were combined. 
 
 Toward the close of the first year of the Committee's work 
 
 444
 
 'PERSONNEL" 445 
 
 it became important to provide a plan that would insure a con- 
 siderable degree of uniformity in operations. By the summer 
 of 1918 the size of the organization had reached a point where 
 over four hundred officers and five thousand enlisted men were 
 engaged in personnel work. The task of keeping in touch with 
 all these and standardizing their methods was by no means 
 easy and was much more necessary than before. 
 
 EARLY METHODS OF SUPERVISION 
 
 Personnel Supervisors. There were still supervisors making 
 personal visits to the camps but there were only five of them 
 to cover the whole United States. Their visits were conse- 
 quently infrequent and were confined almost entirely to the 
 larger camps, leaving the smaller posts arid receiving stations 
 with very little guidance or advice beyond that which the per- 
 sonnel adjutants had received at the personnel school. 
 
 The Personnel Manual. Next to the supervisors the most 
 important source of assistance that the camp personnel offices 
 had was the Personnel Manual. This was begun in the Spring 
 of 1918 and was issued chapter by chapter in loose-leaf form 
 Its purpose was to furnish standard instructions for carrying 
 on the various departments of personnel work, and as these 
 instructions were based upon methods that had been tested out 
 and proved practicable and effective, they were naturally of 
 much value in increasing the efficiency of all the offices. Vol- 
 ume II of this work is an expansion of that Manual. Chapters 
 I, III, IV and V were issued by April, 1918. They were 
 the most important of all. No others were published up 
 to September, 1918. Moreover, these chapters became 
 obsolete very quickly, as the development of the personnel 
 system led to improvements in organization and in forms. 
 Notwithstanding this, the Personnel Manual had an important 
 share in the task of rounding the camp personnel procedure 
 into a real system. 
 
 "Daily Letters." Important changes in methods were of
 
 446 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 course made known by official communications, either as gen- 
 eral orders or as circulars. These, however, comprised only a 
 very small proportion of the items on which personnel adju- 
 tants needed instruction or assistance. It often happened, 
 moreover, that even such information as was contained in gen- 
 eral orders failed to arrive in the hands of the personnel adju- 
 tant until after the time when it would have been most useful 
 to him. In some instances mail went astray and the official 
 communication was never received by him at all. 
 
 All these conditions made it imperative that some means be 
 found for keeping in direct and immediate touch with all per- 
 sonnel adjutants at frequent intervals. A system of daily let- 
 ters was first used for this purpose. Later the letters were 
 sent weekly. Each of these letters contained an item of infor- 
 mation, a bit of instruction, or a helpful suggestion regarding 
 methods and means. The character of these communications 
 can be seen from this typical example: 
 
 May 14, 1918. 
 
 STATISTICIANS NEEDED, FOR LIMITED SERVICE 
 
 "1. There are at present in the United States some 20,000 sol- 
 diers not physically qualified for service overseas. Among this 
 number there are a certain proportion of those who are highly 
 qualified to be of special service to the Army in some capacity or 
 other. Personnel Officers have a great opportunity to seek these 
 men out and get them into those positions where they can be of 
 most use. 
 
 "2. Many Personnel Officers have already been active in this di- 
 rection. This office would appreciate information with reference to 
 striking instances where men of unusual talent who were about to 
 be discharged from the Army on account of some physical defects 
 have nevertheless been saved and used in important army work in 
 which their physical defect is really no handicap. 
 
 "3. In this connection you will be interested to know of one 
 requisition for skilled men which Personnel Officers will soon be 
 called upon to fill. The General Staff is in need of high-grade 
 statisticians and accountants men who are preferably engineering 
 graduates or university graduates with some statistical or engineer- 
 ing experience. These must be men of high intelligence and superior 
 general ability. They are needed for important service in the office
 
 "PERSONNEL" 447 
 
 of the statistical division of the General Staff here in Washington. 
 Only men who are physically disqualified for full military duty will 
 be accepted for these appointments. 
 
 COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION OF 
 PERSONNEL ix THE ARMY." 
 
 These weekly letters helped materially to solve the problem 
 of keeping in touch with the field but they had serious limita- 
 tions. In the first place, the amount of space available in each 
 communication was so small that only a single point could 
 usually be dealt with and this very briefly, when oftentimes 
 the subject demanded extensive presentation. In the second 
 place, it was not found feasible to distribute these letters to 
 all those who needed the instruction. In the third place, the 
 letters had limitations as to typography and possibilities of 
 display which made it impossible to secure a degree of em- 
 phasis that indicated the relative importance of various points 
 or to illustrate them properly. 
 
 "PERSONNEL" 
 
 By midsummer several members and associates of the Com- 
 mittee who had been giving thought to this problem had come 
 to the conclusion that the only satisfactory solution was the 
 establishment of a weekly magazine or house organ. Such a 
 publication, it was felt, would provide a means for keeping all 
 the personnel adjutants and their staffs of enlisted men con- 
 stantly and completely informed regarding all the approved 
 up-to-date methods. At the same time it was felt that this 
 publication would give the men an added interest in personnel 
 work and would tend to show them the relation which their 
 own part in it bore to the general scheme. This larger view- 
 point could not help but relieve somewhat the monotony which 
 their own routine tasks might have, in common with other 
 clerical work. All this, of course, would develop esprit de 
 corps and a higher degree of efficiency. 
 
 The First Issue. The plan was approved by The Adjutant 
 General of the Army and on August 21, 1918, the first issue
 
 448 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 of "Personnel" was published. Practically the whole of it was 
 taken up by a speech which the Secretary of War had de- 
 livered at the Eighth School for Personnel Adjutants at Camp 
 Meigs, Washington, D. C. In this speech the Secretary had 
 stated emphatically his approval of personnel work in the 
 Army and had given so illuminating a view of its possibilities 
 that it was felt especially fitting to bring it to the attention of 
 every officer and soldier engaged in personnel work in this 
 country. 1 
 
 Major General P. C. Harris, The Adjutant General of the 
 Army, contributed a signed editorial to this issue in which he 
 presented the purposes of "Personnel" as follows : 
 
 "The new journal, PEHSONNEL, is to continue and expand the re- 
 lationship which the Adjutant General's Office has sustained with 
 those officers of the Army who are striving to place each soldier 
 where he is most needed. 
 
 "On April 27th I addressed the students of the School for Per- 
 sonnel Adjutsfcts. I have taken pains to visit the personnel offices 
 in the camps, and have attempted to keep in close cooperation with 
 the personnel adjutants in the field. To make this possible this 
 office has acted primarily through the Committee on Classification 
 of Personnel. Thus schools, conferences, visits of supervisors, the 
 services of experts, trade specifications, occupational needs of a 
 combat division, aids to interviewers, qualification cards, the rating 
 scale and numerous other aids have been provided. It is desirable 
 that this office should reach the personnel adjutants oftener than 
 is possible by schools, conferences and visits of supervisors. It is 
 also desirable that the aids should be provided more frequently 
 than is possible in such formal publications as those mentioned 
 above. In many instances, supplementary instruction is necessary. 
 To meet those varied needs, 65 "Daily Letters" have been sent 
 to the Personnel Adjutants in the Divisional Camps. This office now 
 desires to reach a larger group of Personnel Adjutants and to reach 
 them more adequately than has been possible by the daily letter. 
 This new journal is intended to supplant the daily letters and to 
 supplement such other agencies as Schools, Conferences, Visits of 
 Supervisors and all other publications issued by this office. PER- 
 SONNEL will contain information on such topics as General Classifi- 
 cation Work, Trade Testing, Personnel Needs of the Army, Assign- 
 
 1 Secretary of War Baker's speech is reprinted in the appendix of this volume.
 
 'PERSONNEL" 449 
 
 ing Men, Transfers, Rating of Officers, Officers' Qualification Cards, 
 and important contributions to the field of Personnel such as the 
 address of the Secretary of War, contained in the present issue. 
 Personnel Adjutants are authorized and encouraged to write directly 
 to PERSONNEL, Room 528, State, War and Navy Building, ask- 
 ing assistance in any difficulties" in the classification work of the 
 office of the Personnel Adjutant." 
 
 As the members of the Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel were all seriously over-burdened with other duties it 
 was found expedient to add to the organization Mr. G. B. 
 Hotchkiss, an experienced editor, to take charge of the new 
 publication and of other work in connection with the publica- 
 tions of the committee. "Personnel/' however, was not a one- 
 man proposition. Every member of the committee contributed 
 articles from time to time, so that it was in a largest sense a 
 Committee organ. 
 
 Later Development of "Personnel" The slogan of "Per- 
 sonnel" was "The Right Man in the Right Place." Practically 
 every issue had a leading article which showed how the doc- 
 trine of "The Right Man in the Right Place" had been applied 
 in some phase of army activities. The following is a list of 
 the most important leading articles: 
 
 Number 1 "The Secretary of War Speaks on Personnel 
 
 Work in the Army." 
 
 Number 2 "The Army System of Classification" (a sum- 
 mary of the organization of the Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel). 
 Number 3 "The Development Battalions." 
 Number 4 "Personnel Work Overseas" (an explanation 
 of the way the Personnel System works out 
 in the A. E. F.) 
 Number 5 "Personnel Work in Students' Army Training 
 
 Corps." 
 
 Number 6 "A Study of Officers' Ratings." 
 Number 7 "The Making of a Trade Test." 
 Number 8 "Conservation of Man-Power in the British 
 
 Army." 
 
 Number 9 "The Procurement of Officers for the Army." 
 Number 10 "The Recruiting and Classifying of Commis- 
 sioned Officers."
 
 450 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Number 11 "The New Soldier's Qualification Card." 
 Number 12 "The Importance of Intelligence Ratings in 
 the Assignment of Recruits." 
 
 In addition to these leading articles each issue contained an 
 editorial, usually of inspirational character, and a large num- 
 ber of items of news and suggestions regarding methods of 
 proved effectiveness which might be applied in the various 
 camps. 
 
 Editorial Policy and Style. Articles were invariably un- 
 signed. The Committee as a whole took the responsibility for 
 their accuracy. Throughout the publication, in fact, a very 
 strict policy of anonymity was observed, with the exception of 
 quotations, which were, of course, credited to their authors. At 
 first the tone of "Personnel" was serious and dignified. As it 
 progressed, however, a gradual tendency was observable to 
 introduce into it a lighter tone, and to give more items regard- 
 ing methods used in individual camps. 
 
 Had the publication continued longer it would presumably 
 have become more and more a clearing house of suggestions 
 from the camps, as well as official instruction and advice to the 
 camps. The publication, however, was shortlived. After the 
 twelfth issue, and just about the time the armistice was signed, 
 it was ordered discontinued. The very advantages it possessed 
 of direct and immediate communication with officers and men 
 in the Personnel offices, became disadvantages when the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel was absorbed into the 
 military organization as a Section of the General Staff. Its 
 usefulness, moreover, was greatly diminished when the draft 
 increments ceased to pour into the camps, and the work of 
 mobilizing the United States Army was ended. 
 
 Results of "Personnel." Even during its short life, "Per- 
 sonnel" had established itself as a valuable part of the work of 
 the personnel organization. It succeeded in its essential pur- 
 pose of giving to personnel adjutants and their staffs the infor- 
 mation and assistance they needed in carrying on their work 
 efficiently. It was also notably effective in developing morale
 
 "PERSONNEL" 451 
 
 and esprit de corps within the various camp personnel organ- 
 izations, as well as in the home office. Enlisted men, as well 
 as officers, read it eagerly and kept it on file with other CCP 
 forms for permanent reference and use. 
 
 While it was primarily an internal house organ, copies were 
 sent to commanding officers of camps and chiefs of staff corps 
 and departments and others in the military establishment who 
 were especially interested in personnel work. Thus it served 
 as a means of revealing the functions and methods of personnel 
 work and the importance of this work in the general scheme of 
 operations for winning the war. In a few camps the interest 
 was so great that the camp commander and the camp adjutant 
 asked that the publication be distributed among the officers 
 throughout the camp. 
 
 Some copies came into the hands of individuals outside the 
 military organization and requests for it multiplied rapidly. 
 Employment managers especially asked to be put upon the 
 mailing list. The employment management section of the War 
 Industries Board, among others, requested a large number of 
 copies to be distributed among those in training for employ- 
 ment managers. It was rapidly on the way to becoming recog- 
 nized as the authoritative publication in the field of personnel 
 work. 
 
 The original edition of the first issue of "Personnel" was 
 7,000 copies. This number proved far too small to satisfy the 
 demands of camps and other military organizations. In sub- 
 sequent issues the edition was increased to 9,000 and later to 
 10,000. A reprint of Volume I, No. 1, became necessary to 
 supply the demands for copies of Secretary Baker's speech. 
 Some of the later issues had, also, to be reprinted, notably 
 Number 6, containing a Study of Officers' Ratings, which was 
 demanded for distribution to all officers having to make ratings 
 in the camps in October, 1918. Long after the discontinuance 
 of "Personnel" requests continued to come in from officers and 
 civilians for back issues, many of which could not be furnished 
 because the stock had become completely exhausted.
 
 452 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The cost of 10,000 copies of "Personnel" was approximately 
 $250.00, inclusive of overhead and salary charges. This meant 
 about 2^/2 cents a copy. No advertising, of course, was car- 
 ried and no subscription price was charged. This apparently 
 high cost, however, should be considered in relation to the cost 
 of carrying on personnel work in the camps. Considering the 
 pay of the enlisted private alone as $30.00 a month, exclusive 
 of maintenance, the cost of one copy of "Personnel" for a 
 month was only about one-third of 1 per cent, of this amount. 
 When speed in mobilization and efficiency of placement were so 
 essential, the relative cost of the instruction and stimulation 
 which "Personnel" gave toward the accomplishment of these 
 ends was small indeed. 
 
 How well "Personnel" accomplished its purpose may be 
 seen from the following brief extracts taken from a large num- 
 ber of letters from camp personnel adjutants: 
 
 Camp Meade, Maryland: 
 
 "PERSONNEL acquaints all persons who are not 
 familiar with the work with the important part that it plays 
 in the War. It shows them it is one of the most essential 
 things toward the desired end winning the War. The en- 
 listed men in the Personnel Department occupy the position 
 of clerks, and day in and day out perform the same duties, 
 one man writing the qualification card, another the service 
 record, another an insurance blank, etc. These minor 
 duties by themselves appear very insignificant and of no 
 great value or importance, and if their value and importance 
 is not brought to the attention of the men at various times, 
 they soon become careless. PERSONNEL continually 
 reminds the men of the value and importance of each detail 
 of their part in the work, stimulates their interest and 
 creates a greater desire on their part to be accurate 
 in their work. Further, it acquaints them with the work 
 done in other sections, and comes down to the basic roots 
 of how it is started and gives them a better understanding 
 of what the work of each Section means to the next. In 
 this respect it is of especial value to the Assignment 
 Section."
 
 "PERSONNEL" 453 
 
 Camp Lewis, Washington: 
 
 "First, it inspires enthusiasm in both Commissioned and 
 Enlisted personnel. The unofficial, friendly tone of the 
 paper gets close to all concerned and induces a spirit of 
 cooperation in all. 
 
 "Secondly, it is a very convenient way of educating per- 
 sonnel workers and keeps them advised of changes in meth- 
 ods, etc. 
 
 "Thirdly, its distribution through Headquarters and the 
 command in general helps to educate the entire command 
 in the theory of personnel work." 
 
 Camp Devens, Massachusetts: 
 
 "PERSONNEL takes up the various phases of personnel 
 work in a way that is instructive without being tedious. 
 It keeps the men in closer touch with personnel work, and 
 shows to them the importance of the work that they are 
 engaged in. In short it contains just the information they 
 want to know, and in the way they want it told, and I can 
 say that among my men, it has created a greater interest 
 in following up the personnel work." 
 
 Camp Dix, New Jersey: 
 
 "When PERSONNEL is received in this office, such 
 parts as directly affect any particular department are 
 marked for special attention, as for instance in Personnel 
 No. 9, article named "Physical Classes for Use of Develop- 
 ment Battalions" was brought to the attention of the Assign- 
 ment Section in order to enable them, when filling requisi- 
 tions, to take careful note of a man's physical status. In 
 Personnel No. 11, the articles "Changes in Tabbing" and 
 "The Value of Intelligence Ratings" were marked for the 
 attention of the Rating, Tabbing and Assignment Sections 
 respectively, particular stress being placed on the latter in 
 order that proper observation of the intelligence rating 
 would insure proper allocation of the soldier." 
 
 From these and similar expressions it is evident that PER- 
 SONNEL was of great help in the supervision of personnel 
 work in the field through its part in educating the forces 
 and in developing cooperation among all those interested in 
 putting "The Right Man in the Right Place."
 
 CHAPTER 37 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 
 
 Despite varied checks many officers and enlisted men were 
 reaching France in the first few months of the war without 
 all of their papers. This was particularly true in the case of 
 the qualification card, one reason for this being that this rec- 
 ord was kept at camp or division headquarters and not in the 
 company file. In consequence, when the man moved, his card 
 might not be pulled from the file and transferred to the officer 
 in charge. 
 
 On March 15, 1918, General Pershing cabled to The Adju- 
 tant General as follows: . . . "Officers and soldiers in 
 organizations and casuals arriving in France without voca- 
 tional classification cards. In order to maintain classification 
 system here in base and replacement divisions request that 
 all casuals and organizations bring these cards with them." 
 
 The Committee immediately took active steps to ensure that 
 all officers and enlisted men should be accompanied by their 
 qualification cards. As a result personnel adjutants were 
 assigned to Ports of Embarkation to see to it that all records 
 were present, including the qualification cards. Captain 
 (later Major) J. Perry Moore at Hoboken and Captain Merle 
 Crowell at Newport News were placed in charge. Some time 
 afterwards Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Royal Mattice 
 was placed in general charge and acted as inspector for the 
 Committee, making sure that personnel adjutants in the camps 
 were acquainted with the work required at Ports of Embarka- 
 tion and carried these instructions out. 
 
 The Adjutant General of the Army issued instructions, in 
 letter of May 11, 1918, that "Every officer must be covered by 
 an Officer's Qualification Card and for each enlisted man 
 
 454
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 455 
 
 leaving for foreign Service, the following records must be 
 fully and accurately prepared (Par. No. 6): (1) Service Rec- 
 ord, (2) Individual Equipment Record, (3) Pay Card, (4) 
 Information for Allotment of Pay and Application for Family 
 Allowance, (5) Application for Insurance, (6) Personnel 
 Qualification Card, (7) 3 x 5 Locator Cards, and (8) 5 x 8 
 Record Card (A.G.O., S.D. A. E. F., Form No. 6) (white) ; 
 also the following if any existed: (9) Application for Class 
 E Allotment, Q.M.C. Form No. 38, (10) Score Card, (11) 
 Court Martial Record, and (12) Delinquency Record." 
 
 The Commanding Generals at Headquarters, both Ports of 
 Embarkation, issued orders that no officer or enlisted man 
 would be allowed to embark without his qualification card. 
 This was the inception of the check system employed at Ports 
 of Embarkation, to see that every officer and enlisted man was 
 covered with a complete set of records. 
 
 THE MAGNITUDE OF A PORT OF EMBARKATION 
 
 In order to give a mental picture of the magnitude of a 
 Port of Embarkation, it might be well to state that while 
 Hoboken, Port of Embarkation Headquarters, was frequently 
 referred to as "Port of Embarkation" and was, in fact, 
 embarkations took place at Halifax, Nova Scotia; Que- 
 bec and Montreal, Canada; Boston, New York, Hoboken, 
 Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and were fed by pre-embarka- 
 tion camps at Camp Merritt, Tenafly, N. J., Camp Mills and 
 Camp Upton, Long Island, N. Y., Camp Dix, N. J., Camp 
 Meade, Md., Camp Devens, Mass., Camp Crane, Pa., and 
 Aviation Camp at Mineola, Long Island, N. Y. Briefly, 
 embarkation took place from Halifax to Charleston and 
 included every port between, in order to facilitate the speedy 
 movement of troops overseas. 
 
 Under the command of the Commanding General, Port of 
 Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J., the total personnel was 29,979. 
 Of this number, 2,250 were commissioned officers; 20,616
 
 456 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 enlisted personnel; 487, field clerks; and 6,626, civilian clerks. 
 This included Camp Mills, Camp Merritt and all sub posts 
 under the jurisdiction of these Headquarters. 
 
 Newport News comprised the Headquarters of the Port 
 of Embarkation of Newport News, Camp Stuart, Camp Hill, 
 Camp Morrison, and Camp Lee, Va., 1,685 commissioned 
 officers, 16,670 enlisted men, 91 field clerks, and 900 civilian 
 clerks, making a total of 19,346, including all operating 
 forces under the authority of the Port of Embarkation, New- 
 port News, Va. 
 
 The keynote of personnel work at a port of embarkation 
 was struck by the slogan: "No records shall go aboard ship 
 without the man whom they concern . . . No man shall go 
 aboard ship without a complete set of records." 
 
 The fulfillment of this slogan was an absolute necessity. 
 The port of embarkation was the last point of contact in this 
 country for troops embarking for active service overseas. All 
 paper-work tangles involving enlisted personnel were sup- 
 posed to be straightened out before troops left for the port. 
 They had to be straightened out before troops embarked. 
 
 Back of all other considerations lay the primary fact that 
 anything short of this worked a great injustice to the soldier 
 himself. Deficient or faulty records might mean such compli- 
 cations as postponement of pay, suspended transmittal of 
 allotments and allowances to dependents, improper placement 
 of individuals: all of which tended to lessen the contentment 
 and injure the morale of the men. Failure to guard against 
 such deficiency was failure to cooperate fully with our fight- 
 ing forces overseas. 
 
 Incomplete records also very frequently entailed long range 
 correspondence between the American Expeditionary Forces 
 and camps in this country. Most certainly they added bur-
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 457 
 
 dens to hard worked officers and clerks in the fighting units 
 and the Services of Supply. 
 
 The Statistical Department. The first step was to con- 
 solidate the Insurance and Allotment Department, the Card 
 Index of Personnel Department, and the Statistical Depart- 
 ment. The latter's function was the preparation of passenger 
 lists showing the name, Army serial number, rank, grade, 
 name of nearest relative, relationship, and the address of the 
 nearest relative. 
 
 The Insurance Department was primarily intended to take 
 care of the officers and men at the ports, but frequently troops 
 passing through would ask to be insured or to have their in- 
 surance increased when, for various reasons, they refused to 
 take insurance when offered it while in training camps. Get- 
 ting closer to the submarine zone of activities quickened the 
 soldier's appreciation of the protection offered by his Govern- 
 ment. All the persuasion previously exerted by those in the 
 Insurance Department was of no avail, but if good for noth- 
 ing else, the submarine was the best "self-starting insurance 
 solicitor" yet discovered. About $175,000,000 additional in- 
 surance was written at Hoboken and $33,000,000 at New- 
 port News. 
 
 The Card Index of Personnel Department. The Card 
 Index of Personnel, alphabetically arranged, showed the name 
 of each officer and enlisted man, the name of the ship on 
 which he sailed, the date of sailing, and the port from which 
 he sailed, so that information could be quickly given to those 
 interested if they inquired if a certain officer or man had gone 
 abroad. If the name of the man's nearest relative, or any 
 other information pertaining to him, was desired, the pas- 
 senger list of the steamship appearing on the man's card 
 would be consulted and all the data desired would be readily 
 obtainable. 
 
 Previous to the installation of the Card Index of Personnel, 
 the names on the passenger list were alphabetically arranged 
 and the officers and men were loaded according to this
 
 458 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 arrangement on the passenger list. This plan was very incon- 
 venient. For instance, Adams would be a big, tall man and 
 would be in the first squad, Adamson would be a man of 
 medium height and would be in the centre squad, while 
 Adston might be a very short man and in the last squad of 
 a company of two hundred and fifty. Therefore, when their 
 names were called, the tall man from the first squad would 
 troop across the gang-plank and be checked, Adamson would 
 come from the middle squad of a company of two hundred 
 and fifty, with heavy field equipment and would crowd and 
 struggle to get past his companions and inadvertently lose 
 some part of his equipment, which necessitated time to recover 
 and adjust; Adston would come from the last squad in the 
 company and also scramble past his comrades to reach the 
 checker's desk, with his equipment disordered in the same 
 way. Loading in this manner required forty-five minutes for 
 a company of two hundred and fifty men. 
 
 It was clearly evident that some other method must be 
 adopted that would allow loading to proceed with less fric- 
 tion and greater speed. Therefore, the method of listing men 
 on the passenger list according to alphabetical arrangement 
 was discontinued and each company and detachment was listed 
 on the passenger lists according to the usual formation of the 
 company, i. e., by squads. This reduced the loading per com- 
 pany of two hundred and fifty from forty-five minutes to an 
 average of eight and one-third minutes per company. This 
 plan worked so well that instead of loading over but one 
 gang-plank, four gang-planks were employed and a battalion 
 was loaded simultaneously, so that in eight and one-third 
 minutes one thousand men were loaded, whereas formerly but 
 two hundred and fifty were loaded in the same time. Some of 
 the larger boats were loaded and the "turn around" accomp- 
 lished so quickly that the enemy referred to our troop trans- 
 ports as the "United States ferry boats." 
 
 Inspection of Paper Work at Camps Prior to Arrival at 
 Ports. Another vexatious problem presented itself how to
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 459 
 
 cut down delays and eliminate everything that tended to 
 delay accurate counting, checking and supervising at pre- 
 embarkation camps. Unfortunately, only a few officers had 
 had previous military experience, and most of them had to be 
 guided and directed regarding the handling of men and 
 records. This of necessity was slow work, as it required indi- 
 vidual attention and in order to speed up the work a more 
 comprehensive scheme had to be devised. Therefore, it was 
 recommended to The Adjutant General of the Army that a 
 qualified officer be given the "Priority Schedule" (a list 
 showing in sequence the divisions about to move overseas), 
 and that a representative of The Adjutant General's Office 
 be detailed to visit such divisions and request the Command- 
 ing General to assemble all Commanding Officers, Personnel 
 Adjutants, First Sergeants, and Company Clerks approxi- 
 mately 1,600 to 1,700 to a division and outline to them 
 minutely and carefully the records required, the method of 
 tlieir preparation, and the arrangement and manner of carry- 
 ing them to the pre-embarkation camp or Port of Embarka- 
 tion, so that all records pertaining to each and every officer 
 and enlisted man would be complete and instantly available at 
 all times, if last-minute changes occurred on account of sick- 
 ness, disease or death. 
 
 This recommendation was adopted and put into effect, and 
 the result was very beneficial. Each company and detach- 
 ment commander was held responsible for the records of his 
 organization <md all were told that a check would be made at 
 the pre-embarkation camp, as well as at the gang-plank; that 
 names must appear on the passenger list arranged according 
 to company formation, i. e., by squads ; that all records per- 
 taining to each and every enlisted man must be clipped to- 
 gether and arranged in sequence in a box, as per the names 
 on the passenger list. 
 
 Instructions Issued to Organization Commanders at Ports. 
 The following is the instruction sheet and illustration issued
 
 460 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 to organization commanders in the camps and again immedi- 
 ately upon their arrival at pre-embarkation camps: 
 
 " 1. Upon arrival at pre-embarkation camp, an officer from each 
 company or detachment will report, accompanied by company clerk, 
 at Camp Personnel Office, Headquarters, with Passenger Lists and 
 Locator 8x5-inch Cards, Service Records, Pay Records, Individual 
 Equipment Records, Information for Allotment of Pay and Appli- 
 cation for Family Allowance, Application for Insurance, Personnel 
 White Tabbed Qualification Cards, and Record 5 x 8-inch Cards 
 (A. G. O., S. D., A. E. F., Form No. 6 White) ; also the following, 
 if any exists: Score Card, Delinquency Record, Court-martial Rec- 
 ord, and application for Class E Allotment (Q. M. C., Form No. 38), 
 all arranged in accordance with the Passenger List for his com- 
 pany or detachment, to be checked by the Personnel Office. In 
 the event that a company or detachment commander does not have 
 a white Qualification Card for each enlisted man, or two Locator 
 3 x 5-inch Cards and Record 5 x 8-inch Card (A. G. O., S. D., A. 
 E. F., Form No. 6) for each officer, enlisted man, nurse and civilian 
 within his company or detachment, he will immediately notify by 
 telephone the Camp Personnel Adjutant before reporting to that 
 office, when arrangements will be made for the classification of those 
 in the company or unit unclassified. 
 
 "2. The complete set of records mentioned in paragraph 1, for 
 each man, will be fastened together without folding the cards. 
 
 THE RECORDS FOR THE MEN IN EACH COMPANY OR DETACHMENT WILL 
 BE ARRANGED IN EXACT AGREEMENT WITH THE PASSENGER LlSTS BEFORE 
 REPORTING AT THE CAMP PERSONNEL OFFICE. 
 
 "3. PASSENGER LISTS WILL BE ARRANGED IN FIVE PACKETS, with the 
 originals forming one packet. Each of these packets will consist of 
 a complete list of the officers and enlisted men in the company or 
 detachment, and will be arranged from top to bottom as follows: 
 1. Officers (first class) ; 2. Enlisted men above grade 17 (second 
 class); 3. Enlisted men below grade 16 (third class). ALL CASUAL 
 DETACHMENTS WILL HAVE Six PACKETS OF PASSENGER LISTS. 
 
 "4. Passenger lists will be approved and stamped by the Camp 
 Personnel Office when each list is checked against the records and 
 found to be correct. The Personnel stamp in the upper left-hand 
 margin of the second packet of Passenger Lists only, signifies that 
 corrections must be made and the lists returned to the Camp Person- 
 nel Office for re-inspection. The Personnel Adjutant's stamp in the 
 upper left-hand margin of the second packet of Passenger Lists
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 
 
 461 
 
 Fio. 19 
 Illustration Showing How Records Should Be Assembled. 
 
 The drawing is faulty as It makes the Individual Equipment Record 
 appear to be placed BEHIND the Qualification Card, whereas It should be 
 placed in front of the Pay Card.
 
 462 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 and also in the upper right-hand margin of the same packet signifies 
 that the lists and records are approved by the Personnel Office. 
 
 "5. A Personnel Adjutant at the Port of Embarkation will inspect 
 Passenger Lists, and records will be kept "ever ready", in order that 
 they may be withdrawn when names are stricken from Passenger 
 Lists, or when additions are made, so that records can be inserted, 
 covering men lost or added between pre-embarkation camp and Port 
 of Embarkation. No man will board the vessel without a complete 
 set of records, nor will records be received aboard the vessel without 
 the man. In case of nurses and civilians with a unit, two Locator 
 3 x 5-inch Cards and a Record 5 x 8-inch Card (A.G.O., S.D., A.E.F., 
 Form No. 6 White) is all that is required." 
 
 Procedure at the Gang-Plank. When a campany arrived at 
 the gang-plank, the cheeking officer would call, "Smith" and 
 the man would answer, "John W.," thereby identifying him- 
 self with the checker. The Commanding Officer would stand 
 at the side of the checker and after each man identified him- 
 self and was identified by the Commanding Officer, this officer 
 would signify it by saying, "Check" and would have the man 
 step over the gang-plank. In this way, three checks were 
 made on every man, which prevented any German sympathizer 
 from getting on board -with a bomb or other dangerous 
 explosive to wreck the ship. With such a system devised, it 
 was impossible for any man to get on board who was not 
 properly vouched for. 
 
 Inspection Report Regarding Records, Figure 20 is 
 a copy of the report used by all camps and sub-ports of the 
 Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, N. J. This report was first 
 prepared by the personnel adjutant inspecting the records of 
 the unit concerned and completed after the organization had 
 full instructions relative to pre-embarkation matters and had 
 sufficient time to clear up any deficiencies or irregularities. 
 When verified, and after such reports had gone through the 
 usual routine, serving all purposes intended both to the Or- 
 ganization Commanders and Headquarters, Port of Embarka- 
 tion, they were sent to the War Department and forwarded 
 by the Central Personnel Office to the Camp Commander, by 
 indorsement, for corrective and record purposes.
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 
 
 463 
 
 PORT OF EMBARKATION, HOBOKEN, N. J. 
 HEADQUARTERS CAMP 
 
 Field and Office Inspection Report of Records and Passen- 
 ger Lists. 
 
 191 
 
 Organization Number of Officers Numbers of Enlisted 
 
 Former Station Present Men Present 
 
 RECORD REPORT 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Q 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *- 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 co 
 
 h 
 
 CO 
 
 eo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 8 
 
 B CO 
 
 cS 'U 
 
 g q 
 
 s ^ 
 
 i ( 
 
 OH . 
 
 a ^ 
 
 CH , 
 
 3 
 
 
 II 
 
 36 
 
 < 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 ~ 
 
 c 
 H 
 
 Missing 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Incomplete .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Completed Here 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Estimated or 
 Percent of Qualification Cards properly tabbed. . . 
 
 Records 
 Prescribed Box 
 
 ) 
 
 | were not 5 
 
 5 was not { 
 
 General condition of records 
 Remarks . 
 
 arranged according to instructions. 
 used to carry records. 
 
 Checked bv. . 
 
 FIG. 20 
 Inspection Report
 
 464 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 PASSENGER LIST REPORT 
 
 Errors 
 
 8 S 
 
 1 o 
 
 ^ V 
 
 < CO 
 
 
 c8 
 
 .2 
 
 c 
 
 08 
 
 kb 
 
 'O 
 T3 
 
 < t 
 
 properly accom- 
 
 , , f were 7 plished and arranged 
 
 Twelve copies of Passenger Lists < > F 
 
 ( were not j according to instruc- 
 tions. 
 
 f were not ) legible. Number written by this office 
 
 All copies ' J 
 
 I were j 
 
 General condition of Passenger Lists 
 
 Remarks 
 
 Checked by 
 
 (The above Report will be baaed on initial inspection and not upon the 
 final, except where necessary to state work done by your office) 
 
 GENERAL REPORT 
 
 Records and Passenger Lists were inspected and approved by 
 
 the of Camp , 
 
 , as indicated by stamp on Passenger List. 
 
 ( was ) 
 
 )was notC thoroughly informed 
 
 Name of Organization Personnel * 
 
 Adjutant 
 
 regarding the preparation, arrangements, etc., of Records and Pas- 
 senger Lists for organizations moving overseas and attributed his 
 lack of information to 
 
 LOCAL OFFICE INFORMATION 
 
 Date of arrival at Embarkation Camp Remarks 
 
 Location of Organization in Camp 
 
 Instructions received 
 
 Final inspection set for 
 
 Records first received 
 
 Returned for correction 
 
 Final inspection and approval 
 
 Inspection approved: 
 
 Embarkation Personnel Adjutant Camp Personnel Adjutant 
 
 Further remarks to be noted on reverse side 
 
 FIG. 20a. 
 Inspection Report (Continued)
 
 WORK AT THE PORTS 465 
 
 Handling of Casuals. One very perplexing problem was 
 the disposition of Casuals (officers, nurses or enlisted men 
 not a component part of a designated organization). Fre- 
 quently, officers, nurses or enlisted men would become ill at a 
 Port of Embarkation and could not proceed. They would im- 
 mediately lose identity with their previous organization and 
 would be treated as "Casuals", or "Unattached", and when 
 their health was recovered and they were in fit condition to 
 travel, they would be sent abroad as Casuals. 
 
 Every Casual had to have an individual set of records, a 
 passport and two copies of his or her photograph, as a means 
 of identification in the A. E. F. An organization was per- 
 fected for this particular service, and each individual, after 
 presenting the travel order issued by the War Department, 
 was compelled to produce his Qualification Card or immedi- 
 ately make one out. In this way, a check at all Ports of 
 Embarkation on all personnel, whether in organizations or 
 not, was secured.
 
 SECTION X. 
 SPECIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 In this section are presented four special prob- 
 lems that in many senses may be thought of as out- 
 side the field of personnel work with the regular 
 run of enlisted men and officers. There was first 
 of all the selection and training of personnel officers 
 for the personnel organization itself ( Chapter 38. ) 
 Second, there was the handling of civilians, includ- 
 ing those who wished to work for a dollar a year, 
 those who patriotically desired to serve their coun- 
 try, but felt that they had to earn a living at the 
 same time, and those who were seeking their own 
 advancement whether qualified for Government 
 service or not. Chapter 39 relates the organization 
 developed to handle all such and the further activi- 
 ties which grew out of the general situation. Third, 
 there was the problem of utilizing men not fit for 
 full combat service (Chapter 40.) And finally, 
 there was the utilization of educational institutions 
 whereby certain men could be trained as tradesmen 
 for Army uses and certain others as officers ( Chap- 
 ter 41.)
 
 CHAPTER 38 
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR PERSONNEL 
 OFFICERS 
 
 NEED FOR TRAINING PERSONNEL OFFICERS 
 
 Personnel officers for the first divisions to be formed in this 
 country were appointed by the various Commanding Officers. 
 On the whole, these selections were very good, but some of 
 the officers were not fitted for the work and had to be re- 
 placed and a large number were not of sufficient calibre to 
 administer a personnel office after the consolidation of insur- 
 ance, statistical and personnel work. 
 
 As personnel work grew more and more complex, it became 
 more and more evident that the personnel officer of a divi- 
 sion or camp and particularly the latter, must be an excep- 
 tional man. And at the same time it became equally clear 
 that such superior men were not going to be obtained . by 
 calling upon Commanding Officers to nominate them. There 
 were two good reasons for this. Comparatively speaking, 
 there are few men in any camp of the qualifications needed 
 to do all that a personnel officer was called upon to handle. 
 And, second, practically all such officers were needed, in the 
 estimation of the Commanding Officer, for other work. 
 
 'Originally, one officer was appointed as personnel officer, 
 two as insurance officers, and three as statistical officers. 
 Three of the six were authorized for personnel work on Jan- 
 uary 11, 1918. The remaining three furnished on paper a 
 supply for additional personnel officers. But actually most 
 of the statistical officers were unfitted for the work having 
 originally been selected for intelligence work and on the 
 basis of ability to speak French and German. About the time 
 
 '469
 
 470 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 that this became thoroughly realized, there developed a large 
 number of new positions to which personnel officers had to be 
 assigned. Almost over night, then, the situation with respect 
 to a supply of new personnel officers changed from one of a 
 supposed considerable supply to a decided shortage. 
 
 On April 17, 1918, authority was granted for the commis- 
 sioning in the Adjutant General's Department of 22 captains, 
 32 first lieutenants and 15 second lieutenants. They were to 
 be assigned as camp personnel officers in 16 depot brigade 
 camps, 11 U. S. recruit depots and 6 department headquar- 
 ters. It was recognized at this time that future authoriza- 
 tions would have to be made in order to carry on personnel 
 work in this country at the various ports of embarkation, 
 in divisions shortly to be organized, and in France. 
 
 It was imperative in consequence at that time to secure 
 officers and to train them in personnel work. 
 
 The following pages record some of the important steps in 
 meeting this situation. As an actual fact, the demand always 
 did keep ahead of the supply so that months later when the 
 A. E. F. requisitioned 25 personnel officers, it was impossi- 
 ble to fill the entire requisition without most seriously crip- 
 pling the work in this country. 
 
 THE FIRST PERSONNEL SCHOOL 
 
 The first Training School for Personnel Officers was held 
 at Camp Meigs, Washington, D. C., April 25th to May 4th 
 79 officers and 17 enlisted men were in attendance. 
 
 The students were very largely a "hand-picked lot" as the 
 names were secured by personnel supervisors visiting differ- 
 ent camps and personally interviewing candidates. In addi- 
 tion to these, a considerable number of excess A. G. D. officers 
 were sent to the school in order to try them out as possible 
 personnel officers. Most of this group had previously been 
 tried out in their own camps and were reported not to have 
 made good.
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 471 
 
 The program was divided about equally between the two 
 subjects of insurance and personnel work the latter includ- 
 ing classification of men, preparation of A. G. O. forms, 
 handling of P. M. G. O. forms and office routine. The school 
 was under the direction of Ur. Strong. Mr. Kendall Weisiger 
 acted as first assistant with respect to personnel work and 
 Captain (later Major) E. H. Weston as assistant with respect 
 to insurance. 
 
 The program was as follows: 
 Thursday, April 25, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. Registration and Assignment to Quarters. 
 10:00 A. M. Introductory Remarks. 
 
 (a) Dr. Edward K. Strong, Jr., Member of Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel. 
 
 (b) Brigadier General P. C. Harris, Adjutant General. 
 10:30 A. M. "Needs of Divisions and Staff Corps for Skilled Men" 
 
 Dr. W. V. Bingham, Member of Committee. 
 
 11:00 A. M. "Personnel Work in Divisions and Camps" Captain 
 B. J. Kempter, Supervisor Personnel Work (for- 
 merly Personnel Officer, Carnp Kearney.) 
 
 11:45 A. M. "General Scope of Personnel Work in the Army" 
 
 Dr. Walter Dill Scott, Director of Committee. 
 1:00 P. M. Introduction to Insurance and Allotments. 
 
 (a) Lieut. Colonel D. Y. Beckham, Adjutant General, 
 Liaison Officer with War Risk Insurance Bureau. 
 
 (b) Mr. L. J. Arnold, Administrator, Civil Relief Act. 
 
 (c) Mr. U. P. Coler, Insurance Section, Bureau of War 
 Risk Insurance. 
 
 (d) Mr. J. R. Grace, Allotments and Allowances, War 
 Risk Insurance. 
 
 (e) Captain C. M. Jones, in charge of Insurance, Camp 
 Lee. 
 
 (f) Captain E. H. Weston, in charge of Insurance, 
 Eastern Department. 
 
 3:00 P. M. (a) "General Organization of Committee on Classifica- 
 tion of Personnel." 
 
 (b) "General Organization of Division Personnel 
 Office." 
 Dr. E. K. Strong, Jr.
 
 472 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Friday, April 26, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. "P.M.G.O. Forms used by Local Boards." Mr. J. D. 
 Donovan, Secretary to Board of Commissioners dis- 
 charging functions of Adjutant General for District of 
 Columbia. 
 
 9:30 A. M. Drill on Use of Qualification Card, Section A. Dr. E. 
 K. Strong, Jr. Section B, Mr. K. Weisiger, Personnel 
 Supervisor, (Employment Manager, Southern Telephone 
 and Telegraph Co., Atlanta.) 
 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued). 
 
 Saturday, April 27, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. Method of handling Forms 1, 1010, 1029 and 1029-A & B 
 9:00 A. M. Use of Qualification Card (continued). 
 10:00 A. M. Psychological Examination. Given by 1st Lt. H. C. 
 
 Bingham, Surgeon General's Office. 
 11:00 A. M. "Use of Psychological Ratings." Major C. S. Yoakum, 
 
 Surgeon General's Office. 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued). 
 
 Monday, April 29, 1918. 
 8:00 A. M. Demonstration of Receiving and Assigning Men at 
 
 Camps. 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued). 
 
 Tuesday, April 30, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. Discussion, Receiving Men into Camp. 
 
 9:00 A. M. Drill on Classifying Qualification Cards. 
 11:00 A. M. Use of Forms CCP-8, CCP-9, CCP-10, CCP-16. 
 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued). 
 
 Wednesday, May 1, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. Drill on Use of Index of Occupations. 
 9.00 A. M. Drill on Classifying Qualification Cards. 
 .10:00 A. M. "New Method of Reporting Changes in Status, Hand- 
 ling Pay Rolls, Etc." Brigadier General P. C. 
 Harris, Adjutant General. 
 
 10:30 A. M. "Personnel Work in England," Major General K. 
 Hutchison. C.B. D.S.O., Director of Organization, 
 British Army. 
 11:30 A. M. "The Committee on Education and Special Training." 
 
 Major Grenville Clark, Adjutant General. 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued).
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 473 
 
 Thursday, May 2, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. "Employment Management" Mr. P. J. Reilly, Super- 
 visor of Camp Work (Employment Manager, Dennison 
 Manufacturing Company, Framingham, Mass.) 
 
 8:30 A. M. "Personnel work in the Quartermaster Corps," Mr. 
 J. J. Coss, in charge of Personnel Section, General 
 Administrative Division, Quartermaster Corps. 
 
 9:30 A. M. Written Examination. 
 11:00 A. M. "Officers' Rating Scale." Dr. Walter Dill Scott. 
 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued). 
 
 Friday, May 3, 1918. 
 
 8:00 A. M. Balancing a Regiment. Discussion. 
 9:00 A. M. "The Need for Trade Tests and General Plans for 
 
 Such Work." Dr. W. V. Bingham. 
 10:00 A. M. Remarks. Major General H. P. McCain, The Adjutant 
 
 General of the Army. 
 
 10:15 A. M. "Installation of Trade Tests in Camp." Mr. L. B. 
 Hopkins, Supervisor of Trade Test Work (Manager's 
 Assistant, General Electric Co., Pittsfield, Mass.) 
 10:30 A. M. "Demonstration of a Trade Test." Mr. L. B. Hopkins 
 and Dr. B. Ruml, in charge of Development of Trade 
 Tests. 
 
 11:15 A. M. Assignment of Men in a Division. Discussion. 
 1:00 P. M. Insurance and Allotments (continued.) 
 
 Saturday, May 4, 1918. 
 8:00 A. M. "Personnel Work, American Expeditionary Forces in 
 
 France," based on instructions received May 3, 1918. 
 
 Mr. P. J. Reilly. 
 
 9:00 A. M. "A.G.O. Forms particularly relating to discharged 
 men." 
 
 Col. E. T. Conley, General Staff. 
 9:30 A. M. General Review of Work. 
 1:00 P. M. Interview by Lt. Col. A. M. Ferguson, Adjutant 
 
 General. 
 
 Eight hours a day were spent in class room work in lectures, 
 discussions and examinations. The evenings were devoted to 
 preparation of assignments. The instructors meant that the 
 course should be strenuous in order that those not enthusi- 
 astically looking for hard work might the better be weeded 
 out.
 
 474 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Each candidate was personally interviewed by one or more 
 of the instructors and rated on the basis of his (l) appear- 
 ance, (2) personality, (3) technique, or knowledge of (a) 
 personnel work and (b) insurance, (4) aggressiveness, and 
 (5) preference. Each candidate was given a psychological 
 intelligence test and his rating was considered, as well as his 
 grades in examinations, in making up his final rating. On 
 the basis of the rating and his own preference he was recom- 
 mended for a particular rank and position. The general 
 policy pursued in making these recommendations was not to 
 promote a man nor to transfer him from the line to the 
 Adjutant General's Department if there was any doubt about 
 him. Recommendations of all candidates were made by Mr. 
 Weisiger and Dr. Strong to Lt. Col. A. M. Ferguson, and 
 in addition Capt. Weston reported his own findings in the 
 case of insurance officers to Col. D. Y. Beckham, in charge 
 of insurance in the Adjutant General's Office. 
 
 The School had a very decided effect upon personnel work all 
 through the Army. Although only 93 men were in attendance, 
 yet the school influenced a very large number because each 
 one went back and spread the "gospel" to many others. And 
 these latter could not fail to take note of the subject when 
 they were told that officers such as these had addressed them: 
 
 Major General H. P. McCain, The Adjutant General. 
 Major General R. Hutchison, Director of Organization, 
 British Army. 
 
 Brigadier General P. C. Harris, Adjutant General. 
 Colonel E. T. Conley, General Staff. 
 Lt. Colonel A. M. Ferguson, Adjutant General. 
 Lt. Colonel D. Y. Beckham, Adjutant General. 
 
 General Hutchison's speech was printed and several copies 
 given to each student so that they might distribute them to 
 best advantage in their camps. This speech accomplished a 
 good deal in educating officers as to what personnel work 
 meant as it very clearly pointed out how England had suf- 
 fered through the mishandling of its personnel and how she
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 475 
 
 was now endeavoring to make the most of what personnel was 
 still available. 
 
 The school also was of great help in building up a good 
 morale among enlisted men in personnel offices as it clearly 
 showed that capable enlisted men could be promoted and 
 commissioned in personnel work. This was most desirable 
 as many an enlisted man had been sent to a line Officers' 
 Training Camp because the personnel officer did not feel he 
 could stand in the way of his promotion although both the man 
 and the officer felt it was a mistake not to keep him in per- 
 sonnel work. 
 
 Because of this change, gradually the policy developed of 
 looking for officer material within the personnel office instead 
 of outside. But clear to the end line officers who were good 
 material were sent to the schools. Civilians of special qualifi- 
 cations due to business experience were also included in the 
 schools. Several of these developed into first class person- 
 nel officers. 
 
 SECOND TO TENTH PERSONNEL SCHOOLS 
 
 When the school was planned there had been no thought 
 of subsequent ones. But the success attained by the first 
 school justified the continuance of the instruction with the 
 result that ten others followed in quick succession. 
 
 Only two schools could be scheduled a month as all per- 
 sonnel officers and enlisted men were needed in the camps 
 from the 25th of the month to about the 5th of the next month 
 to handle the incoming selective-service men. The length of 
 the schools also depended somewhat upon the situation. It was 
 found, however, that about eight or nine days were necessary, 
 else the many topics could not be covered satisfactorily. 
 
 The program at the various schools changed to some extent. 
 It was, of course, impossible to obtain as much talent away 
 from Washington as there and in consequence the three in- 
 structors carried more of the work in the second to the seventh 
 schools than is indicated in the program given above. Local
 
 476 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 officers were used to some extent, and in all but one school the 
 camp commander opened or closed the school. The one excep- 
 tion was due to the sudden orders to entrain received by the 
 division in the camp with its resulting rush and confusion. 
 
 The schools varied somewhat with respect to the emphasis 
 placed upon the various topics. At Camp Bowie, there were 
 in attendance a considerable number of personnel officers 
 from Flying Fields and consequently, their particular prob- 
 lems were discussed at some length. At the Camp Gordon 
 School a new feature was introduced whereby some time was 
 devoted toward the close of the school to conferences of candi- 
 dates interested in a particular department of the Army. 
 Coast Artillery officers here held several meetings in which 
 many of their problems were considered. It was here under 
 the leadership of Captain V. H. Henderson of the Depart- 
 ment of Military Aeronautics that many of the plans for 
 personnel work in that department were developed and very 
 
 Attendance at Second to Tenth Schools. 
 
 A.G.D. Other Enlisted Civilians 
 Officers Officers Men 
 May 12-17, Camp Bowie, 
 
 Fort Worth Texas 8 67 10 
 
 May 20-25, Camp Gordon, 
 
 Atlanta, Ga 6 37 20 
 
 June 7-13, Camp Grant, 
 
 Rockford, 111 13 43 63 
 
 June 17-21, Camp Lewis, 
 
 Tacoma, Wash 4 10 46 
 
 July 5-12, Camp Kearney, 
 
 San Diego, Calif 4 25 35 
 
 July 17-24, Camp Travis, 
 
 San Antonio, Texas .... 8 85 86 
 
 Aug. 7-14. Camp Meigs, 
 
 Washington, D. C 15 52 15 8 
 
 Aug. 20-28, 'Camp Meigs, 
 
 Washington, D. C 4 17 56 4 
 
 Sept. 3-11, Camp Meigs, 
 
 Washington, D. C 2 43 39 14
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 477 
 
 shortly after put into operation. In the same way at the 
 Camp Grant School, Captain C. D. Burnham shaped up 
 plans for personnel work in the Ordnance Department. 
 
 These conferences thus accomplished a considerable amount 
 of good by affording an opportunity to the men actually in the 
 field to make recommendations as to how the work could be 
 improved and also to emphasize the factors most injurious to 
 their work. The instructors forwarded their final reports to 
 officers in Washington who were in a position to act. 
 
 At the Camp Lewis School, a new problem was encountered. 
 How should personnel work be carried on in the Spruce Pro- 
 duction Division? A working plan was mapped out at the 
 school. But nothing very much ever became of it due to the 
 relative weakness of the personnel officers in the division and 
 the lack of interest in the subject by their superior officers. 
 The division probably contained at the signing of the Armis- 
 tice, a greater proportion than in any other unit of improperly 
 placed men from the standpoint of the needs of the entire 
 Army. 
 
 The small delegation of coast artillery officers at the Camp 
 Kearney School prepared a brief statement as to the difficulties 
 of accomplishing good personnel work because of the lack of 
 orders from the Chief of Coast Artillery. The instructors en- 
 larged the report to include data obtained from other schools 
 and forwarded it to Washington. After some delay, changes 
 were made by the Chief of Coast Artillery, which resulted in 
 the development of the best personnel organization in any 
 Staff Corps. 
 
 At the Camp Travis School, there were in attendance about 
 thirty officers and enlisted men from Kelly Field and other 
 nearby fields of the Department of Military Aeronautics. 
 This group went over the personnel situation at Kelly Field 
 very carefully with the result that during the next few 
 months many excellent improvements were made in its organ- 
 ization and operation. 
 
 There were in attendance at this school a large number of
 
 478 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 regimental personnel officers from regiments stationed along 
 the border. When they returned to their units they introduced 
 personnel work in many cases with much success. 
 
 The above notes have been included here as they bring out 
 the point that much of the benefit of the schools lay in the 
 opportunity they afforded men in the field to get together 
 and intelligently plan their work. Their recommendations 
 were also in many cases put into operation after they had 
 been forwarded to Washington. 
 
 THE ELEVENTH SCHOOL AT CAMP SHERMAN 
 
 The school at Camp Sherman marks a decided change in 
 the method of selecting candidates and of conducting the 
 school. Although the first ten schools were conducted primarily 
 to develop new officers in personnel work they had drifted 
 really into merely training the present force and into serv- 
 ing as a clearing house for plans concerning the work. They 
 undoubtedly accomplished a very great deal toward the rapid 
 development of personnel work in the country. But at the 
 close of the tenth school the demand for new and capable 
 officers was still far in excess of the supply, and it was 
 urgently necessary that this shortage be eliminated. The 
 Camp Sherman School was accordingly planned to meet this 
 situation. 
 
 The Need for More Personnel Officers. On September 28, 
 1918, the estimated need for additional officers was as follows: 
 
 To fill 40 new divisions with 2 officers each 80 
 
 To replace losses in Personnel Officers of all kinds 
 
 in America 70 
 
 Probable demand from overseas 30 
 
 Personnel Officers for Trade Test work 70 
 
 Miscellaneous to be trained on request from various 
 
 War Department Offices 50 
 
 Total next 9 months 800 
 
 To deliver 300 graduates it will be necessary to 
 school at least three hundred fifty.
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 479 
 
 The Source of Supply was outlined in this way: 
 
 1. Exceptional enlisted men now engaged in personnel 
 work and definitely recommended and guaranteed by their 
 respective personnel officers. (The main source.) 
 
 2. Civilians recruited from .civil life by Procurement 
 Branch of General Staff. 
 
 3. Unusually able drafted men just entering limited serv- 
 ice camps, selected and recommended by personnel officers. 
 
 4. S. A. T. C. men, either students or faculty members, 
 carefully selected and assigned to the personnel school in 
 the same way as candidate officers will be selected for other 
 officer schools. 
 
 6. Personnel officers now acting for the S. A. T. C. that 
 deserve a larger outlet for their abilities. 
 
 6. Those officer candidates now in O. T. C.'s, formerly in 
 personnel work and definitely recommended by their former 
 personnel officers. 
 
 Selection of Candidates. Although the best results had been 
 obtained in selecting candidates through personal conferences 
 with them before ordering them to a school as was the case 
 with the first Camp Meigs School, this method largely fell 
 into disuse due to the rush of other matters and the shortage 
 of supervisors who could give their time to it. In conse- 
 quence, most candidates were selected on the basis of such an 
 order as this: 
 
 "Send your division personnel officer and one of his 
 assistants and in addition two officers or enlisted men 
 deemed fitted for personnel work. The men selected for 
 this instruction should be of first-class material as if they 
 make good they will eventually be promoted to the grades 
 of captain and possible major." 
 
 But such orders did not bring to the school very many first- 
 class men outside of those already in personnel work, and 
 too often weak men not fitted for anything but clerical work 
 were sent. Such were all right, possibly, as non-commissioned 
 officers, but they could not qualify as officers who had to 
 administer as much work as was centralized in a personnel 
 office.
 
 480 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 In consequence, it was decided that all candidates for the 
 Camp Sherman School should be certified as good material 
 by the camp personnel officer. There follows the instruc- 
 tions sent out on this subject: 
 
 September 26, 1918. 
 
 1. Early last spring when divisions began moving overseas it be- 
 came immediately necessary to provide a large number of trained 
 personnel officers to handle the camps and to fit up new divisions, 
 staff corps, and the like. 
 
 2. To this end a number of hand picked men were sent to Camp 
 Meigs for instruction in the first school for Personnel Officers, from 
 which was graduated a considerable number of personnel officers 
 who have since shown marked success in their work. 
 
 3. Following upon this a series of schools was held throughout the 
 country to which a number of officers and men were sent by various 
 camp and division commanders with the net result that there are 
 today in America a considerable number of men who have been well 
 schooled in the general principles of Personnel Work. 
 
 4. However, since the majority of these officers and men are already 
 detailed to specific duties in their respective camps, the total avail- 
 able trained material is altogether inadequate to meet the present or 
 future demands for Personnel Officers. It, therefore, becomes neces- 
 sary to now set up a central school to which carefully chosen can- 
 didates are to be sent for training in Personnel work, after which 
 they are to be assigned wherever they may be needed in the Army. 
 
 5. The responsibility of selecting candidates for this school is to be 
 placed squarely upon the shoulders of the Personnel Officer, since 
 he is the man most interested in securing competent and well trained 
 assistants and successors when opportunity presents itself for pro- 
 motion. 
 
 6. You will, therefore, direct your Camp Personnel Officer to select, 
 interview and recommend a number of officers and enlisted men of 
 officer material to attend the next school, which begins at Camp 
 Sherman on October 10 and which will last for a period of one 
 month. In making these selections we hope that it will be borne 
 in mind that the weeding out should be done before the school in- 
 stead of afterwards, and that this school will be expected to turn 
 out 85 per cent of the number in attendance as acceptable Personnel 
 Officers. 
 
 7. In making his selections your Personnel Officer will bear these 
 requisites in mind:
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 481 
 
 Appearance Sufficiently good to impress superiors and to 
 command the attention and respect of subor- 
 dinates. 
 
 Personality Sufficiently forceful, tactful and kindly to insure 
 the fullest measure of co-operation from supe- 
 riors as well as from subordinates. 
 
 Physically Strong enough to withstand the wear of long 
 hours and tedious work. Limited Service men 
 acceptable. 
 
 Previous Experience Of such a character as will make for 
 attention to detail, ability to give instruction, and 
 above all to organize and properly direct the efforts 
 of subordinates. 
 
 Intelligence Keenly alert and resourceful. High School train- 
 ing or better. "B" intelligence or better. 
 Interest A spontaneous eagerness for Personnel Work. 
 
 8. When he has sorted out the men who amply fulfill these basic 
 requirements he will interview them and send a card (Form CCP- 
 1110 for each man that he thinks will be acceptable, to the Director 
 of the Personnel School, Room 528, State War and Navy Building, 
 so that the Director can anticipate his probable future supply and 
 order in a sufficient number of candidates to fill the first school. 
 
 9. On each applicant's card will be attached one of the rider sheets 
 enclosed with this letter on which the Personnel Officer will check his 
 appraisal of each man under each of the items on the sheet. In 
 making his comparisons he will select an average Lieutenant now 
 satisfactorily doing Personnel work, and check the nominee against 
 him as being better, equal, or poorer than the average successful 
 Lieutenant. 
 
 10. It is suggested that the Personnel Officer seek his material 
 among the successful men in his office, both enlisted and commis- 
 sioned, and also among candidates about to be graduated from the 
 Officer's Training School in your camp, and from any other similar 
 source that you deem reliable. 
 
 11. The men selected should be viewed with an eye to their abilities 
 for Personnel work and since they are not to be used on such work 
 as insurance, enlistment, etc., men primarily valuable to these lines 
 of work should not be considered for nomination to the school. 
 
 12. Previous experience in Personnel work is, however, not so 
 desirable as potentiality for development into Personnel Officers of 
 large calibre, consequently nominees will be viewed as to their capac- 
 ity to deserve a captain's rank within the next year.
 
 482 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Name of Candidate. 
 Station 
 
 Physical 
 
 Impressive general appearance 
 Facial appearance 
 Energy (punch) 
 
 Intelligence 
 Alertness 
 Accuracy 
 Intelligence Test 
 
 Leadership 
 Self Reliance 
 Initiative 
 Decisiveness 
 Tact 
 Ability to direct 
 
 Personal Qualities 
 Ability to co-operate 
 Unselfishness 
 Likeableness 
 Readiness to shoulder 
 responsibility 
 
 Value to Personnel Service 
 Industriousness 
 Ability to deal with 
 
 Commanding Officers 
 Good judgment 
 Ability to plan 
 Ability to teach 
 Ability to organize 
 Ability to work with details 
 Ability to judge ability 
 Knowledge and ability in 
 Personnel work 
 
 a 
 
 4) ej u 
 
 be ^q be 
 
 03 5 s nj 
 
 !-. ^ (- 
 
 4) o C 
 
 REMARKS
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 483 
 
 Is the Candidate now ready for the rank 
 of at least 1st Lieutenant? Yes. No. 
 
 What rank can he deserve within one year 
 from now? 
 
 How many months has the candidate been engaged 
 in army personnel work? 
 
 Signed 
 
 Candidates were in this way carefully selected by per- 
 sonnel officers who knew them. Their records and ratings 
 were then reviewed by officers at Washington and the best 
 men selected for the school. This procedure gave the best 
 results obtained for any school, as the candidates were of a 
 very high class. Statistically they can be described as follows: 
 
 Commissioned officers 13 
 
 Sergeants major 16 
 
 Sergeants 13 
 
 Corporals 1 
 
 Privates 15 
 
 Civilians 2 
 
 Total 60 
 
 Average age 27 years, 4 months. 
 
 Average length of service 6 months, 21 days. 
 
 Number of men with college education (degrees) ... 20 
 
 Number of men with some college education 18 
 
 Number of men with no college education 22 
 
 All had an intelligence rating of "A" or "B". 
 
 Experience led to certain changes, and the letter to Com- 
 manding Officers of October 28th, calling for nominations 
 for the 12th school emphasized these new points: (1) Sev- 
 eral personnel officers had clearly not grasped the fact that 
 first class men were needed, but instead had recommended 
 many very faithful enlisted men with the idea of getting 
 them commissions. In order to eliminate this factor to a still
 
 484 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 greater degree it was specified that "the cards for the candi- 
 dates will be held pending the coming of a personnel super- 
 visor who is charged with concurring or not concurring with 
 your personnel officer in his selections. The cards of those 
 men in whose nominations he concurs will then be sent to 
 Washington." (2) "Photographs of the candidates will in 
 each case be attached to the qualification cards as prescribed, 
 and the letter of transmittal will list the names of the candi- 
 dates nominated in the order of preference as agreed on 
 between the personnel officer and the personnel supervisor." 
 (3) Renewed emphasis was placed upon the need for men 
 of large calibre by calling for men "who will merit at least 
 the rank of Captain within three months from graduation" 
 instead of "within a year." 
 
 Selecting candidates from many camps is a very difficult 
 task. The above details have been ennumerated here as it is 
 believed they are as near "fool proof" as it is possible to 
 make them. 
 
 Due to the influenza epidemic and the quarantine at Camp 
 Sherman, the school did not open until October 23rd. It 
 continued until November 19, eight days after the signing 
 of the Armistice. In consequence none of the students were 
 commissioned or transferred to the Adjutant General's De- 
 partment, but many were used after the close of the school 
 in the operations incident to demobilizing the Army. 
 
 The program of the school differed in many respects very 
 markedly from that of the first ten schools. In the first place, 
 due to the expected separation of personnel work from ad- 
 jutant's work (see Chapter 22) it was specified that candi- 
 dates particularly fitted for the latter kind of work should 
 not be sent. And consequently much less attention was given 
 to insurance, allotments, handling of A. G. O. forms incident 
 to receiving men into camp, etc. In the second place, con- 
 siderable time was devoted to infantry drill, setting up exer- 
 cises, military courtesy, etc. The daily schedule follows:
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 485 
 
 Reveille, 1st call (i.OO A. M. 
 
 Reveille 6.10 A. M. 
 
 Assembly 6.15 A. M. 
 
 Mess Call 6.30 A. M. 
 
 Sick Call 7.20 A. M. 
 
 Calisthenics 7.25 7.55 A. M. 
 
 1st Period Lecture 8.00 8.50 A. M. 
 
 2nd Period Lecture 8.50 9.40 A. M. 
 
 Hrcl Period Drill 9.4010.40 A. M. 
 
 4th Period Lecture 10.4011.30 A. M. 
 
 Mess 12 M. 
 
 Roll Call 1.001.05 P. M. 
 
 5th Period Lecture 1.051.55 P. M. 
 
 6th Period Lecture 1.552.45 P. M. 
 
 7th Period Drill 2.454.15 P. M. 
 
 8th Period Lecture 4.155.05 P. M. 
 
 Retreat 5.15 P. M. 
 
 Study Period 7.009.00 P. M. 
 
 The course of study aimed to make each student familiar 
 with the duties of the personnel office, and to acquaint him 
 with the duties of most of the officers with whom he would 
 constantly be dealing, such as a Company Commander, the 
 Adjutant, the Assistant Adjutant, who would be charged with 
 insurance, allotments, receiving men into camp, etc., the Camp 
 Surgeon, the Psychological Examiner, the Camp Quarter- 
 master, the Chief of Staff, and the Camp Commander. Be- 
 sides these instruction was given upon general military mat- 
 ters, such as for example, kinds of orders ; pay, mileage, 
 transportation and quarters; correspondence and filing; courts 
 martial and articles of war, etc. Naturally greater emphasis 
 was placed upon interviewing men, classifying them, trade- 
 testing, assigning them to organizations and preparation of 
 CCP forms than any other duties. 
 
 The instructional staff consisted of: 
 
 Major Chas. L. Abel, Camp Personnel Officer, in charge. 
 Lieut. G. C. Kirk, Senior Instructor. 
 Lieut. H. S. Lytle, Assistant Instructor.
 
 486 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Captain S. R. Jenkins, Military Instructor. 
 Lieut. Thomas Lindley, Assistant Instructor. 
 
 A number of other officers stationed at Camp Sherman lec- 
 tured on their own work. Dr. Strong and Mr. Weisiger, 
 stationed at Washington, were in general charge of the train- 
 ing program. 
 
 PERSONNEL SCHOOLS FOR TRAINING S. A. T. C. 
 PERSONNEL ADJUTANTS 
 
 Shortly before the opening of the S. A. T. C. units in 
 colleges throughout the country, it was realized that personnel 
 adjutants would be needed in each unit to handle the induc- 
 tion papers, insurance and allotments, and such classification 
 of students as would be subsequently called for. There were 
 in session at that time three schools for training line officers 
 for these S. A. T. C. units and it was decided to retain cer- 
 tain of these students for a post-graduate course in the work 
 of a personnel adjutant. In consequence the following officers 
 and civilian members or associates of the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel were assigned to this duty. 
 
 1. Students' Army Training Corps Camp, Plattsburg, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Mr. Kendall Weisiger, in charge. 
 
 Major Warren Bigelow, Personnel Adjutant, Camp 
 
 Custer. 
 1st Lieut. C. F. Donnelly, Insurance Officer, Camp 
 
 Wadsworth. 
 
 2. Students' Army Training Corps Camp, Ft. Sheridan, 
 Ills. 
 
 Mr. J. J. Coss, in charge. 
 
 Major A. I. Moriarty, Personnel Adjutant, Camp 
 
 Pike. 
 1st Lieut. H. B. Vanderblue, Insurance Officer, 
 
 Camp Grant.
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 487 
 
 3. Students' Army Training Corps Camp, Presidio of San 
 Francisco. 
 
 Mr. Arthur J. Turner, in charge. 
 Major R. M. Alton, Personnel Adjutant, 8th Divi- 
 sion. 
 Captain R. G. Bowman, Personnel Adjutant, 16th 
 
 Division. 
 
 Captain E. R. Perry, Assistant Personnel Adjutant, 
 Camp Lewis. 
 
 The three schools were opened on September 10th, 1918, 
 and continued for 8 days. There were in attendance at the 
 three schools, respectively, 167 men at Plattsburg, 325 men 
 at Ft. Sheridan, and 60 men at the Presidio of San Fran- 
 cisco. These men were all carefully selected, largely on the 
 basis of personal interviews by the instructors who devoted 
 two to three days to this work prior to the opening of the 
 special schools. On the basis of their recommendation 152 
 men were commissioned 2nd lieutenants at Plattsburg and 
 assigned to S. A. T. C. units in that section of the country. 
 Similarly 295 men were commissioned at Ft. Sheridan and 
 60 men at the Presidio. 
 
 A standard program was prepared at Washington and sup- 
 plied each school with the understanding that it be adapted 
 to local conditions. In general, it followed the lines of the 
 program of the first ten personnel schools. The candidates 
 were also finally recommended according to the methods 
 used in those schools; due weight being given to grades in 
 written examinations, intelligence rating and personal inter- 
 view. 
 
 The candidates were composed of both college instructors 
 and students from various colleges having the R. O. T. C. 
 In placing the graduates, an instructor might be returned to 
 his own institution, but the "students" were in every case 
 sent to some institution other than the one they had attended 
 because of their comparative youth (averaging 19 years) 
 and the consequent likelihood of a depreciation of their ability 
 by their former instructors and classmates. The best men
 
 488 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were assigned to the largest and most important positions 
 allowing each his own preference as far as possible. 
 
 TRAINING SCHOOL FOR TRADE TEST OFFICERS 
 
 Chapter 30 describes the work carried on at Newark in 
 training officers and enlisted men in trade test work. 
 
 PERSONNEL SCHOOLS WITHIN PERSONNEL 
 OFFICES 
 
 In order to secure greater efficiency in the work of the 
 personnel office, particularly in such matters as interview- 
 ing, a number of the camps found it advisable to organize 
 local personnel schools. All the enlisted men in the office 
 were required to attend these schools and were there given 
 instruction in the different phases of the work. 
 
 One personnel officer described what he was planning to 
 do in these words: "I intend to give a series of talks to our 
 two hundred men, covering all subjects pertaining to the 
 induction of drafted men, in the making of their records, 
 insurance, allotments and the purpose of the work. I will 
 probably have each of my officers give a half or three-quar- 
 ters of an hour talk and then have one-half hour discus- 
 sion on each subject, so that the men in the various depart- 
 ments will not only know something of the work in their own 
 department, but in every other department. The discussion 
 may bring out talent which might be lost sight of at the 
 present time." 
 
 Another officer reported this program which he inaugurated 
 after a Personnel School had been in his camp. "The men 
 take exercise from 7:00 to 7:30 each morning. From 7:30 to 
 8 :00, during the receiving of the draft, we have 'get-together' 
 meetings in which points which have arisen the previous day 
 are discussed and methods which tend to efficiency are out- 
 lined. In this manner the men who were unable to go to 
 the Personnel School are being instructed and their work is 
 showing material improvement. During the slack period be-
 
 TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR OFFICERS 489 
 
 tween drafts, these meetings are being held from 7 :30 to 
 8 :30, and I have invited the personnel officers of the st 
 and th Infantry Regiments to attend and thus will be 
 able to instruct them in personnel work, on which at present 
 they have a rather vague understanding. Either myself or 
 Lieut. P. are present at each of these meetings." 
 
 In addition to such instruction, in many camps during the 
 lull period between drafts parties of enlisted men were 
 allowed to visit industrial plants in the neighboring cities 
 and thus became familiar with the duties of many kinds of 
 workmen. This enabled them to interview such workmen as 
 they appeared in the draft with much greater efficiency. And 
 it also raised the morale within the personnel office very 
 materially. 
 
 TRAINING SCHOOL FOR TRANSPORT PERSONNEL 
 ADJUTANTS 
 
 In order to expedite the handling of personnel records of 
 returning officers and enlisted men, personnel adjutants were 
 assigned to transports. Eighty-one officers were given a 
 thorough course of instruction in their duties commencing on 
 January 9, 1919. This consisted of three days of lectures 
 by officers most familiar with the various phases of the 
 work, followed by practical instruction in debarkation work. 
 After the officers had shown that they thoroughly under- 
 stood their duties they were assigned to transports. 
 
 The school was under the direction of Major J. Perry 
 Moore, Personnel Adjutant, Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, 
 New Jersey. Topics, such as the following were presented: 
 General purpose and duties of Transport Personnel Adju- 
 tants; debarkation regulations, co-ordination of debarkation 
 departments; preparation of passenger lists, landing returns, 
 individual records; forms required for sick, wounded and 
 convalescents, and method of tagging and debarking sick and 
 wounded; etc.
 
 490 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The training program outlined above accomplished many 
 things. Among others, it educated many officers and en- 
 listed men so that they were fitted for responsible posi- 
 tions in personnel work. It standardized procedure in the 
 camps throughout the country in a way which could not be ac- 
 complished otherwise. And it so stimulated both officers and 
 enlisted men and made them feel that they belonged to a big 
 and very much worth while branch of the Army, that they 
 threw themselves into the work with a great deal of enthus- 
 iasm. It also showed them how personnel work in their 
 particular kind of a camp, staff corps, etc., fitted into the 
 general plan for the whole Army and thus lifted them out of 
 a purely local and sometimes selfish utilization of personnel.
 
 CHAPTER 39 
 
 HISTORY OF THE WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 
 ORGANIZATION OF WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 
 
 Early in the expansion of the War Department it became 
 apparent that a definite liaison between the Department of 
 Labor, representing industry, and the War Department, 
 representing the Army, should be established. On December 
 31, 1917, The Adjutant General addressed a memorandum 
 to the Chief of Staff suggesting that it would be "very ad- 
 visable to establish closer and regular relations with the De- 
 partment of Labor," and recommending "that the Department 
 of Labor be requested to designate a representative on its 
 part who shall be authorized to deal with this office and the 
 War Department generally." 
 
 The problem of labor supply had already occupied the at- 
 tention of the Committee on Classification of Personnel in 
 the Army. The recommendation was therefore made to the 
 Chief of Staff that an officer be assigned to the Committee 
 "to act in conjunction with the Committee and to cooperate 
 especially with the Department of Labor." An interchange 
 of notes and preliminary conferences showed that all parties 
 concerned were of one opinion, and on January 18, 1918, less 
 than three weeks from the date of the initial note, The Adju- 
 tant General issued the following announcement on behalf of 
 the War Department: 
 
 "Subject: Establshment of War Service Exchange. 
 
 "1. There has been established as part of this office an 
 organization to deal with offers of service to the War De- 
 partment and to supply men for special purposes in the 
 Army. This will be known as the War Service Exchange. 
 
 "2. The functions of the War Service Exchange will be 
 
 491
 
 492 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 (a) to answer inquiries, written and verbal, of persons 
 desiring to serve in the Army; (b) to keep informed of 
 the needs of the various branches of the service as to 
 personnel and to direct suitable persons as to where and 
 how to apply; (c) to cooperate with the Department of 
 Labor and other useful agencies in locating and supplying 
 men needed for special purposes by various branches of 
 the service. 
 
 "3. It is emphasized that the purpose of the new organi- 
 zation is not to supersede or to interfere with the Personnel 
 work of the Staff Departments, but to supplement their 
 work and to cooperate with them to the fullest extent. 
 
 "4. The War Service Exchange will be located at Room 
 528, War Department, telephone, Branch 54. 
 
 "5. It is requested that all Staff Departments cooperate 
 in making the War Service Exchange of the greatest pos- 
 sible assistance to themselves and to the service as a whole." 
 
 This announcement contained no provision for funds. The 
 new organization was to be financed by the Committee on 
 Classification of Personnel, which was rapidly outgrowing 
 its budget. Furthermore, the announcement merely requested 
 "that all Staff Departments cooperate in making the War 
 Service Exchange of the greatest possible assistance to them- 
 selves and to the service as a whole." There was no specific 
 authority requiring departments to route all tenders of serv- 
 ice through the new organization, or to consider or report on 
 offers received from it. 
 
 Nevertheless, the War Service Exchange opened its office 
 in Room 530, State, War and Navy Building, and proceeded 
 to consider policies and methods. Mr. Winslow Russell was 
 placed in charge. Associated with him at the start were 
 Major E. N. Sanctuary (the officer assigned to the Com- 
 mittee to cooperate with the Department of Labor), Mr. 
 John J. Coss, Mr. Hugh F. Magee, and two stenographers. 
 During the previous summer Mr. Coss in the employ of the 
 Committee on Public Information had prepared a book de- 
 signed to aid volunteers to find the place of their greatest use- 
 fulness in Government work. It was natural for the Com-
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 493 
 
 mittee to secure his services in this connection since he had 
 already made the necessary contact with all the various Gov- 
 ernment Departments in securing the information required to 
 compile the book. It was immediately evident that so small 
 a force as four men could not hope to more than scratch the 
 surface of the work outlined in The Adjutant General's state- 
 ment. In consequence the force was gradually but steadily 
 increased. Those who played more important roles were Mr. 
 Carl W. Jones and Mr. Stanley Roth ; Mr. Jones in connec- 
 tion with recruiting campaigns referred to later, and Mr. 
 Roth in connection with plans for a centralized personnel 
 organization. 
 
 Investigating the Needs of the Staff Corps. Since answer- 
 ing inquiries and cooperating with the Department of Labor 
 were functions pertaining to supply of man-power, it was 
 obviously necessary to become familiar with the immediate 
 demands for man-power as expressed in the needs of the 
 Staff Corps. Interviews with the personnel chiefs civilian, 
 enlisted and commissioned showed at once the need for such 
 a clearing-house for personnel matters as was now offered 
 in the War Service Exchange. They also showed that not 
 only tens of thousands of men were needed immediately, but 
 that many needs could not be filled from the draft, since 
 the Staff Corps called for specialists with the technical and 
 scientific training not possessed, because of youth, by the aver- 
 age drafted man. 
 
 The Information Blank. There was immediate need, in 
 the first place, for a common medium of exchange between 
 the applicant, the Staff Corps, and the War Service Ex- 
 change. To satisfy this need, a form was drawn up, called 
 the Information Blank, which gave the draft classification 
 required by The Adjutant General's Office, and the personal 
 qualifications, training and experience record of the appli- 
 cant. The Staff Corps man-power needs most difficult to 
 meet were largely for officer material, either men who could 
 be commissioned direct from civil life or sent to a training
 
 494 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 camp to compete for a commission. The Information Blank 
 had to be detailed and specific, to insure that the selected 
 Blanks finally submitted to a Corps would be those of appli- 
 cants most likely to qualify. 
 
 War Department Telephone Directory. The second im- 
 portant discovery made in the first day's research was the 
 necessity for a War Department directory of telephones, 
 personnel, and departments. There was no one War Depart- 
 ment telephone exchange serving all departments, but sev- 
 eral exchanges heavily overloaded and burdened with infor- 
 mation calls. Locations and telephone numbers were con- 
 stantly changing. Furthermore, there was no way of visualiz- 
 ing the various departments of the War Department, their 
 sub-divisions, functions, personnel, and locations. Since it 
 was a function of the War Service Exchange to "keep in- 
 formed of the needs of the various branches of the service 
 as to personnel," the compilation of a Directory was within 
 the Exchange's powers and would serve the twofold pur- 
 pose of getting acquainted with the organization of the War 
 Department and helping solve a critical problem of com- 
 munication. The Secretary of War granted permission for 
 the project. The first Military Telephone Directory was put 
 into circulation on February 15, just a month after the War 
 Service Exchange was created. The Directory gave the func- 
 tions, personnel, addresses, and telephone numbers of every 
 Department, Bureau, Section, Branch and Unit in the War 
 Department. There were two divisions of the Directory, 
 the Alphabetical and the Classified Sections. Owing to con- 
 stant changes the Directory remained up-to-date for only a 
 few weeks, but it relieved to a large extent the desperate 
 telephone confusion existing and it familiarized the War Serv- 
 ice Exchange with the organization and functions of the 
 more than four hundred working units of the War Depart- 
 ment. 
 
 The Exchange compiled the first two issues of the Direc-
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 495 
 
 tory, thereafter turning over the revising to the Director of 
 Military Telephones. 
 
 Sources of Personnel Supply. The War Service Exchange, 
 turning to the actual work of meeting demands for men, 
 found it was able to fill requirements from four sources: 
 (1) from written offers of services, (2) from personal calls 
 of applicants, (3) from the reserve files in the Corps them- 
 selves, (4) from applications instigated by organized re- 
 cruiting campaigns. 
 
 HANDLING CORRESPONDENCE FROM APPLICANTS 
 FOR WAR WORK 
 
 The first task demanding attention was to answer an 
 accumulation of many hundreds of letters to which The 
 Adjutant General's Office had been unable to give attention. 
 In order to answer the correspondence as expeditously as 
 possible the following policy was planned: From this mis- 
 cellaneous assortment of letters, those should be selected 
 which indicated that their writers were or might be of value 
 to the Army in commissioned, enlisted or civilian capacity. 
 Only such persons should receive Information Blanks. Form 
 letters should be used to answer all but special cases. In 
 short, decision was made that a quality standard should be 
 maintained. 
 
 Information Blanks were issued and returned to the War 
 Service Exchange in franked envelopes. They were con- 
 sidered carefully by a classifier, who classified them accord- 
 ing to best usefulness, employing the Committee on Classifi- 
 cation of Personnel occupational classification (CCP-4) with 
 its symbols. The Blanks were filed, after -classification, 
 with pertinent correspondence enclosed in them, in an In- 
 formation Blank file which was indexed according to draft 
 status and symbol number. When, for instance, the Ordnance 
 issued a call for mechanics, the Information Blank files were 
 consulted. If gear cutter operators were requested, the draft 
 age files were referred to under the classification "6 ge," and
 
 496 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 the Blanks so filed were charged and submitted to the 
 Ordnance personnel officer. If the call was for mechanical 
 engineers, highly trained men were obviously needed and 
 the "Over draft" files were consulted under the Occupational 
 Classification "6 me." Information Blanks were submitted 
 in person by a member of the War Service Exchange and 
 each applicant's qualifications discussed with the personnel 
 officer. Accepted blanks were charged off the files and re- 
 jected blanks were returned to the files subject to further 
 call. The corps personnel officer sent to the author of each 
 accepted blank further inquiry as to qualifications, or a 
 request to report for personal examination either to Washing- 
 ton or to the nearest camp or city Corps representative. 
 
 The occupational file, cross-indexed on cards for applicant's 
 name, was kept "live" by circularization every two months. 
 A return post card was sent to each man whose Information 
 Blank was on file, asking whether or not his services were 
 still available. If the post card was not returned inside of 
 two weeks, the Information Blank was considered "dead" and 
 was removed from the file. Thus, the War Service Ex- 
 change file had the two valuable assets of being built origin- 
 ally on a quality standard and then being kept up-to-date. 
 
 Throughout eleven months of work, the average percentage 
 of applicants who received Information Blanks was about 
 20%, the variation from this average, as shown by the weekly 
 reports on correspondence, being small. Because of the 
 periodic circularization and the insistent demand of the various 
 Staff Departments for high-grade men, the War Service Ex- 
 change files were kept free from "dead" material and had a 
 high turnover. 
 
 Congressional correspondence was heavy and was handled 
 separately. It was not desirable to answer congressional in- 
 quiries and recommendations with form letters, and a special 
 correspondent was delegated by The Adjutant General to 
 reply to congressional letters. The Exchange was the only 
 central congressional service bureau in the War Department.
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 497 
 
 Personal interviews required mueh attention. Men from all 
 over the country were coming to the War Department to 
 offer their services. Few of them knew where to go or what 
 to do. To these the War Service Exchange served as an 
 information bureau and routing agency. The Exchange de- 
 termined not to attempt to pass final judgment on the quali- 
 fications of any applicant, but rather to route applicants to 
 the proper places in the War Department, permitting the 
 Staff Sections and Departments to pass their own final judg- 
 ment on qualifications. It did serve as a preliminary "weeder 
 out," eliminating men obviously unqualified to serve in capaci- 
 ties such as they desired. Two members of the Exchange de- 
 voted their entire time to this interviewing, but during the 
 busy hours of the day, four and even six of its members were 
 needed to serve the growing number of applicants. By April 1, 
 an average of 1,000 personal interviews a month were held. 
 Many technical experts and highly qualified professional men 
 who came to Washington to tender their services to the Gov- 
 ernment were, through the War Service Exchange, directed to 
 the service in which they could be most useful. 
 
 The reserve files in the Corps themselves provided still an- 
 other source for filling calls. The Exchange was often able to 
 transfer reserve or useless applications held in one Corps to 
 another Corps requiring applicants with these qualifications. 
 Also, the Storage and Traffic Committee of the Shipping 
 Board had a carefully selected reserve file of applications, 
 which was generously offered to the Exchange by Mr. Robert 
 List a"nd was used profitably. 
 
 ENLARGEMENT OF WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 
 ACTIVITIES 
 
 Development of Contact With Staff Corps and Departments. 
 The members of the Exchange soon discovered that enough 
 demands for highly specialized personnel could be found in 
 one week to require for their satisfaction a very large recruit- 
 ing force working constantly for many months. Even though
 
 498 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 by the first of April the War Service Exchange was receiv- 
 ing an average of 10,000 written and 1,200 personal offers 
 of service a month, the amount of desirable material approx- 
 imately 20% was small as compared with the War Depart- 
 ment demand. The big problem, therefore, was to build some 
 sort of field force distributed over the entire country, through 
 which demand for men could be issued and answered. 
 
 The need for specialists was so urgent that each Corps had 
 set up its own recruiting machinery, determining for itself 
 the number of men it would require, the method of recruiting 
 and the amount of money to be spent. When a particular 
 Corps was in the field recruiting types of men not required 
 by another Corps, recruiting efforts were satisfactory, but 
 more often two or more Corps were recruiting for the same 
 type of men in the same localities at the same time. The 
 War Service Exchange was the only organization in the War 
 Department which was attempting to fill man-power require- 
 ments impartially for the good of the service as a whole. 
 
 Absorption of the Intercollegiate Intelligence' Bureau. The 
 Exchange saw that a material service could be rendered the 
 War Department if a single centralized and standardized 
 National recruiting service were substituted for the many com- 
 peting and wasteful services of all the various Corps. A 
 working alliance was formed with the Associated Engineering 
 Societies, the Public Service Reserve and similar organizations. 
 
 On April 15, the Exchange absorbed the Intercollegiate 
 Intelligence Bureau, which had maintained in 150 colleges 
 volunteer representatives for recruiting college men. 
 
 Cooperation With the Military Training Camps Associa- 
 tion. A closer relationship was also established at this time 
 with the Military Training Camps Association, which had 
 established volunteer recruiting and information offices in most 
 of the larger cities of the country. This Association had done 
 valuable work in recruiting for the first officers' training 
 camps and could concentrate all its energies on the work be- 
 cause it had no other interests besides that of securing
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 499 
 
 specialists for the service. It seemed, therefore, to be the 
 logical organization to represent the War Service Exchange 
 throughout the country. The Secretary of War was asked to 
 grant permission to The Adjutant General to issue Civilian 
 Aid Certificates to recruiting representatives of the Exchange. 
 This permission was granted and most of the certificates were 
 given to members of the Military Training Camps Associa- 
 tion as acknowledgment of their services to the War Depart- 
 ment. 
 
 A report was issued to the field representatives weekly, 
 listing the number of men required, with specifications of 
 each need as received from the various corps. The field rep- 
 resentatives could thus recruit to better purpose, since they 
 knew both the type and number of men wanted. On urgent 
 calls, information was telegraphed to the representatives and 
 the names and addresses of interviewed applicants were wired 
 back. 
 
 PLANS FOR A CENTRALIZED PERSONNEL 
 ORGANIZATION 
 
 The Exchange considered that it was rendering valuable 
 service to the Corps, but that this service was spasmodic. No 
 definite responsibility could be placed upon the Exchange 
 because it was serving in the capacity of a charitable institu- 
 tion and had no direct central control over any of the channels 
 by which men could enter the service. Despite its strategic 
 location in the War Department Building and its close liaison 
 with the Committee on Classification of Personnel, the Ex- 
 change had long felt its inability, because of the inadequacy 
 of its powers, to aid in more than a small measure to solve 
 the growing problems of Staff Corps personnel supply. Close 
 contact with all of the Corps had given to its members a 
 thorough knowledge of the various personnel problems and 
 programs, which was probably possessed by but few bodies 
 in Washington at this time. It appeared that each Corps was 
 endeavoring to work out its own destiny independent of the
 
 500 PI I STORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 other Corps, and that such a policy could not promise success 
 because it involved competing effort in recruiting. 
 
 The Exchange determined therefore to analyze the prob- 
 lem of personnel procurement and to draw up a plan for 
 centralized procedure, a plan which would incorporate all of 
 the fundamental principles on which a program of centrali- 
 zation would need to be carried out, but embody no specific 
 reference to particular organizations or individuals. Sum- 
 mary of the plan follows: 
 
 Status of Demand Centralization Within War Department. 
 Each Staff Corps had at that time a central personnel division, 
 located in Washington, with commissioned, enlisted and civilian 
 branches. Each of these personnel divisions knew the de- 
 mand for men from the requisitions issued to it by the vari- 
 ous sections in the Corps. 
 
 How to Centralize. Demand From All Corps. One person- 
 nel supply organization serving all Staff Corps should receive 
 periodically from the Corps Personnel Chief inventory of 
 man-power needs. Such inventory should be submitted on 
 standard form in standard terminology, giving full specifica- 
 tions for each need. 
 
 An instruction book, brief and concise with specimen forms, 
 explaining the method of requisitioning, should be distributed 
 to every section of every Corps. 
 
 Reserve applications on file by thousands in every Corps 
 should be filed with the Centralized Organization so that 
 available applicants might be accepted at once to fill needs in 
 other Corps. 
 
 Centralized Personnel Organization Would Serve Demand 
 and Supply for the Army Through'. 
 
 1. Department Managers. 
 
 2. Priorities and Policy Board. 
 
 3. Supply Managers. 
 
 4. Traveling Supervisors. 
 
 5. District and Branch Managers.
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 501 
 
 The Department Manager. Each Staff Corps would select 
 an officer to be transferred to the Centralized Personnel 
 Organization who would have charge of and be responsible 
 for the service of the Centralized Organization to that Staff 
 Corps. This officer should be intimately familiar with the 
 internal organization of his Corps and with the types of men 
 required. 
 
 The duties of the Department Manager would be as follows : 
 
 a. To see that requisitions, stated in prescribed form with 
 required specifications, came through promptly from his 
 Corps. 
 
 b. To see that men selected to fill requisitions met speci- 
 fications. 
 
 c. To keep accurate record on each application submitted, 
 as to acceptance or rejection of the applicant by the Corps 
 Section. 
 
 d. To check the status of requisitions daily. 
 
 e. To consult the Supply Manager and Supervisors about 
 requisitions which warranted special action in the supply 
 field, such as emergency calls for large units of men or 
 for exceptional individual talent. 
 
 f. To present complete statements of his Staff Corps 
 needs to the Priorities and Policy Board. 
 
 The Priorities and Policy Board, Duties: 
 
 a. To confer with the particular Department Managers 
 concerned and determine apportionment, whenever the de- 
 mand from two or more corps for a specific type of man 
 exceeded the supply. 
 
 b. To balance demand and supply and determine on ac- 
 tion to be taken. 
 
 c. To determine general policy, plan recruiting cam- 
 paigns, and exercise executive functions. 
 
 The Supply Manager. Duties: 
 
 a. To keep accurate records of the supply sources in 
 each occupation on the basis of reports submitted by the 
 District Managers. 
 
 b. To keep a running inventory on the available reserve 
 in the files of the District Managers. 
 
 c. To advise the Priorities and Policy Board where to go 
 for supply and what methods to use in procuring it.
 
 502 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 d. To transmit requisitions to the District Managers. 
 
 e. To instruct the Supervisors. 
 
 The Supervisor. Duties: 
 
 a. To inspect the machinery in the field and insure its 
 operation according to the policy determined by the Priori- 
 ties and Policy Board and the Supply Manager. 
 
 b. To oversee three or four field districts. 
 
 The District Manager. The active recruiting work would 
 be delegated to twelve District Managers, each administering 
 a geographical District. 
 
 Zonal organization with central control would be prefer- 
 able to complete centralization: 
 
 a. Because of the size of the country it would not be 
 possible effectively to issue, record and route the necessary 
 correspondence, applications and orders from a single 
 Washington office. 
 
 b. District concentration would make possible intensive 
 cultivation of supply sources. 
 
 c. The presence of district assembly points would make 
 possible personal interviews at a minimum loss of time and 
 money. 
 
 d. Desirable appointees to District Managerships would 
 be men living in the district and thoroughly familiar with 
 the commercial and occupational make-up. 
 
 Functions of the District Manager: 
 
 a. To answer inquiries, written and verbal, of persons 
 desiring to serve in the Army. 
 
 b. To maintain a high quality standard in the applica- 
 tions on file through discrimination in sending out informa- 
 tion blanks. 
 
 c. To classify all information blanks and file them by 
 occupations. 
 
 d. To keep files "live" through periodic circularization of 
 applicants. 
 
 e. To maintain an interviewing staff to deal with personal 
 inquiries. 
 
 f. To co-operate with the Department of Labor and 
 other useful agencies in locating men requisitioned by the 
 Supply Manager.
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 503 
 
 g. To furnish complete information concerning applicants 
 to the Supply Manager, and through him to the Department 
 Managers, and to cooperate with representatives of the 
 various Corps in arranging interviews, with applicants. 
 
 Operating Instructions for District Manager. The District 
 Managers should first concentrate on investigating the sup- 
 ply of exceptionally rare or valuable specialists, and should 
 submit reports of investigations to the Supply Manager, 
 Washington. 
 
 Second, he should establish points of contact: (a) with 
 labor organizations, labor groups and societies of skilled work- 
 men, engineers and technical experts; (b) with commercial 
 and business organizations and manufacturers ; (c) with uni- 
 versities and colleges, technical and trade schools; and (d) 
 with trade journals, house organs, newspapers, periodicals 
 and other publications. District Managers should attempt 
 rather to establish the maximum number of points of con- 
 tact than to accumulate large numbers of individual applica- 
 tions. Only limited reserves of applications to meet emer- 
 gency demands should be encouraged. 
 
 General Policy of the Centralized Personnel Organization. 
 The Centralized Personnel Organization would be an assembl- 
 ing and directing and not a selecting organization. The 
 final selection would be made by the branch of the Corps 
 requisitioning the men. Selection would be made possible on 
 two bases: (a) on the basis of comprehensive and concise 
 applicants' information blanks ; and (b) on the basis of per- 
 sonal interviews arranged by the District Manager in co- 
 operation with individual officers or examining boards sent 
 out over the Districts by the Staff Corps at designated inter- 
 vals. Experience had demonstrated that personal interviews 
 were advisable in selecting men for unusual or highly respon- 
 sible positions, but that complete information blanks were 
 practicable in selecting men for less important positions.
 
 504 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 CENTRALIZATION OF PERSONNEL WORK IN THE 
 GENERAL STAFF 
 
 This plan was completed on May 17, and held ready for 
 presentation through military channels. It was a coincidence, 
 therefore, that on the previous day, May 16, the Inspector 
 General had called a conference of department chiefs to dis- 
 cuss the problems of personnel and inter-department wastes. 
 In this conference there was an informal discussion of per- 
 sonnel problems, with particular reference to co-ordination of 
 effort among the various branches of the service, the desirabil- 
 ity of a central personnel exchange and a chief of personnel 
 for all war organizations. At a second conference, held the 
 next week and attended by the personnel chiefs of all the 
 Corps, it was resolved that each Corps should submit to the 
 Inspector General a plan for the solution of the personnel 
 problem. The plan of the War Service Exchange- was im- 
 mediately submitted. 
 
 June passed without word that any change in the person- 
 nel organization was contemplated. As the calls from the 
 Staff Corps were increasing it was advisable for the War 
 Service Exchange to readjust its own organization to meet 
 conditions. These readjustments, as far as possible, were in 
 conformity with the plan for centralization, a policy, it was 
 hoped,, which would demonstrate the practicability of the plan 
 and secure its quicker adoption. Instead, therefore, of hav- 
 ing several men from the War Service Exchange negotiating 
 with each Staff Corps, it was decided to have one man as- 
 signed exclusively to two or three corps, to be responsible for 
 obtaining and filling requisitions for personnel in these Corps. 
 The staff of the Exchange was divided into an interviewing 
 and correspondence department, an office administrative de- 
 partment, and demand and supply divisions. A personnel re- 
 quisition Blank was issued to all personnel chiefs of the Corps, 
 upon which all calls to the Exchange were to be submitted. 
 This blank standardized the procedure and specifications
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 505 
 
 necessary for obtaining men through the War Service Ex- 
 change. 
 
 Method of Obtaining Specialists. There were at this time 
 three methods of obtaining specialists for the Staff Corps: 
 
 (1) by allotment from the general draft, either directly to 
 Staff Corps or to schools and from the schools to the Corps ; 
 
 (2) by selective draft through the Provost Marshal General'a 
 Office; (3) by individual voluntary induction through the War 
 Service Exchange. The Committee on Education and Special 
 Training controlled the issuance of all induction authority. In 
 many instances this Committee decided that requisitions should 
 be filled neither by allotment nor selective draft, but that the 
 personnel officers of the various Staff Corps should have the 
 exercise of their own discretion in choosing men to satisfy the 
 needs. In these cases., the Committee referred the requisitions 
 to the War Service Exchange. 
 
 The second method, induction of specialists by selective 
 draft through the Provost Marshal General, seemed ideal, and 
 yet Staff Corps personnel officers complained of its lack of 
 effectiveness. They maintained that a very low efficiency in 
 the type of men was obta'ined. The reason for such quality 
 dilution was apparent. The local draft boards in many cases 
 were unable to secure complete and indisputable evidence con- 
 cerning the qualifications of all of their draftees. Men who 
 were about to be drafted desired as promising positions in 
 the Army as possible, and accordingly stated to the local 
 boards in their questionnaires what they wanted to be rather 
 than what they were. The local boards were unable to elim- 
 inate such misrepresentations, and so in filling requisitions by 
 selective draft many misfits were assigned to the Staff Corps. 
 
 The third method, individual voluntary induction, proved 
 the most efficient. It operated with as high as ninety per- 
 cent effectiveness, since the Staff Corps could take exactly 
 the types of men they wanted and hence were satisfied. Even 
 tho most satisfactory to the Corps, it had several objection- 
 able features, from the general service standpoint. The Staff
 
 506 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Corps personnel officers desired the best men obtainable and 
 quite naturally overlooked the interests of the other Corps 
 who often were in greater need of these same men. Most 
 of these officers endeavored to fill their units with experts, 
 where in many instances semi-skilled men would have served 
 as 'well, failing to realize that the utilization of none but ex- 
 perts for present units would result in exhaustion of experts 
 and a very much lower standard in future units to be or- 
 ganized. 
 
 Another objection to obtaining men by individual volun- 
 tary induction was the placement of men fitted for general 
 military service in positions for which men less well qualified 
 physically could be used. Although the Committee on Educa- 
 tion and Special Training had established control of this pro- 
 cedure, many personnel officers, in the anxiety to obtain 
 much-needed personnel, were selecting suitable applicants 
 without regard to their physical abilities or inabilities. 
 
 On the basis of these facts, specific recommendations seemed 
 apparent. It was obvious that the determination of priority 
 and general policy concerning personnel should be entrusted 
 to an impartial body which would act for the best interests 
 of the entire service and would not be restricted by partisan 
 considerations. Such a body adjudicating all requisitions for 
 enlisted personnel was already in existence in the Committee 
 on Education and Special Training. This Committee was 
 under the control of the Chief of Staff and included represent- 
 atives of the General Staff, Adjutant General's office and the 
 Provost Marshal General's office all impartial bodies con- 
 cerned with personnel procedure. 
 
 The fundamental principles underlying the methods of 
 allotment and the selective draft seemed quite sound. Dis- 
 satisfaction was occasioned by the incomplete operation of 
 the two systems. If the service rendered by the Committee 
 on Education and Special Training were intensified by in- 
 creasing its personnel and assigning one officer to represent 
 each Corps, and simultaneously the occupational classification
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 507 
 
 work in the Provost Marshall General's office were improved, 
 voluntary induction through the War Service Exchange, with 
 the evils noted, could be eliminated with decided simplification 
 in procedure and without in any way impairing the quality of 
 the personnel obtained by the various Staff Corps. 
 
 In June the Provost Marshal General issued an order 
 discontinuing all inductions of Class One men until July 1st, 
 and constituting the Provost Marshal General the only 
 authority for issuing orders to the local boards, thus prevent- 
 ing the Staff Corps from communicating with local boards on 
 inductions. 
 
 The induction of general service men for limited service 
 positions was prohibited, a new and important limitation to 
 induction. The War Service Exchange became, therefore, a 
 recruiting agency for limited service men and officer material 
 only and received induction authority only on requisition from 
 the Provost Marshal General's office. The War Service Ex- 
 change, as then organized, seemed destined to be a make- 
 shift organization, serving the Staff Corps with special types 
 of personnel until the Central Distributing Office, (which had 
 taken over the central personnel control previously exercised 
 by the Committee on Education and Special Training) the 
 Provost Marshal General's office and the new officer's train- 
 ing camps for civilians were functioning to full capacity. The 
 War Service Exchange was duplicating some of the efforts of 
 those more important organizations. 
 
 The staff members of the Exchange, however, believed they 
 possessed a substantial permanent contribution to offer the 
 Army in their intimate knowledge of the personnel needs of 
 the Staff Corps. This knowledge would make the Exchange 
 useful (1) as an agency for centralizing and organizing Staff 
 Corps personnel demands for a central personnel organiza- 
 tion. (2) as an agency for assigning to the Staff Corps the 
 rare specialists reported from the depot brigades and (8) as 
 an agency for applying the selective draft to individual cases. 
 The War Service Exchange had not relinquished the hope that
 
 508 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 eventually centralization of personnel functions in the War 
 Department would come. A closer co-operation, therefore, was 
 sought with the Committee on Classification of Personnel with 
 the suggestion that a central planning staff be established in 
 the Committee to co-ordinate the numerous activities of the 
 Committee, conduct outside research and recommend adjust- 
 ments to The Adjutant General which would improve the per- 
 sonnel system of the Army. . 
 
 TWO SPECIAL RECRUITING CAMPAIGNS 
 
 While the Exchange was thus considering the broader 
 phases of organization and policy, it was also continuing its 
 efforts to secure man-power scientifically. Besides routine 
 work and many smaller campaigns, it conducted two major 
 drives for specialists for Ordnance officers and for limited 
 service men. 
 
 Special Recruiting Campaign for the Ordnance Department. 
 The Ordnance Department required 375 mechanics to be fur- 
 nished within three weeks and 200 mechanics per month 
 thereafter, for training and service as commissioned officers 
 in division ammunition trains, mobile ordnance repair shops 
 and motorized artillery regiments. Over half a million me- 
 chanics were needeed for the various Army units at this time 
 and many times that number for war industries. Difficulties 
 were therefore anticipated. The War Service Exchange, in 
 conjunction with the Military Training Camps Association, 
 decided to issue a call for applicants from ten cities and, 
 if the number and caliber of the applicants should prove en- 
 couraging, to send out the Ordnance Officers' Examining Board 
 for the final official examination. In just four weeks from the 
 receipt of the requisition 1,011 applicants had been examined 
 for mechanical and physical qualifications and 477 recom- 
 mended for commissions as captains and lieutenants. Be- 
 sides those recommended for commissions, many not accept- 
 able as officer material signified a desire to serve as privates 
 and were accepted for the Ordance schools.
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 509 
 
 The Ordnance Department stated in acknowledgment to 
 the Exchange, "It is believed that the standard of excellence 
 in personnel secured upon these trips is higher than has been 
 obtained heretofore and acknowledgment is made for the ex- 
 cellent work done in carrying this endeavor to a successful 
 conclusion. It is felt that the success of the work was assured 
 by the careful and systematic management, and particularly 
 by the work done in the several cities in advance of the 
 meetings of the Ordnance Examining Board." 
 
 Over a thousand applications were received too late for the 
 official examination. These were submitted to fill a large re- 
 quisition for the same types of men received from the newly 
 formed Motor Transport Corps. The War Service Exchange 
 believed it had demonstrated that zonal administration with 
 centralized control was not only a practical but a most effec- 
 tive method of serving recruiting needs of the Staff Corps. 
 
 Special Campaign for Clerical Workers. Before the cam- 
 paign for Ordnance officers was completed, the Exchange 
 undertook another National drive for specialists. The Army 
 was faced with the necessity of diluting its physical force with 
 men whose minor defects, though disqualifying them for active 
 field service, would not interfere with Staff work. Many 
 physically perfect soldiers being used as clerks could be trans- 
 ferred to line work if limited service men were inducted to 
 replace them. 
 
 The Exchange, therefore, undertook a recruiting campaign 
 for 1,800 stenographers, accountants, clerks, chauffeurs and 
 inspectors for limited service with the Staff Corps. A plan 
 similar to that employed in the Ordnance campaign, with 
 complete detailed instructions and assigned quotas, was issued 
 to the representatives of the Military Training Camps Associ- 
 tion in fifteen cities. Instructions sent to the branch repre- 
 sentatives were completed to minute detail. Copy for news- 
 paper articles was furnished giving specific information to 
 the public, and trade tests for stenographers were used to 
 insure a high percentage of acceptable applicants. Inductions
 
 510 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were handled completely by means of standardized written 
 information. The Bureau of Aircraft Production reported 
 that of 336 candidates for induction as accountants and in- 
 spectors, 147 had been accepted, and that in addition over 400 
 other applicants had been offered voluntary induction through 
 correspondence instigated by the War Service Exchange 
 Campaign. The entire demand of the Bureau of Aircraft 
 Production for accountants and inspectors had not only been 
 met but oversupplied almost 100%. In all, over 1,000 of the 
 1,800 specialists required were furnished to the various corps. 
 This was considered by the corps as a remarkable showing in 
 view of the fact that the campaign was conducted when the 
 supply of limited service men was very much depleted by 
 continual draft for the various limited service camps. 
 
 There were twenty-eight people employed in the Exchange 
 at this time, occupying five rooms. Between January 18th 
 and October 1st, 9,000 personal interviews had been held with 
 applicants. Ninety thousand written applications for service 
 had been received, classified and assigned where possible. It 
 is conservatively estimated that the War Service Exchange 
 placed 10,000 men in the service. There were 7,000 active 
 information blanks from volunteers, classified and filed voca- 
 tionally and ready for placement on call by requisition. Credit 
 must be given to the Military Training Camps Association for 
 its invaluable field service and to the Federal Employment 
 Service, Department of Labor, for its co-operation. 
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE MERGED WITH 
 PERSONNEL BRANCH, GENERAL STAFF 
 
 While the War Service Exchange was completing the 
 limited service campaign, centralization of personnel proce- 
 dure was announced by the General Staff and a new Per- 
 sonnel Branch of the Operations Division of the General Staff 
 came into being. The members of the War Service Exchange 
 who had come more intimately into contact with the personnel 
 demand and supply conditions in the staff corps were assigned
 
 WAR SERVICE EXCHANGE 511 
 
 to formulate the plans for the Recruiting Sub-Section of the 
 Personnel Branch. These members used as a basis for their 
 work the plan for a centralized personnel organization which 
 they had submitted in May. They developed detailed instruc- 
 tions for the operation of the Recruiting Sub-Section, estab- 
 lishing central control in the Washington office and decentral- 
 ized administration through twelve district headquarters offi- 
 ces. They also drew up a standard application blank, a pub- 
 licity plan and other plans for administrative machinery. 
 
 The members of the Exchange who had served in the inter- 
 viewing, correspondence and office administration departments 
 of the Exchange were assigned the operation of the Wash- 
 ington District Headquarters of the Personnel Branch. This 
 office was to serve as a model for the other district offices. 
 
 Thus the idea of the War Service Exchange centralized 
 personnel procurement, operating with central control and 
 decentralized administration was realized. However, just 
 as the new organization was about to launch its first impor- 
 tant campaign, the armistice was signed. Orders were issued 
 cancelling recruiting programs, and the War Service Ex- 
 change passed into history along with the Recruiting Sub- 
 Section of the Personnel Branch, Operations Division, Gen- 
 eral Staff.
 
 CHAPTER 40 
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 
 THE PROBLEM OF HANDLING MISFITS 
 
 Misfits Unavoidable. It was early found that from a 
 variety of causes many unfit men appeared in the camps. In 
 unaccountable ways men not at all fit for combat service over- 
 seas were found in depot brigades, or receiving depots or 
 other recruiting points. Further, men in the divisions were 
 constantly developing disabilities and were found to be 
 unsuited for overseas service, thereby increasing the accumu- 
 lations of men only partially fit, or unfit for any kind of ser- 
 vice whatever. 
 
 When divisions were preparing to move out for transporta- 
 tion overseas it became the practice to discard all unsuitables 
 for any reason, often because of inability to speak English 
 well or because of some slight peculiarity. Such men were 
 dumped into the depot brigades, with the result that camp 
 space necessary for other organizations, or new divisions 
 forming was filled up with the "lame," the "halt" and the 
 "blind," and space for receiving the new draft was limited 
 thereby and the organization and training of new divisions 
 delayed. 
 
 The necessity for promptly handling this problem in an 
 intelligent and thorough way was finally recognized and the 
 General Staff assigned its solution to the Operations Division. 
 In turn it was placed in the hands of Major (later Lt. Col.) 
 Bernard Lentz, of that division, for study and suggestions. 
 
 What to Do With Misfits. About this time the Committee 
 on Classification of Personnel in the Army was also consider- 
 ing the necessity of using men of limited physical ability in 
 
 512
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 513 
 
 organizations and for occupations remote from combat ser- 
 vice. It had also been studying the English system of physical 
 and mental categories, and their method of utilizing men of 
 trade or professional ability, who were, however, not up to 
 the maximum standard physically. 
 
 Major Harold D. Corbusier, of the Medical Corps, a spe- 
 cialist in orthopedic work, brought to the attention of the Com- 
 mittee about this time a schedule for "Training Battalions" 
 to take over the development of men of limited physical 
 ability. A meeting was held on February 22, 1918, between 
 Mr. P. J. Reilly, Mr. J. J. Swan, both of the Committee, and 
 Colonel E. G. Brackett and Major H. D. Corbusier, the latter 
 two cf the Medical Corps. It was agreed after considerable 
 discussion that it was necessary to give this matter of using 
 limited service men serious and immediate consideration, and 
 it was recognized that the Medical Department must play 
 the principal part. 
 
 Pursuing this policy the Committee presented the matter to 
 Colonel F. Billings, who was in charge of the Reconstruction 
 Service of the Surgeon General's Office. Lieutenant Colonel 
 Edward King, his assistant, was assigned to co-operate in the 
 work. It was also discussed separately and in detail with 
 Major Lentz of the General Staff, and conferences were held 
 with various others in a position to assist. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 
 
 General Orders No. 45. On May 9, 1918, through the 
 efforts of Major Lentz, General Orders Number 45, were 
 issued. This established development battalions and provided 
 for their organization at each National Army, National Guard, 
 and Regular Army divisional camp, and in such other camps 
 as may be directed by the Secretary of War, and as many of 
 such battalions in each place as might be necessary to meet 
 the conditions. These battalions were to be organized under 
 Table 401 for Training Battalion, Infantry, Series D, cor- 
 rected March 22, 1918.
 
 514 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Purpose of Development Battalions. The function of the 
 battalions was to relieve divisions, replacement organizations, 
 etc., of all unfit men. There was to be conducted in such 
 battalions intensive training with a view to developing unfit 
 men for duty with combatant or non-combatant forces either 
 within the United States or for service abroad. A further 
 purpose was promptly to rid the service of all men who, after 
 thorough trial and examination, were found to be physically, 
 mentally, or morally incapable of performing the duties of a 
 soldier. 
 
 The control of these development battalions was placed 
 under the general supervision of the camp commander, but 
 they were specified as an adjunct of the depot brigades in 
 places where such depot brigades were regularly established. 
 
 The order went on to specify how the men were to be trans- 
 ferred to the development battalions, and then to name what 
 classes of men were regarded as eligible for immediate trans- 
 fer to such organizations. It also provided that in indepen- 
 dent commands where there were no development battalions, 
 men found unfit for general military service were to be trans- 
 ferred to the nearest adjacent development battalions. It 
 provided that men could not be transferred from these bat- 
 talions except on War Department orders. 
 
 It was recognized that many new problems were involved 
 in the organization of these battalions, and it was felt unwise 
 to attempt to cover every possible contingency in the first 
 instance, but the order did provide that commanders of such 
 battalions were to make recommendations in writing with the 
 view to increasing the efficiency of the project within the 
 period of one month. 
 
 Board of Control. For the purpose of receiving such sug- 
 gestions and co-ordinating the work, as well as with the idea 
 of preparing instructions and orders from time to time, a 
 board was appointed by The Adjutant General under date of 
 June 10, 1918, consisting of Lieutenant Colonel Harry E. 
 Mock of the Medical Department, Major (later Lt. Col.)
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 515 
 
 Bernard Lentz of the General Staff, and Mr. J. J. Swan of 
 the Adjutant General's Department. This board was to meet 
 on June 12, "for the purpose of co-ordinating the work in 
 connection with the establishment of battalions under General 
 Orders No. 4,5." 
 
 Just previous to the meeting Colonel Edward King was 
 temporarily substituted by the Medical Department for Lt. 
 Col. Mock, and served on the board during this preliminary 
 work. As a result of the board's investigation, instructions 
 concerning the operation of development battalions were 
 prepared and issued as War Department Document No. 812, 
 under date of July 1, 1918. The purpose of these instruc- 
 tions was to make clear certain points in General Orders No. 
 45, and to put before the commanders such general principles 
 with reference to the practical working of the order as would 
 insure uniformity of operation and the full use of such 
 features as experience had shown to be essential for the suc- 
 cess of the plan as a whole up to that time. 
 
 Classification of Limited Service Men. The system of 
 classifying limited service men is described in some detail in 
 Chapter 27. 
 
 THE PART OF PERSONNEL WORK IN 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 
 
 If the reception and classification of men who are physically 
 fit is essential for proper placement, it is apparent that this 
 is even more so in the case of men who are of a lower physical 
 class; and it was early evident that greater care would be 
 required to place such men occupationally in the Army. This 
 was fully substantiated by experience in England, where the 
 question of utilizing all its man power was of greater impor- 
 tance owing to the smaller number available, and that every 
 man was an important asset due to the fact that England had 
 called out her men to such a large extent. 
 
 About this time many officers in the American Army began 
 to realize that the same problem would have to be considered
 
 516 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 here and anticipated the time when the utilization of all men 
 entering the service would be seriously taken up. 
 
 Co-operation of Line, Medical and Personnel Officers 
 Necessary. It was evident from the start, and especially in 
 view of British experience, that the question of selecting and 
 placing men of limited physical ability required close co-ope- 
 ration on the part of the medical officers and personnel adju- 
 tants, since both the physical side and the occupational side 
 of a man would have to be considered together. It was for 
 this reason that the Committee on Classification of Personnel 
 considered it wise to have representation on the board having 
 to do with the formation of the plans and procedure for 
 operating development battalions. 
 
 This proved wise because there was a constant tendency 
 on the part of the Medical Department to regard all men not 
 physically fit as purely medical cases of clinical interest, and 
 to disregard the occupational phases and abilities of limited 
 service men who might be utilized to great advantage in terms 
 of their trade ability. 
 
 The revised plans referred to below, for operating develop- 
 ment battalions contemplated a very careful sorting of men 
 sent to such battalions, and the closest co-operation between 
 medical, personnel and line officers. The line officer must 
 have charge of training, but the character and extent of train- 
 ing must depend upon the recommendation of the medical 
 officers, who alone can determine what will help or hurt each 
 man. The line officers, moreover, must take care of the 
 physical training, the regular army training, and the assign- 
 ment of these men for various work in and about the camps. 
 
 The part to be played by personnel adjutants in this pro- 
 gram is perhaps best illustrated by studying what happened 
 in the camps where a personnel adjutant was not present. In 
 general, the medical officers were inclined to regard the bat- 
 talions as wonderful material for clinics. The different spe- 
 cialists, unintentionally of course, would keep men under dif- 
 ferent kinds of treatment and training for much longer
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 517 
 
 periods than was either necessary or permissible. On the 
 other hand, the line officers were inclined entirely to disregard 
 the instructions received from the surgeons relating to the 
 amount of training or work that a soldier should do. This 
 resulted very often in the line officer undoing all that the 
 surgeon was trying to accomplish. It was not at all unusual 
 to find a whole company assigned to different details, and 
 therefore unable to take prescribed treatments at the various 
 stations. 
 
 The personnel adjutant's business was to correlate these 
 two activities. He had to persuade the surgeons that this was 
 not a clinic, but was designed, to increase the man power of 
 the Army in the shortest possible time. He had to convince 
 the army officers that this was a reasonable and necessary 
 addition to army activities and that their part was definitely 
 to carry out the suggestions from the Surgeon General's Office 
 as to hours and amount of training. 
 
 Need of Real Personnel Work. The personnel adjutant 
 was able to do all this the more intelligently because he had 
 the man's full record on the qualification card, and could 
 intelligently advise each department regarding the army use- 
 fulness of the soldier. In fact, in the camps where personnel 
 adjutants were efficient, the line and medical officers -both 
 depended very largely upon the personnel adjutant's judg- 
 ment in finally releasing or assigning a man to definite work 
 in the camp or overseas. 
 
 One illustration will probably suffice. Assuming that a man 
 had taken treatment prescribed by the medical officer and a 
 maximum improvement had been obtained and assuming that 
 at the same time lie had taken an allotted amount of military 
 training and exercise, his case then comes up for the final 
 decision before the development battalion's surgeon and the 
 major commanding the development battalions. The personnel 
 adjutant is present with a card giving full information regard- 
 ing the soldier. The settlement of the case nine times out of 
 ten is based on the information contained on the qualification
 
 518 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 card, namely, what this man did in private life and what he 
 is fitted to do in the Army. If he is a shoemaker and has flat- 
 foot, there is no reason why he should not perform reasonable 
 service in the Army. If he is a plumber with missing teeth, 
 there is no reason why he should not work as a plumber in 
 the Army. 
 
 In other words, personnel work has been the single unit 
 correlating and wisely directing the activities of the two other 
 departments existing in development battalions. 
 
 PLANS FOR IMPROVING DEVELOPMENT 
 BATTALIONS 
 
 Defects in Original Plans. Practical experience with the 
 development battalions as organized under General Orders 
 No. 45, and early operating reports, Form CCP-601, coming 
 in for June and July, 1918, brought out difficulties and 
 defects, the chief of which may be summarized as follows: 
 
 1. Thousands of men unfit in one way or another were 
 transferred to the development battalions who should 
 have been assigned to duties they were competent to 
 perform within the Army. Many of these were left 
 behind as divisions moved overseas. 
 
 2. Many men were accepted who later turned out to be 
 unfit and were transferred to development battalions 
 when they should have been discharged on Surgeon's 
 Certificate of Disability. 
 
 3. Calls for limited service men brought to camps many 
 men who were unfit for immediate use, and hence be- 
 came development battalion cases. 
 
 4. In many cases perfectly fit men were also transferred 
 to these battalions. 
 
 5. No outlet was provided for this heavy influx and accu- 
 mulation of men. 
 
 6. Many inferior officers were assigned to development 
 battalions because of shortage or other reasons, with 
 the result that instructions were not carried out, and 
 training moved very slowly and imperfectly. 
 
 7. The general shortage of officers prevented securing 
 anything like an adequate supply. This resulted in
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 519 
 
 delays in sorting and classifying the men, medical 
 treatment and training. 
 
 8. Inadequate housing was also a serious factor, and en- 
 dangered the health of thousands. 
 
 Plans for Changes Eased on Experience. The first rush 
 and confusion described was anticipated to some extent, and 
 investigations and studies of all phases were under way since 
 May 9, 1918, for the purpose of securing absolute data to 
 enable accurate and final recommendations to be made. As 
 these reports of operation came in from development bat- 
 talions these various defects were called to attention and sug- 
 gestions for improvements were offered. To test out plans a 
 model battalion was organized at Camp Meade, and officers 
 from various other camps were called there to perfect methods 
 for general use. Various other steps were taken, such as the 
 assignment of medical officers as inspectors and the appoint- 
 ment of Mr. Henry H. Wellman as General Supervisor for 
 the Adjutant General's Department, to visit and standardize 
 methods in the operation of development battalions. 
 
 Ultimately a report was presented to the Board, and a new 
 order to replace General Orders No. 45 was prepared in con- 
 ference with all departments interested. 
 
 A manual for the operation of development battalions to 
 supplement the new general order, and to replace Document- 
 No. 812 which amplified the original General Orders No. 45, 
 was in process of construction. This was to include complete 
 and definite instructions on all phases of development bat- 
 talion operation. It would have been complete enough to per- 
 mit a competent officer to organize and operate a development 
 battalion in every respect. 
 
 Had the war continued the work of development battalions 
 would have increased in importance. They would have fur- 
 nished a considerable supply of limited service men to replace 
 and liberate large numbers of other men fit for general service 
 overseas. 
 
 Revised General Order to Replace G. 0. No. 45. This
 
 520 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 new order was about to be issued when the armistice was 
 signed on November 11, and an order issued on November 15, 
 1918 to begin demobilizing development battalions went into 
 effect. The new order is printed here in full as it presents 
 the solution as to how development battalions should be 
 operated in the light of experience up to November 11, 1918. 
 
 "1. General Order No. 45, War Department, May 9th, 1918, is 
 hereby revoked and the following substituted therefor; such other 
 instructions as conflict with the following order are also revoked. 
 
 Under the authority conferred by the Act of Congress, "Authoriz- 
 ing the President to Increase Temporarily the Military Establish- 
 ment of the United States," approved May 18, 1917, and the Act 
 of Congress approved July 9, 1918 (Pub. 193), the President directs 
 that there be organized for the period of the existing emergency at 
 each divisional camp, and in such other camps or stations, as may 
 be directed by the Secretary of War, one or more development bat- 
 talions and a headquarters for development battalions to be organ- 
 ized under Table 400, Receiving Battalion, Depot Brigade, Series D, 
 corrected to August 13, 1918. 
 
 In camps where one development battalion is located, headquarters 
 for the development battalion will consist of authorized headquarters 
 as provided for in Table 400, Receiving Battalion, plus one first 
 lieutenant personnel officer. Additional commissioned personnel (in- 
 cluding a chief surgeon for the development battalion) will be de- 
 tailed from officers on duty with the development battalions as 
 needed. 
 
 In camps where two or more development battalions are located, 
 headquarters for development battalions will consist of: 
 
 1. Lieutenant Colonel 1 
 
 2. Major, Medical Corps 1 
 
 (Chief Surgeon, Development Battalions) 
 
 3. Captains 2 
 
 (1 adjutant, 1 personnel officer) 
 
 Additional commissioned personnel, as needed by headquarters for 
 development battalions (authorized above for two or more bat- 
 talions) will be detailed from officers on duty with development bat- 
 talions. Enlisted personnel, to assist the headquarters for develop- 
 ment battalions will be detailed on special duty from the enlisted 
 personnel provided for headquarters Receiving Battalion, Table 400. 
 The officers authorized herein will be provided as prescribed in
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 521 
 
 the third paragraph of section I and by section IX of the Act of 
 May 18, 1917, and, as far as practicable, will be selected from those 
 who are physically disqualified for combatant service. 
 
 Training cadres for companies in Development Battalions, and 
 enlisted men as above prescribed, for headquarters, development 
 battalions,' will be selected, as soon as possible, from those who have 
 been classified C-l and C-2. They will not, as a rule, be transferred 
 from development battalions unless, as time goes by, they become 
 fit for general military service. Special medical, morale and psychol- 
 ogical officers in addition to the personnel prescribed above may be 
 attached to the development battalions as necessary. 
 
 J< 2. Development Battalions have been authorized for the definite 
 purpose of relieving combatant forces, and other special units, of men 
 .disqualified by physical defects or for other reasons. The functions 
 of the development battalions, therefore, are: 
 
 (a) To furnish a center for the reception of all such men. 
 
 (b) To conduct intensive training with a view to developing 
 unfit men along lines of physical, functional and vocational 
 reconstruction for duty with combatant or non-combatant 
 forces. 
 
 (c) To classify and assign men to useful duty in the service or 
 to promptly rid the service of all men who, after thorough 
 trial and observation, are found incapable of performing 
 useful duty as soldiers. 
 
 "3. Development battalions will be conducted as separate camp 
 activities directly under the camp commander. 
 
 "4. The following procedure in connection with the transfer of men 
 to the development battalions will be observed in camps where the 
 establishment of such battalions is authorized: 
 
 (a) In connection with each headquarters for development bat- 
 talions there will be appointed a Clearing Board which will consist 
 of the Chief Development Battalion Surgeon, the personnel officer 
 and one line officer. The Camp Surgeon will make available for 
 the use of the Clearing Board, such special medical officers as may 
 be necessary for examination and consultation purposes. The Chief 
 Development Battalion surgeon is the member of this Board re- 
 sponsible for the final classification of men appearing before the 
 Board. 
 
 (b) When an enlisted man is inapt or does not possess the 
 required degree of adaptability for military service; or has not suf- 
 ficient knowledge of the English language to enable him to properly 
 perform his duties; or gives evidence of habits or traits of character.
 
 522 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 other than those for which trial by court martial should be employed, 
 that render his service in the organization undesirable; or is dis- 
 qualified for service physically through his own misconduct or other- 
 wise; or is an alien enemy or allied alien enemy; or an alien who is 
 not a declarant and has been drafted through his ignorance of his 
 rights under the selective service law, or for any other reason, is 
 not fit to perform the duties of a soldier, his company or detach- 
 ment commander will report the facts to the commanding officer 
 who will appoint a board consisting of one officer, preferably the 
 summary court. This board will determine whether or not the soldier 
 should be sent to the Clearing Board with a view to transfer to 
 the development battalion. When transfer to the development bat- 
 talion on account of physical disability is contemplated, the board 
 will consult a medical officer before transfer is recommended. 
 
 (c) The Clearing Board will examine all men properly brought 
 before it and will dispose of them as follows: 
 
 Men considered fit for duty in the organization to which they be- 
 long will be returned to said organization. 
 
 Men subject to discharge on surgeon's certificate of disability will 
 be immediately recommended for discharge. 
 
 Men whose conditions and usefulness can be improved by develop- 
 ment and instruction will be transferred to development battalions. 
 
 Men found suitable by the Clearing Board for immediate assign- 
 ment to duty will be classified as available for transfer and will 
 be held in development battalions until transferred. 
 
 All recommendations of the Clearing Board, including return to 
 original organization, assignment to development battalion, available 
 for transfer after classification or discharge for other than physical 
 reasons, will be submitted to the camp commander for approval 
 or disapproval and the camp commander or authorized representative 
 will promptly issue the necessary orders to carry his decisions into 
 effect. Recommendations for discharge for physical reasons will 
 be disposed of according to existing regulations. 
 
 (d) Camp commanders are hereby authorized to issue discharge 
 recommended by the Clearing Board "By Order of the Secretary 
 of War." This authority applies not only to discharge on surgeon's 
 certificate of disability under existing instructions, but also to any 
 other cases where, in the opinion of the camp commander, such dis- 
 charge is for the best interests of the service. The intention, how- 
 ever, is that practically all discharges recommended by the Clearing 
 Boards should be on surgeon's certificate of disability and other 
 processes for discharge should not be used except when the sur- 
 geon's certificate of disability is clearly unsuitable.
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 523 
 
 (e) For the purpose of this order, such independent commands 
 as are adjacent to and intimately connected with divisional camps 
 or cantonments, will be considered a part of such camp or can- 
 tonment. 
 
 '5. Within the development battalions men will be grouped de- 
 pending upon physical disability, extent and character of training, 
 intelligence, nationality, or other conditions. Men who, after thorough 
 trial and observation, show that they cannot be made useful in some 
 capacity, will be discharged. In exceptional cases, and then only 
 upon recommendation of the Clearing Board, will men be kept in 
 development battalions under treatment and training for a period 
 exceeding two months. The number of such men kept for more 
 than two months will be reported on the monthly summary report, 
 Form CCP-601. As a rule, men should either be made available 
 for assignment within two months or they should be discharged. 
 
 "6. While men are undergoing treatment and training in the de- 
 velopment battalions, they will not be detailed for guard, fatigue 
 or other duty outside the development battalions. Men who have 
 been classified, and while awaiting assignment, may be detailed for 
 such duty in the camp. 
 
 "7. The Clearing Board, as defined above, will classify all men 
 in development battalions in accordance with Circular No. 7, War 
 Department, October, 8, 1918. Transfers and discharges from de- 
 velopment battalions will be made only after recommendation by the 
 Clearing Board. Camp commanders are hereby authorized to trans- 
 fer classified men from development battalions to organizations 
 within their respective camps. Class A men will and Class C-l 
 men of special qualifications may be transferred to combatant 
 organizations intended for overseas service. Classes C-l and C-2 
 men may be transferred to non-combatant organizations within 
 the camp to fill authorized vacancies or to replace men who 
 are fit for overseas service. Men who are designated as "star" 
 men on form CCP-15 will not be transferred from development 
 battalions except by War Department order. Transfers as pro- 
 vided for above will be made by camp commanders between 
 the first and twentieth of each month, both dates inclusive. 
 Beginning on the twenty-first of each month, the occupational report 
 CCP-15 will be prepared. This report will include all men in de- 
 velopment battalions who are then available for transfer and who 
 have not actually been transferred. Separate reports on form CCP- 
 15 will be prepared for men of classes A, C-l, and C-2 (formerly 
 Ratings 1, 2, and 3). Separate reports will be made, in the same 
 manner covering colored men. These reports will be mailed so
 
 524 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 as to reach the Adjutant General's office (Room 528) not later 
 than the first of the following month. Men so reported will be 
 transferred out of development battalions only upon orders from 
 the War Department. 
 
 "8. In posts, camps, or stations where the number of men is not 
 sufficient to warrant the establishment of a development battalion, 
 the classes of men enumerated in paragraph 4b (except venereals 
 who will be treated at their stations) will be transferred to the 
 nearest development battalion. The proceedings of the board (one- 
 officer, preferably the Summary Court), appointed to recommend 
 transfers, will be sent for approval, to Department Headquarters, 
 when troops are under the jurisdiction of such commander. In cases 
 arising at arsenals, etc., that are within the territorial limits of 
 the department but are ordinarily exempted from the control ot 
 the department commander, recommendations for transfer to de- 
 velopment battalions will be likewise sent to Department Headquar- 
 ters. In these cases department commanders will issue the necessary 
 orders for transfer, after first ascertaining from the commanding offi- 
 cer, under whose jurisdiction the nearest development battalion is 
 placed, that accommodations are available. Should such accommoda- 
 tions not be available, report will be made to the War Department for 
 instructions. In this connection department commanders should 
 scrutinize recommendations for transfer to development battalions 
 with a view to keeping such transfers at a minimum. In order 
 that department commanders may do this intelligently a copy of 
 qualification and medical card (form CCP-1) will be sent with rec- 
 ommendations for transfers to department Headquarters. Until 
 the new qualification and medical card is received, copies of form 
 CCP-1, now being used, and medical form 88, or other appropriate 
 form describing the case, will be sent with recommendations for 
 transfer to the development battalions. Department commanders 
 will not approve recommendations for transfer to development bat- 
 talions of men who clearly should be discharged on surgeon's certifi- 
 cate of disability. Men who are fit for limited service and who 
 probably cannot be further developed will, as far as possible, be 
 utilized by department commanders in non-combatant organizations 
 within their respective departments. 
 
 "9. Commanding officers of general hospitals and recruit depots 
 are hereby authorized to transfer men from their respective com- 
 mands direct to the nearest development battalions. Before such 
 transfers are made, they will ascertain, from commanders of camps 
 to which it is intended to send men, whether or not accommodations 
 are available in development battalions. Should such accommoda-
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 525 
 
 tions not be available, report will be made to tbe War Department 
 for instructions. 
 
 "10. These instructions are intended to cover all cases arising 
 within the continental limits of the United States. This applies to 
 men returned from abroad and to all branches of the service. The 
 instructions contained herein also apply to development battalions 
 authorized for Porto Rico. The Commanding General, American 
 Kxpeditionary Forces will issue such instructions as he may deem 
 necessary relative to the disposition within his command of men in 
 the classes enumerated in paragraph 4b above. 
 
 "11. Transfers to development battalions will be made within the 
 grades held by enlisted men, unless transferred for disability, which 
 is the result of their own mis-conduct such men should be reduced 
 to private before transfer. When the number of non-commissioned 
 officers, cooks, etc., sent to a development battalion, exceeds the 
 number provided for in Table 400, Receiving Battalion, such men 
 will be carried on the rolls of the battalions as extra numbers. 
 Men holding grades, such as saddler, horseshoer, etc., not provided 
 for in Table 400, will also be carried as extra number on the rolls 
 of the battalion to which they are assigned. 
 
 "12. Cases of men whose disposition is not covered by these 
 instructions, will be referred to the War Department for necessary 
 action. 
 
 "13. On the last of each month, camp commanders will rennet 
 report on form CCP-601 to the Adjutant General (Room 528). This 
 report will be made by Headquarters for Development Battalions 
 and will be a consolidated report for all development battalions in 
 the respective camps. 
 
 "14. Camp Commanders and officers who are placed on duty with 
 development battalions should bear in mind the importance of this 
 work. Success in conserving the man power of the nation can be 
 obtained only through untiring effort and an exercise of good 
 judgment on the part of Commanders who should assign, to Develop- 
 ment Battalions, officers who possess special fitness for the duty to 
 be performed." 
 
 EXTENT OF GROWTH OF DEVELOPMENT 
 BATTALIONS 
 
 The extent to which these battalions had grown in a short 
 time is indicated by the attached summary reports. 
 
 The figures reported here are incomplete and do not give a 
 full or accurate summary of the actual conditions up to
 
 526 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 November 30, 1918. The inaccuracy is due to the fact that 
 orders for demobilization of November 15 resulted in incom- 
 plete reports in certain cases and no reports at all from four 
 camps, although repeatedly called for. 
 
 They do, however, afford a fairly general summary of the 
 situation and an idea of the extent to which the establish- 
 ment of these battalions assisted in clearing or relieving divi- 
 sions and depot brigades of men unfitted for full military 
 service. 
 
 An analysis of the data which brings out other interesting 
 and useful details, is attached. 
 
 Development Battalions. Consolidated or Summary Report. 
 From Organizations to November 30, 1918. 
 
 Total 
 
 Totals to account for this report 229,958 
 
 Totals discharged 36,274 
 
 Totals deserted 919 
 
 Totals died 1,358 
 
 Rated 1 38,466 
 
 Rated 2 42,738 
 
 Rated 3 39,468 
 
 All transfers out of battalions 115,694 
 
 Totals remaining in battalions 89,370 
 
 Development Battalions. Summary of Various Types 
 Disqualifications. 
 
 (Incomplete Figures.) 
 
 Total by Per Cent 
 
 Disqualifications of Total 
 
 Venereals 77,456 34.4 % 
 
 Foot conditions 28,823 12.7 % 
 
 Mental 4,798 2.1 % 
 
 Functional heart condition 10,917 4.8 % 
 
 All other physical 53,540 23.7 %
 
 DEVELOPMENT BATTALIONS 527 
 
 Non-English 
 
 Total by 
 Disqualifications t 
 .... 15,562 
 
 Per Cent 
 of Total 
 6.8 % 
 5.8 % 
 0.19% 
 0.51% 
 0.61% 
 2.1 % 
 5.9 % 
 
 Illiterates 
 
 .... 13,215 
 
 Morally unfit 
 
 140 
 
 Conscientious obj ectors . . . 
 
 1,093 
 
 Draft evaders 
 
 .... 1,196 
 
 Enemy aliens 
 
 4,623 
 
 Other aliens 
 
 13,354 
 
 
 
 Totals 224,717
 
 CHAPTER 41 
 
 THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND 
 
 SPECIAL TRAINING AND THE STUDENTS' 
 
 ARMY TRAINING CORPS 
 
 THE HANDLING OF SPECIALISTS 
 
 The Committee on Classification of Personnel (CCP) and 
 the Committee on Education and Special Training (EST) 
 were both interested in providing the Army with men of 
 special ability either to work at a trade or to command other 
 men. Before the relation which these committees sustained to 
 each other can be clearly understood a brief introductory 
 statement regarding the handling of trade specialists is 
 necessary. 
 
 Beginning with the fall of 1917 calls for men with trade 
 ability were made by staff corps for their technical units in 
 constantly increasing volume. This situation was critical 
 since (1) no adequate machinery for handling such calls or 
 allotting trade specialists existed; (2) there were no tables 
 showing the numbers of trade specialists required either for 
 individual units or the entire Army as authorized in October, 
 1917 amounting to forty divisions in addition to units for 
 corps and army troops and the services of supply; and (3) 
 in addition, there existed no reliable figures on the number of 
 each kind of specialist received in each 100,000 of the draft. 
 
 In meeting these difficulties, which were of the utmost im- 
 portance for EST, the CCP played an important part. 
 
 Allotment Machinery. In the fall of 1917 when calls for 
 specialists were received by the Adjutant General they were 
 referred to the CCP through Major (later Lt. Col.) Grenville 
 Clark, who had been assigned to the Committee as military 
 
 528
 
 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 529 
 
 associate and executive officer by Major General McCain. A 
 memorandum recommending whether or not transfer of such 
 trade specialists should be made and from what point was 
 prepared and submitted by The Adjutant General to the Chief 
 of Staff. These recommendations were consistently approved. 
 Major Clark recommended in October, 1917, that a liaison 
 officer from the General Staff be appointed to act with him 
 on allotments, and on The Adjutant General's request Lt. Col. 
 (later Brigadier General) Robert I. Rees was assigned. From 
 October, 1917, to February, 1918, calls for trade specialists 
 were handled in the first instance by them and from February 
 to June, 1918, by the Committee on Education and Special 
 Training of which they were both members. Thereafter the 
 Operations Division, represented by Lt. Colonel Richard H. 
 Kimball, handled the requisitions. The men to be trans- 
 ferred were located throughout this entire period from the 
 records kept by the CCP. 
 
 THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND SPECIAL 
 TRAINING AND PERSONNEL REQUISITIONS 
 
 The Committee on Education and Special Training, during 
 the period named, handled requisitions for trade specialists 
 as one of its functions. Its membership, Colonel (later 
 Brigadier General) Hugh S. Johnson, Deputy Provost Mar- 
 shal General, later succeeded by Lt. Col. (later Colonel) 
 John H. Wigmore, Lt. Col. (later Brigadier General) 
 Robert I. Rees, General Staff, and Major (later Lt. Col.) 
 Grenville Clark, Adjutant General's Department, included 
 those branches of the Army particularly interested in the 
 administration of personnel and made quick action possible. 
 
 Under General Orders No. 15, February 10, 1918, the 
 functions of The Committee on Education and Special Train- 
 ing were defined. 
 
 "2. Under the direction of the Chief of Staff the func- 
 tions of the Committee shall be: to study the needs of the 
 various branches of the service for skilled men and tech-
 
 530 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 nicians; to determine how such needs shall be met; whether 
 by selective draft, special training in educational institu- 
 tions or otherwise; to secure the co-operation of the educa- 
 tional institutions of the country and to represent the War 
 Department in its relations with such institutions ; to admi- 
 nister such plan of special training in colleges and schools 
 as may be adopted. 
 
 "3. The Committee on Education and Special Training 
 shall have associated with it an advisory civilian board 
 appointed by the Secretary of War, composed of represen- 
 tatives of educational institutions. An officer shall be 
 detailed by the Chief of each Staff Corps and Department 
 to consult with the Committee concerning the needs of his 
 Corps or Department." 
 
 The EST, by a letter in February to all staff corps, 
 regularized the procedure in filling requisitions for skilled 
 personnel as follows: 
 
 "The Committee will have office room adjoining the 
 Classification Committee and War Service Exchange of the 
 Adjutant General's Office. By co-ordinating the work of 
 the Committee on Education and Special Training with 
 these organizations it is the intention to have a clearing 
 house for all personnel requirements, in order that requisi- 
 tions of various branches of the service for men may be 
 dealt with systematically. 
 
 "In order to co-ordinate the administration of matters 
 relating to personnel requirements the following procedure 
 will govern on and after February 12th: 
 
 (a) All requisitions and statements of needs relating to 
 enlisted personnel will be addressed and sent to "The 
 Adjutant General of the Army, attention Room 528, War 
 Department Building." (Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel.) 
 
 (b) These requisitions will be recorded and turned over 
 to the Committee on Education and Special Training 
 which, under the direction of the Chief of Staff, will 
 determine how the requisition shall be dealt with, whether 
 by selective draft, special training in educational institu- 
 tions, transfers of men already in the service, volunteer 
 recruiting or otherwise. 
 
 (c) In determining how to handle a particular case the 
 Committee will consult with the representative of the
 
 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 531 
 
 Staff Department concerned; having reached a decision 
 and obtained the approval of the Chief of Staff, the 
 matter will be handled as follows: (1) If it be a case 
 for selective draft the necessary steps will be taken by 
 the Provost Marshal General; (2) If it be a case for 
 selection and transfer of men already in the service, the 
 necessary steps will be taken by the Adjutant General 
 and his Classification Committee; (3) Cases involving 
 volunteer recruiting will be handled by the usual ma- 
 chinery of the Adjutant General's Office; (4) Cases in- 
 volving special training in educational institutions will 
 be dealt with directly by the Committee on Education 
 and Special Training under its authority to administer 
 such plan of special training in colleges and schools as 
 may be adopted. The same will apply to special training 
 in industrial plants. (5) Requisitions for individual 
 specialists, for men to fill civilian positions and cases 
 involving relations with the Department of Labor will 
 be handled by the War Service Exchange of the Adju- 
 tant General's Office. It is not intended, however, to 
 disturb arrangements already established by staff depart- 
 ments for filling civilian positions. 
 
 "All requisitions for men will be set forth in terms of 
 the index of occupations prepared by the Adjutant Gen- 
 eral's Classification Committee. Copy of index is inclosed. 
 Each requisition shall specify the number of men wanted 
 under each head, giving the numeral and symbol according 
 to the index of occupations. As above stated, all requisi- 
 tions will be addressed and sent to the Adjutant General of 
 the Army, attention Room 528." 
 
 TABLES OF OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALISTS NEEDED 
 
 As early as September, 1917, the CCP began to list the 
 needs of an infantry division in terms of trade specialists or 
 occupations. It had likewise encouraged and assisted the staff 
 corps in determining the occupational needs of its units. With 
 its establishment the Committee on Education and Special 
 Training was charged with forecasting the needs "of the 
 service for skilled men and technicians." 
 
 With the co-operation of the staff corps and Major Clark 
 for EST, Mr. Alexander C. Robinson III. of the Committee
 
 532 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 prepared in February a forecast of the needs for specialists 
 based on the units included in the six phases of the army 
 organization. This showed a probable shortage in the number 
 of skilled specialists required. The character of the army 
 had changed in a year so radically as to demand thousands 
 of occupational specialists where hundreds had sufficed before. 
 A survey of the following table from the annual report of the 
 Secretary of War, 1918, reveals the great increase of tech- 
 nical units in the present army. 
 
 Old Army, New Army, 
 
 March, November, 
 
 1917. 1918. 
 
 Infantry and machine gun 85,000 974,000 
 
 Engineer 3,000 394,000 
 
 Field Artillery and ammunition train 9,000 389,000 
 
 Medical 7,000 300,000 
 
 Quartermaster 8,000 228,000 
 
 Coast Artillery 21,000 137,000 
 
 Ordnance 1,000 64,000 
 
 Signal 3,000 52,000 
 
 Cavalry '. 22,000 29,000 
 
 Air Service 202,000 
 
 Motor Transport 103,000 
 
 Militia Bureau 27,000 
 
 Chemical Warfare 18,000 
 
 Tank 14,000 
 
 In training 549.000 
 
 All other 31,000 185,000 
 
 Total 190,000 3,665,000 
 
 The forecast of needs was not accurate; it could not be, 
 since many of the units were new and their proper balance of 
 skilled personnel undetermined. Only months afterwards 
 were adequate tables of occupational needs prepared for the 
 Staff Corps when this work was taken over and pushed to 
 completion by the Committee. (See Chapter 14.) 
 
 The forecast could not be used as an exact basis of opera- 
 tion because of another reason. The date when the different 
 units authorized would be organized was not exactly stated,
 
 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 
 
 and the program of shipping changed repeatedly during the 
 spring months. The great push was to send over infantry 
 divisions. In consequence it was impossible to say on Feb- 
 ruary 15: "By June 1 we shall have to have 100.000 me- 
 chanics organized as units ready for shipment, and of these we 
 have 5,000 available and 65,000 assured from the drafts up 
 to May 15." All that could be said was: "We are going to 
 need great numbers of specialists, and we must get an ample 
 supply." 
 
 THE SKILLED MEN FURNISHED BY THE DRAFT 
 
 To determine the numbers of skilled men which the Army 
 might expect to secure from the draft, the Committee through 
 Dr. Bingham had made an analysis of occupations received 
 in each 100,000 of the draft. Work was begun on this in 
 November, 1917. This supply, as compared with the calls for 
 specialists and with the projected tables of needs caused great 
 anxiety. This was intensified by reason of the fact that indus- 
 try would have to keep many of the specialists needed in the 
 Army if it were to produce munitions and other necessary 
 supplies. 
 
 By the end of 1917 it became apparent that the Army would 
 have to undertake the program of training to increase the 
 number of skilled or semi-skilled men needed for its units. 
 The EST was authorized to administer the program which 
 the studies of the CCP had shown to be vital. It associated 
 with itself, therefore, on the advice and with the assistance 
 of the Committee a Civilian Advisory Board of Educators. 
 The membership of this board, of which Dr. Charles R. Mann 
 W.TS chairman, included Dr. James R. Angell, member of the 
 Committee, and Mr. J. W. Dietz and Mr. C. R. Dooley, both 
 of whom were camp supervisors for the committee. 
 
 THE TRAINING PROGRAM OF THE COMMITTEE 
 ON EDUCATION AND SPECIAL TRAINING 
 
 The training functions of EST increasingly absorbed the 
 attention of its members and in June, 1918, its work of allot-
 
 534 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ting skilled personnel was taken over by the Operations Divi- 
 sion, General Staff. 
 
 The need for trade specialists EST planned to meet by 
 establishing training detachments at institutions already 
 engaged in vocational or technical training. In April, 1918, 
 contracts were made with twenty-three institutions and on 
 November 11 there were 124- training detachments (known 
 then as Section B, S. A. T. C.) A total of 142 institutions had 
 units at some time during this period. The total number of 
 men contracted for with these vocational sections was 143,508. 
 The initial authorization for this training was 20,000, later 
 raised by 80,000 additional for the period ending November 1, 
 1918. The 1918 winter program authorized an additional 
 220,000 (20,000 of this colored). 
 
 In their handling of vocational specialists the Committee 
 assisted EST in four ways: (1) by furnishing estimates of 
 probable shortages as a guide in determining the numbers and 
 kinds of men to be trained; (2) by assisting in procuring 
 suitable men to be trained; (3) by distributing the trained 
 personnel from the schools; and (4) by some supervision of 
 the classification work done at Training Detachment Units. 
 
 In none of these activities were the results completely satis- 
 factory to the Committee. The shortage figures were given 
 as imperfect estimates only, and further information adequate 
 to check them did not seem available for use by EST. Be- 
 cause of this operation on problematical estimates there were 
 instances of groups of men being trained in certain lines in 
 excess of the need for them. 
 
 The men secured for training never gave complete satis- 
 faction. This was due primarily to the inability of the Com- 
 mittee and EST, because of outside factors, to have men 
 sent to Training Detachments from Depot Brigades. There 
 the CCP classification machinery would have selected men 
 according to specifications and so insured apprentices in 
 trades going to Training Detachments of their trade. Where 
 such procedure was impossible men with at least promising
 
 535 
 
 potential ability might have been sent. As it was, the Train- 
 ing Detachments received men direct from Local Boards. 
 Frequently, the selection was badly made, both as to previous 
 trade experience and to potential ability. A single quotation 
 from a report of June 26th, made by a supervisor is in point: 
 
 "Observations at Trade Schools indicate that Draft 
 Boards are not always exercising good judgment -in the 
 selection of men inducted for training in these schools. Men 
 already skilled in occupations useful in the Army are sent 
 to schools without facilities for continuation courses in these 
 subjects. The result is that these men are put into courses 
 for which they are unqualified and which they have no de- 
 sire to learn. This results in much waste of time, money 
 and good material, besides working an injustice to the men 
 so inducted." 
 
 A partial remedy was found in a small receiving and classi- 
 fication post opened in May, 1918, at Valparaiso University, 
 Indiana, where a personnel adjutant classified and trade 
 tested the men before sending them to Training Detachments. 
 Only a fraction of the men needed, however, could be thus 
 supplied. 
 
 The distribution of men at the close of their training period 
 was unsatisfactory because men had to be removed from the 
 schools on a set date, irrespective of the ability of technical 
 units in the Army camps to absorb them on that date. No 
 storage camp was ever supplied, and as a consequence men 
 were sometimes misplaced even after having been trained. 
 The total number distributed by the central distributing office 
 from the Training Detachments was 89,094-. 
 
 The classification work carried on at some Training De- 
 tachments was unsatisfactory because of two reasons: men 
 were reported to Washington for distribution as tradesmen 
 in the trade taught at their unit, irrespective of the fact 
 that because of the misplacements by Local Boards men 
 already fairly skilled in one trade might be sent to a de- 
 tachment teaching, a different trade and come out of it less 
 skilled in the new than in the old trade. In addition men
 
 536 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were reported as more highly skilled than their performance 
 warranted. When these men were secured in technical Army 
 units considerable criticism resulted. The Soldiers' Qualifica- 
 tion Cards (CCP-1) were so imperfectly made out that in 
 August Training Detachments were instructed to discontinue 
 making them except for men going directly overseas. For 
 all others, cards were made out by the personnel system at 
 Army Camps receiving them. When Training Detachments 
 became Section B units in the S. A. T. C. (Oct. l) trained 
 personnel adjutants were assigned to them, and, had the war 
 continued, the making of the qualification cards would have 
 been resumed. 
 
 These difficulties were at least in part inescapable in the 
 early months of the war. Doubtless they would have been 
 overcome as the Army program became stable, the numbers 
 of men needed were exactly predictable, and the personnel 
 force in the units better trained and experienced. Even with 
 the imperfections incident to its operation the work of EST 
 in the vocational sections accomplished its purpose it in- 
 creased the number of trade specialists available for the 
 Army. 
 
 THE STUDENTS' ARMY TRAINING CORPS 
 
 In addition to training technical specialists EST prepared 
 and executed plans for increasing the officer personnel in 
 which by June, 1918, there was a decided shortage due to the 
 unexpected increase in the size of the Army. The plans in- 
 volved bringing the colleges of the country into the military 
 program as posts for the preliminary training of officer 
 material. In June the Students' Army Training Corps was 
 authorized. College students were to be enlisted, then 
 placed on furlough status and, as civilians without pay, re- 
 main in college for study and military training. Three sum- 
 mer camps for training an instructing personnel drawn from 
 college instructors and students were opened July 18th, and 
 ran for two months with an attendance of about 8,000.
 
 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 537 
 
 The military program was increased in July to 98 divisions 
 arid the increased man-power bill changing the draft limits 
 to 18 and 45 was projected. These circumstances caused a 
 recasting of the S. A. T. C. program; and it was decided to 
 place the college under military control and enlist the stu- 
 dent body and continue them in regular army status with 
 full pay. Twenty-seven hundred of those in attendance at 
 the summer camps were commissioned and many of these were 
 returned to conduct the military training at the colleges. 
 About 526 units were established in October and November, 
 1918. 
 
 The Committee assisted the S. A. T. C. by training per- 
 sonnel adjutants for its units, by devising a plan for selecting 
 and classifying officer material in the units and a plan for ad- 
 mitting new soldiers to S. A. T. C. units. Demobilization 
 officers for S. A. T. C. were also trained under supervision 
 of the Committee. 
 
 Training Schools for Personnel Adjutants. At a joint meet- 
 ing of members of the Committee and EST held August 30, 
 1918, the Committee agreed to conduct training schools for 
 personnel adjutants at the three summer training camps. In- 
 structing staffs were dispatched and Mr. Kendall Weisiger, 
 Mr. John J. Coss, and Mr. A. J. Turner were put in charge 
 of schools opening September 16, at Plattsburg, N. Y., Fort 
 Sheridan, Illinois and the Presidio, San Francisco. These 
 supervisors selected the personnel to be trained and con- 
 ducted an intensive eight day course. The quality of the 
 personnel trained was notably high and excellent results were 
 achieved. All phases of Army paper work as well as the 
 personnel work proper, including classification, were covered. 
 (See Chapter 38 for further details.) 
 
 The Thorndike Rating Plan. The S. A. T. C. with its 
 125,000 soldiers was regarded as a promising field for men to 
 be sent to officers' training camps. Indeed, up to November 
 11, 1918, 8,000 officer candidates were transferred from S. A. 
 T. C. units Section A and 1,144 from Section B. Infantry,
 
 538 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Field and Coast Artillery, Air Service (pilots and observers) 
 and certain branches of the Navy as well were all anxious 
 to recruit from the colleges. The Committee through its chair- 
 man, Dr. E. L. Thorndike, assisted by Dr. T. L. Kelley, 
 presented in September and in finished form in October a 
 plan for selecting impartially from S. A. T. C. the men best 
 qualified for each of these branches. 
 
 The details of the plan in its final form were worked out 
 by Dr. Kelley and a committee of 9. A. T. C. supervisors, 
 operating under Mr. A. C. Vinal, Director of S. A. T. C. 
 Personnel Methods. The plan is fully described in Chapter 
 XIII, Volume II, (Personnel Manual). Briefly, it involved 
 having each branch of the service desiring candidates for 
 officer training divide 1 00 points between seven qualities which 
 they required in their officers. The entire student body was 
 then to be rated on these seven qualities and those eligible 
 fo? further consideration selected. This group would then 
 be classified on the basis of their independent ratings for the 
 branch of service for which they were best fitted. 
 
 This plan met with favor. It was given a preliminary try- 
 out at the University of Virginia and Georgetown University. 
 The result being satisfactory, it was on the point of being 
 installed when the armistice was signed. The Committee 
 had already instructed in personnel work the S. A. T. C. 
 supervisors charged with the introduction of the system under 
 Mr. Vinal. 
 
 PROCEDURE FOR INDUCTING MEN FOR REPLACE- 
 MENTS INTO S. A. T. C. UNITS, SECTION A 
 
 Soon after October 1, the dat at which S. A. T. C. Units 
 were established at educational institutions, vacancies began to 
 occur in the Units. Since contracts for a minimum number of 
 soldiers had been made with the institutions, and since the 
 Army desired to use them to capacity, it became necessary 
 to provide a way of inducting new men into the Units. The 
 regular college entrance requirements were not considered
 
 COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 539 
 
 suitable, since the S. A. T. C. training was for Army needs 
 and many men who could profit by it would be excluded if 
 rigid educational requirements were prescribed. 
 
 In October, Dr. Thorndike presented to Brigadier General 
 Robert I. Rees, in charge of S. A. T. C., a plan for admission, 
 the chief features of which were an intelligence test for 
 mental alertness, and a detailed personal record report. The 
 ideas of this plan appear in the one finally adopted and 
 described in this section, but the Thorndike plan as such 
 was not adopted. 
 
 The plan adopted by EST on November 6, 1918, in addi- 
 tion to using the general scheme of the Thorndike plan, fol- 
 lowed suggestions made by Lieutenant Colonel Grenville 
 Clark, Mr. A. C. Vinal, and his associates in the Personnel 
 Methods Division. (See Chapter XIII, Volume II, for details.) 
 
 The plan adopted was felt to be absolutely democratic and 
 to provide for selection by merit only. It placed the respon- 
 sibility for filling vacancies on each college, yet through a dis- 
 trict clearance made any surplus of one institution available 
 for other Units. This decentralized recruiting was rendered 
 necessary because of the ruling that men could not be selected 
 and transferred from Depot Brigades. This was the plan 
 proposed at a joint meeting of the Committee and EST. 
 
 As a feature of the plan involving selection of candidates 
 for S. A. T. C. at Depot Brigades the Trade Test Division 
 of the Committee devised a General Elementary Trade Ex- 
 amination. Men successfully passing this examination would 
 be further considered for transfer to the vocational (B Sec- 
 tion) units of the S. A. T. C. 
 
 Conclusion. The most important items in the relation of 
 the Committee to the Committee on Education and Special 
 Training were the studies in the number of specialists needed 
 by the Army, conducted chiefly by Dr. Bingham, which was 
 one of the measures responsible for the creation of EST; 
 and the selection and classification plan for officer candi- 
 dates devised by Dr. Thorndike.
 
 SECTION XL 
 PERSONNEL WORK WITH 
 
 COMMISSIONED OFFICERS 
 
 There were 5,791 officers in the Army on April 
 6, 1917. On November 11, 1918, there were 188,434 
 officers. Early in the period of this rapid increase, 
 it was realized that a simple, convenient and com- 
 prehensive record or register card for each officer, 
 standard throughout the service, was needed. The 
 Officers' Qualification Card (CCP-1101) was de- 
 vised to answer this need. Before the close of the 
 war, it was installed in every Army unit at home 
 and abroad. The card furnished commanding 
 officers and the War Department with the informa- 
 tion as to the ability, military and civilian, and the 
 efficiency of each officer in the American Army. It 
 was used in assigning the right officer to the duty 
 requiring his peculiar ability and it provided a 
 means of recording the rating which expressed his 
 superior officer's estimate of his usefulness to the 
 service. 
 
 Chapter 42 describes the Officers' Qualification 
 Card and explains how it was used in the Army. 
 Chapter 43 presents, in a similar manner, The Offi- 
 cers' Rating Scale.
 
 CHAPTER 42 
 
 THE OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 
 THE FIRST OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 
 
 When the pioneer civilian personnel supervisors went out 
 into the camps in September, 1917, to assist in building a 
 system to receive men from the local boards, they introduced 
 the Soldiers' Qualification Card. It was a standard per- 
 sonnel record card and in some six of the divisions command- 
 ing officers insisted that it be used to card the officers, until 
 something better could be devised. 
 
 This expression of need for a recording system of officers 
 enlisted the cooperation of the Committee, and work was 
 begun on a special qualification card for officers. As an aid 
 in the construction of such a card every division commander 
 was requested to provide the Committee with a sample of the 
 form used for recording the qualifications and efficiency of 
 his officers. The first edition, which incorporated many of 
 these suggestions, was prepared by Dr. James R. Angell and 
 came off the press November 5, 1917. (It is reproduced, 
 face and reverse, Figures 21 and 2 la.) Four colors of tabs 
 were used on this card: green and orange on the top series 
 of figures and blue and yellow on the bottom series. Thorough 
 experience and partial skill were indicated by the first and 
 second of each pair, respectively. 
 
 The small card was used at once in a few divisions, who 
 were eager for it although they were told that a new and bet- 
 ter card would soon be issued. A limited number of small 
 cards were carried overseas with the early divisions. Some 
 of the Coast Defense Stations also used it. Indeed, as late
 
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 545 
 
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 546 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 as January, 1919, some of these cards were received in Wash- 
 ington from Coast Defense Stations in the Philippines. 
 
 SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS 
 
 The first revision, issued January 5, 1918, brought the 
 card to a larger size and revised the list of occupations and 
 provided more space for military qualifications and experi- 
 ence and for recording the officers' ratings. In form and 
 general arrangement, it resembled the final edition of the 
 card so much that a casual observer might not note the dif- 
 ference. The last edition is illustrated (Figure 22) on pages 
 548 and 550. 
 
 The chief differences between the card of January 5, 1918, 
 and the final form of Officers' Qualification Card are: (1) 
 the transfer of the description of the principal civilian oc- 
 cupation to the face of the card (effected third edition, Feb- 
 ruary 15, 1918) ; (2) the addition of a space for "Present 
 Location" to the final form and (3) the addition of sub- 
 classifications in the civilian qualification list and of sub-classi- 
 fications in the military qualification list, as well as the main 
 headings "Motor Transport," "Military Aeronautics," "Air- 
 craft Production," and "Chemical Warfare," with their sub- 
 classifications. The way in which the civilian classification 
 was built up is fully described in connection with the Soldiers' 
 Qualification Card (See Section II.) The military classifi- 
 cations were prepared chiefly by the corps or arm of the 
 service concerned. Through the enlargement of the military 
 classification, it was possible to provide a single card which 
 would satisfy all Corps with the exception of the Medical. 
 The importance of expanding the military classification and 
 the space for recording military experience was emphasized 
 by The War Plans Division of the War College. 
 
 Edition of May Twenty-second. A revised edition of the 
 qualification card was prepared at the time General Orders 
 No. 46, War Department 1918, was published. This pres- 
 ented two new features: (1) On recommendation of the War
 
 OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 547 
 
 Plans Division, supported by Brigadier General P. C. Harris, 
 the card was reduced one-half inch in width and printed on 
 stock that would fold. This change made it possible to 
 dispatch the card folded in a standard Army envelope. (2) 
 The space for recording the intelligence rating which had ap- 
 peared on the January 5, and subsequent editions was omitted, 
 because, on May 22, the use of the intelligence tests for 
 officers was under consideration. 
 
 Edition of October First. A new edition was printed on 
 October 1, 1918, on which the space for recording intelli- 
 gence tests was reintroduced and space assigned for record- 
 ing the location of the officer at the time the card was made 
 out. This card showed the maximum number of sub-classi- 
 fications under military qualifications and continued the let- 
 ter series at the top of the card, which had been included on 
 the March 15 edition for the purpose of tabbing the military 
 qualifications of officers. (This is the form reproduced on 
 pages 5 18 and 550. Details of filling out this card and tabbing 
 it are given in Chapter XI of Volume II.) 
 
 Introduced Into the Line. The cards of January 6, 1918, 
 were put in use at once. On January 15, 1918, a letter was 
 sent by the Adjutant General to the commanding generals of 
 all divisions. The following paragraphs are quoted from this 
 letter: 
 
 "The first general rating of officers in your division, pur- 
 suant to the method stated in the printed instructions, will 
 be as of February 1, 1918, and similar ratings will be made 
 every three months thereafter. Intermediate ratings may be 
 made if desired. 
 
 "For the sake of uniformity, the use of Officers' Qualifi- 
 cation Cards and the rating system in connection therewith 
 is made obligatory in all divisions in the United States. It 
 is believed that the use of these cards will make it pos-
 
 548 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
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 OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 
 
 549 
 
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 550 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 sible to dispense with practically all other cards and card 
 files relating to officers in the divisions. 
 
 "These cards will be filed at Division Headquarters and 
 their confidential character preserved by all proper pre- 
 cautions. The system of index tabs affixed to the cards 
 provides a simple method of quickly locating officers with 
 special qualifications. 
 
 "It is intended that this system will provide the informa- 
 tion for the detail or transfer of officers to special duty or 
 to other branches of service, in accordance with their 
 qualifications. It is intended also that the system shall 
 result in the elimination or transfer of all officers in your 
 division not fully competent for their duties under active 
 service conditions, and it is expected that the result of the 
 rating of your officers on this plan will be the discharge or 
 transfer of a considerable percentage of the lowest rated 
 of your officers." 
 
 General Pershing Requests Officers to Bring Cards to 
 France. In cable of March 26, General Pershing requested 
 that all officers and soldiers should carry qualification cards 
 overseas, and from that time on all officers were required to 
 present qualification cards at ports of embarkation before 
 receiving ship assignment. 
 
 Report on the Effectiveness of the Card. The qualification 
 card and the sj^stem of rating officers had not been adopted 
 permanently, however, for all officers of the Army. In order 
 to gauge the opinion of the field on this matter, the following 
 telegram was sent on April 6, 1918: 
 
 "Reference letter this office January 15th relative to 
 classifying and rating of commissioned officers, your views 
 and recommendations and those of brigade, regimental, 
 separate battalion, and other separate unit commanders are 
 desired on the following: 1. Shall Officers' Qualification 
 Card be adopted permanently for line officers; 2. If adopted, 
 are any modifications of former instructions recommended; 
 3. Is the rating scale on this form preferable to the method 
 of reporting degrees of efficiency employed in former 
 efficiency reports on officers ; 4. Is the adoption of the 
 Regular Army efficiency report (Form 429), or National
 
 OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 551 
 
 Guard efficiency report (Form 429-1) or modification of 
 one of these recommended in lieu of -Officers' Qualification 
 Card or of rating scale on that card? Report should reach 
 this office as soon as practicable and not later than April 
 15th." "McCain." 
 
 The replies to this telegram were given most serious con- 
 sideration, and on May 24 the investigation was closed with 
 General March's decision that both qualification card and 
 rating scale would be adopted. A letter by Major General 
 McCain, under the date of May 25, sums up the investigation 
 as follows: 
 
 "The majority of all reports were distinctly favorable to 
 the retention of the card and the rating scale. Many sug- 
 gestions were offered for including the card and the scale. 
 It has been decided to embody these changes in a new 
 edition." 
 
 General Orders No. 46 > May 26, 1918, made the use of the 
 qualification card and the rating scale official for officers in 
 the continental limits of the United States. Significant para- 
 graphs are quoted: 
 
 "All officers of the Army below the grade of brigadier 
 general, on active duty and serving within the continental 
 limits of the United States, will be classified and rated 
 according to the rating scale method now in use in the case 
 of line officers and in certain of the staff corps and depart- 
 ments. Each officer will fill out an officers' qualification 
 card and will be rated according to the rating scale on or 
 before June 30, 1918. In case of transfer, whether within 
 the United States or overseas, this card will be rated, and 
 inclosed in a sealed envelope or package. It will accom- 
 pany the officer and be delivered to the commanding officer 
 to whom he reports. 
 
 "Duplicate officers' qualification cards will be made 
 before July 5, 1918, and will be forwarded by the division, 
 department, district, post, camp, or other station com- 
 mander directly to the Adjutant General of the Army, ex- 
 cept that duplicate cards of officers of staff corps and de- 
 partments of the National Guard, National Army, and 
 Officers' Reserve Corps will be forwarded to the Chief of
 
 552 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
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 OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARD 553 
 
 the staff corps or department concerned. The above will 
 not apply where duplicates have been forwarded under 
 previous instructions. 
 
 "Applications for qualification record cards, tables of 
 occupational needs, officers' qualification cards, and instruc- 
 tions for their use will be made to The Adjutant General of 
 the Army, Room 528, War Department." 
 
 Officers' Card Installed in Staff Corps. Antecedent to this 
 order, at the request of the chiefs of the different bureaus, 
 the officers' qualification card and rating scale had been intro- 
 duced and its use supervised in the Quartermaster Corps, 
 Coast Artillery Corps, Air Service, Ordnance Department, 
 and Tank Corps. For the Medical Department, a special 
 card with a special medical qualification list was prepared and 
 the first arid only edition printed on May 22 (see Figure 23, 
 Page 552, where the face of the card is reproduced. The 
 reverse of the card is identical with the regular officers' 
 qualification card). 
 
 The Card Ordered Used in the A. E. F. In the American 
 Expeditionary Forces, qualification cards had been in use soon 
 after the first division reached France. General Orders No. 
 210, A. E. F., November 19, 1918, made use of the officers' 
 qualification card and rating scale official for the officers of 
 the A. E. F. Paragraph 1, Section II, reads as follows: 
 
 "All officers of the A.E.F. below the grade of Brigadier 
 General will be rated in accordance with the provisions of 
 G. O. 85, War Department, 1918, under the Rating Scale 
 system adopted by the War Department and now used by 
 the United States Army within the continental limits of 
 the United States. The rating of officers will be made 
 December 15, 1918. Thereafter ratings will be made quar- 
 terly, commencing April 15, 1918." 
 
 The Card's Use Extended to the Army in the Philippine 
 Islands, etc. On January 10, 1919, a letter from the office of 
 the Adjutant General to the commanding officers of the mili- 
 tary forces outside of the continental limits of the United 
 States made official the use of the card and rating scale for
 
 554 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL ^ 
 
 officers under their commands. This completed the installa- 
 tion of the system in the Army of the United States. 
 
 DISPOSITION OF OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION 
 CARDS 
 
 The officers' qualification card was made out in duplicate 
 for all officers outside the A. E. F. One card was kept at 
 field headquarters and the other was sent to The Adjutant 
 General or to the chief of the proper branch of the service 
 depending on whether the officer was in the line or in a staff 
 corps. Officers on departure for the A. E. F. made out an 
 extra card to be forwarded to G. H. Q., A. E. F. One copy 
 remained in Washington and the other accompanied the officer 
 to his field headquarters in France. All officers, line or staff, 
 had a card at G. H. Q., Chaumont, and in addition, staff 
 officers had a card at Tours, in G. H. Q., S. O. S. The file 
 at Chaumont lacked cards for some eight thousand officers at 
 the date of the Armistice, but the completion of the file was 
 assured by G. O., No. 210, A. E. F. 
 
 Cards were carried by officers on transfer. The field head- 
 quarters' copy was given, on transfer, in a sealed envelope to 
 each officer. 
 
 Officers' qualification cards were listed among the required 
 discharge papers. After the card had been properly filleH 
 out and rated as of discharge date it was transmitted to The 
 Adjutant General of the Army. 
 
 THE USE OF THE OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION 
 CARD 
 
 In making clear the use of the officers' qualification card it 
 is impossible to do better than expand the ideas presented in 
 General McCain's letter of January 15, 1918, (see Page 547). 
 He spoke of uniformity, simplification of records and card 
 files, location of officers with special qualifications, detail or 
 transfer of officers to special duty or to other branches of the 
 service in accordance with their qualifications, the elimination
 
 OFFICERS' Q UALIFICA TION CARD 555 
 
 or transfer from divisions of officers unfit for active service 
 conditions and the discharge or transfer of lowest rated offi- 
 cers. This is an epitome of the uses of the card; each point 
 needs amplification only. 
 
 Uniformity. The card ensured that the same critical 
 points of information would always be on record for each 
 officer no matter where he was stationed. One system only 
 need be learned, not a new system for each station. Officers 
 became as automatically familiar with the place on the card 
 to look for certain information as New Englanders in locating 
 certain news items in the "Springfield Republican" or New 
 Yorkers in the "New York Times." The card listed the essen- 
 tial items and made them standard. 
 
 Simplification of Records. Over and above the correspon- 
 dence file all needed records of an officer could be kept on one 
 8x11 inch card, which could be filed alphabetically in a 
 standard cabinet where it could be located instantly. 
 
 In the War Department it no longer became necessary to 
 search correspondence files and inconvenient records for 
 ordinary information about an officer. The same data could 
 be secured in one-tenth the time from the card. In the field, 
 the commanding officer had information immediately at his 
 disposal, thereby obviating much of the necessity of personal 
 interviews. 
 
 Location of Officers With Special Qualifications Through 
 the Index Tabs. The numbered and lettered spaces at the 
 top of the card provided for increasing the usefulness of the 
 card four-hundred-fold. These spaces represented named 
 civilian or military qualifications and a tab on a space indi- 
 cated that the officer represented by the card possessed the 
 appropriate named experience, civilian or military. The color 
 of that tab indicated the degree of his experience or skill. 
 Through the use of the index tabs it was possible to locate an 
 officer in any one of 68 main occupations and 322 sub-occupa- 
 tions, not to mention special abilities or occupations he him- 
 self might list. This one file of cards gave, in a single drawer,
 
 556 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 over 400 separate files by occupation or military experience. 
 The saving in time and money can readily be imagined. 
 
 Detail or Transfer of Officers for Special Duty. This 
 was possible for any commanding officer with initiative and 
 knowledge of the army's needs. The use of the cards for 
 detail for special duty was limited by these two factors only. 
 Any commanding officer could sit in his office, map out the 
 officer assignments he had under his control, list them and 
 write opposite each the particular qualifications which each 
 post demanded. This picture completed, he could call on the 
 officer in charge of the cards for the cards of men approxi- 
 mating the requirements listed. By a study of these cards he 
 would see just what civilian experience and military qualifica- 
 tions each of his officers possessed. 
 
 This preliminary study was particularly useful under two 
 sets of conditions: (a) where the commanding officer was new 
 at his station, and (b) where the units of his command were 
 scattered, e. g.. coast defenses, regiments on guard duty, etc. 
 
 The next step was to bring the officer and the job together. 
 This was a simple matter if the jobs and the men had been 
 studied carefully. In matching man and job the commanding 
 officer might find that he had some jobs for which none of his 
 officers were fitted. In this case he would put in a requisition 
 for an officer and accompany it with a detailed statement of 
 qualifications and rank needed. On the other hand, the com- 
 manding officer might have found that he had some officers not 
 fitted for any of his jobs. In this case his duty would be to 
 study carefully the officer and his qualifications. This leads 
 us to the next heading. 
 
 Elimination or Transfer from Divisions of Officers Unfit 
 for Active Service Conditions and Discharge or Transfer of 
 Lowest Rated Officers. The commanding officer, after his 
 study of an officer who was a misfit in his own organization 
 might come to a variety of conclusions. One might be: "He 
 is physically unfit for field service but suited for office duty in 
 Ordnance* Engineering." In this case he would recommend
 
 OFFICERS' Q UALIFICA TION CARD 557 
 
 transfer and request another officer with specified qualifica- 
 tions as replacement. Again, the commanding officer might 
 discover that the officer under consideration was generally no 
 good, was rated 43 and had no special qualifications which he 
 could use if transferred. Such an officer would be recom- 
 mended for discharge. 
 
 Since commanding officers are not always familiar with all 
 officer positions and would like more information both on the 
 duties of some of the less usual posts under their command 
 and on the duties in the staff corps, the Committee has 
 prepared for their use Tables of Commissioned Personnel 
 Specifications which will state both the qualifications required 
 and the duties to be performed by each officer in the army 
 (see Chapter 17). The task is one of considerable mag- 
 nitude but a start has been made in the right direction. 
 
 Use of Officers' Qualification Cards by Personnel Boards. 
 General Orders No. 78, August 22, 1918, provided for a per- 
 sonnel Board to recommend to unit commanders details, 
 assignments and appointments of officers based on fitness with- 
 out regard to seniority. General Orders No. 85, September 
 12, 1918, further provided that these Boards should take 
 action on all officers whose ratings might fall below 45, and 
 should recommend for such probation, transfer or discharge. 
 
 In the operations of these Boards the same use of the cards 
 would be made as described above for the commanding officer. 
 
 Use of the Cards in Selecting Officers for the Regular Army 
 and the Reserve Corps. A complete file of all officers dis- 
 charged from the service is kept in the office of The Adjutant 
 General of the Army. When application is made for com- 
 mission in the Regular Army or the Reserve Corps, details 
 regarding each officer discharged, both as to experience and 
 rating are at once available. After the proper number of 
 officers of each rank and qualification has been determined in 
 order to provide a well balanced commissioned personnel (Reg- 
 ular or Reserve) for the Army, it is a simple matter, from
 
 558 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 a study of the cards, to determine which of the officers mak- 
 ing application should be chosen. 
 
 In the event of hostilities it would be possible to call, 
 from a study of the cards, just the officers needed because 
 of special qualifications. Geographical location and any com- 
 bination of ability would be susceptible of instant determina- 
 tion. In peace as in war the Officers' Qualification Card is 
 an effective method of handling large numbers of commis- 
 sioned personnel. With it there must always be associated a 
 very thorough knowledge of the specifications and qualifica- 
 tions for the commissioned personnel to satisfy the Army's 
 needs:
 
 CHAPTER 43 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF THE RATING 
 
 SCALE 
 
 The rating scale by which all officers in the Army are rated 
 quarterly, was devised and introduced into the Army by 
 Colonel Walter Dill Scott. Major General H. P. McCain, 
 Third Assistant Secretary of War F. P. Keppel, and Lieuten- 
 ant Colonel Grenville Clark made possible its trial, and the 
 collective approval of the officers of the Regular Army was 
 responsible for its final acceptance. It is a systematized ap- 
 plication of an old principle long in use in the Army; its 
 basis is the determination of the relative excellence of men 
 by comparing them in turn with men whose ability is 
 thoroughly known; its chief innovation is that the comparison 
 is made on a series of qualities taken one at a time, and not 
 in terms of a general comparison. 
 
 The history of the development and trial of the scale is 
 identical with the history of the rise of the Committee, and 
 is fully described in Chapter 4 of this volume. 
 
 USE OF THE RATING SCALE IN TRAINING CAMPS 
 
 It is enough to state here that the scale was viewed with in- 
 terest when presented, in July, 1917, to Major General Mc- 
 Cain and Brigadier General E. F. Ladd. They considered 
 that it might be a method of selecting officers on an achieve- 
 ment rather than a seniority basis. This problem of selection 
 was giving the War Department much concern at the time. 
 It was decided, therefore, that this new plan should be given 
 a trial in the Training Camps for Officers, and Dr. Scott 
 was accordingly authorized to present the scale at the train- 
 ing centres. A trial at Fort Myer was arranged and the 
 
 559
 
 560 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 scale was presented and approved there on July 12th. The 
 scale at this time was presented as useful in selecting those 
 candidates in the Reserve Officers' Training Camps who should 
 be commissioned. The first series of training camps which 
 began May 15th, and closed August 15th, was in progress at 
 the time. From Fort Myer, Dr. Scott went to present and 
 try the scale at Plattsburg, where he met officers from Madi- 
 son Barracks and Fort Niagara then to Fort Benj. Harrison, 
 and on to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, where he met officers from 
 Fort Riley and Fort Snelling. He was back in Washington 
 on July 27th, with a favorable report from each camp. The 
 consensus of opinion was that the plan should be used in all 
 the camps of the second series and in as many of the camps 
 of the first series as could get the necessary machinery going. 
 Work was begun on forms for the second series. With the 
 approval of the Secretary of War through the formation of the 
 Committee on Classification of Personnel in the Army, the 
 work was completed and the method regularly introduced into 
 the Officers' Training Camps. 
 
 Work in the .First Series R. 0. T. C. Officers in eight of 
 the Reserve Officers' Training Camps, first series, made some 
 use of the introductory rating sheets for candidates in selecting 
 men to be recommended for commissions. The rating scale, 
 however, was not the only measure of fitness used; records for 
 the entire period of training played an important part. 
 
 Work in the Second Series R. 0. T. C. The second series 
 of R. O. T. C. opened August 27th, in sixteen camps. For 
 this series, the Committee provided three forms: Al, "In- 
 structions for Use of the Rating Scale;" A2, "Permanent 
 Record" (record for use in Camp Adjutant's Office), and A3, 
 "Pocket Rating Card." The points worthy of special note 
 are these: (1) Provision was made for using the rating scale 
 during the school. For final rating and for arranging the 
 candidates in order of excellence by serial arrangement in 
 final ratings, the permanent record (A2) gave the critical 
 elements later included in the soldiers' and officers' qualifica-
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 561 
 
 tion cards. (2) The use of these forms was not supervised, 
 but they were regarded by the officers of the training camps 
 as of very genuine assistance. 
 
 Work in the Third Series 0. T. S.: The use of the scale 
 entered a new phase with the third series of camps opening 
 January 5, 1918, and running until April 1. In addition to 
 the use in rating candidates during and at the end of their 
 course, it was used to select soldiers to be sent from divisions 
 to the third series. Details of this procedure have already 
 been presented in Chapter 26. In the third series, the 
 soldier's qualification card took the place of the permanent 
 record sheet used in the second series. 
 
 Work in the Fourth Series 0. T. S. : For the fourth series 
 of O. T. S., which began May 15th, in twenty-four National 
 Army and National Guard Divisions, the same methods were 
 used: (1) Candidates for the schools were selected by the 
 Officer's Rating Scale and were listed in order of merit. (2) 
 While in training, students were rated and the revised report 
 was kept on the pocket card. In addition since candidates 
 for commissions were sent to the fourth series from authorized 
 R. O. T. C. units at educational institutions, instructions to 
 guide the professors of military science and tactics at these 
 institutions were prepared by the Committee and sent by The 
 Adjutant General in a letter of April 15th. These select- 
 ing officers rated the eligible R. O. T. C. students and 
 recorded the men selected in order of merit (Form CCP-203 
 M. I.) according to instructions given them in a descriptive 
 circular of the requirements of the fourth series (Form CCP- 
 207.) Qualified civilians made application for the fourth 
 series through the professors of military science and tactics at 
 R. O. T. C. institutions and were rated by the scale, as all 
 other candidates. (See Chapter 26 for further details.) 
 
 Central Officers Training Schools: The fourth series of 
 schools, each attached to a division, were much disturbed by 
 division movements and the candidates at these camps were 
 finally transferred to three Central Officers' Training Schools
 
 562 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 for Infantry; one for Machine Guns, two for Field Artillery, 
 and one for Engineers. For the Central Schools, a special 
 form explaining the rating scale and its use for rating candi- 
 dates for commission was prepared. To make the work more 
 uniform, the method was discussed with the commanding offi- 
 cers of the infantry schools at a conference in Washington 
 and it was decided that the rating by the rating scale 
 should count one point and the military record, during the 
 school, one point. Conferences were also held with the com- 
 manding officers in the Machine Gun, Field Artillery and 
 Engineer Training Schools, and the plan was adopted of 
 counting one point for the rating scale and two points for the 
 grades on the topics of instruction. At the time of the armis- 
 tice, the Central Officers' Training Schools were using the 
 scale for rating candidates and, according to the prearranged 
 plans, were supplementing it by the detailed records which 
 were kept for each exercise or day or week. 
 
 Use of the Scale at Quartermaster Officers' Training School: 
 The Quartermaster training and mobilization centre, Camp 
 Joseph E. Johnston, was training officer candidates and re- 
 serve officers and in August, 1917, was in need of a record and 
 rating system. A system modeled on that devised for the 
 second series of R. O. T. C. was prepared and introduced 
 early in September. The system was explained in Circular 
 Q. M. G., Special Form G. and H., authorized August 31, 
 1917, and the record was kept on a large 8x16 card folded into 
 four parts, to conform to the size of the Service Record. This 
 form called for the information given on the permanent record 
 and added a section, which was the earliest form of the Index 
 of Occupations. 
 
 This card also carried space for recording grades in prac- 
 tical and theoretical work in administration, repair and con- 
 struction, accounting and finance, supply and transportation 
 (Maximum total score 50), and for recording ratings on 
 the scale (Maximum total score 50.) The scale had certain 
 peculiarities of definition and score worthy of note.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 563 
 
 1. Adaptability: Ease of learning, capacity to apply 
 knowledge and ability to grasp readily and to solve new 
 problems. (Maximum score 10.) 
 
 2. Judgment: In addition to native intelligence, con- 
 sider the ability to arrive quickly at a sensible decision in 
 any problem or situation. (Maximum score 10.) 
 
 3. Habits: Consider reliability, loyalty, punctuality, sub- 
 ordination, thoroughness, industry, disposition, and a spirit 
 of service and general helpfulness. (Maximum score 10.) 
 
 4. Leadership: Consider self-reliance, general bearing, 
 initiative, and decisiveness, and the ability to command the 
 obedience, loyalty and cooperation of men. (Maximum 
 score 10.) 
 
 5. Value to the Service: Consider ability to plan tasks 
 and affairs to superintend work with dispatch and lack of 
 confusion, tact in dealing with others, general efficiency 
 and personality. (Maximum score 10.) 
 
 For each of these qualifications, each instructor gave a 
 rating, an average was struck for each qualification and the 
 sum of the averages taken for the final score. To complete 
 the system, a class-room grade book was provided. This 
 system was in use until the personnel methods in use at 
 Camp Joseph E. Johnston were revised in March, 1918. 
 
 USE OF THE SCALE TO RATE OFFICERS 
 
 The use of the scale as described up to this point has 
 been confined to candidates for a commission. The wider use 
 of the scale to apply also to officers after their commission- 
 ing, and to indicate their efficiency, is the subject of this 
 section. In the R. O. T. C., officers using the scale to rate 
 candidates frequently applied it in measuring their fellow 
 officers. Division commanders here and there used it and 
 found it valuable. 
 
 A trial of the scale was made on the officers of the 80th 
 Division at Camp Lee, under Major General A. Cronkhite. 
 Under date of November 10th, 1917, he reported to The 
 Adjutant General that the trial of the rating scale and 
 psychological ratings, which were also used at Camp Lee,
 
 564 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 had convinced him of their utility. He stated that a system 
 combining the two "should be continued in this division/' and 
 that he believed the system if applied elsewhere would obtain 
 results of equal value. He stated further: 
 
 "The value of the practical rating of Mr. Scott and his 
 associates is shown in the most marked manner, in the re- 
 sults attained in the various training camps, in conjunction 
 with the psychological tests of Major Yerkes, and his 
 associates, as a result of which the ability curves resulting 
 from the psychological examination, and the practical rat- 
 ings of Mr. Scott, accord almost absolutely in their re- 
 sults ; and in so far as they concern the enlisted personnel, 
 also subjected to psychological examinations and partial 
 practical judgment, apply equally well to the enlisted per- 
 sonnel. 
 
 "It is my order that the practical rating of Mr. Scott, 
 and his associates, shall be immediately applied to all en- 
 listed men in this command, who may possess an apparent 
 ability which will make them possible candidates for com- 
 missions. 
 
 "Attention is particularly invited to the fact that, where- 
 as, these schemes of judgment are intended to do absolute 
 justice to .all officers and enlisted men who are entitled to 
 advancement, they specifically insure the fact that no officer, 
 or enlisted man, will be recommended for promotion who is 
 not thoroughly qualified for advancement, and that, there- 
 fore, full justice must be done to the service and to the 
 country through the appointment of men who are qualified 
 for duties which they are to assume." 
 
 Following this favorable report, it was decided to widen 
 the use of the scale for rating officers. In a letter of January 
 15th, 1918, The Adjutant General extended the use of the 
 scale to all divisions in the United States. (For letter, see 
 page OL.) To insure a satisfactory use of the scale, an in- 
 structor trained in the use and presentation of the scale was 
 sent to each division. Under their guidance, the scale was 
 used with fair results. For this rating,, Form CCP-1102, 
 January 5, 1918, was issued. The last revision of this form 
 (January 1, 1919), is reproduced here.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 565 
 
 WAR DEPARTMENT 
 INSTRUCTIONS FOR RATING COMMISSIONED OFFICERS 
 
 "Significance of the Rating Scale. 1. Under General Orders 46 
 and 85 (W. D., 1918), all officers in the Army below the rank of 
 Brigadier General will be rated quarterly according to the Officers' 
 Rating Scale. Circular No. 73 (W. D., 1918), provides that a final 
 rating will be given each officer just prior to separation from the 
 service. The rating of an officer is a numerical expression of the 
 degree in which he possesses the five essential qualifications of an 
 officer; namely, (1) Physical Qualities, (2) Intelligence, (3) Leader- 
 ship, (4) Personal Qualities, and (5) General Value to the Service. 
 The rating is made by comparing him in each of these respects with 
 officers of the next higher rank. 
 
 "2. Promotions, discharges and subsequent appointments are deter- 
 mined as a rule by ratings. Making just and accurate ratings is 
 therefore one of the most serious duties of an officer. Proper rating 
 is largely dependent on the possession of an accurate Rating Scale. 
 Each rating officer makes his own scale, using the reverse of this 
 Form. 
 
 "How to Make the Scale. 3. Write on small slips of paper the 
 names of from twelve to twenty-five officers of your own rank and 
 not above the average age of that rank. They should be men with 
 whom you have served or with whom you are well acquainted In- 
 clude officers whose qualifications are extremely poor as well as 
 those who are highly efficient. If these names do not include all 
 the grades for each of the five qualifications, others may be added. 
 
 "4. Look over your names from the viewpoint of Physical Qualities 
 only. Disregard every other characteristic of each officer except the 
 way in which he impresses his men by his physique, bearing, neat- 
 ness, voice, energy, and endurance. Arrange the names on the slips 
 of paper in order from highest to lowest on the basis of the physical 
 qualities of the men. Select that officer who surpasses all the others 
 in this qualification and enter his name on the line marked Highest 
 under Physical Qualities. Then select the one who most conspicu- 
 ously lacks these qualities and enter his name on the line marked 
 Lowest. Select the officer who seems about half way between the 
 two previously selected and who represents about the general average 
 in physical qualities; enter his name on the line marked Middle. 
 Select the officer who is half way between Middle and Highest; 
 enter his name on the line marked High. Select the one who ranks 
 half way between Middle and Lowest; enter his name on the line 
 marked Low. 
 
 "5. In the same manner make out scales for each of the other
 
 566 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 four qualifications (Intelligence, Leadership, Personal Qualities and 
 General Value to the Service). 
 
 "6. Each officer whose name appears on the Scale should be 
 one who exhibits clearly and distinctly the qualification and the 
 degree of the qualification for which he has been chosen. 
 
 "7. The names for Highest and Lowest on each section of the 
 Scale must represent extreme cases. The name for the Middle 
 should be that of an average officer, half way between extremes. 
 High and Low should be half way between the Middle and the 
 extremes. An even gradation of merit is important. 
 
 "8. In making or using any section of the Scale, consider only 
 the qualification it covers, totally disregarding all the others. 
 
 "9. In rating subordinates of more than one grade, the best prac- 
 tice is to make separate scales for each grade, using always the 
 names of officers one grade higher than that of the subordinate 
 to be rated. However, in exceptional cases good results have 
 been secured where a Scale constructed of captains is used for rating 
 both lieutenants and captains, and a Scale constructed of colonels is 
 used for rating all ranks of field officers. 
 
 "How to Use the Scale. 10. Rate your subordinate for Physical 
 Qualities first. Consider how he impresses his men by his physique, 
 bearing, neatness, voice, energy and endurance. Compare him with 
 each of the five officers in Section I of your Rating Scale, and give 
 him the number of points following the name of the officer he most 
 nearly equals. If he falls between two officers in the Scale, give 
 him a number accordingly (e. g., if between Low and Middle, give 
 him 7, 71/0 or 8.) 
 
 "11. Rate the subordinate in a corresponding manner for each of 
 the other four essential qualifications. Under III (Leadership) and 
 V (General Value to the Service), consider which officer he will 
 most nearly equal after equivalent experience. 
 
 "12. In rating, make a man-to-man comparison of the subordi- 
 nate with the officers whose names appear on your Scale never in 
 terms of numbers directly. Disregard the numerical equivalent 
 until you have made these concrete comparisons. 
 
 "13. When rating several subordinates, rate all of them on each 
 qualification before adding the total for any one. 
 
 "14. This is not a percentage system and you should not allow 
 yourself to fix in mind any particular number of points you think 
 the subordinate ought to get. 
 
 "15. The total rating for a subordinate is the sum of the ratings 
 you give him in the five separate qualities. If directions are fol- 
 lowed carefully, the average of any considerable group of officers
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 567 
 
 rated is about sixty points. In other words, sixty points for a 
 lieutenant means that a captain has compared him with the captains 
 he knows and certifies that after equivalent experience he will be 
 equal to an average captain. 
 
 "16. Each officer below the rank of Brigadier General will be 
 rated by his immediate superior. Ratings will be revised or approved 
 by the immediate superior of the officer making the rating. 
 The revising officer will use his own scale and make ratings inde- 
 pendently of those made by the rating officer. Superior officers 
 will see that their subordinates make all ratings according to the 
 Rating Scale system, in order that a just and equitable record may 
 be had for all officers in the Army." 
 
 I. Physical Qualities 
 
 I Physique, bearing, neatness, voice, energy and endurance. (Con- 
 / sider how he impresses his men in the above respects.) 
 
 / Highest 15 
 
 igh 12 
 
 [iddle 9 
 
 Low 6 
 
 Lowest 3 
 
 II. Intelligence 
 
 Accuracy, ease in learning, ability to grasp quickly thepoint of 
 view of commanding officer, to issue clear and intelligent orders, 
 to estimate a new situation, and to arrive at a sensible decision in a 
 crisis. 
 
 Highest 15 
 
 High 12 
 
 Middle 9 
 
 Low 6 
 
 Lowest 3 
 
 III. Leadership 
 
 Initiative, force, self reliance, decisiveness, tact, ability to inspire 
 men and to command their obedience, loyalty and co-operation. 
 
 Highest 15 
 
 J High 12 
 
 ^ Middle 9 
 
 Low 6 
 
 Lowest 3 
 
 IV. Personal Qualities 
 
 Industry, dependability, loyalty, readiness to shoulder responsi- 
 bility for his own acts, freedom from conceit and selfishness, readi- 
 ness and ability to co-operate. 

 
 568 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Highest 15 
 
 High 12 
 
 Middle 9 
 
 Low 6 
 
 Lowest 3 
 
 V. General Value to the Service 
 
 His professional knowledge, skill and experience; success as an 
 administrator and instructor; ability to get results. 
 
 Highest 40 
 
 High 32 
 
 Middle 24 
 
 Low 16 
 
 Lowest 8 
 
 The Use of the Rating Scale in Certain of the Staff Corps 
 Before May 26, 191S: The acting Quartermaster General, 
 Major General George W. Goethals, under Circular VII, 
 February 18, 1918, adopted the scale as the official rating sys- 
 tem for the Quartermaster Corps. 
 
 The same action was taken for the Aviation Section of the 
 Signal Corps, under date of March 26th, by Lieutenant 
 Colonel W. E. Gillmore (Form CCP-1102 S. C.) For this 
 Corps a special rating was worked out for pilots and ob- 
 servers, as reproduced below: 
 
 /. Special Ability as a Pilot. 
 
 Aggressiveness, alertness, coolness, dependability, 
 keenness of observation, and skill in handling an air- 
 plane and machine gun in action. 
 
 Highest 100 
 
 High 80 
 
 Middle 60 
 
 Low 40 
 
 Lowest 20 
 
 77. Special Ability as an Observer. 
 
 Aggressiveness, alertness, coolness, dependability, 
 keenness of observation and skill in mapping and in 
 directing artillery fire.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 569 
 
 Highest 100 
 
 High 80 
 
 Middle 60 
 
 Low 40 
 
 Lowest 20 
 
 The Coast Artillery Crops, Ordnance Department, Tank 
 Corps, and Medical Department adopted the same course, so 
 that by the time General Orders No. 46 was issued the scale 
 had been widely introduced. 
 
 The Scale Ordered for All Officers in the United State's: 
 General Orders No. 46, War Department, 1918, (See Page 
 OG) Ordered the use of the scale for all officers in the 
 United States below the rank of Brigadier General. They 
 were to be rated by their superiors, as of June 30, 1918. 
 This wide use of the scale was in accordance with the desire 
 of General March that it be given a thorough trial. (In- 
 struction was given in many of the camps in the United 
 States by committee representatives before the June ratings 
 were made.) 
 
 The Final Adoption and Regularization of Officers' Ratings: 
 General Orders No. 85, War Department, 1918, made the 
 rating of officers by the rating scale compulsory and set the 
 dates of rating for every three months, beginning October 
 16, 1918. For the October ratings, instructions were given 
 at nearly all camps and larger stations East of the Rocky 
 Mountains. The October ratings showed such marked im- 
 provement that for the January series no special instructions 
 were given. 
 
 The Rating Scale Abroad: The rating scale was used 
 sporadically overseas before General Orders No. 210 A. E. F. 
 was issued. This provided that all officers in the A. E. F. be 
 rated December 15, 1918, and thereafter quarterly commenc- 
 ing April 15, 1919. The form supplied for reporting the 
 rating is illustrated in Figure 24.
 
 570 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
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 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 571 
 
 The Rating Scale has passed through eight revisions in 
 which there has been some change in the wording of the defini- 
 tions of the five chief qualities. The last revision occurred in 
 September, 1918, and the definitions there given had re- 
 mained standard up to this writing (April, 1919). The 
 changes, on the whole, are significant and are recorded here 
 as they throw light upon how the several items were viewed 
 by Army officials. 
 
 Physical Qualities. This item was defined in the first rat- 
 ing scale (used in connection with the First Series: Reserve 
 Officers' Training Camps, and printed in July, 1917), as fol- 
 lows: "Consider how the candidate will impress his men by 
 his physique, bearing, neatness, voice, energy and endurance." 
 
 The word "health" was substituted for "physique" only 
 to be dropped in favor of "physique" later. "Voice" was 
 dropped, then added, then dropped, and finally included. 
 
 The final wording in September, 1918, was: "Physique, 
 bearing, neatness, voice, energy, and endurance. (Consider 
 how he impresses his men in the above respects.}" 
 
 Intelligence. The first definition was: "Consider ease of 
 learning, capacity to apply knowledge, and ability to grasp 
 readily and to solve new problems." 
 
 In October, 1917. "adaptability" was added and the phrase, 
 "to overcome difficulties" substituted for "to solve new prob- 
 lems." 
 
 In December, 1917, "accuracy" was added. 
 
 In February, 1918, the definition was: "Consider accuracy, 
 ease of learning: and ability to get new points of view and to 
 grasp readily and to overcome difficulties." 
 
 In September, 1918, the final definition was: "Atcuracy, 
 ease in learning, ability to grasp quickly the point of view of 
 commanding officer, to issue clear and intelligent orders, to 
 estimate a new situation, and to arrive at a sensible decision 
 in a crisis." 
 
 Leadership. This heading was referred to as "Military
 
 572 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Leadership," until February, 1918. The first definition was: 
 "Consider self-reliance, initiative, decisiveness, and the abil- 
 ity to command the obedience, loyalty and cooperation of 
 men." 
 
 In October, 1917, "tact" was added. 
 
 In December, 1917, "aggressiveness" was added. In Febru- 
 ary "force" was substituted for it. 
 
 In September, 1918, the final definition was: "Initiative, 
 force, self-reliance, decisiveness, tact, ability to inspire men 
 and to command their obedience, loyalty and cooperation." 
 
 Personal Qualities. The term "Character" was used until 
 April, 1918. A statistical study showed, however, that officers 
 were rated altogether too high under this heading due to the 
 fact that "character" was associated with "personal habits." 
 The new heading has been a far greater success, as it focusses 
 attention upon the other items even more than upon "personal 
 habits." The original definition was: "Consider reliability, 
 loyalty, disposition: and fairness and general helpfulness to- 
 ward his men." 
 
 In September, 1917, it read: "Consider reliability, disposi- 
 tion, loyalty, regard for authority, and the spirit of service 
 and general helpfulness." 
 
 In October, "Consider loyalty, reliability, sense of duty, 
 carefulness, perseverance, and the spirit of service and gen- 
 eral helpfulness." 
 
 In November, 1917, "sense of duty" and "carefulness" were 
 dropped; and "cheerfulness" and "personal habits" added. 
 
 In February, 1918, it read: "Consider industry, depend- 
 ability, personal habits, consideration for subordinates, loyalty 
 to the organization to which he belongs, willingness to carry 
 out plans even tho they do not meet his entire approval, and 
 readiness to shoulder responsibility for his own acts." 
 
 In March, 1918: "Consider industry, dependability, loyalty, 
 personal habits, considerations for subordinates, and readi- 
 ness to shoulder responsibility for his own acts." 
 
 And in September, 1918: "Industry, dependability, loyalty,
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 573 
 
 readiness to shoulder responsibility for his own acts, freedom 
 from conceit and selfishness, readiness and ability to co- 
 operate." 
 
 General Value to the Service. The first definition was: 
 "General impression of the candidate's probable value for a 
 company officer, considering his military knowledge and train- 
 ing; and his value as an administrator, as a drill master, and 
 as a leader in action." 
 
 In October, 1917, it read: "General impression of the 
 candidate's probable value as a company officer, considering 
 his ability as an administrator, as a drill master, as a leader 
 in action; and whether he can arrive quickly at a sensible de- 
 cision in a crisis." 
 
 In February, 1918: "Consider professional knowledge, 
 skill and experience; and his success as an organizer and ad-, 
 ministrator." 
 
 In April, 1918: "Consider his value as an administrator, 
 as an instructor, as a drill master, as a leader in action; and 
 whether he can arrive quickly at a sensible decision in a 
 crisis." 
 
 And in September, 1918: "His professional knowledge, 
 skill and experience, success as an administrator and instruc- 
 tor; ability to get results." 
 
 It is apparent that the heading "Personal Qualities" has 
 been the most difficult to define with the heading "General 
 Value to the Service" next. The other three headings clearly 
 connote a more definite meaning and their present definitions, 
 it is safe to predict, will not be changed materially in any 
 subsequent editions. 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE USE OF THE RATING SCALE 
 
 Indicating Individual Ability. The scale is a measure of a 
 man's ability in each of five qualifications. Some men may 
 be in the highest group for intelligence, but low in physical 
 ship. The scale gives to commanding officers who make as-
 
 574 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 signments a standard record of the essential traits of the 
 men available and if the procedure is followed, much more 
 exact assignments will result. 
 
 Use for Promotion, Transfer and Separation. General 
 Orders No. 78, War Department, 1918, provided for ? per- 
 sonnel board to recommend details, assignments and appoint- 
 ment of officers. In General Orders No. 85, War Depart- 
 ment, 1918, detailed instruction on the use of the scale by 
 the board is given. 
 
 "1. All officers in the Army below the grade of brigadier 
 general on active duty and serving within the continental 
 limits of the United States, will hereafter be rerated ac- 
 cording to the rating scale every three months, beginning 
 October 15, 1918. Ratings will be recorded on the quar- 
 terly rating sheet (Form CCP 1105). After the "rat- 
 ings," "reratings," "and items since last report" are 
 recorded on the original officer's qualification card on file 
 at unit headquarters, the quarterly rating report will within 
 10 days of the date specified for that quarterly rating be 
 forwarded by the division, department, district, post, camp, 
 or other station commander directly to The Adjutant Gen- 
 eral of the Army except in the case of staff corps and 
 departments, whose reports will be forwarded to the chief 
 of staff corps or department concerned. 
 
 "2. All officers who have not been rated and all officers 
 immediately upon being commissioned shall be rated in 
 accordance with General Orders, No. 46, War Department, 
 1918, and the duplicate qualification cards dispatched as 
 therein specified. 
 
 "3. Whenever the average of a rating and revised rating 
 of any officer falls below 45 points the rating will be re- 
 viewed by the personnel board appointed under the provi- 
 sions of paragraph 2, General Orders, No. 78, War De- 
 partment, 1918. If the rating in question is verified by this 
 board as falling below 45, the commanding officer will re- 
 1 commend to The Adjutant General of the Army that the 
 officer in question be either 
 
 "a. Placed upon probation until next regular rating; 
 
 "b. Transferred; or 
 
 "c. Discharged from the service.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE S75 
 
 Any officer placed upon probation or transferred because 
 of low ratings, the average of whose rating and revision at 
 any subsequent time is less than 45 points, will be recom- 
 . mended for discharge from the Army. 
 
 "4. In the execution of General Orders, No. 78, War 
 Department, 1918, commanding officers will be guided by 
 the following instructions: 
 
 "a. All recommendations for appointments within their 
 commands after December 1, 1918, will be made on Form 
 CCP 1155, and the candidates for appointments shall be 
 rated according to the rating scale by the officer making the 
 recommendation . 
 
 "b. All assignments within their commands shall be 
 made primarily on the basis of the qualification cards, in- 
 clusive of the ratings. 
 
 "c. Promotions shall be based primarily upon ratings. If 
 any officer is recommended for promotion when another 
 officer of the same grade with a substantially higher rating 
 in the same regiment, separate battalion or other separate 
 unit is eligible, the commanding officer shall state the rea- 
 sons for the recommendations. 
 
 "The foregoing instructions will not be construed as pre- 
 venting personnel boards from making such investigations 
 and examinations as may be deemed necessary to determine 
 the fitness and capacity of those whose names are under 
 consideration by the board. 
 
 "5. Application for Officers' Qualification Cards (CCP 
 1101), Instructions (CCP 1102), Supplementary Instruc- 
 tions (CCP 1104), Forms for Quarterly Rating Report 
 (CCP 1105), and Forms for Recommendation for Promo- 
 tion (CCP 1152), Forms for Recommendations for Ap- 
 pointment (CCP 1155), will be made to The Adjutant 
 General of the Army, Room 528, War Department." 
 
 Following the signing of the armistice instructions were 
 issued in Circular No. 73, War Department, 1918, that 
 each officer about to be separated from the service would have 
 a final rating entered on his qualification card. The same final 
 rating was also included on the report of discharge, Form 
 150 CPB GS, which included recommendations concerning 
 the officer's subsequent appointment in the Regular Army or 
 the Reserve Corps.
 
 576 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Recording Ratings on Qualification Cards. The earliest 
 edition of the Officers' Qualification Card (reproduced on page 
 544) provided three spaces for recording the date, rating on 
 each of five qualities, "Total," and "Qualified for Promo- 
 tion" "Yes," "No," and signature of the rating officer. The 
 second edition of January 5th, increased the lines for record- 
 
 QUARTERLY RATING REPORT 
 
 Sigtutun (TVH Written) of Rating O&tt ctftifyitlg tfctt atfap 
 
 Orp, 
 
 Signature (Typed nd Written) of Revuuig Officer arriving dm 
 teviiuxjs were nude in KmrHinfTt with Riting Sale iimnicrkim. 
 
 1 1 f-f-f-FFH 
 
 FIG. 25 
 Quarterly Rating Report 
 
 ing separate ratings to four, added the "Signature of the Re- 
 vising Officer" and space for "Remarks," "Promotion," 
 "Transfer," etc., after each of the periodic ratings. 
 
 As a result of an inquiry of May 22nd, (described, page 
 547), there were added after each periodic rating, the ques- 
 tions, "How long have you known him?" "Suitable for what 
 branch of Service?" "Weaknesses and disciplinary actions?" 
 
 Extra spaces for suplementary ratings for pilots and ob- 
 servers (described, page 568) were added on the edition of 
 March 26th.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 
 
 Recording Ratings on Quarterly Rating Sheets. The rat- 
 ings made each quarter were recorded on a quarterly rating 
 report, (reproduced in Figure 25). These ratings were trans- 
 ferred to the card at field headquarters and dispatched to 
 Washington to be entered on the card in the central file: 
 
 Supervising the Ratings. After the rating of January 15, 
 
 28 
 
 15 
 
 J 
 
 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 
 
 POINTS RECEIVED 
 
 Fio. 26 
 Distribution of Ratings 
 
 1918, sheets were sent to division commanders asking for a 
 report on the ratings. The number of second lieutenants, first 
 lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels, 
 and brigadier generals were separately called for according as 
 their ratings fell into the classes: 5, 6 10, 11 15, etc. 
 These reports showed a decided tendency on the part of 
 officers to rate too high and also that this was more preva- 
 lent in some camps than others. On the whole, those camps 
 made the best showing at which special instruction had been 
 given by representatives of the Committee. As a result re- 
 newed efforts were made to reach every officer and instruct 
 him in the use of the scale through word of mouth.
 
 578 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 A special study was made of the ratings given 299 Regular 
 Army officers by five well known major generals, and distribu- 
 tion (as shown in Figure 26) was discovered. 
 
 This distribution is about perfect on theoretical grounds and 
 showed that theory and practice would agree when the rat- 
 ings were carefully made out according to instructions. 
 
 The ratings of June 30, 1918, were given careful study. 
 The average rating was found to be about sixty-five much 
 too high. A study made of Ordnance Corps ratings of the 
 same date showed, on the other hand, a remarkably normal 
 distribution so much so that it was accepted as the standard 
 toward which to work. On a special form the distribution 
 of ratings of the Ordnance Corps and a particular camp were 
 outlined and this chart was sent to the commanding officer of 
 the camp in order that he might see how his camp compared 
 with what was looked upon as the ideal distribution. In some 
 cases this report led to revisions and in several other cases 
 to a special effort within the camp to bring about more stand- 
 ard ratings in the future. 
 
 After the October 1 5th ratings were entered on the cards in 
 the central file, studies were made and the ratings for each 
 camp charted, to show the average rating given by each rating 
 officer and the distribution of the ratings. The following figure 
 shows the method followed. The name of the rating officer 
 is recorded at the left; opposite is shown by a small dot 
 each rating given by him together with a large dot indicat- 
 ing the average of all the ratings. At the extreme right is 
 added "remarks" as to whether the ratings are probably too 
 high or too low, etc. In many cases the record of an officers' 
 ratings were communicated to his commanding officer in order 
 to have them corrected or the officer further instructed in the 
 use of the scale. 
 
 SPECIAL STUDY OF THE SCALE 
 
 During October to December, 1918, Dr. H. O. Rugg made 
 a special statistical study of the results of the scale and
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF RATING SCALE 579 
 
 spent some time in the field at Camp Sheridan anfl Camp 
 Taylor. As a result, the following recommendations were 
 made. 
 
 1. That at least three independent ratings be obtained 
 on each officer in each Army unit; that machinery be set up 
 to insure that these ratings are made intelligently, and 
 that they shall not be mere revisions as at present. 
 
 2. That the average of the independent ratings for each 
 trait (physical qualities, intelligence, leadership, personal 
 qualities, general value to the Service) and for total rat- 
 ing be reported on the Officer's Qualification Cards as the 
 official quarterly rating. 
 
 8. That these ratings be made by members of a rating 
 scale board, the members of which for each Army unit shall 
 be appointed by the officer who is best equipped to do so. 
 
 4. That the members of this Board receive very detailed 
 and explicit instructions for constructing and using scales. 
 
 5. That these instructions shall prescribe that each rat- 
 ing be done on a new rating scale to be made in accordance 
 with the following procedure. That at each Army unit an 
 officer to be designated by the commanding officer, prob- 
 ably the Personnel Officer in many cases, will act as in- 
 structor at a meeting of all rating officers in the unit. In- 
 structions should be given each quarter, to make sure that 
 any new rating officers who have been appointed will con- 
 struct standardized scales. At this meeting, each rating 
 officer shall construct a scale by carrying out the following 
 steps : 
 
 a. An original list of at least twenty-five names of 
 officers of the same rank shall be drawn up. It will be 
 wise to include in such lists, as far as possible, officers 
 who have served in the present Army unit for some 
 time. This is in order that if desired the scales of the 
 three members of the rating scale board may be com- 
 pared and made equivalent. 
 
 b. Each officer on this original list shall be located 
 on a "checking sheet" in one of seven groups for each 
 sub-element of the rating scale. 
 
 c. From this detailed estimate of the qualities of each 
 officer, a list shall then be arranged in rank order, so 
 that the officers are arranged from the best to the poorest. 
 This serial arrangement shall be carried out separately
 
 580 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 for 'each of the five groups of qualities, i. e., physical, in- 
 telligence, leadership, personal qualities, and jgeneral 
 value to the Service. Thus, five independent rank order 
 lists will be drawn up. 
 
 d. The men to be entered . on the scale as standard 
 officers for the grades in each of the five qualities shall 
 be chosen from the rank order list by the careful weigh- 
 ing of the merits of the officers: first, nearest the very 
 top of the list highest; second, nearest the bottom of 
 the list lowest; third, near the "middle"; and again, 
 fourth and fifth, near the mid-point between highest and 
 middle and between lowest and middle, respectively. 
 
 e. In rating officers on this scale, each rating officer 
 shall rate all of his subordinates for one quality at a 
 time, i. e., all of them for physical qualities, then all for 
 intelligence, then all for leadership, etc., throughout the 
 list. The totaling of the ratings assigned to the separate 
 qualities on any one man shall be done only after all the 
 separate ratings have been made. 
 
 f. The ratings of the three members of the rating scale 
 Board shall be compiled by an officer designated (the per- 
 sonnel officer in most cases). Each officer on whom there 
 is a larger difference between any two ratings than twelve 
 points should be rerated. In those cases in which there is 
 still a great difference in rating, the final rating shall be 
 given by a conference of the rating board, in which 
 specific comparisons of the officer with those on the re- 
 spective scales should be made and discussed. 
 
 6. It is believed that it is practicable to inaugurate some 
 such procedure as that outlined above for the ratings of 
 April 15th. 
 
 7. The practice of having original ratings revised should 
 be abolished at once, since three independent ratings will 
 be more accurate than a revision.
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 COOPERATION WITH OTHER* 
 DEPARTMENTS 
 
 It was inevitable that in the development of per- 
 sonnel work the Committee on Classification of 
 Personnel would be called upon to aid other depart- 
 ments of the Army in various ways. As shown in 
 Chapters 19 and 20, Army paper work became in- 
 timately connected with personnel work in the 
 camps. Several additional phases of this subject 
 are discussed in Chapter 44 as they relate to the 
 Adjutant General's Office. In the next chapter are 
 discussed the steps by which the classification sys- 
 tem was gradually adopted by The Provost Mar- 
 shal General and incorporated into the system of 
 classifying all draft registrants throughout the 
 country. 
 
 The Committee was most intimately associated 
 with the Division of Psychology, Surgeon General's 
 Office, in that Major R. M. Yerkes, head of that 
 division was a member of the Committee and sev- 
 eral members of the Committee were psychologists 
 by profession. The use and results of the Army In- 
 telligence Tests are presented in Chapter X, of the 
 Personnel Manual (Volume II.) Certain more 
 general phases of this subject are set forth in Chap- 
 ter 46. Another more specialized psychological
 
 582 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 problem dealing with the selection of aviators and 
 ground officers in the Department of Military Aero- 
 nautics is given in Chapter 47. 
 
 Personnel work was early inaugurated in the 
 Quartermaster Corps and was maintained by 
 officers in that Corps. The relation of the Commit- 
 tee to this work is described in Chapter 48. 
 
 Through the fact that the Marine Corps was 
 brigaded with the Army in France it became neces- 
 sary for the same system to be installed in that 
 Corps. Chapter 49 relates the steps leading up to 
 this introduction of personnel work into the Navy 
 and how it was finally established not only in the 
 Marine Corps, but also in the Navy proper.
 
 CHAPTER 44 
 THE ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 
 
 The Committee on Classification of Personnel, being for 
 the greater part of its existence under the jurisdiction of 
 The Adjutant General, was naturally in close touch with 
 the other divisions of The Adjutant General's Office and 
 was therefore in a position to cooperate with them. The 
 more important ways in which the Committee rendered assis- 
 tance to The Adjutant General's Office will be discussed in 
 this chapter. 
 
 REPORT ON ARMY PAPER WORK 
 
 In the middle of November, 1917, Mr. W. R. DeField, an 
 efficiency expert from Montgomery Ward and Company, was 
 called to Washington by the Committee to make a study of 
 Army paper work with a view to reducing it if possible. Mr. 
 DeField first studied the various forms on file in the War De- 
 partment, but he soon found that the work in Washington was 
 so subdivided as to make it impossible to gather sufficient data 
 to outline comprehensive plans. He therefore visited a num- 
 ber of camps and made a careful study and analysis of all 
 paper work. 
 
 Intra-camp Correspondence. During these visits to various 
 camps suggestions were made for the reduction of paper work 
 in connection with intra-camp correspondence. In one camp, 
 for instance, in the Division Adjutant's Office they were typ- 
 ing an indorsement on each set of papers when sent out for 
 attention, action, etc. It was recommended that, instead, a 
 reference blank be used which would have printed on it a 
 list of the various offices and officers to whom correspondence 
 might be referred and also a list of the various reasons for 
 forwarding the communication in question. Thus, all that 
 
 583
 
 584 
 
 PI I STORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 would be necessary in forwarding correspondence would be 
 to type the date and the name of the person forwarding it, 
 and place a check mark in front of the name of the person 
 to whom it was forwarded, and a check mark in front of the 
 reason for forwarding. This suggestion was adopted in sev- 
 eral of the camps. An example of such a memorandum in- 
 dorsement for intra-camp correspondence is as follows: 
 
 Headquarters 86th Division, N. A., Camp Grant, 111.,. . . 191 . 
 
 MEMORANDUM 
 Ind. 
 
 TO: 
 
 1 Chief of Staff 
 
 2 Assistant Chief of Staff 
 
 3 ..Division Adjutant 
 
 4 Camp Adjutant 
 
 6 Division Inspector 
 
 6 Camp Inspector 
 
 7 Sanitary Inspector 
 
 8 Judge Advocate 
 
 9 Division Quartermaster 
 
 10 Camp Quartermaster 
 
 11 Constructing Quarter- 
 master 
 
 12 Utilities Department 
 
 13 Surgeon 
 
 14 Engineer 
 
 15 Division Ordnance Of- 
 ficer 
 
 16 Camp Ordnance Officer 
 
 17 Signal Officer 
 
 18 Mustering Officer 
 
 19 Intelligence Officer 
 
 20 Personnel Officer 
 
 21 Statistical Officer 
 
 22 Insurance Officer 
 
 23 Exchange Officer 
 
 24 Range Officer 
 
 25 Interpreter 
 
 26 Comm'd't Inf. School of 
 
 Arms 
 
 FOR: 
 
 (a) his attention 
 
 (b) inviting attention to 
 
 ....... ind. 
 
 (c) to note and return 
 
 with all papers 
 
 (d) to note and file 
 
 (e) official copy furnished 
 
 (f) Information and guid- 
 ance 
 
 (g) transmitted 
 
 (h) forwarded 
 
 (i ) returned 
 
 ( j ) approved 
 
 (k) disapproved 
 
 (1 ) remark 
 
 (m) remark and recom- 
 mendation 
 
 (n) recommendation 
 
 (o) expression of opinion 
 
 (p) suggestion as to in- 
 dorsement of letter 
 
 (q) for acknowledgment 
 
 and reply to writer 
 
 (r) action 
 
 (s) action contemplated in 
 
 ind. 
 
 (t ) return with report of 
 
 action 
 
 (u) compliance
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 
 
 585 
 
 TO: 
 
 27 C. O. 3d Officers' Train- 
 ing Camp 
 
 28 C. O 
 
 29 C. G 
 
 30 Sgt. Major 
 
 31 Chief Clerk 
 
 32 Efficiency Board 
 
 33 Board, discharges under 
 
 Paragraph 139 A. R. 
 
 34 Division Athletic Officer 
 
 35.. 
 
 FOR: 
 
 (v) compliance with 
 
 ind. 
 
 (w) nomination 
 
 (x) investigation and re- 
 port 
 
 (y) order telegram 
 
 ind. 
 
 (z) signature 
 
 (pp) attach previous corre- 
 spondence 
 
 ........ Distribution "A" 
 
 ........ Distribution "B" 
 
 ........ Distribution "C" 
 
 ........ Distribution "D" 
 
 BY COMMAND OF BRIGADIER GENERAL KENNON. 
 ASS'T DIVISION ADJ'T 
 
 Distribution 
 
 Distribution "B 
 
 Distribution 
 Distribution 
 
 "A" Copy to Cammanding' General and Aids, all members of 
 the Camp and Division Staff; all Commanders of 
 Brigades, Regiments, Independent Battalions and Com- 
 panies; also all Independencies. 
 
 Copy to Commanding General and Aids, all members 
 of Camp and Division Staff, and all Commanders of 
 Brigades, Regiments, Independent Battalions and Inde- 
 pendent Companies. 
 
 Copy to Commanding General and Aids, all members of 
 Camp and Division Staff. 
 
 "D" Copy to Commanding General and Aids, and all members 
 Division Staff. 
 
 "C" 
 
 Reports of Changes and Muster Rolls. The main purpose 
 of Mr. DeField's visits to the camps was, however, to study 
 the paper work in connection with forwarding records from 
 camps to the War Department. This report was considered 
 by Colonel (now Major General) P. C. Harris, in connection 
 with plans already on foot, and after many conferences, Gen- 
 eral Orders No. 42, War Department, April, 1918, was issued, 
 which provided for the discontinuance of the muster rolls and 
 for the appointment of a personnel officer for "each regiment, 
 separate or detached battalion, or similar unit, and for the 
 headquarters of each army, army corps, and territorial depart- 
 ment, and for each post, camp, or other station." The per- 
 sonnel officers, beginning with May 1, 1918, were directed to 
 prepare payrolls, since after April 30 there was to be "no
 
 586 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 muster of troops for pay." And the bimonthly muster of 
 troops and the preparation of muster rolls was ordered to be 
 discontinued after June 30. This alone was a tremendous 
 saving and worth the time and effort involved in making the 
 study of paper work. It did away with the necessity of a 
 separate force for a mustering office, and simply added one 
 more duty to those of the personnel officer for the perform- 
 ance of which the necessary information was already avail- 
 able, thus eliminating the necessity for duplication of informa- 
 tion. (This subject is considered in connection with the rise 
 of paper work in the camp personnel offices in Chapter 19.) 
 
 Consolidation of All Paper Work Incident to Receiving 
 Drafted Men in the Camps. Mr. DeField also rendered a 
 detailed report as to the procedure at one army cantonment 
 by which a very great saving in paper work had been accom- 
 plished through the consolidation of this work into one office 
 under the camp personnel officer. This report was the starting 
 point from which gradually developed a complete consolida- 
 tion of all such paper work. (See Chapter 20 for details.) 
 
 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE WAR SERVICE 
 EXCHANGE 
 
 Before the War Service Exchange was established in 
 January, 1918, tenders of service from all parts of the coun- 
 try were sent to the various divisions and subdivisions of the 
 War Department, which in turn referred many of them to 
 The Adjutant General's Office. The Miscellaneous Division, 
 A. G. O., handled a large percentage of these offers, but the 
 correspondence accumulated so fast that it was absolutely 
 impossible for that division to handle it with any degree of 
 effectiveness, in addition to its other duties. It was therefore 
 a genuine service to The Adjutant General's Office to have 
 this central bureau established which served as a clearing- 
 house for offers of assistance to the government. It relieved 
 the other divisions which had been obliged to handle such 
 correspondence previously.
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 587 
 
 A great many men and women offered their services through 
 their Congressmen. In handling these cases the War Service 
 Exchange met a particular need, as it was the only central 
 congressional service bureau in the War Department. This 
 correspondence became so heavy that a special correspondent 
 was delegated by The Adjutant General's Office to the War 
 Service Exchange to handle it. (For details concerning the 
 War Service Exchange, see Chapter 39.) 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT OF STATISTICAL SECTION, 
 A. G. O. 
 
 In the spring of 1918 a study was made of the handling 
 of current strength records in The Adjutant General's Office 
 by Mr. I. B. Davies, one of the Committee associates. It 
 was found that, as a result of the rapid expansion of the 
 Army, the existing method of maintaining strength statistics 
 was inadequate, and it was therefore recommended that an 
 officer with statistical training be put in charge of handling 
 the monthly strength returns with a view to improving the 
 accuracy of the reports and bringing them up to date. 
 
 A Statistical Section of The Adjutant General's Office was 
 accordingly established in July, 1918, with 2nd Lt. (later 
 1st Lt.) Earl C. Norris in charge. 
 
 System Existing Prior to July, 1918. Prior to July, 1918, 
 three ledgers were kept, one each for the Regular Army, the 
 National Guard and the National Army. These three volumes 
 provided for the strength of units of the line only, and the 
 figures were transcribed monthly from strength returns. 
 Strength of the several staff corps was obtained from the 
 chief of each corps, and represented merely the total number 
 of officers and enlisted men in the corps, with no information 
 as to their distribution among organizations and camps. 
 Work on the ledgers was often several months behind, and 
 collection of delinquent returns was not prosecuted vigor- 
 ously. In short, the system of ledger records was unable to
 
 588 HISTORY' OF PERSONNEL 
 
 furnish the current information which was becoming indispen- 
 sable. 
 
 Task of the Statistical Section. In July, 1918, the Statis- 
 tical Section of The Adjutant General's Office was formed 
 with the immediate task of collecting, compiling and fur- 
 nishing information relative to the distribution of the army 
 by organization, location, color, and branch of service. In 
 other words, the questions to be answered were these: 
 
 Of a given organization 
 
 How many officers and enlisted men? 
 
 Are they white or colored? 
 
 Where are they located? 
 
 To what branch of the service do they belong? 
 
 And of camps, .posts and other stations 
 What organizations are located there? 
 (strength, color, etc.) 
 
 System Established in the Statistical Section. In order to 
 answer the above questions a 5x8 card file was constructed, 
 in which each card represents an organization or detachment 
 thereof. The cards were grouped geographically, i. e., all the 
 organization serving at a given camp were represented behind 
 the index card of that camp. The index cards were arranged 
 alphabetically. Each organization card showed the number of 
 officers and enlisted men, white or colored, and the date and 
 source of the latest information. At each camp, post or other 
 station where more than one organization was located, a "total" 
 card summarized the strength of the camp and showed all 
 arrivals and departures of troops, as well as prospective troop 
 movements which had been ordered. Celluloid tabs affixed 
 to each of the organization cards indicated branch of service. 
 . The card file just described was commenced by taking as 
 a basis the strength returns of June, 1918. These cards were 
 checked daily against orders for troop movements and tele- 
 graphic reports of troop movements, and monthly against the 
 organization strength returns. Organizations belonging to the 
 American Expeditionary Forces submitted the monthly
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 589 
 
 strength returns but they did not cable information concerning 
 their movements within Europe. 
 
 Revision of A. G. 0. Strength Returns. As soon as the 
 work of the Statistical Section was started, it became apparent 
 that the forms of monthly strength returns then in use were 
 quite inadequate. As stated above, the staff departments were 
 reporting to The Adjutant General merely by total strength, 
 and certain line organizations were reporting improperly if at 
 all. This deficiency in the forms was keenly felt throughout 
 the War Department and in the field. The various offices 
 requiring information either improvised forms for their own 
 particular requirements or were forced to make constant use 
 of the telegraph. Considerable extra expense' and duplication 
 thus resulted, the chief burden falling on the troops in the 
 field, who were called upon constantly for special reports of 
 every kind. 
 
 A revision of the A. G. O. strength return forms produced a 
 series of six, which cover the present organization of the Army, 
 and which do away in large measure with the necessity for 
 special reports. In addition, there have been constructed 
 forms for some of the staff departments which do away with 
 duplication in the field. Through cooperation with these 
 staff departments, forms have been evolved which meet the 
 requirements of The Adjutant General and furnish the infor- 
 mation necessary for the department concerned. The forms 
 in use are these: 
 
 Company Return Form 30 A.G.O. 
 
 Regimental Return 41 A.G.O. 
 
 Headquarters Return " 28 A.G.O. 
 
 Post or Camp Return 27 A.G.O. 
 
 Division Return " 678 A.G.O. 
 
 Department, Corps and Army 
 
 Return " 24 & 24a A.G.O. 
 
 Air Service-Squadron (Com- 
 pany or Detachment) Re- 
 turn (Military Aeronautics 
 and Aircraft Production) Form 1 D.M.A.
 
 590 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Signal Corps Return From 285 C.S.O. 
 
 Quartermaster Return 434 Q.M.C. 
 
 Motor Transport Corps Return " 477 M.T.C. 
 Ordnance Department Strength 
 
 Return " 6028 O.D. 
 
 Function of the Statistical Section, The collected informa- 
 tion is compiled in a variety of ways and distributed to offices 
 of the War Department interested in its use. Perodic reports 
 are furnished, and special reports are prepared dealing with 
 the various phases of the distribution of the Army. 
 
 Since the signing of the armistice, the progress of demobili- 
 zation has been recorded by organization, strength, and branch 
 of service, and a variety of periodic reports compiled for the 
 War Department. 
 
 CHECKING OF RECORDS OF ENLISTED MEN AND 
 OFFICERS AT PORTS OF EMBARKATION 
 
 Chapter 37 records the establishment of a force at ports 
 of embarkation whereby the records of enlisted men and 
 officers were checked to see that all were present and 
 properly made out. This work happened to be handled to 
 a considerable extent by the Committee because of its activity 
 in seeing to it that the qualification cards should accompany 
 the soldiers and officers to France. 
 
 INCLUSION OF EDUCATIONAL AND OCCUPA- 
 TIONAL INFORMATION IN THE SERVICE 
 RECORD 
 
 Previous to the edition of the Service Record (Form No. 
 29, A. G. O.),' dated September 25, 1917, there had been 
 entered on these records the soldier's name, address, physical 
 qualities, vaccination and inoculation history, report of assign- 
 ment, record of prior service and of current enlistment, mili- 
 tary record, clothing account and record of allotments and 
 deposits. There had been no place to enter educational or
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 591 
 
 occupational qualifications. Instead a duplicate qualification 
 card on buff stock was provided company commanders. It 
 was felt that the Service Record was not complete without 
 some information concerning a man's education and his occu- 
 pational experience and skill, and that by the inclusion of this 
 material the buff qualification cards could be dispensed with, 
 thereby eliminating considerable paper work. Brigadier Gen- 
 eral (later Major General) P. C. Harris was engaged at the 
 time in revising the Service Record and when the matter was 
 presented, he provided space in the four page insert, pages 
 6a-6d, for recording educational and occupational history. It 
 was further planned that this material would be copied from 
 the qualification card. 
 
 FILES OF OFFICERS' QUALIFICATION CARDS 
 
 General Orders No. 46, War Department, May 9, 1918, pro- 
 vided that duplicate Officers' Qualification Cards for all line 
 officers should be filed in The Adjutant General's Office. These 
 files were kept, at first, in the Efficiency Section, Officers' Divi- 
 sion, A. G. O., together with files containing other records of 
 officers. It was soon demonstrated that the officers' qualifica- 
 tion cards would require a section by themselves and a staff to 
 handle them headed by someone familiar with the personnel 
 system, in order to keep the files accurate and up to date. In 
 August the files of officers' cards were accordingly moved to 
 the halls outside of Room 528, as there was no one room 
 available. At first, Mr. Gabriel I. Lewis, an associate of the 
 Committee, had charge of the files, with a large force of clerks 
 to do the classifying, tabbing and filing. Later, early in 
 October, Mr. C. F. Axelson took charge with Mr. G. M. 
 Leonard as assistant. Both of these men were formerly per- 
 sonnel supervisors in the camps and had a thorough working 
 knowledge of the classification system. The section worked 
 under great difficulties, on account of being located in the 
 open halls ; the light was poor, the ventilation was poor, there 
 was no heat, and there was constant disturbance caused by
 
 592 
 
 people passing to and fro. Not until after November 11, 
 however, was it possible to secure rooms for the files and the 
 staff handling them. When, owing to the signing of the 
 armistice, all drafts were cancelled, it was possible gradually 
 to cut down the force of the central distributing office, and 
 no sooner did they vacate one room than files of officers' cards 
 were moved in until now the files are completely housed in 
 three rooms. 
 
 At this time the following procedure was carried out: 
 
 (a) Each card was checked to make sure that it belonged 
 in The Adjutant General's Department and not in one of the 
 staff corps. If not, it was sent to proper destination. 
 
 (b) Files were searched for duplicates. If one or more 
 was found, all valuable information, e. g. ratings, experience, 
 etc., was included on one card, and this card properly 
 classified, tabbed, and placed in a "live file." 
 
 (c) Ratings were copied upon receipt of quarterly rating 
 reports after proper numbering and indexing of reports had 
 been done. When a rating report was received for which 
 there was no card on file, a letter was sent to the camp with 
 instructions that a duplicate be forwarded. 
 
 (d) The final card of all discharged line officers was 
 checked against cards in live files and omitted ratings, etc., 
 transcribed, so that the final card would contain all the useful 
 information available about the former officer. 
 
 (e) As discharged officers were commissioned in the Re- 
 serve Corps, their cards were separated from those of other 
 discharged officers and placed in a separate file. 
 
 At present (March 20, 1919) the files contain nearly 
 200,000 cards and more are pouring in. Before demobilization 
 of the Army is completed it is expected that over 400,000 
 cards will be collected, or an average of over two (original and 
 one or more duplicates) for each officer. This section of the 
 Committee's work will therefore be maintained for some time 
 after the discontinuance of the other sections. Eventually the 
 files will probably be maintained by The Adjutant General's
 
 ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE 593 
 
 Department but particularly accessible to the Personnel 
 Branch, General Staff. 
 
 REPORTS TO THE ADJUTANT GENERAL CON- 
 
 CERNING ADJUTANT'S WORK IN THE A. E. F. 
 
 AND BRITISH ARMY 
 
 In connection with the installation of personnel work in 
 the A. E. F. several representatives of the Committee went 
 abroad. They reported to The Adjutant General concerning 
 the British system of recruiting and personnel work, British 
 trade tests, the British War Office's daily telegraphic con- 
 ference, plans for demobilization in Great Britain, personnel 
 work in the A. E. F., etc.
 
 CHAPTER 45 
 
 CO OPERATION WITH THE PROVOST 
 MARSHAL GENERAL'S OFFICE 
 
 During the early part of the summer of 1917 it became 
 apparent not only that the needs of the Army for specialists 
 of various kinds could not be met by any extant devices for 
 supplying promptly such specialists from the draft, but also 
 that under the actual operation of the draft highly essential 
 men in certain important industries were being taken into the 
 Army and often assigned to work for which they were ill fitted. 
 Although in theory the draft boards were given authority to 
 discriminate in favor of certain essential industries, the early 
 operation of the boards was irregular, eccentric, and often ill- 
 considered. While the main work of the Committee on 
 Classification of Personnel was directed to the effective 
 classification and distribution of men already in the Army, 
 certain members of the Committee gave attention to possible 
 methods of improving the selective process of the draft. 
 
 It was thought that, with a more adequate system whereby 
 information could be quickly codified at Washington regard- 
 ing the presence of large groups of expert men of any given 
 kind in a given region, the needs of the Army might be much 
 more promptly met by immediately sending such groups to 
 points where they were needed than by waiting for the slow 
 operation of classification of the men after they had been 
 delivered to the various cantonments from which they would 
 then have to be re-assembled at some other point. Moreover, 
 it was believed that in this way a more intelligent check could 
 be maintained upon the relative invasion of specific groups of 
 industries or occupations and that a more reasonable balance 
 could thus be observed between the needs of the Army, on 
 
 594
 
 PROVOST MARSHAL'S OFFICE 595 
 
 the one hand, and the needs of industry, commerce and agri- 
 culture on the other. 
 
 Conferences were held with members of the Council of 
 National Defense, with the Assistant Secretary of the Depart- 
 ment of Labor, with representatives of the Emergency Fleet 
 Corporation, with representatives of the Census, and with 
 members of the Provost Marshal General's Office, particularly 
 Colonel (later Brigadier General) H. S. Johnson, Major 
 F. C. Woodward, Major (later Colonel) J. S. Easby-Smith, 
 and Major (later Colonel} J. H. Wigmore. These confer- 
 ences were designed: 
 
 1. To ascertain from men competently acquainted 
 with the industrial situation, the type of measure best 
 designed to secure the end in view; 
 
 2. To gain from the Department of Labor and the 
 representatives of the Census impressions of the best 
 technique for accomplishing the desired end; and 
 
 3. To secure from the Provost Marshal General's 
 Office a knowledge of the requirements and limitations of 
 the law under which any such measures would necessarily 
 be promulgated. 
 
 As the outcome of these several conferences the conclusion 
 was reached that, the most effective method of gaining the type 
 of information desired was to operate on the basis of a ques- 
 tionnaire to be filled out by drafted men in the presence of 
 examiners specially trained to gather the required informa- 
 tion. It was believed that by utilizing the State Councils of 
 Defense and by securing the co-operation of school teachers 
 a very large number of sufficiently skilled record takers could 
 be supplied to the Local Boards to enable the securing of the 
 necessary data. It was intended to establish district and local 
 coaching schools for the purpose of training these record 
 takers. 
 
 It will be recalled that the original card filled out by 
 drafted men called for certain occupational information. Ex-
 
 596 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 perience quickly showed, however, that in the first place this 
 information was hopelessly inadequate to meet the Army 
 needs, and, second, that there was no effective machinery for 
 organizing even such information as came in through these 
 channels. When the proposed improvement of this method 
 was broached to General Crowder by Major (later Lt. Col.) 
 Grenville Clark and Dr. J. R. Angell early in the autumn of 
 1917, the Provost Marshal General declined to give any con- 
 sideration to the matter whatever. His position appeared to 
 be that the pressing necessity was to put into the cantonments 
 the largest possible number of men in the least possible time. 
 Moreover, he appeared at that time to feel no concern about 
 the effects of the operation of the draft on essential industries. 
 
 However, with the passing of time and the preparation by 
 the subordinates of the Provost Marshal General of a new 
 questionnaire to be used in the second draft, the Committee 
 was informed eight hours in advance of the closing of the 
 proofs for the printer that permission would be given to intro- 
 duce one section of questions regarding industrial and occupa- 
 tional matters which the Committee were invited to formulate. 
 Naturally, the result of this much belated permission was of 
 a most unsatisfactory kind. Nevertheless the Committee did 
 the best that it could under the circumstances and supplied a 
 considerable list of questions from which, however, the repre- 
 sentatives of the Provost Marshal General's Office, without 
 consultation with the Committee, deleted certain of the entries 
 which the Committee considered of most crucial consequence. 
 
 Eighty-seven main headings were utilized with fifty-four 
 subdivisions, corresponding in general to the then existing 
 Index of Occupations. They were printed in the Question- 
 naire under the following caption: 
 
 "Q. 10. In the columns below draw one line under 
 those occupations at which you have worked: draw two 
 lines under those at which you are expert. After each 
 2, 9, 5} of experience you have had in that occupation."
 
 PROVOST MARSHAL'S OFFICE 597 
 
 The list appeared as follows, (the corresponding CCP 
 classification code being given at the extreme right) : 
 
 Years 
 
 1 . Accountant 
 
 2. Artist, dramatic and otherwise, 
 
 3. Auto and gas engineman 
 
 (a) Factory 
 
 (b) Garage 
 
 (c) Ignition system 
 
 (d) Marine engines 
 
 4. Auto and motor truck driver, 
 
 5. Baker 
 
 6. Band Instrument 
 
 7. Barber , 
 
 37 
 
 62 
 
 24 & 25 
 25s 
 24g 
 24m 
 25m 
 
 22 & 23 
 
 40 
 
 44 
 
 45 
 
 On the basis of this suggestive list selective service men 
 classified themselves according to civil experience. This infor- 
 mation was transcribed to cards and filed in the Provost Mar- 
 shal General's Office to be used as a basis for drafting men 
 by occupational experience. 
 
 The list was expanded to about 400 headings in the revised 
 questionnaires used for the draft of men from 18 to 45 years 
 of age. This second list as published was substantially the 
 Index of Occupations of the April revision except that many 
 of the minor sub-divisions of occupations were excluded. 
 Moreover, it employed the CCP code system. Note the in- 
 structions and first few headings. 
 
 "Directions:- -Look carefully through this list. The main 
 occupations are printed in black letter type: then, in smaller 
 type, the most important kinds of job or special work within 
 each occupation. Each job or special work has a key num- 
 ber and letter printed after it. When you have found your 
 occupation and job on the list, turn to the Questionnaire, page 
 3, question 5, and fill out the blanks with the names of your 
 occupation and your job and the key number and letter. Do 
 not forget to enter the key number and letter."
 
 598 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Accountant 
 
 Certified public accountant 37-ac 
 
 Cost accountant 37-co 
 
 General 37-g 
 Airplane Mechanic 
 
 Airplane cloth worker 76-ai 
 
 Assembler 61 -a 
 
 Engine 61-e 
 
 Propeller maker (tester) 61-p 
 
 Rigger 64-s 
 etc. 
 
 The presence of this standard list helped measurably in 
 lending the 13,000,000 selective service men to express their 
 occupational experience in the same language, which was, of 
 course, of great value in classifying them. 
 
 The actual handling of the questionnaires, the classification 
 of drafted men, and their assignment was entirely in the 
 hands of the Provost Marshal General's Office, where elabo- 
 rate preparations were made for organizing and controlling 
 the information thus secured.
 
 COOPERATION WITH THE MEDICAL 
 DEPARTMENT 
 
 Many activities of the Medical Department are intimately 
 interrelated with the administration of Army personnel. One 
 of the functions of the medical service is to" examine all re- 
 cruits and to classify them with reference to both physical 
 and mental fitness for military duty. Soldiers about to be 
 transferred from one camp to another must be physically 
 examined. Convalescents cannot be returned to their units or 
 assigned to special duty until their physical qualifications for 
 the work they will be called upon to do have been deter- 
 mined by the medical officers. Such responsibilities as these 
 are so closely allied to the work of the personnel organization 
 that the closest co-operation is essential to the fullest utiliza- 
 tion of available man-power. 
 
 It is not within the scope of this brief chapter to recount 
 in detail the history of the many phases of personnel activity 
 in which the Army personnel organization co-operated with 
 the Medical Department. The story is interwoven with the 
 accounts given elsewhere in this volume, of the procedure of 
 receiving men into camp and the steps that led to enormous 
 simplifications and economies in this complex process (Chap- 
 ter 20) ; the study of the physical requirements of various 
 army occupations to ascertain where effective use could be 
 made of men physically qualified for limited service only 
 (Chapter 27) and the elaboration of the Development Bat- 
 talion plan, as a means of saving for the military service 
 thousands of recruits who otherwise would either have been 
 discarded as unfit or have remained as misfits in the regular 
 organizations, a hindrance to rapid training (Chapter 40). 
 
 599
 
 600 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Elsewhere, too, is recorded the preparation, by the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel, of the special qualifica- 
 tion card for medical officers, and the compilation of tables 
 of occupational needs and personnel specifications for the 
 Medical Department. But the peculiarly intimate relations 
 that existed between the work of the Committee and the 
 Division of Psychology of the Surgeon General's Office must 
 here be given special prominence. 
 
 COOPERATION WITH THE DIVISION OF 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 From the beginning the closest personal contact existed 
 between the psychologists of the Surgeon General's Office 
 and the Committee on Classification of Personnel. Major 
 R. M. Yerkes, S.C., who was the head of the Division of 
 Psychology throughout the entire period of its activities, was 
 also one of the original twelve members of the Committee. 
 Dr. (later Major) L. M. Terman, another of the original 
 members, gave his full time during the early weeks of the 
 Committee's existence to work upon the methods of psycho- 
 logical examining of recruits, which at that time were still in 
 a somewhat tentative form. Dr. Thorndike and other mem- 
 bers of the Committee, then and later, also helped in per- 
 fecting those methods and adapting them to military re- 
 quirements. 
 
 Perhaps one of the best services which members of the 
 Committee were able to render to the Division of Psychology 
 lay in interpreting its aims and values to officers of the Gen- 
 eral Staff and other officials of the War Department who 
 were skeptical of the military value of the psychological work 
 and who hesitated to authorize the expenditures of money 
 and personnel necessary for its proper functioning. The 
 work of psychological examining was seriously hampered for 
 many months, through long postponements of approval of 
 its program, and more than once it was threatened with ex- 
 tinction through the hesitancy of some war plans committee
 
 MEDICAL COOPERATION 601 
 
 or other high authority to recognize the value of mental test 
 methods in sifting out the mentally unfit and in disclosing 
 superior ability among recruits. Eventually the Division of 
 Psychology was able to demonstrate beyond question its mili- 
 tary usefulness. During the final months of mobilization the 
 psychological examiners in all the great camps were supply- 
 ing the company and regimental commanders and the officers 
 in charge of personnel with information regarding the men- 
 tality of the newly arriving recruits ; and this information was 
 being utilized in selecting men for special assignment and in 
 'balancing' the various units so as to insure more rapid and 
 uniform progress in training. 
 
 A minor but important phase of co-operation developed 
 in connection with the training of officers for assignment to 
 psychological and to personnel work. Mr. Weisiger, Dr. 
 Strong and other representatives of the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel lectured before the training school for 
 psychological examiners at Camp Greenleaf and sought to 
 give the men a broad survey of the problem of personnel ad- 
 ministration, toward the solution of which their own work 
 was to contribute an integral part. Major J. W. Hayes, 
 S.C., in turn was loaned by the Division of Psychology to 
 direct at Newark a course of training for trade test officers. 
 The entire program of personnel classification, trade testing 
 and psychological examining was essentially one complex 
 undertaking, aimed to find out as promptly and exactly as 
 possible where each recruit's best army usefulness lay. It 
 was imperative that the agencies engaged in the different 
 phases of this undertaking should understand clearly each 
 other's aims and methods, and work together for the com- 
 mon end. 
 
 Pathetic tales might be told of the partial failure to realize 
 this full co-operation during the early months ; of psychologi- 
 cal examiners who were so slow in reporting the results of their 
 mental measurements that the recruits had left camp before 
 their records were available ; and of personnel officers who did
 
 602 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 not even know where on the qualification card the intelligence 
 score was supposed to be recorded, or what to do with that 
 information after they had it. But gradually the psycholo- 
 gists became organized to the point where they were able 
 to make their examinations as rapidly as the men arrived in 
 camp; and the personnel officers learned the value of the in- 
 telligence score as one of the items of information which had 
 real significance when it came to making assignments or 
 selecting men for special training. 
 
 In bringing about this better mutual understanding be- 
 tween personnel officers and psychological examiners in the 
 camps, Major C. S. Yoakum, S.C., rendered service of con- 
 spicuous value; and after the publication of Chapter X of 
 the Personnel Manual, (see Chapter X, Volume II) in the 
 preparation of which Major Terman and Major Yoakum had 
 the chief responsibility, no personnel officer had any further 
 excuse for ignorance of the uses to which intelligence data 
 might wisely be put. 
 
 The administration of personnel classification and of psy- 
 chological examining logically belonged together. In recount- 
 ing the history of the development of the army personnel sys- 
 tem (in Chapter 5) it was pointed out that only the accident 
 of historical considerations accounts for the fact that the psy- 
 chological examining was developed under the Surgeon Gen- 
 eral while the personnel classification was administered by 
 The Adjutant General. If ever America is again called upon 
 to mobilize and train a great army rapidly, the more natural 
 and logical plan will be to unite the personnel classification, 
 the intelligence examining and the trade testing within a 
 single personnel organization. These are all aspects of a 
 single task, the determination of the soldiers' abilities and 
 greatest military usefulness. 
 
 COOPERATION WITH THE DIVISION OF PHYSICAL 
 RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 In the Fall of 1918 the Medical Department was making 
 
 enormous preparations to take care of the wounded and dis- 
 

 
 MEDICAL COOPERATION 603 
 
 abled who were to be brought to America from the battle- 
 fields of France during the winter and spring of 1919. 
 Happily the number of casualties was relatively slight in 
 comparison with what it would have been if the burden of 
 active fighting, had continued. But even as it was, many 
 thousands of our soldiers came back to America convalescing 
 from injuries which would temporarily or permanently han- 
 dicap them in the further pursuit of the civilian occupations 
 with which they were familiar. 
 
 The task of training these handicapped soldiers and making 
 them capable of independent self support fell to the Division 
 of Physical Reconstruction, of the Surgeon General's Office. 
 One feature of this program included a school at Camp 
 Greenleaf, for the training of officers and men for the physi- 
 cal reconstruction service. To this school and to all the 
 Physical Reconstruction Hospitals, the Committee on Classi- 
 fication of Personnel sent supplies of trade test materials 
 for use in connection with the interviewing and classifying 
 of the convalescent soldiers before decisions were made re- 
 garding their courses of occupational training; and after the 
 armistice a considerable number of officers and men expe- 
 rienced in trade testing were transferred from the Adjutant 
 General's Department to the Division of Physical Recon- 
 struction, to help in the work of occupational reclassification 
 and vocational counsel.
 
 CHAPTER 47 
 
 COOPERATION WITH THE AVIATION SEC- 
 TION, SIGNAL CORPS AND DEPARTMENT 
 OF MILITARY AERONAUTICS 
 
 From its inception the Committee has co-operated with the 
 Personnel Section of the Air Service in the study of the 
 selection and classification of officers and, to a lesser degree, 
 of enlisted men. Dr. E. L. Thorndike had charge of this 
 section and is responsible for all that was achieved. 
 
 The following brief abstracts of reports represent some of 
 the main lines of investigations carried on and action sug- 
 gested. The suggestions in practically every case commended 
 themselves to the military authorities. 
 
 A STATISTICAL STUDY OF A THOUSAND REPRE- 
 SENTATIVE CASES OF MEN ACCEPTED BY 
 THE EXAMINING BOARDS AS PROSPEC- 
 TIVE OFFICERS ON A FLYING 
 STATUS 
 
 Age, education, civilian salary, athletic achievement and 
 other facts obtainable were secured from the cadets' applica- 
 tion blanks, and presented in tables and diagrams of the sort 
 illustrated on the following pages. 
 
 604
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 
 
 605 
 
 I55J- 
 
 11 20 2l 21 23 It 25 26 27 28 2* 30 3l 32+ 
 Age 
 
 Table 4. Age of 1000 Aviation Cadets in Ground Schools. 
 At age 19 there were 25 Cadets. 
 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 28 
 29 
 30 
 
 or over 
 
 56 
 
 131 
 
 163 
 
 156 
 
 123 
 
 111 
 
 61 
 
 67 
 
 45 
 
 32 
 
 30
 
 606 
 
 HISTORY' OF PERSONNEL 
 
 15%- 
 
 I l-l'/o 
 
 -2-1 HI H2 H3Gr.H O C2 C3 CrC C+ 
 School Education 
 
 Table 5. Education of 1000 Aviation Cadets in Ground Schools. 
 
 A common school in the case of 14 Cadets. 
 
 1 year of high school " " 8 " 
 
 2 years of high school " " 42 " 
 
 3 years of high school " " 30 " 
 High school graduation " " 220 " 
 H. S. Graduation plus 1 year " 139 " 
 H. S. Graduation plus 2 years" 168 " 
 H. S. Graduation plus 3 years " 148 " 
 College graduation (or 
 
 equivalent) 153 " 
 College graduation, plus 
 
 1 year or more, 
 
 28 

 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 
 
 607 
 
 I 1 
 
 Table 6. 
 
 /S 10 IS 25 25 30 35 40 HS 50 S5 60 
 
 60 
 
 Reported Weekly Earnings of 1000 Aviation Cadets in 
 Ground Schools. 1 
 
 Less than $13 
 $13 to $18 
 $18 to $23 
 $23 to $28 
 $28 to $33 
 $33 to $38 
 $38 to $43 
 $43 to $48 
 $48 to $53 
 $63 to $58 
 $58 to $63 
 Over $63 
 
 by 58 cadets. 
 
 " 104 " 
 
 " 185 " 
 
 " 255 " 
 
 " 131 " 
 
 " 71 " 
 
 47 " 
 
 " 19 " 
 
 " 65 " 
 
 8 
 
 " 17 " 
 
 " 40 " 
 
 'About one-fifth of the cadets make no report of earnings. Most of 
 these entered the service directly from school or college. They are not In- 
 cluded In Table 3.
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 The. above tables are on the basis of over a thousand cases 
 taken at random from the entire enrolment at the ground 
 schools. They may be accepted as substantially a correct 
 picture of the entire enrolment. They err, if at all, in the 
 direction of over-estimating amounts of education and salary. 
 The data, being supplied by the men themselves, are subject 
 to any errors made by them; and these errors may tend on 
 the whole to give too favorable measures of the men. 
 
 The facts as to education and wage suggest that an impor- 
 tant change in policy ought perhaps to be considered. This 
 is the restriction of commissions to a selection of the men who 
 are superior officer material, and the retention of the men who 
 are good flyers but not good officer material on a status of 
 lesser dignity. 
 
 The facts also suggest that during the period of training 
 at the ground school, a smaller allowance than that now given 
 might have a better effect in getting good men into the service 
 and a better effect on their progress in the service. For a 
 man with only a high school training (or that plus a year in 
 some inferior school) who is earning in these times of high 
 wages less than $100 a month, the aviation service may be a 
 financial temptation, rather than an appeal to patriotism, 
 adventure, or interest in aviation. Also the fact that he has 
 more money to spend than he has ever had before is likely 
 to distract him from work and endanger his health. 
 
 ON THE QUALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH SUCCESS 
 
 IN THE SCHOOLS OF MILITARY 
 
 AERONAUTICS 
 
 The first stage in the progress of a flyer toward actual 
 military service at the front was a course of study on the 
 ground, including general military subjects and special 
 courses in signalling, gunnery, engines, theory of flight, and 
 other work relevant to the work of a military aviator. A 
 large fraction of the men accepted by the examining boards 
 failed in this work ; and it was desired to reduce this wastage.
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 609 
 
 Also there was some doubt concerning just what qualities of 
 intellect and manhood these schools did require. 
 
 A thousand cadets in the ground schools were taken for 
 study. The entire record of each man throughout his course 
 at the ground school was copied off from the weekly report 
 sheets filed by the school. Co-efficients of correlation were 
 computed showing the significance of age, amount of educa- 
 tion, rate of progress through school, etc., etc., for success 
 in the work of the ground school. Among the main results 
 were the following. 
 
 Age. Within the group of men accepted by the examining 
 boards, age makes no appreciable difference to success in the 
 ground schools. There will be as many brilliant records and 
 as many discharges per hundred of the youngest as there 
 will be per hundred of the oldest. In all probability, if the 
 boards acted with as much discretion as in the past in main- 
 taining their standards other than age, young men of 20, or 
 19, could be admitted in large numbers without appreciable 
 deterioration in the work of the ground schools. There would 
 indeed be just as much probability of improvement as of 
 deterioration. 
 
 Amount of Education. Amount of education is prophetic 
 of success in the ground schools, but not so much so as the 
 instructing staffs of these schools probably think. The cor- 
 respondence between amount of education as reported by a 
 man and his average mark in the ground school work in 
 engines, gunnery, signalling, theory of flight, etc., (these sub- 
 jects being given weight according to the opinions of those 
 in authority) is .35. That is, two-thirds of the causes of his 
 average mark in the ground school course lie outside of those 
 taken account of by the amount of education which he reports. 
 Consequently, although we should have fewer failures per 
 hundred if we admitted to the ground school men who had, 
 say, two years of college or its equivalent, the reduction 
 would not be great, and the loss of the many good men who 
 would be barred out would be a very serious matter.
 
 610 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 It should be noted that the reports made by instructors in 
 the ground schools concerning the causes of failure and con- 
 sequent discharge are almost certainly subject to two fallacies 
 found almost everywhere in educational reports, namely, (1) 
 the assumption that inadequate education is the cause of what 
 is really due to lack of intrinsic ability, and (2) incomplete 
 survey of the facts. A teacher in the ground school will 
 probably attribute failure to inadequate education four times 
 out of five ; but it is a demonstrable fact that three out of 
 four students with only a high school education do satisfac- 
 tory work in the ground school. 
 
 Rate of Progress in School. The reported age at which a 
 pupil enters high school (taken conversely) corresponds to 
 an extent of .15 .02 with achievement in the ground school. 
 
 Reported Class Standing in the Last Year of School. 
 Question 12 of the blank is as follows: 
 
 "If you attended a college or professional school of 
 engineering, answer the following questions: 
 
 To the best of my knowledge, my rank in class during 
 my last year in school was (put a cross [X] under 
 the approximate rank) : 
 
 First Tenth 
 
 2d 
 
 3d 
 
 4th 
 
 5th 
 
 of Class 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 6th 
 
 7th 
 
 8th 
 
 9th 
 
 Lowest 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 Tenth 
 
 The replies to this are far from reliable, but in spite of 
 this the item is of some significance, there being a correspon- 
 dence of about .20 between reported relative position in class 
 and achievement in the ground school. If the item were 
 made free from error by being furnished by the school in 
 question instead of the candidate, the correspondence would 
 probably be nearly .30. 
 
 Salary, at Last Position. Taken by itself, the salary
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 61 1 
 
 received by a man is of zero significance for success in the 
 ground school. Men receiving $40 a week do no better than 
 men receiving $20; men receiving $30 a week do no better 
 than men receiving $15. 1 
 
 Social Status: Occupation of Father. In many cases the 
 social status of the candidate cannot be determined from the 
 facts of record; but enough cases can be found of sons of (a) 
 professional men, (b) mechanics and tradesmen and (c) 
 clerks and salesmen to justify comparison. 
 
 There is a very, very slight inferiority of the sons of clerks 
 and salesmen in the work of the ground schools, but the dif- 
 ference is of no practical consequence, being smaller than its 
 own probable error. 
 
 It may be noted that by the ratings of the instructors at 
 the flying schools for "promise as a military aviator all things 
 considered," the sons of mechanics, tradesmen, clerks and 
 salesmen are poorer material than the sons of professional 
 men, engineers, bankers and manufacturers. 
 
 Candidate's Statement of His Proficiency in Work Related 
 to that of the Signal Corps. Question 15 of the application 
 blank is as follows: 
 
 "Underscore once each of the following in which you have 
 had experience; underscore twice those in which you are 
 proficient; place a cross (X) after those whose theory you 
 have studied: Accounting ( ); aviation ( ); automobile 
 driving ( ) ; automobile construction ( ) ; automobile 
 repair ( ) ; carpentry ( ) ; carrier pigeons ( ) ; electrical 
 wiring ( ) ; electrical equipment ( ) ; line construction 
 ( ) : machine construction ( ) ; machine repairing ( ) ; 
 map making ( ) ; mechanical drawing ( ) ; photography, 
 still pictures ( ) ; photography, moving pictures ( ) ; 
 printing ( ) : radio apparatus ( ) ; submarine cable work 
 
 'It is possible that this general zero effect Is compounded of two 
 opposite tendencies, (A) for men of little education to earn more at the 
 ages of 20 to 25 than college graduates do, and by virtue of their less 
 education to do less well in the ground school, and (B) for men of equal 
 education to do better in the ground schools if they are of the type that Is 
 successful in a worldly sense.
 
 612 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ( ) ; store-keeping ( ) ; surveying ( ) ; telegraphy ( ) ; 
 teaching ( ) ; visual signaling ( ) ; add any other occupa- 
 tions that seem important " 
 
 If we credit a candidate 5 for each "proficiency/' and 1 
 for each "experience" or "theory studied/' 1 and add the 
 credits there obtained, and compare the resulting scores with 
 his achievement in the ground schools, we find a slight advan- 
 tage for those scoring high. The correspondence is slight 
 (+.15). 
 
 Experience in Automobile Driving and Repair, as Reported 
 by the Candidate. The correspondence between the candi- 
 date's statement of his experience in driving and repairing 
 automobiles and his achievement in the ground school course 
 in engines is slight (.15). If the examining boards for one 
 month accepted only men who claimed to know nothing about 
 driving and repairing automobiles, and for the next month 
 only men who claimed to be proficient in both, there would 
 be only a moderate difference in the achievement of the two 
 groups even in the work on engines. 
 
 The Interest in and Ability at Physical Science, (Pure and 
 Applied} J'ersus the Interest in and Ability at the "Human- 
 ities" and Biological Sciences. Question 11 of the blank is 
 as follows: 
 
 "Give names of the three studies in which you did the 
 best work in the last two years of school." 
 
 If we give a credit of (+1) to a candidate for an entry of 
 physics or chemistry or any engineering subject, and a penalty 
 of ( 1) for an entry of Latin, English, History, Philosophy, 
 Anthropology, Language and the like, we have scores running 
 from -1-3 to 3. There is a correspondence of .28 between 
 this score and achievement in the ground school. 
 
 Conclusion. On the whole it is evident that success in the 
 work of the ground school depends largely upon special 
 
 'Substantially the same result Is obtained If a "proflcieircy" is scored 
 2 or 3 or 4 instead of 5 times as much as an "experience" or "theory 
 studied."
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 613 
 
 interest in and ability at that special work, and cannot be 
 prophesied at all closely from a candidate's amount of educa- 
 tion, or his statements concerning the matters specified in 
 the application blank. The most important single symptom is 
 amount of education, the next most important are rate of 
 progress in school, class standing, and interest in and ability 
 at studies of the physical sciences. If the examining boards 
 reject candidates of, say, only a high school education, they 
 will reduce the number of discharges from the ground school, 
 but they will also thereby cut out many of its most promising 
 men. 
 
 It must also be remembered that the ground schools are 
 not ends in themselves, but means toward the production of 
 competent pilots, scouts, fighters, bombers, etc.; and that 
 over-emphasis by examining boards on the academic qualifica- 
 tions is likely to admit men less promising in respect to 
 courage, nerve, zeal for risk and the like. 
 
 The selection of candidates by the examining boards should 
 be primarily to secure men who will succeed at the front. 
 Success, at the ground school and success at the flying school 
 are significant only in so far as they are prophetic of success 
 at the front. 1 It is better to send a hundred men to ground 
 school of whom twenty-five fail there and seventy-five make 
 competent military aviators at the front, than to send a hun- 
 dred who all pass the ground school requirements but of whom 
 only fifty make competent rrUitary aviators at the front. 
 
 As a practical matter, then, the selection of candidates by 
 the examining boards should be such as to furnish the best 
 possible men for the front with the least possible wastage in 
 the ground schools and flying schools. We can devise a sys- 
 tem of credits for amount of education, reported class stand- 
 ing, rate of progress through school and preferred subjects 
 of study, etc., which would make the selection of candidates 
 very much more efficient than it now is so far as the ground 
 
 1 Or, -t> some cases, of success as teachers of flying, marksmanship, etc.
 
 614 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 schools alone are concerned, but it seems better to plan the 
 scheme with a view to work in the flying schools and at the 
 front as well. To reduce discharges from, and increase suc- 
 cesses in the ground school, is only one part of the general 
 problem. 
 
 THE AIR SERVICE TEST OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 
 
 The facts given above show that a cadet required notable 
 scholarly ability to complete satisfactorily the work of the 
 ground school. At the same time it seemed undesirable to 
 pick military aviators chiefly on academic qualifications. So 
 the attempt was made to provide a test that (1) would pick 
 brainy men who could graduate in the ground school, (2) 
 would not pick, however, the studious type at the expense of 
 courage, skill, alertness and bodily dexterity, and (3) would 
 in fact pick for success at the flying school and over the lines 
 as well as for success in the ground schools. 
 
 The so-called Thorndike test of mental alertness was the 
 result. This was composed of eight of the regular army tests 
 already in use by the Division of Psychology in the Office of 
 the Surgeon General, plus five others. The regular army 
 tests were, however, modified by being made harder so as to 
 fit officer material rather than enlisted men. Also fifteen 
 forms of the test, of equal difficulty, were prepared instead of 
 five, so that a new form could be given every two weeks to 
 prevent any unfair preparation for the test. Finally the tests 
 were so arranged that they could be given by the examining 
 boards or by any personnel officer after an hour's study of 
 the directions. 
 
 These tests were tried out with five hundred cadets, and 
 the correlations and partial correlations determined. The 
 test was shown to give a much better prophecy of success in 
 the ground school than amount of education or class standing 
 or any other item reported by the candidate, the partial cor- 
 relation between it and success in ground school being three 
 times as high as for any such item. A prophecy was made
 
 615 
 
 concerning fifty men tested on their third day .in the Prince- 
 ton Ground School. Eight men were named as likely to do 
 poor work: of these eight, six were discharged from the school. 
 Of eleven men named in a similar prophecy at the Ohio 
 School only two graduated without being "set back" and six 
 failed to graduate at all. 
 
 The test was consequently adopted for use by all examining 
 boards and remained in force till mobilization ceased. It was 
 shown, in connection with other investigations to be mentioned 
 later, to be useful also in eliminating men who would fail to 
 learn to fly well enough to receive the R. M. A. A sample of 
 the test (which amounted to a booklet of 12 8^x11 pages) 
 is shown below. 
 
 TEST 2 
 
 Look at each sentence. Think what it would be if the words were 
 put in the right order. If it would be true, draw a line under the 
 word true. If it would be false, draw a line under the word false. 
 
 1. health necessary camp a is to clean true false 
 
 2. Germany of Wilson king is England and true false 
 
 3. work like men all true false 
 
 4. water cork on float will not true false 
 
 5. iron paper made of is filings true false 
 
 6. tropics is in the produced rubber true false 
 
 7. fish hunt and like boys to never true false 
 
 8. size now of guns use are great in true false 
 
 9. bushes trees roots have and their air the in true false 
 
 10. Not bees lazy and are ants called true false 
 
 TEST 4 
 
 Wrile the correct answers to these problems. Use the margins 
 of the pages to figure on. 
 
 1. A dealer bought some mules for $800. He sold them 
 
 for $1,000, making $40 on each mule. How many 
 
 mules were there? Answer ( ) 
 
 2. A rectangular bin holds 400 cubic feet of lime. If 
 
 the bin is 10 feet long and 5 feet wide, how deep 
 
 is it? Answer ( )
 
 616 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 3. A recruit spent one-eighth of his spare change for 
 
 post cards and four times as much for a box of 
 letter paper, and then had 90 cents left. How 
 much money did he have at first? Answer ( ) 
 
 4. If 3y 2 tons of coal cost $21, what will 5y 2 tons 
 
 cost? Answer ( ) 
 
 5. A ship has provisions to last her crew of 500 men 
 
 6 months. How long would they last 1,200 men? 
 Answer ( ) 
 
 6. If a man runs a hundred yards in 10 seconds, how 
 
 many feet does he run in a fifth of a second? 
 Answer ( ) 
 
 7. A U-boat makes 8 miles an hour under water and 
 
 15 miles on the surface. How long will it take 
 to cross a 100-mile channel, if it has to go two- 
 fifths of the way under water? Answer ( ) 
 
 8. If 241 squads of men are to dig 4,097 yards of trench, 
 
 how many yards must be dug by each squad? 
 Answer ( ) 
 
 9. A certain division contains 3,000 artillery, 15,000 
 
 infantry, and 1,000 cavalry. If each branch is 
 expanded proportionately until there are in all 
 20,900 men, how many will be added to the 
 
 artillery? Answer ( ) 
 
 10. A commission house which had already supplied 1,897 
 barrels of apples to a cantonment delivered the 
 rest of its stock to 29 mess halls. Each mess hall 
 received 54 barrels. What was the total number 
 of barrels supplied? Answer ( ) 
 
 TEST 6 
 
 In each of the sentences below, you have a choice among four 
 words. Draw a line under the one of these four words which makes 
 the truest sentence. 
 
 1. Gas engines are lubricated by gasoline air water oil. 
 
 2. Buenos Ayres is a city of Spctin Argentina Brazil Portugal. 
 
 3. The Pittsburgh team are called Giants Cubs Pirates Tigers. 
 
 4. The howitzer is a type of machine-gun rifle cannon pistol. 
 
 5. The Zeppelin is a monoplane biplane dirigible submarine. 
 
 6. An irregular four-sided figure is called a scolium trapezium 
 
 parallelogram pentagon. 
 
 7. From Berlin to Petrograd is about 500 mi. 900 mi. 1,400 mi. 
 
 1,900 mi.
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 617 
 
 8. The inventor of the telegraph was Ampere Edison Farraday 
 
 Morse. 
 
 9. If the two sides of a right triangle are 3 ft. and 4 ft, the hypot- 
 
 enuse is about 434 ft. 5 ft. 5% ft. 5y 2 ft. 
 10. The color of bromine vapor is violet green brown white. 
 
 ON THE QUALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH SUCCESS 
 IN THE TECHNIQUE OF FLYING 
 
 After graduating from a School of Military Aeronautics 
 (so-called ground school) a flying cadet was sent to an Avia- 
 tion School (so-called Flying School) where he passed 
 through various stages of flying instruction and, if success- 
 ful, receiving his rating as Reserve Military Aviator 
 (R. M. A.) and commission. Contrary to general opinion in 
 the early months of the war, the great majority of young 
 men of fair intelligence, courage and nervous stability who 
 wished to learn to fly could do so, and with a degree of skill 
 that secured the R. M. A. Only about six in a hundred of the 
 men sent to Aviation Schools were so lacking in "aptitude for 
 flying" that they could not learn at all or learned so slowly 
 that they were not allowed to continue. The direct military 
 wastage was therefore not great, but the money loss was; the 
 average expense for each such discarded candidate being 
 variously estimated at from two thousand to five thousand 
 dollars. 
 
 Over a score of tests possibly prophetic of ability to learn 
 to fly had been given to about 170 cadets at Boston by Drs. 
 H. E. Burtt, W. R. Miles and L. T. Troland, and at San 
 Diego by Dr. G. M. Stratton, and at Philadelphia by Dr. 
 F. N. Maxfield. 
 
 The Committee cooperated in securing information about 
 the relative skill of these individuals as flyers and in com- 
 puting correlations between skill as a flier and score obtained 
 in each of these tests. The facts gathered by Dr. R. P. 
 Parsons concerning the naval aviators tested by him were 
 also studied. It was shown that no one test could wisely be
 
 618 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 used to admit or exclude, but that a set of six or eight tests, 
 each properly weighted, gave promise of saving much money, 
 and of expediting the training of fliers. 
 
 In February, 1918, the Committee recommended a certain 
 set of tests for a thorough tryout with a hundred excellent 
 fliers, a hundred relatively poor fliers and a hundred men of 
 known flying ability. Captain V. A. C. Henmon and Captain 
 Stratton were detailed by the Air Service to do this work 
 with a member of the Committee. 
 
 Table 7. Data on Flying Ability of 100 Cadets at Kelly Field, No. 2. 
 
 Test Scores 
 
 Report from Average 
 flying school Notes to date of dual time 
 p=:poor g=good June 15 of others 
 
 75 or worse 
 
 PPPPPP 
 
 2 suspended, relieved or discharged. 15.50 
 
 -50 to -74 
 
 PPPPPPg 
 
 4 " " " 11.16 
 
 -25 to -49 
 
 PPPPPPP 
 
 5 " " " 10.17 
 
 
 PPPPPPg 
 
 
 to -25 
 
 PPPPggg 
 
 9 " " " 10.03 
 
 
 PPPPggg 
 
 
 
 PPPPggg 
 
 
 
 PPPP 
 
 
 to +25 
 
 PPggggg 
 
 1 " " " 9.19 
 
 
 PPggggg 
 
 
 
 ppggggg 
 
 
 +25 to +49 
 
 pgggggg 
 
 1 not reported 9.23 
 
 
 pgggggg 
 
 
 
 Pgggg 
 
 
 +50 to +74 ggggggg 
 +75 or better g 
 
 7.50 
 7.21 
 
 The results of the tryout were worked up and a detailed 
 report made. The facts indicated a correlation of about .70 
 between success in the flying school and the properly 
 weighted score of a team of tests composed of the Stratton- 
 Parsons test of emotional instability, the Stratton test of per- 
 ception of tilt, the Miles steadiness test, the Thorndike test 
 of mental alertness and the Kelly-Henmon athletic score, 
 either with or without the addition of certain tests of reaction- 
 times.
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 619 
 
 The complete team of tests as given by Captain Henmon 
 at Kelly Field showed the following results for the hundred 
 flyers of known ability. 
 
 Forty-five cadets untried as to flying ability were tested 
 and a prophecy submitted naming five men to show as many 
 discharges for inability to fly as all the other forty. This 
 prophecy was borne out by their later records. 
 
 The general effect of the test was computed from the cor- 
 relations obtained to be as follows: 
 
 Suppose 10,000 men are accepted on the present basis by 
 the examining boards, during the next ten months. Call 
 the flying ability of the thousand best of them 10, call the 
 flying ability of the thousand next best 9, call the flying 
 ability of the third best thousand 8, and so on. We will 
 have obviously: 
 
 Ability 1234 56 7 89 10 
 
 Number of Men 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 
 
 Suppose the team of tests recommended is applied, and 
 1,000 men are rejected, their places being filled by other 
 applicants. The tests are significant of ability to learn to fly 
 to such an extent that we shall cut off at the bottom and fill 
 in at the higher levels so as to have: 
 
 Ability 123 4 5 6 7 ' 8 9 10 
 
 Number of Men 696 865 967 1022 1057 1080 1094 1102 
 
 (1) The average flying ability is thus increased by 8 per 
 cent. 
 
 (2) The very poor flyers who would never fly at all, but 
 simply be a waste of time and money, will be reduced 
 by half. 
 
 (3) The army will get this higher quality of flyers quicker 
 than it would have got the poorer quality. For the 
 tests not only pick the men who will be rated higher 
 when they do get their R. M. A., but also the men who 
 will get it sooner.
 
 620 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 (4) These gains in quality and speed will be made at no 
 cost of intelligence, courage, determination, co-opera- 
 tion, or other military virtues. On the contrary, these 
 will be somewhat higher in the men who rank well in 
 the tests. Care has been taken to make sure of this. 
 As a result, four special personnel units were constituted 
 by the Air Service to give these tests to candidates and to 
 cadets early in their careers at the Ground Schools. Captain 
 Henmon was put in charge. Captains E. L. Wells, D. E. 
 Rice and Burtt assisted him. Research to improve the tests 
 still further was authorized and ample facilities were pro- 
 vided, Captain Stratton being put in charge. 
 
 ON THE QUALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH GENERAL 
 SUCCESS AS A MILITARY AVIATOR 
 
 An aviation cadet's course of study in the ground school 
 and his learning to fly at the flying school were of course only 
 means to the end of successful work under the actual con- 
 ditions of warfare. The examining boards had as their real 
 task, not simply to pick men who could graduate from a 
 school of military aeronautics and learn to fly quickly and 
 well, but to pick men who would help most to win the war at 
 the front. To make their selection most efficient they needed 
 a bill of specifications based on the qualities found to be posi- 
 tively correlated with success in the actual work of a military 
 aviator. 
 
 The Committee made a thorough analysis of all the data 
 available concerning men successful and unsuccessful as mili- 
 tary aviators, as fast as it was available, and of the opinions 
 of experts from England, France and Italy. Reports of 
 results were made from time to time. Data were scanty, 
 very variable, conflicting and inconclusive, during the entire 
 first year of this country's participation in the war. 
 
 The military authorities were unable to get specific data 
 from fliers of known success at the front. Consequently there 
 was required the arduous procedure of collating them from
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 621 
 
 Central Files and from the records of examining boards. 
 The facts of the tables below were thus gradually obtained. 
 These and others were used as the scientific basis for the 
 CCP Plan for Selecting and Classifying Officer Material in 
 the Students' Array Training Corps, recommended in Octo- 
 ber, 1918. (See Chapter 41.) The Armistice prevented any 
 checking of the results of the plan, which had just been put 
 into action, so far as it concerned the selection of pilots. 
 
 Table 8. The Frequencies of Different Amounts of Education in 
 Military Aviators of High and Low Ratings for Success. H=high. 
 L=Low. D=discharged or transferred because of lack of promise 
 is a flyer. 1 
 
 Records at the Front Records in flying schools 
 Aces H L H L D 
 
 Less than high 
 
 School graduation. 9.7% 3.9% 6.9% 7.7% 11.7% 6.5% 
 H. S. graduation or 
 
 H. S. graduation 
 
 plus 1 year 27.3 22.1 18.6 32.5 32.4 36.1 
 
 H. S. graduation plus 
 
 2 or 3 years 39.0 48.5 52.1 32.5 33.7 38.0 
 
 College graduation or 
 
 equivalent 22.0 25.5 22.3 27.3 22.3 19.4 
 
 Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 
 
 Number of cases 
 from which p e r- 
 centages are cal- 
 culated 41 231 188 366 377 108 
 
 >The H records at the front are of men who have brought down enemy 
 planes, been cited or decorated, or officially reported by their squadron 
 commanders as being In the upper half (approximately) of the, group for 
 success In their work. 
 
 The Li records at the front are of men who were imprisoned without 
 having achieved success as noted above, or who were officially reported by 
 their squadron commanders as being In the lower half (approximately) 
 of the group for success In their work. 
 
 The H records In flying schools are of men who were reported directly 
 to Dr. Thorndlke as specially competent pilots, or as In the top quarter for 
 general promise as a military aviator, or whose official ratings as pilots 
 were above the average (for the rator and revisor in question). 
 
 The L records in flying schools are of men who were reported directly 
 to Dr. Thorndlke aa comparatively poor pilots, or as In the bottom quarter 
 for general promise as a military aviator, or whose official ratings as pilots 
 were below the averages (for the rator and revisor in question). 
 
 The D records are of men who were relieved from Instruction as pilots 
 because of lack of promise as a flyer through Inability to learn to fly or 
 "loss of nerve."
 
 622 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 9. The Frequencies of Different Ages in Military Aviators 
 of High and Low Ratings for Success. H = high. L low. D 
 discharged or transferred because of lack of promise as a. flyer. 
 
 Records from the Front Records from flying schools 
 Aces H L H L D 
 
 Born in 1892 or 
 
 earlier 7.5 21.7 22.7 27.9 34.1 33.3 
 
 Born in 1893, 94 or 
 
 95 47.5 52. 53.5 48.5 38.6 43.9 
 
 Born in 1896 or later 45.0 25.7 23.8 23.6 27.3 22.8 
 
 Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 
 
 Number of cases 
 
 used in calculating 
 
 percentages 40 230 198 369 381 114 
 
 Table 10. The Frequencies of Different Degrees of Athletic Ability 
 in Military Aviators of High and Low Ratings for Success. H=high. 
 L=low. D=discharged or transferred because of lack of promise. 
 
 Records at the front Records at the flying schools 
 H L H L D 
 
 Men of less athletic 
 ability 54.0 56.6 47.1 56.1 54.4 
 
 Men of greater athletic 
 
 ability 46.0 43.4 52.9 43.9 45.6 
 
 Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 
 
 Number of cases used in 
 calculating the per- 
 centages 74 53 316 312 90 
 
 Table 11. The Frequencies of Different Degrees of Ability in 
 Driving an Automobile in Military Aviators of High and of Ix>w 
 Ratings for Success. H, L and D mean as in Tables 8 to 10. 
 
 . Ratings from the front and 
 
 from flying schools combined 
 
 H L and D 
 
 Men claiming no ability with automobile 
 
 or only theoretical knowledge 21.6 - 37.2 
 
 Men claiming some ability 37.8 38.1 
 
 Men claiming full proficiency 40.6 24.7 
 
 Number of cases used in calculating the 
 
 percentages 315 312 
 
 Table 12. The Frequencies of Different Salaries in Military 
 Aviators of High and Low Ratings for Success. H, L, and D
 
 I II 
 
 Records at the Records In flying 
 front schools 
 
 H L H L D 
 
 III 
 
 I and II 
 Combined 
 All 
 All H L & D 
 
 26.1 
 
 26.1 
 
 16.0 
 
 17.5 
 
 31.5 
 
 17.9 
 
 21.8 
 
 39.1 
 
 52.2 
 
 40.8 
 
 40.9 
 
 29.6 
 
 40.5 
 
 40.6 
 
 21.8 
 
 13.0 
 
 21.4 
 
 21.1 
 
 22.2 
 
 21.4 
 
 19.9 
 
 13.0 
 
 8.7 
 
 21.8 
 
 20.5 
 
 16.7 
 
 20.2 
 
 17.7 
 
 46 
 
 46 
 
 206 
 
 171 
 
 54 
 
 252 
 
 271 
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 623 
 
 mean respectively high, low, and discharged or transferred because 
 of lack of promise. 
 
 Under $20 26.1 
 
 $20 to $29 39.1 
 
 .$30 to $39 21.8 
 
 $40 or more 13.0 
 
 Number of cases 
 
 Table 13. The Frequencies of Different Amounts of Social 
 Achievement in Military Aviators of High and Low Ratings .for 
 Success. H, L and D mean as in Tables 8 to 12. 
 
 A11L 
 All H and D 
 
 Low in Social Achievement 30.8 34.8 
 
 Medium in Social Achievement 34.3 36.9 
 
 High in Social Achievement 34.9 28.3 
 
 Number of cases 198 233 
 
 Table 14. The Frequencies of Different Ratings for Responsibility 
 and Leadership in Military Aviators of High and Low Ratings 
 for Success. H, L and D have meanings as in Tables 8-13. 
 
 All L 
 All H and D 
 
 Reporting enterprises requiring little respons- 
 ility and leadership 17.2 21.0 
 
 Reporting enterprises requiring medium 
 amounts 52.9 45.8 
 
 Reporting enterprises requiring much responsi- 
 bility and leadership 29.9 33.3 
 
 Number of cases used in calculating the per- 
 centages 274 319 
 
 Table 15. The Frequencies of Different Amounts of Previous Mili- 
 tary Training in Military Aviators of High and Low Ratings for 
 Success. H, L and D have meanings as in Tables 8-14. 
 
 Records Records 
 
 from the front from flying schools 
 
 H L H L L and D 
 
 No previous military training. . 42.4 38.5 39.7 33.2 36.8 
 
 Little previous military training 29.9 23.6 24.5 27.5 27.2 
 
 Much previous military training 27.7 37.9 35.8 39.3 36.0 
 
 Number of cases.. . 177 782 290 280 331
 
 624 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 16. The Frequencies of Different Heights in Military 
 Aviators of . High and of Low Ratings for Success. H High. 
 L=Low. D=discharged or transferred because of lack of promise 
 as a flyer. 
 
 Records 
 
 In flying schools 
 
 H L, D 
 
 10.8 19.8 27.5 
 
 27.3 32.7 28.6 
 
 31.6 27.1 27.6 
 
 30.3 20.4 16.3 
 
 Records 
 at the front 
 
 Under 5 ft. 7 in 
 
 H 
 14.1 
 
 L 
 15.0 
 28.8 
 35.3 
 20.9 
 
 43.8 
 56.2 
 
 67 or 68 in 
 
 .... ... 28 8 
 
 69 or 70 in 
 
 33.2 
 
 5 ft. 11 in. or over. . . 
 
 23.9 
 
 Under 69 in 
 
 Aces 
 48.6 42.9 
 51.4 57.1 
 
 69 in. or over. . 
 
 Number of cases from 
 which percentages 
 are calculated . 
 
 205 
 
 187 
 
 38.1 
 61.9 
 
 333 
 
 52.5 
 47.5 
 
 343 
 
 56.1 
 43.9 
 
 98 
 
 Table 17. The Frequencies of Different Weights in Military 
 Aviators of High and of Low Ratings for Success. H = high. 
 L = low. D discharged or transferred because of lack of promise 
 as a flyer. 
 
 Records 
 at the front 
 H L 
 
 Under 140 Ib 23.2 32.1 
 
 140 to 149 22.2 25.1 
 
 150 to 159 30.4 23.0 
 
 160 to 169 15.9 14.4 
 
 170 or over 8.2 5.4 
 
 Number of cases from which 
 percentages are calculated 207 187 
 
 Records 
 in flying schools 
 
 H 
 
 L 
 
 D 
 
 20.0 
 
 29.9 
 
 38.4 
 
 26.0 
 
 24.6 
 
 25.3 
 
 24.5 
 
 23.1 
 
 21.2 
 
 15.8 
 
 15.8 
 
 11.1 
 
 13.7 
 
 6.5 
 
 4.0 
 
 335 
 
 341 
 
 99
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 625 
 
 Table 18. The Frequencies of Different Degrees of "Stockiness" 
 in Military Aviators of High and of Low Rank for Success. H = 
 high. L = low. D discharged or transferred because of lack of 
 promise as a flyer. 
 
 Very stocky 
 (Ht. in in. 
 divided b y 
 cube root of 
 
 weight i n Records at the front Records In flying schools 
 
 H L H L D 
 
 pounds less 
 
 than 126)... 15.0 15.71 ] 21.21 24.1 1 
 
 Stocky (128 34.4 131.9 I L35.3 144.0 38.1 
 
 or 129) 19.2 16.2 J 14.1J 19.9 J 
 
 (Aces 
 38.9) 
 
 Average 
 (+130 or 
 131) 23.9 21.5 \ 25.81 20.7 1 
 
 h r 1 * 
 
 133) 22.2 20.4 13.8 J 18.4 J 
 
 (Aces 
 
 38.9) 
 
 Slender (134 
 
 or 135).... 
 
 12.61 14.71 
 
 13.8 1 9.81 
 
 Very slender 
 
 I 19.8 Ue.2 
 
 1 25.1 L 16.9 19.0 
 
 (136 or 
 
 
 
 over) 
 
 7.2 J 11.5 J 
 
 11.3 J 7.1 J 
 
 
 (Aces 
 
 
 
 
 22.2) 
 
 
 Number of 
 
 
 
 cases from 
 
 
 
 which per- 
 
 
 
 centages are 
 
 
 
 calculated . . 
 
 . 167 191 
 
 283 266 42
 
 626 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Percentages from front and flying schools averaged 
 H L 
 
 Under 128 18.6 ] 19.9 ] 
 
 \ 34.8 \ 38.0 
 
 128 and 129 16.7 J 18.1 J 
 
 130 and 131 24.8] 21.1] 
 
 ^42.8 [40.5 
 
 132 and 133 18.0 J 19.6 J 
 
 134 and 135 13.2] 12.2] 
 
 J-22.4 ^21.5 
 
 136 and over 9.2 J 9.3 J 
 
 Table 19. The Frequencies of Super-vision, Normal and 20/20 
 Vision, and Vision below Normal in Military Aviators of High 
 and of Low Ratings for Success. H = high. L = low. D = dis- 
 charged or transferred because of lack of promise as a flyer. 
 
 Records Records from 
 
 from the front the flying schools 
 
 Aces H L, H L D 
 
 Vision above normal 30.3 29.7 31.9 45.8 48.7 28.9 
 
 20/20 or normal 63.6 64.4 58.2 51.4 47.5 68.4 
 
 Vision below normal 6.1 5.9 9.9 2.8 3.8 2.6 
 
 Vision above normal 33.3 29.7 32.6 43.0 45.0 26.9 
 
 20/20 or normal 60.6 63.5 61.7 54.2 48.8 71.1 
 
 Vision below normal 6.1 6.8 5.7 2.8 6.2 
 
 Number of cases used for 
 above percentages 36 118 141 72 80 38 
 
 A similar result is obtained if the vision of the better eye only 
 is used. 
 
 Table 20. 
 Out of 119 fliers rated H at the front there are 3 ears rated above 
 
 normal and 15 below normal. 
 Out of 143 fliers rated L at the front there are 2 ears rated above 
 
 normal and 15 below normal. 
 Out of 72 fliers rated H at the flying schools there are 2 ears rated 
 
 above normal and 7 below normal. 
 Out of 81 fliers rated L at the flying schools there are ears rated 
 
 above normal and 8 below normal. 
 Out of 31 men discharged for inability to learn to fly, only one ear 
 
 was below normal.
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 627 
 
 Table 21. Frequencies of Different Lengths of Nystagmus after 
 
 Rotation and of Different Amounts of Past-Pointing in Military 
 
 Aviators of High and of Low Ratings for Success. H = high. 
 L = low. D = discharged or transferred because of lack of promise 
 as a flyer. 
 
 Records Records 
 
 at the front at the flying: schools 
 
 Aces H L H L D 
 
 Average length of nystag- 
 mus 221/2 to 29y 2 53.6 48.5 53.4 46.8 56.2 64.0 
 
 Average length of nystag- 
 mus under 22% or over 
 
 291/2 46.4 5.15 46.6 53.2 47.8 36.0 
 
 Number of cases used in 
 
 the calculation 28 132 131 109 73 86 
 
 Number of past pointings 
 
 near "normal" (10 to 15) 55.6 60.0 74.3 67.9 61.2 69.7 
 
 Number of past pointings 
 far from "normal" (under 
 
 10 or over 15) 44.4 40.0 25.7 32.1 38.8 *30.3 
 
 Number of cases used in 
 
 the calculation 9 40 70 53 67 86 
 
 Table 22. The Frequencies of Different Heart Rates in Military 
 Aviators of High and of Low Ratings for Success. H, L, and D 
 have meanings as in previous tables. 
 
 H L, H L D 
 
 Under 72 17.0 12.1 11.3 18.7 13.9 
 
 72-77 31.4 29.8 28.2 26.3 27.8 
 
 68-83 15.2 25.5 21.1 13.8 33.3 
 
 84-89 21.2 16.3 21.1 17.5 11.1 
 
 90 or over 15.2 16.3 18.3 23.7 13.9 
 
 Aces 
 
 Under 77 38.2 48.4 41.9 39.5 45.0 41.7 
 
 77 and over 61.8 51.6 58.1 60.5 55.0 58.3 
 
 Number of cases.. .34 118 141 71 80 36
 
 628 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Table 23. The Frequencies of Different Blood Pressures in Military 
 Aviators of High and Low Ratings for Success. H, L, and D have 
 meanings as in previous tables. 
 
 Records Records from 
 
 from the front the flying schools 
 
 Systolic Aces H L H L D 
 
 Under 120 34.4 28.8 29.9 16.8 11.7 21.8 
 
 120-139 56.2 56.9 51.2 63.7 70.6 67.8 
 
 140 or over 9.4 14.4 9.0 19.5 17.7 10.4 
 
 Number of cases 32 153 134 113 136 87 
 
 Diastolic 
 
 Under 70 19.4 24.6 18.0 12.5 11.7 15.0 
 
 70 to 80 64.5 59.9 67.2 75.9 78.8 71.2 
 
 90 and over .....16.1 16.2 14.8 11.6 9.5 13.8 
 
 Number of cases 31 142 128 112 137 87 
 
 A TEST OF INTELLIGENCE FOR USE WITH 
 ENLISTED MEN IN THE AIR SERVICE 
 
 The Department of Military Aeronautics, for various 
 reasons, especially because of the nature of the work done by 
 its enlisted men, decided not to rely solely on the regular 
 army intelligence test for the intelligence of recruits, in 
 which the ability to deal with verbal data was properly made 
 prominent. At the request of the Director, Dr. Thorndike 
 of the Committee undertook, in September, 1918, to prepare 
 a series of tests to supplement or replace the regular army 
 tests, Alpha and Beta, and if possible to prepare a series that 
 could be administered satisfactorily by any personnel officer 
 after a few hours of practice. 
 
 A series was devised using four of the army Beta tests, 
 changed somewhat so as to be adapted to men in the mechan- 
 ical trades and four new tests, all being given without any 
 use of words by the examiner or the candidate. Fifteen 
 alternative forms were prepared, all of equal difficulty. These 
 were tried out with some thousands of individuals, standar- 
 dized, checked against the demonstrated ability of men who 
 had been long in the air service, and found satisfactory. One 
 sample form is shown below. All instructions are received
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 629 
 
 by imitation of the examiner who uses a large sheet, 20x36 
 inches, in front of the group, following a standard procedure. 
 
 SERIES i 
 
 A 
 
 Write your name here ] 
 Write it very clearly j 
 
 TEST 1 
 
 l|v|v| |v|v| |v|v| 
 
 |V|V| |V|V| |V|V| |V|V| 
 
 1 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2|X|X|X| |X|X|X| |X|X|Xl IXIXIXI IXIXIXI IXI I 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3|X|0| 
 
 
 ixlol 
 
 |x|o| 
 
 
 Ixloi 
 
 1 Ixl 1 
 
 
 IE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0| | 
 
 
 IE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5|0|X|X| 
 
 o|x|x| lolxlxl lolxlxl lolxlxl 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 "T 
 
 
 
 
 6 |0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X|X|0|X.IX|0|XIX|0|X|X| 1 
 
 
 i i i i i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7|0|A|A|D|D| lOlAlAlDlDl |O|A|A|D|D| |O|A|A| 1 
 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8|i rini 
 
 i irini |i 
 
 irini H 
 
 rini ii rim 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BLI t 
 
 
 .MIL 
 
 MIL 
 
 
 1 L ] M 
 
 . 
 
 1 
 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 |i iininn 
 
 li 
 
 |l |HI|IIR| 
 
 1 | | 1 |Hl|lM 
 
 I! 
 
 1 1 [in | mi |n! 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ill M mm 
 
 1 
 
 iililiilinii |i|i|iniii|i|ii|i i mini il mi 
 
 1 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 12|olAlAlDlD|0|AlAlDlD|0|AlA|D|D|0|A|A|D|D|0| 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 1 1 ! 
 
 FIG. 27 
 Mental Test Test 1 
 
 These tests gave promise of being a valuable supplement 
 to the regular army tests, Alpha and Beta, in the case of 
 recruits destined for work in the field artillery, coast artil- 
 lery, signal corps, motor transport, tank corps and other 
 departments where intelligence in dealing with mechanisms
 
 630 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 rather than in understanding verbal directions is of special 
 importance. See Figure 27 for fragments of the test. 
 
 TEST 3 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 9 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FIG. 27a. 
 Mental Test Test 3 
 
 A PLAN FOR CLASSIFYING PILOTS FOR TRAINING 
 
 AS PURSUIT PILOTS, BOMBING PILOTS, 
 
 PILOTS FOR OBSERVERS, AND 
 
 INSTRUCTORS 
 
 At the request of Lieutenant Colonel J. E. Carberry of 
 the Training Section, a tentative plan was devised early in
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION, 631 
 
 the fall of 1918 for using available information about pilots 
 in training, so as to put the right man in the right place. 
 Various circumstances prevented the Committee from per- 
 fecting this plan and discovering its merits by a try-out. 
 The fundamental principle of distributing a fixed amount of 
 qualitative demand amongst various characteristics, such as 
 intellect, skill in straight flying, skill in "stunt" flying, mark- 
 manship, etc., differently for the four varieties of pilots, was 
 accepted and a first revision of the plan made in co-operation 
 with the officers in charge of flying instruction at Kelly Field. 
 This principle of "bidding" for qualities was used later to 
 good effect as the basis in the Committee plan for the 
 Selection and Classification of Officer Material in the Stu- 
 dents' Army Training Corps, (see Chapter 41). The tech- 
 nique of so using the resulting fitness scores as to send each 
 man to the work for which he was most fit and at the same 
 time give each branch of work its just proportion of men of 
 each grade of ability, which was worked out for the Carberry 
 plan, was adopted in its entirety in the plan for distributing 
 the S. A. T. C. officer material to the different branches of the 
 line and Staff Corps. Had the war continued, the placement 
 of some seven thousand officers per month would have been 
 effected in accordance with the principles and technique 
 worked out first for the placement of pilots. 
 
 ON THE SELECTION OF PERSONNEL FOR THE 
 AIR SERVICE UNDER PEACE CONDITIONS 
 
 Dr. Thorndike was appointed by the Director of Military 
 Aeronautics as a member of the board to consider and report 
 on the problems of training under peace conditions. By vote 
 of the board he was requested to report specially on the 
 Selection of Personnel for the Air Service under Peace Con- 
 ditions, and outlined a plan by which the service could secure 
 the desired sort of men for (A) officer-pilots, observers, 
 engineer officers, adjutants, personnel officers, etc.; (B) 
 pilots with rank corresponding to that of petty officers in the
 
 632 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 navy; (C) foremen, skilled mechanics, and the like, with 
 rank of sergeant, master electrician, etc.; and (D) unskilled 
 and apprentice workmen with rank of private. 
 
 OUTLINE OF VARIOUS SERVICES RENDERED THE 
 DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY AERONAUTICS 
 
 Besides these main lines of work in connection with prob- 
 lems of the flying personnel, the Committee was responsible 
 for: 
 
 1. Various reports concerning the qualities associated 
 with success as a military aviator, beginning in November. 
 1917, for the guidance of examining boards in the selection 
 of cadets on a flying status. 
 
 2. An investigation of the ratings made upon the same 
 candidates by different examining boards. 
 
 3. A scale for measuring the degrees of responsibility 
 and leadership represented by different jobs, for use by 
 examining boards. 
 
 4. A scheme for credits to be used by examining boards 
 in selecting aviation cadets. This scheme was based on the 
 judgment of thirty experts in scientific personnel work and 
 fifteen experienced military aviators. 
 
 5. A scale for measuring the athletic ability of candi- 
 dates, for use by examining boards. 
 
 6. A scale for measuring the achievement of college and 
 high school students in non-academic activities, for use by 
 examining boards. 
 
 7. An investigation of the relation between the records 
 made in the Barany rotation tests by 135 aviators and their 
 success as fliers. And later a still more extended investiga- 
 tion of the same problem. 
 
 8. A descriptive inventory of the non-flying officers of 
 low military rank, but exceptionally great merit and promise. 
 
 9. A descriptive inventory of the success in civilian life 
 of non-flying officers, of the rank of captain, first lieutenant 
 and second lieutenant.
 
 AERONAUTICS COOPERATION 633 
 
 10. An investigation of the use of the Officers' Qualifica- 
 tion Record Card in the Air Service. 
 
 11. A set of tables for equating the official ratings given 
 by any one officer rating ten or more officers with the ratings 
 given by any other. 
 
 12. A set of tables for interpreting the meaning of co- 
 efficients of correlation of .50, .60, .70, .80 and .90. 
 
 13. A study of the personnel data in the case of British 
 fliers secured by Captain Bigelow for the Personnel Section 
 of the D. M. A. 
 
 14. The relation between standing in the Schools of Mili- 
 tary Aeronautics and success as a Military Aviator.
 
 CHAPTER 48 
 
 The Quartermaster Corps was the first of the Staff Corps 
 to follow in detail the Committee's methods for commissioned 
 and enlisted personnel. Major General H. G. Sharpe, and 
 later, Major General G. W. Goethals, Mr. Robert Thome, 
 and Colonel Charles P. Daly, all considered the classification 
 and officer ratings important and cooperated in their intro- 
 duction and perfection. The first Trade Test station was 
 established at the Quartermaster Camp Joseph E. Johnston, 
 Jacksonville, Florida, and the Personnel Office at that camp, 
 under Major Claude M. Fuess, was a model of its kind. 
 
 After the rating scale had been started in the line of the 
 Army, Dr. Scott and his associates made contacts with the 
 officers of the Staff Corps and presented the Army Classifica- 
 tion System, as then operated. In the Quartermaster Corps, 
 General Sharpe and Colonel Daly were immediately im- 
 pressed with the importance of the work. At that time, July, 
 1917, it was important that every effort be expended on the 
 line, so the amount of work that could be done by the Quar- 
 termaster Corps was limited. A system for using the rating 
 scale and for keeping records for candidates for commission 
 in training at Camp Joseph E. Johnston was, however, 
 worked out. This was installed by Captain (later Major) 
 J. H. Spengler, Q. M. C. In February, 1918, however, 
 the need for the more thorough classification and rating of 
 officers in the Quartermaster Training Camp at Jackson- 
 ville, Florida, became acute and, at the request of General 
 Goethals. Dr. Scott, Colonel Daly and Mr. W. S. Field, who 
 was working for the Quartermaster General on personnel and 
 
 634
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 635 
 
 training problems, went to Camp Joseph E. Johnston and 
 classified all the officers in the school. The cards were 
 sent to the office of the Quartermaster General and there used 
 in selecting officers for special assignment. 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN THE OFFICE OF THE 
 QUARTERMASTER GENERAL 
 
 On March 1, 1918, Mr. (later Lt. Col.) John J. Coss of 
 the Committee took charge of the personnel work in the Quar- 
 termaster Corps and continued until July 1st, when he re- 
 turned to the Committee. He was supported in his work by 
 Mr. W. R. DeField, a member of the Committee, who was 
 assistant to Mr. Robert Thome, Assistant Quartermaster Gen- 
 eral. The details of the work in the Quartermaster Corps 
 given in this chapter are for the period of Mr. Coss' adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 During this time, the use of the Rating Scale and the 
 Officers' Qualification Card was established throughout the 
 Corps. In this work, the field staff of the Committee, under the 
 direction of Dr. Strong, assisted materially by explaining the 
 scale in all the larger Quartermaster stations. The qualifica- 
 tion cards were used increasingly for the selection of officers 
 and for overseas detail. The practice of sending qualification 
 cards with casual officers, so marked as to indicate the proper 
 assignment, was first regularized in the Staff Corps by the 
 Quartermaster. 
 
 An effort was made to centralize the procurement of officers. 
 Orders were issued that no civilians would be commissioned 
 unless there were no qualified officers or officer candidates 
 available. This gave a fairer chance to the men in the serv- 
 ice, but it did not operate perfectly, since the need for officers 
 could not be accurately enough predicted to prepare a supply 
 from within the service. 
 
 The commissioning of draft age civilians was reduced to a 
 minimum. Only the rarest technical specialists were commis- 
 sioned and then seldom over the rank of first lieutenant.
 
 636 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Each commission so granted was approved by Major General 
 Goethals or Brigadier General R. E. Wood. 
 
 A new form of application for commission (CCP-1110) and 
 a summary report sheet called "Inventory of Personnel" 
 (CCP-12) were prepared for the Quartermaster Corps by 
 Mr. Kendall Weisiger of the Committee. The applicant's 
 qualification card was used with marked success. Indeed, it 
 formed the basis of the card prepared by the centralized 
 Personnel Branch of the General Staff, for use by all appli- 
 cants for commission. The "Inventory," while a very 
 effective form, required for its use a greater refinement of 
 personnel methods than was achieved in the rush of the war 
 expansion. 
 
 An effective system for keeping track of the commissioned 
 personnel was installed. Each Staff Corps kept its own file 
 of officers' qualification cards and its own station list, show- 
 ing the geographical location of its officers. In addition, the 
 Quartermaster Corps kept a visible, alphabetical officers' file. 
 For the station file, an ingenious system was devised by 
 Major George H. Hahn, of the Personnel Division. Each 
 officer was recorded on a card bearing the appropriate top 
 flap. When an officer changed stations, his card was moved. 
 The card system was filed in the "tub" file and not in the 
 usual drawer system. 
 
 A modification of this system with a series of red cards 
 with the rank flaps to be inserted, blank, where vacancies in 
 the different grades existed, could be used successfully in 
 peace times for a centralized station record. Metal tabs in 
 colors appropriate to the corps, could be used on the red 
 cards and on the others to indicate the corps assignments. 
 
 A Civilian Qualification Card and a new rating scale were 
 worked out for the Quartermaster Corps civilian personnel 
 by Mr. W. S. Field, in conjunction with the members of the 
 Committee. This card is unique in that it provides for rec- 
 ording the kind of occupation, the kind of business and the 
 degree of responsibility, by checking separate lists.
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 6i7 
 
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 638 
 
 A system of monthly strength returns and forecast of 
 needs was instituted and carried out chiefly by Captain W. R. 
 Robinson and Mr. William Carruth. This report kept cur- 
 rent exact figures of strength and estimated need by occupa- 
 tion. The estimate of needs was begun in March but was 
 never accurate. Accuracy, indeed, was not possible until the 
 full occupationalization of organizations was completed, in 
 November, 1918, by Major Sidney A. Friede, Quartermaster 
 Corps, detailed for work with the Committee. 
 
 This estimate of needs was particularly necessary for the 
 training work of the Quartermaster Corps, which was under 
 the effective direction of Mr. W. S. Field. In an effort to 
 accumulate information on the functions to be performed by 
 officers and men in overseas units, in order to forecast the 
 needs more accurately and to formulate a training program, 
 Major Friede was sent overseas and returned with a very 
 valuable report. 
 
 The use of limited service men in the Quartermaster Corps 
 in office units for the field was extensive. Studies were made 
 on the advisability of using limited service men in the office 
 of the Quartermaster General and the Supply Depots. The 
 saving of money over the civilian clerical forces was not 
 large enough to over-balance the dislike of giving office posi- 
 tions to men in uniform, even if certified by the draft for 
 limited service only. In the Quartermaster Corps, very few 
 enlisted men were ever used in office work outside of the field. 
 
 Procedure of Organization Units. The Office of the 
 Quartermaster General was called upon to furnish officers 
 and enlisted men for service in the States, and it was also 
 required to organize uilits in accordance with an overseas 
 program. To enable the corps to meet its obligations, author- 
 izations for commissioned and enlisted personnel were given 
 by the General Staff. Requisitions for enlisted personnel 
 were prepared by occupations and transmitted to the central 
 distributing office of the Committee. These requisitions were 
 put on a priority schedule by Lt. Col. Kimball, of the Opera-
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 
 
 639 
 
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 640 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 tions Division, General Staff, and to fill them men were 
 ordered from Depot Brigades to Quartermaster organization 
 points. 
 
 At these points, the largest of which was Camp Joseph E. 
 Johnston, the classification of the men was checked, assign- 
 ments to companies made or further individual training 
 ordered. The units were given a small amount of group 
 training and were then reported to the Transportation Divi- 
 sion of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division, as ready 
 for transportation. When this was furnished, the units pro- 
 ceeded to embarkation points and were shipped. 
 
 Officers for overseas organizations were secured either by 
 assignment of personnel serving in camp organizations or 
 by commissioning from the Officer Candidate School at Joseph 
 E. Johnston or Camp Meigs, or by commissioning from civil 
 life. The last method was followed rarely, and only for 
 such special units as, for instance, the Refrigeration Service. 
 
 From July, 1918, the personnel under the direct control 
 of the Quartermaster General was decreased by the separa- 
 tion from the Quartermaster Corps of the Construction Divi- 
 sion and the Motor Transport Corps and by the absorption 
 of Quartermaster functions by Purchase, Storage, and Traf- 
 fic. With the centralization of officer personnel procurement 
 in the Personnel Branch, General Staff, the Quartermaster 
 Corps, as all other arms of the Service, became dependent 
 upon that agency for its officer personnel. 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN THE FIELD* 
 
 Camp Joseph E. Johnston was established on October 13, 
 1917, and continued without intermission to the close of the 
 war as a Quartermaster camp. Its organization was singular, 
 in that it could not be administered through brigades, regi- 
 ments and battalions, as were the National Army and 
 camp was early worked out. This so-called "block-system," 
 
 The following Is taken from the report of Major C. M. Fuess, In 
 charge of Personnel, Camp Joseph E. Johnston.
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 641 
 
 without any reference to military acts or customary military 
 National Guard camps where line organizations were in train- 
 ing. A scheme of military administration peculiar to the 
 regulations assembled a number of Quartermaster Corps com- 
 panies for the purpose of camp administration within sep- 
 arate geographical blocks. This peculiarity, together with 
 the fact that Camp Johnston was almost primarily a train- 
 ing camp, made the personnel work there of the most com- 
 plicated character. A general order, dated April 18, 1918, 
 declared the entire camp to be a school, and every division 
 within the camp was directed to consider itself a part of the 
 general training scheme. 
 
 These preliminary remarks will serve to show in part 
 how interesting the situation at the camp came to be for the 
 personnel officer in charge. In addition, it is worth while 
 mentioning that the officer in charge of personnel work was 
 for several months a civilian and that all the members of 
 the Personnel Division were connected with the Quarter- 
 master Corps and not with the Adjutant General's Depart- 
 ment, as in other cantonments. Finally, the scope and power 
 of the personnel office in Camp Johnston was greater than 
 in any personnel office, and its functions "were more numerous 
 and varied. 
 
 Early Personnel Work. Shortly after the camp was or- 
 ganized, a local record card had been devised which each 
 enlisted man was obliged to fill out himself: This card in 
 the light of future events proved to be by no means adequate, 
 even when supplemented by the system introduced in August, 
 1917, by the Committee. When a card was made out, it was 
 sent to camp headquarters. Here, each card was examined and 
 marked in blue pencil with "Vocational Assignment." As no 
 official index of occupations then existed, a special occupational 
 list was prepared in the camp. When specialists of a particular 
 trade were needed, new classifications had to be made. At one 
 time, for instance, a special class was made of "Overland and 
 Buick Spare Parts Experts." When the vocational assignments
 
 642 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 were completed cards were filed by occupation. Locator 
 cards were also prepared from travel orders and filed alpha- 
 petically. A glaring defect of this system was that the 
 qualification cards were filled out by the men to be assigned 
 without interview, instruction or control of any nature, ex- 
 cept to see that a card was received from each man. In 
 the early days of Camp Johnston, the men sent there aver- 
 aged very high in education and ability. They soon found out 
 that if they underscored "auto driver," or "horseman," or 
 "farmer," they would probably be assigned as chauffeurs in 
 a Truck Train or laborers in a Remount Squadron. They, 
 therefore, usually concealed the fact that they had ever driven 
 an automobile or carried on farm work. 
 
 Some assignments in camp were very unpopular. For in- 
 stance, nobody liked to be assigned as teamster in a Wagon 
 Company. On one occasion when nobody volunteered for 
 this job, the personnel officer took at random a hundred cards 
 and assigned all the men to Wagon Company work. This 
 procedure was not very successful, because many of the men 
 were too short or too light in weight to carry on the work. 
 Finally, somebody devised a "brilliant" scheme. Delegates 
 from the Wagon Companies were sent to every barracks in 
 camp with authority to pick out whatever men they wished. 
 This procedure resulted in giving the Wagon Companies a 
 full personnel. 
 
 It is not just, however, to criticise too severely those in 
 charge of Personnel work at Camp Johnston early in 1918. 
 No one had been told anything about right methods and they 
 had received no instruction since August, 1917, regarding the 
 plans of the Committee on Classification of Personnel in the 
 Army. The principle that a man should be assigned on the 
 basis of his previous training and experience was not well 
 established. Transfers from one unit to another were made, 
 not usually on the basis of the man's previous occupation, but 
 frequently because of personal influence. Furthermore, there 
 was no one who was recognized as being in absolute control
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 643 
 
 D personnel work at the camp. Authority was divided among 
 several officers all of whom were at the beck and call of the 
 Camp Adjutant. The deficiencies of the personnel work at 
 Camp Johnston were brought to the attention of the Com- 
 mittee in February, 1918, and the first important reforma- 
 tory step in the handling of enlisted personnel was taken in 
 sending Mr. D. J. O'Connor to Camp Johnston. 
 
 Reorganization of Personnel Work. Mr. O'Connor put 
 into use at Camp Johnston the qualification card devised 
 by the Committee, and gave detailed instructions regarding 
 the proper method of interviewing men and making out 
 these cards. Under his supervision, the entire person- 
 nel of the camp was "carded." Second Lieutenants from 
 the first Officers' Training School were used as inter- 
 viewers. At approximately the same time, Dr. Scott came to 
 Camp Johnston and lectured to the officers regarding the mak- 
 ing out of Officers' Qualification Cards and the correct 
 methods of rating subordinate officers. 
 
 As a result of the visits of Mr. O'Connor and Dr. Scott, 
 a new conception of personnel work was established in the 
 camp. Mr. Fuess (later commissioned) was then selected by 
 Mr. Coss and after being trained by the Committee, was 
 placed in charge of personnel work. When he arrived, he 
 found the way already opened for the installation of a real 
 Personnel Division. For two or three days after his arrival 
 at Camp Johnston, Mr. Fuess was occupied from early 5 morn- 
 ing until late at night in interviewing men who claimed that 
 they had been improperly assigned. Soldiers qualified in 
 specific trades maintained that they had not been placed in 
 companies where their attainments could be used. A dis- 
 tinguished lecturer and author, a graduate of Harvard, had 
 been assigned to a Butchery Company, where his main job 
 was to cut meat. Being slight of frame and not in very 
 good health, he was poorly equipped for the task of handling 
 a cleaver. When removed from the Butchery Company and
 
 644 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 assigned as intruder in the Training Division, he delivered 
 brilliant lectures. 
 
 It may be that the new Chief of Personnel was inclined 
 to lend too free an ear to the complaints brought to his 
 notice. In some cases he was convinced that a cowardly 
 or weak man was trying to escape overseas duty. In one 
 famous case, a soldier succeeded through some plaintive tale in 
 getting himself transferred from an overseas unit to some 
 non-combatant permanent company. Unwisely, however, he 
 boasted of his achievement and the boast reached the ears 
 of the Chief of the Personnel Division. Righteously angry 
 at having been so imposed upon, that officer proceeded to 
 transfer the soldier to his original overseas company. This 
 case is typical of what happened in many cases in those early 
 days. 
 
 It soon became apparent that it would be beyond the 
 physical power of one man to interview the long line of 
 soldiers that appeared each day. Accordingly, Mr. Fuess 
 picked two sergeants and he intrusted them with the duty of 
 listening to the tales of woe. These men soon acquired ex- 
 perience in the art and were able very quickly to separate 
 the sheep from the goats. The goats were summarily 
 ejected; the sheep were treated courteously and given assign- 
 ments more to their satisfaction. It was important also to 
 establish at once a system of interviewing incoming recruits. 
 Not entirely satisfied with the results of the interviewing by 
 the second lieutenants, Mr. Fuess picked some fifteen young 
 enlisted men, all college graduates, and gave them instruc- 
 tions in the proper method of making out qualification cards. 
 These men became the nucleus of an organization which was 
 later to include some fifty interviewers, all of them skilled in 
 their particular job. 
 
 To keep the personnel organization working together, con- 
 ferences of department heads were called every morning at 
 seven forty-five. This proved a valuable feature. 
 
 The organization of the personnel office at the time of
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 645 
 
 Mr. Fuess' arrival had been worked out by Mr. W. S. Field, 
 who, as Chief of Quartermaster Training and advisor on the 
 administration of Camp Johnston, had drawn organization 
 plans for each of the functions of the camp establishment. Mr. 
 Field's connection with the corps ceased on July 1, and, as 
 the personnel work grew, certain changes became necessary. 
 
 The operation of the different branches under the Chief of 
 Personnel is of interest: 
 
 Any civilian choosing to enter the service at Camp John- 
 ston was brought before the Induction Branch, Personnel Di- 
 vision, where he was instructed in the proper form to fill out 
 and was regularly taken into the service. An enlisted soldier 
 coming to Camp Johnston from some other camp or army 
 post was sent at once to the Receiving Group to report to 
 the commanding officer. From there, he was directed to the 
 Office of the Procurement Branch, Personnel Division. Here 
 he presented his qualification card; if he had no qualification 
 card he was interviewed and a card made out and placed in 
 the files. After filling or making out his qualification card, 
 the soldier was sent before an officer by whom he was assigned 
 to a particular company in a particular regiment in the Re- 
 ceiving Camp. Private John Smith, for instance, on the basis 
 of his past experience in motor car work was assigned to the 
 Road Training Regiment, Company 9. As soon as practical, 
 after his assignment, he was, if he acknowledged any profic- 
 iency in any particular trade, sent to the Trade Test Branch, 
 Personnel Division, where he was given a test. For example, 
 if he claimed to be an outside wireman or an auto mechanic 
 he was given the necessary tests and on the basis of his 
 attainments was graded as an expert, journeyman, apprentice, 
 or novice. The result of these tests was placed in red ink on 
 his qualification card. After these preliminaries, the soldier 
 took his proper assignment in the Receiving Camp. Here he 
 was brought before various boards by whom he was innoculated 
 for typhoid, vaccinated, inspected for tuberculosis, foot
 
 646 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 trouble and tested by the psychologist to determine the grade 
 of his mentality. 
 
 The normal length of stay in the Receiving Camp, as de- 
 termined by carefully prepared statistics, was approximately 
 22 days. During this time, the recruit received four hours 
 per day drill along military lines and four hours a day in 
 elementary instruction in one of three branches: office train- 
 ing, shop training or road training. At the end of approxi- 
 mately three weeks he was declared released by the epide- 
 mologist and was therefore available for transfer to the main 
 camp. Each day a certain number of men were ready for 
 such transfer and their qualification cards were forwarded to 
 the Assignment Branch, Personnel Division, at Headquarters. 
 Here an officer, basing his judgment on the qualifications of 
 the men as indicated by their qualification cards, assigned 
 them to various posts in the main camp. 
 
 Theoretically, at Camp Johnston every man coming from 
 the Receiving Camp should have been assigned at once to 
 some school unit in the Training Division and should there 
 have entered upon a course of study of from four to eight 
 weeks. In actual practice, this procedure was not possible. 
 What really occurred was that in most cases all men coming 
 from the Receiving Camp who were marked as experts or 
 journeymen were assigned immediately to overseas organiza- 
 tions. In some cases, when the pressure was very great, it 
 was necessary in order to prepare these units on time to 
 assign to them even apprentices. " When assigned to an over- 
 seas unit, the soldier received some scanty training, but he 
 was generally equipped and inspected with his fellows within 
 a very short period and sent to a port of embarkation. In 
 an exceptional case when a man was fortunate enough to be 
 sent to school and pursued the course of the Training Divi- 
 . sion until that division declared him ready for assignment, 
 he was then put in overseas organizations to perform the 
 functions for which he had been properly trained. 
 
 In assigning men to these units as much care as possible
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 647 
 
 was exercised. No card system, however, is without its de- 
 fects. In cases where it could be shown that a man's original 
 assignment was improperly made, he made appeal to the 
 Adjustment Branch, Personnel Division, by whom he was 
 often transferred to a unit where his ability could be proved 
 to be of more value. Such transfers at Camp Johnston 
 occurred frequently and were carried out solely for the pur- 
 pose of placing the right man in the right job. 
 
 The Organization Branch, Personnel Division, formed all 
 such overseas' units and arranged for their departure from 
 camp. When a requisition came from the office of the Quar- 
 termaster General to send men of certain qualifications to 
 other posts, it was the duty of the Requisition Branch, Per- 
 sonnel Division to select these men, usually on the basis of 
 a personal interview, and to transfer them to fill the order. 
 Calls of this kind came frequently and in some weeks two 
 hundred or three hundred men were sent out of camp in 
 response to such demands. This particular work of the Per- 
 sonnel Division was by no means unimportant and had to be 
 conducted with great care. 
 
 The Records and Statistics Branch, Personnel Division, 
 kept the records of every man in camp, filed the qualification 
 cards and maintained a locator card file. Wheji a man was 
 finally sent from camp, either in an overseas unit or on a 
 requisition from Washington, the Personnel Division attended 
 to his departure, providing him or his commanding officer 
 with the qualification card and thus ushered him out of camp. 
 
 The Personnel Division also controlled the promotion and 
 the commissioning of men in camp. The papers of all men 
 recommended for commission or promotion were forwarded 
 through the Personnel Division. The Personnel Division had 
 authority, through the commanding officer, to make non-com- 
 missioned officers. The location of companies or army units 
 in camp was directed by the Chief of the Personnel Division. 
 In addition, the management of the pay cards and pay rolls 
 was directed by the Personnel Adjutant's Branch, Personnel
 
 648 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Division, and all matters connected with insurance and allot- 
 ment were attended t'o by the War Risk Insurance Branch, 
 Personnel Division. The Personnel Division, also in con- 
 nection with the Officers' Training School, interviewed 
 prospective officers with a view to their assignment to definite 
 stations in response to requisitions from the Quartermaster 
 General. Officers' qualification cards were kept in the files of 
 the Personnel Division and placed in the hands of officers on 
 their departure from camp. 
 
 At the time when the Personnel Division was working at 
 its highest capacity, it numbered 412 men located in various 
 sections of the camp. The Induction Branch, the Procure- 
 ment Branch and the Trade Test Branch were in the Receiv- 
 ing Camp. All other branches, except the War Risk Insur- 
 ance Branch, were located in the Headquarters Building. It 
 has sometimes been maintained that the clerical force em- 
 ployed was too large, but when it is remembered that the 
 Personnel Division at Camp Johnston carried on administra- 
 tive work, which was of a kind not carried on by Personnel 
 Divisions in other camps, the office force used will not seem too 
 great. 
 
 A peculiar situation arose with the organization of the sepa- 
 rate Motor Transport Corps in Camp Johnston. It was not 
 altogether desirable that the Personnel Division should ad- 
 minister the personnel work connected with the Motor Trans- 
 port Corps; yet no other method could be followed if the 
 work of the Motor Transport Corps was to be done. Eventu- 
 ally the problem was solved in the following manner: The 
 Chief of the Personnel Division assigned one man in each 
 of the twelve branches to specialize in the complexities of the 
 Motor Transport Corps. When these men had learned fully 
 their lessons, they were taken bodily and placed under the 
 control of the commanding officer of the Motor Transport 
 Corps at Camp Johnston, who thus had a complete Per- 
 sonnel Division under his direction and at his disposal. 
 Through this method, the transition from one state of affairs
 
 QUARTERMASTER COOPERATION 649 
 
 to another was accomplished without friction or confusion. 
 The archives of the Quartermaster Corps contain a detailed 
 account of the operation of each Branch of the Personnel 
 System at Camp Johnston. 
 
 
 
 CAMP MEIGS 
 
 At Camp Meigs, which was a small casual camp of about 
 3,000, located on the outskirts of Washington, there was 
 established a personnel office which did satisfactory work 
 throughout the war. A training school was established there 
 of officers from the Camp Johnston School. Camp Meigs was 
 used by the Committee for four sessions of the series of Per- 
 sonnel Schools which were conducted under Dr. Strong and 
 Mr. Kendall Weisiger.
 
 CHAPTER 49 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN THE NAVY AND 
 MARINE CORPS 
 
 Under provisions of the Man-Power Act of August, 1918, 
 and as a result of a conference between the War and Navy 
 Departments, the Navy was allotted an average monthly 
 quota of 15,000 to be taken from the draft; 6,500 by indi- 
 vidual induction and the remainder from the "run of the 
 draft." In addition to this monthly quota there were certain 
 classes of the draft from which inductions could be made by 
 the Navy. 
 
 The U. S. Marine Corps, under the provisions of the Man- 
 Power Act of August, 1918, was entitled to receive from the 
 "general run of the draft" a monthly quota of 5,000 men 
 until February, 1919, and a 1,500 quota thereafter. The 
 Marine program provided that 4,000 men should be received 
 per month at Paris Island, South Carolina, and Mare Island, 
 California. At these marine barracks they were to receive 
 their preliminary training and then be forwarded to the 
 Marine Pre-Embarkation Camp at Quantico, Virginia, for 
 assignment to duty with combat organizations. 
 
 With the extension of the draft to the Navy and Marine 
 Corps the personnel problems which had arisen at the national 
 army cantonments similarly appeared in the Navy and Marine 
 Corps. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Fall of 
 1918 should see the request for the cooperation of the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel in the Army with the 
 Navy Department. 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN THE NAVY 
 
 The urgent need of the United States Navy for a personnel 
 
 650
 
 651 
 
 system similar to that adopted and used in the Army can best 
 be shown by quoting the following from the Newport (R. I.) 
 Naval Training Station Bulletin. 
 
 EXPERIENCED PHOTOGRAPHERS WANTED 
 
 A first-class experienced photographer familiar with dark-room 
 work, retouching and printing is desired for the Newport "Recruit," 
 also a man who is capable of acting as layout artist. Applicants 
 should apply at office of the "Recruit." 
 
 CAMERA REPAIRMEN NEEDED 
 
 Heads of all Departments will immediately submit to the Execu- 
 tive Officer a report of the number of men available for transfer 
 for instruction as camera repairmen. Men should have had some 
 previous experience in making or repairing cameras. 
 
 LABORATORIANS (MECHANICAL) 
 
 Men who believe themselves specially qualified for duty as Labora- 
 torians (mechanical) at the Engineering Experiment Station, Naval 
 Academy, Annapolis, Md., will submit application to the Materiel 
 Office through the heads of their departments. 
 
 The essential qualifications are: a knowledge of mechanical engi- 
 neering, such as would be obtained at a technical school, including 
 courses in mechanical drawing, shop-work, physics, applied mechanics, 
 applied electricity and steam engineering. 
 
 The principal duties that would be assigned these men are: cali- 
 bration of engineering measuring instruments, such as thermometers, 
 pressure gauges, etc., taking observations during a test of steam and 
 electrical machinery; calculating of results, plotting of curves and. 
 making sketches and .drawing. 
 
 Materiel Officer will submit list of men qualified with statement of 
 training and qualifications in each case. 
 
 Applications for this duty will not be received after 12 KX) M. on 
 Thursday, October 3, 1918. 
 
 MEN FOR MERCHANT MARINE 
 
 All men desiring transfer to. the Officer Material School, Naval 
 Auxiliary Reserve (Merchant Marine), should submit their applica- 
 tion through the regular channels. 
 
 Men selected for this training must meet the following qualifications: 
 
 1. Men of ability and officer material. 
 
 2. Age 21 to 40 inclusive.
 
 652 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 3. Education equivalent to at least completion of High School 
 Course, including good knowledge of trigonometry and 
 logarithms. 
 
 4>. Physically qualified for line officer standard of the regular 
 Navy. 
 
 5. Must be in regular Navy, in the Naval Reserve Force (any 
 
 class) for general service. 
 
 6. Shall have had at least one month's military training or its 
 
 equivalent. 
 
 Men are wanted immediately for this school. Heads of depart- 
 ments will publish this notice. 
 
 RAILROAD MEN NEEDED 
 
 The Bureau of Navigation has need of men for duty as section 
 hands in connection with the construction of a' Government Railroad 
 at Indian Head, Maryland. 
 
 All men who have had previous railroad experience are requested 
 to submit their names to the head of their department. 
 
 Heads of departments will submit lists of names to the Executive 
 Officer. 
 
 Only men available for transfer should be included in the above 
 referred to lists. 
 
 MINING ENGINEERS 
 
 The Bureau of Navigation has urgent need for five men for 
 inspection of mines, in connection with the shipping of bunker coal 
 to the Atlantic seaboard. 
 
 Men should be graduate Engineers of high standing and have ex- 
 tensive practical experience in the coal fields of West Virginia and 
 Pennsylvania producing low volatile coal. 
 
 Men believing themselves possessed of the necessary qualifications 
 to perform this duty are requested to immediately submit their 
 names to the Executive Officer via the head of their department. 
 
 The foregoing extracts are clear indications of the need 
 in the Navy for some scientific system of ascertaining and 
 recording an enlisted man's qualifications involving the use 
 of qualification cards and trade tests and also some scientific 
 effort to ascertain and express in a standard language the 
 needs of the Navy. 
 
 Major Coffin detailed to the Bureau of Navigation. On 
 September 15, 1918, the Secretary of the Navy requested
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NAVY 653 
 
 the Secretary of War to detail an officer from the Adjutant 
 General's Staff to report to the Bureau of Navigation of 
 which Rear Admiral L. C. Palmer was then chief. In accord- 
 ance with this request, a memorandum of September 21 was 
 issued placing the services of Major Charles R. Coffin, Adju- 
 tant General's Department, Personnel Adjutant of one of th'e 
 large Army camps, at the disposal of the Personnel Section 
 of the Bureau of Navigation. 
 
 Plan for Mobilization of the Navy Devised. Major Coffin 
 reported in person to Lieutenant Commander Emory Winship, 
 the Chief of the Personnel Section. At a conference at which 
 Lieutenant Commander Leroy Brooks, Lieutenant Loughran, 
 and Chief Clerk Yeoman Whitely were in attendance he 
 explained not only the forms used in Army personnel work, 
 but also the forms from the Provost Marshal General's Office 
 used in the induction and receiving of drafted men. As a 
 result of this conference the Navy Department issued, on 
 September 21, 1918, a letter on the mobilization of man- 
 power for the Navy, setting forth many phases of the subject 
 in detail. 
 
 Personnel Work Explained at Naval Training Station. 
 Subsequent to this conference, Major Coffin proceeded to the 
 Naval Training Station at Newport, Rhode Island, to con- 
 fer with the Commandant, Captain E. H. Campbell, for the 
 purpose of ascertaining how much of the Army personnel 
 system was adaptable to the needs of the Navy. Accompany- 
 ing Major Coffin was Lieutenant Commander Raymond 
 Dodge, a member of the Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel in the Army, who had been released from service with 
 the Army for the purpose of developing and perfecting cer- 
 tain tests contemplated for the use of the Navy in selecting 
 naval aviators, gun pointers, signalmen, listeners, and men 
 for fire control and lookout duty. As a result of the con- 
 ference, Captain Campbell was most enthusiastic about the 
 personnel system and designated Lieutenant Shannon from 
 his office to confer with Major Coffin and Lieutenant Com-
 
 654 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 mander Dodge upon the personnel system for the Navy. As 
 the result of their efforts the following memorandum was 
 submitted to the Bureau of Navigation: 
 
 "SUGGESTED PERSONNEL CLASSIFICATION 
 DIVISION 
 
 "1. The Senior Personnel Classification Officer shall be 
 assigned duty in the Bureau of Navigation, and shall be 
 known as Head of the Personnel Classification Division, and 
 will act as assistant to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. 
 
 "(a) The Head of the Personnel Classification Division 
 shall be an officer on the active list of the Navy, appointed by 
 the President, but with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
 from among the officers of the line of the Navy, not below the 
 grade of Lieutenant Commander, for a period of four years, 
 who shall under the direction of the Chief of the Bureau of 
 Navigation, be charged with the Personnel Classification 
 development of the Fleet, Bases and Training Stations, and 
 be charged with the preparation and readiness of plans for 
 such increase that might be used in time of war. 
 
 "(b) The orders issued by the Head of the Personnel 
 Classification Division in performing the duties assigned him 
 shall be prepared under the authority of the Chief of the 
 Bureau of Navigation, and his orders shall be considered as 
 emanating from the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and 
 shall have full force and effect as such. 
 
 "(c) To assist the Head of the Personnel Classification 
 Division in the Bureau of Navigation in performing the duties 
 of his office, there shall be assigned for this exclusive duty not 
 less than officers of and above the rank of Lieutenant 
 
 Junior Grade of the Navy, or First Lieutenant of the Marine 
 Corps. 
 
 "(d) The business of the Personnel Classification Division 
 of the Navy shall be distributed in such manner as the Chief 
 of the Bureau of Navigation shall judge to be expedient and 
 proper.
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NAVY 655 
 
 "(e) The Head of the Personnel Classification Division 
 shall furnish such information and data as may be called for 
 by the Chief of Naval Operations and the General Board, 
 furnishing a copy of same to the Chief of the Bureau of 
 Navigation. 
 
 "(f) He shall advise the Chief of the Bureau of Naviga- 
 tion on all business of his department in regard to foreign 
 progress, along this line, with such comment as he may deem 
 advisable. 
 
 "(g) In preparing and maintaining in readiness continu- 
 ally various forms of procedure for the use of the Fleet and 
 Naval Training Stations in time of war, he shall frequently 
 consult with, and have the advice and assistance of the vari-* 
 ous Bureaus, Boards and Officers of the Navy Department, 
 including Marine Corps Headquarters in matters coming 
 under their cognizance. 
 
 "(h) The Head of the Personnel Classification Division 
 shall from time to time witness Personnel Classification work 
 in the Fleet, and frequently inspect Bases and Training Sta- 
 tions when practicable. 
 
 "(i) He shall have two principal Senior Assistants, officers 
 not below the grade of Senior Lieutenant, one of whom pref- 
 erably to be on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Atlantic Fleet, and the other on duty at a Naval Training 
 Station. 
 
 "(j) With each 20,000 enlisted personnel afloat there shall 
 be one Personnel Classification Officer. 
 
 "(k) There shall be assigned to each Naval Training Sta- 
 tion or Naval Base one Personnel Classification Officer. 
 
 "(1) Personnel Classification Officers assigned duty with 
 a force shall keep complete files of the force personnel, and 
 when practicable verify their files with the master files kept 
 by the Senior Personnel Classification Officer in the Bureau 
 of Navigation semi-annually. Should it be impracticable to 
 do this a letter will be forwarded to the Bureau of Naviga- 
 tion, stating in detail the reason for omission. Following a
 
 656 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 comparison of files a report will be submitted showing any 
 discrepancies that may be found to exist, along with sugges- 
 tions as to their possible future elimination. 
 
 "(m) Personnel Classification Officers afloat shall be 
 charged with the enforcement of the Personnel Classification 
 Regulations, and with the distribution of all orders and regu- 
 lations of a general or circular character that might be of 
 interest to Flag and Commanding Officers. 
 
 "(n) The Senior Personnel Classification Officer shall be 
 responsible for the proper training and development of Per- 
 sonnel Classification Officers, and shall make recommenda- 
 tions to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation from time to 
 time that will increase the efficiency of the Personnel Classi- 
 fication Division. 
 
 "(o) The Senior Personnel Classification Officer shall be 
 in charge of the schools for Personnel Classification Officers, 
 and shall keep on file in the Bureau of Navigation a list of 
 officers available for such duty. 
 
 "(p) The Head of the Personnel Classification Division 
 shall recommend to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation 
 such officers as he deems qualified for Personnel Classifica- 
 tion for the staffs of Commanders-in-Chief and Training Sta- 
 tions. 
 
 "(q) The Head of the Personnel Classification Division 
 will furnish such data as may be required by the Chief of the 
 Bureau of Navigation for his annual report, showing progress 
 made and work accomplished, along with such statistics as 
 might be of interest." 
 
 Captain Campbell later suggested a change in paragraph 
 j, so that a Personnel Officer would be provided for each 
 vessel afloat, except in the case of smaller craft where the 
 duties of the Personnel Officer were to be added to the duties 
 of another officer already on duty. Before leaving Newport, 
 the following Qualification Card for use in the Navy was 
 prepared by Major Coffin. This card followed the general 
 line of the Soldiers' Qualification Card.
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NAVY 
 
 657 
 
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 658 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Cessation of Hostilities Halts Personnel Program. The 
 signing of the Armistice halted the work so favorably begun 
 in the Navy and terminated for war purposes the close liaison 
 established between the Bureau of Navigation and the Com- 
 mittee on Classification of Personnel in the Army, but not 
 until the usefulness and the necessity of personnel work in 
 the Navy had been demonstrated. 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK WITH THE MARINES 
 
 A cablegram from the American Expeditionary Forces 
 reading "Thirteenth Regiment Marines arrived without pas- 
 senger lists, locator cards, master cards, qualification cards. 
 Request that in future Marines bring same records required 
 of all other organizations," was received in Washington on 
 October 12, 1918. As one of the results of this request 
 the Commandant of the Marine Corps requested that an 
 officer be detailed from the Army for the purpose of assist- 
 ing in the installation of the Army system of records. Im- 
 mediate action was taken on this request and Major Coffin, 
 of the Adjutant. General's Department, who had already co- 
 operated with Navy in explaining the Army personnel sys- 
 tem, was detailed to report to the Adjutant-Inspector of the 
 Marine Corps for the purpose of installing the system used 
 in the Army. As one of the results of a conference with 
 Brigadier General C. S. Long on October 22, a decision was 
 made to prepare the two organizations then awaiting embar- 
 kation at Quantico with the necessary papers, and on the 
 same day personnel work was explained to Brigadier General 
 A. W. Catlin, the Commandant at Quantico, who immediately 
 assigned Second Lieut. D. VanMoss to install the system, 
 under the supervision of Major Coffin. Meanwhile, it had 
 been decided at Marine Corps Headquarters to adopt all 
 Army forms insofar as they pertained to units operating in 
 the American Expeditionary Forces. 
 
 At Quantico, classes were immediately organized and in- 
 struction began in the preparation of all forms used by the
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NAVY 
 
 659 
 
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 660 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Army overseas and within forty-eight hours this work was 
 entirely completed for both the Machine Gun Battalions and 
 the Replacement Troops at Quantico which were about to 
 join the American Expeditionary Forces. 
 
 Upon the completion of this work, similar records were 
 prepared for the remainder of the personnel stationed at 
 Quantico and instruction was given in the tabbing, classifi- 
 cation and symbol systems used in connection with the Sol- 
 diers' Qualification Cards and in the preparation of embarka- 
 tion forms. Instructions were also given to all of the officers 
 at the Post on the Officers' Qualification Card and the use and 
 application of the Rating Scale. 
 
 Paris Island. Upon the completion of the installation of 
 the personnel system at Quantico, it was recommended that 
 the work be immediately installed at Paris and Mare Islands, 
 for the reason that the stay of the Marines at Quantico was 
 limited and the real functions of personnel work could best 
 be applied at the point where men were received from the 
 draft and by recruitment into the service; namely, at these 
 two island camps. 
 
 The original Marine Qualification Card was somewhat 
 smaller than the original card used in the Army and even 
 less developed. It called for only one occupation and gave 
 no room for details. The policy of the Marine Corps was 
 to send no man to France who had not qualified as marks- 
 man, except cooks. Consequently when a man failed to 
 qualify on the range and was anxious for overseas service, 
 he immediately became a cook regardless of whether or not 
 he was familiar with that occupation and irrespective of any 
 other qualifications which he may have possessed. It is not 
 surprising, therefore, that qualification cards were not a mat- 
 ter of much concern and were irregularly made out and spas- 
 modically kept with the other records of an enlisted man in 
 the Marine Corps. 
 
 Upon his arrival at Paris Island, Major Coffin explained 
 to Brigadier General J. P. Myers, the Post Commandant, the
 
 PERSONNEL WORK IN NAVY 661 
 
 Army personnel system and the Commandant was very much 
 impressed with its usefulness and enthusiastically advocated 
 its immediate adoption. In addition to the personnel work 
 of the enlisted men the use of the Officers' Qualification Card 
 and the Rating Scale was indorsed. At this station, Army 
 forms, including the qualification cards, were prepared for 
 the entire personnel, and the system installed provided for 
 the preparation at the quarantine station of all personnel 
 records and for a shipping station which was to check out 
 transferred men and examine their records. 
 
 At the direction of the Post Commandant, General Myers, 
 Second Lieutenant J. E. Watson was detailed as Personnel 
 Adjutant for the Post. A class composed of all officers on 
 the Island was formed and instruction given in the use of 
 the Officers' Qualification Card and the application of the 
 Rating Scale. 
 
 Conclusion. Major Coffin was on his way to Mare Island. 
 California, to install the personnel system at that point when 
 the signing of the armistice necessitated his recall for demo- 
 bilization work, and as a consequence the system was not 
 installed at that depot. This terminated the activities of co- 
 operation between the Marine Corps and the Personnel or- 
 ganization, but not before the Army personnel system had 
 been eagerly sought and heartily endorsed by that corps.
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 DEMOBILIZATION 
 
 To complete the history of the personnel system 
 this section includes in one short chapter the resume 
 of activities incident to the reversal of the mobiliza- 
 tion machinery and the part which the personnel 
 office played in the early days of demobilization.
 
 CHAPTER 50 
 
 DEMOBILIZATION 
 EARLY PLANNING 
 
 As early as April, 1918, some attention was given by the 
 planning section to the problems of demobilization, a step in 
 Army personnel procedure which was bound to follow the tri- 
 umph of allied military force sooner or later. Mr. Clothier, 
 on his way back from installing personnel work in the 
 A. E. P\, spent some time studying the plans of the British 
 Army to demobilization. He rendered a very complete report 
 to the Committee and it was in turn called to the atten- 
 tion of The Adjutant General of the Army and to the Secre- 
 tary of War. The report outlined the various facts which 
 would have to be taken into consideration in demobilization. 
 This English plan called for demobilization largely in terms 
 jf industrial needs and had been arrived at after careful con- 
 sideration of other plans based largely upon military moves. 
 The final section of this report suggested certain principles 
 which would have to be considered by the American Army in 
 demobilization and further called attention to the way in which 
 present personnel organization could function in the matter. 
 
 The Organization Chart of the Committee of November 8, 
 1918, (when the organization was part of the General Staff), 
 as illustrated in Figure 3 of Volume II (The Personnel Man- 
 ual) shows a demobilization unit as part of the planning sub- 
 section. The investigations then being carried on, relative to 
 demobilization, were under the direction of Lt. Col. J. J. Coss 
 and Lt. Col. R. C. Clothier, in addition to the many other 
 duties of these officers at that time. In this work they came in 
 contact with a committee on this subject at the War College, 
 
 665
 
 666 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 presented Mr. Clothier's report on the English plan of de- 
 mobilization to this committee and kept in touch with plans 
 which were being developed there. Nothing definite was ac- 
 complished except possibly to clear the ground for a recon- 
 sideration of the problem. Little was accomplished as none 
 appeared to realize that the war would end so soon and Army 
 officers at that time were interested in no other problem than 
 that of winning the war. 
 
 PLANS PROPOSED IN NOVEMBER, 1918 
 
 With the signing of the armistice demobilization plans be- 
 came at once a topic of absorbing importance. The War De- 
 partment, the Labor Department and the War Industries 
 Board (particularly through the War Labor Policies Board) 
 all took up the question of demobilization methods. 
 
 The advocates of industrial demobilization advanced 
 the belief that the attention of the country should be shifted 
 from Army needs to the needs of production on a peace basis, 
 and that considerations of Army organization and speed of 
 discharge should be viewed as of secondary importance. They 
 did not sufficiently realize at the time that any plan for dis- 
 charging men on a priority schedule of needed occupations, 
 made perfectly practicable through the classification system of 
 the Army, could not be operated unless the needs of the coun- 
 try for labor of each sort could be expressed on a time 
 schedule. No machinery exact enough to determine these needs 
 existed; furthermore, industry was so hesitant about the re- 
 sumption of peace production that it could hardly predict 
 needs two weeks in advance. 
 
 The plan of demobilization which was accepted took as its 
 first principle military need : units were not to be disorganized 
 by partial demobilization, but would be demobilized in blocks 
 in the order in which their discharge would least decrease mil- 
 itary efficiency. Every effort was made to carry out demobiliza- 
 tion as rapidly as safety permitted and economy demanded. 
 Within this program the known needs of industry were met by
 
 DEMOBILIZATION 667 
 
 giving wherever possible preferential discharge to men actually 
 called for by their previous employers. Conditions of unem- 
 ployment which might arise from too rapid discharge were 
 considered, and provision was made for checking demobiliza- 
 tion from camps discharging into an overcrowded labor market. 
 Weekly reports prepared jointly by the Labor Department 
 and the War Industries Board were used as an index of con- 
 ditions. 
 
 GENERAL PROCESS OF DEMOBILIZATION 
 
 The War Department commenced demobilization within a 
 few days after the signing of the armistice. A telegram of 
 November 14, from The Adjutant General outlined the gen- 
 eral steps to be taken in separating officers and enlisted men 
 from the service. The telegram closed with this sentence: 
 
 "The preparation and disposition of records pertaining to 
 discharge of officers, enlisted men and organizations will be 
 under the supervision of the Camp Personnel Adjutant 
 who will be responsible that the records are complete and 
 conform' to instructions, and for the forwarding of the 
 records to The Adjutant General of the Army." 
 
 This telegram definitely established that the personnel 
 adjutant would handle the papers incident to separation, just 
 as he had previously handled them in the case of receiving 
 selective service men into camp. 
 
 Meanwhile, the personnel and functions of the Miscellan- 
 eous Section, Personnel Branch, Operations Division, General 
 Staff, were transferred to the control of The Adjutant Gen- 
 eral of the Army (see Chapter 9). The personnel adjutants 
 who were responsible for the demobilization procedure in the 
 camps remained under the jurisdiction of the Classification 
 Division. 
 
 Instructions as to demobilization were sent out by tele- 
 gram, letter, circular and General Orders from the War 
 Department. These averaged more than one a day from
 
 668 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 November 14. 1918, to the end of January, 1919. These in- 
 structions were concerned with what to do but seldom stated 
 how the many details were to be carried out. Each camp had 
 to develop a procedure by which the many details could be 
 carried out in an orderly and efficient manner. Needless to 
 add, some camps developed excellent organizations, while 
 others did not do so well. 
 
 In order to facilitate the work in all camps, visits were 
 made to several camps in order to see how the orders were 
 carried out and then a "Memorandum on Separation of En- 
 listed Men from the Military Service" was prepared and 
 issued on December 6. This memorandum was "issued for the 
 information of all concerned and it is suggested that it be 
 published with necessary and appropriate changes as a 
 camp memorandum." Later another memorandum was issued 
 "On Separation of Enlisted Men from the Military Service: 
 Suggested Organization of Procedure in Office of Company 
 Commander." It gave in detail the procedure whereby a com- 
 pany commander had prepared the papers of 60 enlisted men 
 a day for separation from service. Up to that time it had 
 been considered that the preparation of papers of 15 men a 
 day was a good day's work for a company commander. 
 
 On January 21, a blue-print showing the organization of 
 the personnel office (see Figure 30) was issued by the Classifi- 
 cation Division, Adjutant General's Office, together with a 
 sheet of explanatory notes. On the same day a letter from 
 the Adjutant General's Office authorized the force of 7 officers 
 and 200 enlisted men in the personnel office of a depot Brigade 
 Camj) to be cut down to 5 officers and 110 enlisted men. 
 And on January 22, an "Appendix: Separation of Enlisted 
 Men from the Military Service" was issued. This appendix 
 was intended to bring the December sixth set of instructions 
 up to date and in harmony with all the orders issued since 
 that time.
 
 DEMOBILIZATION 
 
 669 
 
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 670 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 COOPERATION WITH DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 
 
 As the employment problem increased in magnitude the 
 Personnel Office made every effort to facilitate the coordina- 
 tion effected between tfce Department of Labor and the War 
 Department in the placement of discharged soldiers in indus- 
 try. Because of information at its disposal concerning the 
 qualifications of discharged men and because of its control 
 over the process of demobilization, the Camp Personnel Office 
 was in a position to cooperate, and it did cooperate with the 
 United States Employment Service, the service established by 
 the Department of Labor at the military stations to function 
 as employment clearing-houses and guide the soldier back into 
 civil industrial pursuits. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 At the time of writing this chapter (February, 1919) the 
 procedure of demobilization was still in a state of develop- 
 ment. The confusion caused by constantly changing instruc- 
 tions was being gradually corrected by the stabilization and 
 amplification of instructions, and the work of the inspectors. 
 But in this time the process had been shortened, and although 
 far from perfected, approached a standard of efficiency.
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 PERSONNEL OF THE COMMITTEE ON CLASSI- 
 FICATION OF PERSONNEL IN THE 
 ARMY AND ASSOCIATES 
 
 I. THE COMMITTEE ON CLASSIFICATION OF 
 PERSONNEL IN THE ARMY 
 
 Roster of members who have served on the Committee from its 
 formation on August 5, 1917, to its absorption by the General Staff, 
 September 18, 1918. 
 
 Walter Dill Scott, Director. Director, Bureau of Salesmanship 
 Research, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. 
 
 E. L. Thorndike, Chairman. Professor of Educational Psychology, 
 Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 
 
 W. V. Bingham, Executive Secretary. Head of Division of Ap- 
 plied Psychology, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. 
 
 J. R. Angell, Dean of the Faculties, University of Chicago, 
 Chicago. 
 
 R. C. Clothier, Assistant to Vice President, A. M. Collins Mfg. 
 Co., Philadelphia. 
 
 John J. Coss, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Business 
 Ethics, Columbia University, New York. 
 
 W. R. DeField, Supervisor of Systems, Montgomery Ward & Co., 
 Chicago. 
 
 Raymond Dodge, Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 
 Middletown, Conn. 
 
 H. L. Gardner, Director of Employment, Cheney Bros. Silk Co., 
 South Manchester, Conn. 
 
 William Browne Hale, Attorney. Kelly, Hale, Dammann & 
 Coolidge, Chicago. 
 
 P. J. Reilly, Employment Manager, Dennison Manufacturing Co., 
 Framingham, Mass. 
 
 Winslow Russell, Agency Manager, Phoenix Mutual Life Insur- 
 ance Co., Hartford, Conn. 
 
 671
 
 672 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 J. F. Shepard, Associate Professor of Psychology and Supervisor 
 of Building Construction, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 
 Mich. 
 Edward K. Strong, Jr., Professor of Psychology, George Peabody 
 
 College for Teachers, Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 J. J. Swan, Consulting Mechanical Engineer, New York City. 
 L. M. Terman, Professor of Educational Psychology, Stanford 
 
 University, California. 
 J. B. Watson, Professor of Psychology, John Hopkins University, 
 
 Baltimore. 
 R. M. Yerkes, Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 
 
 Minneapolis. 
 
 In August, 1917, the Committee consisted of: Messrs. Scott, 
 Thorndike, Bingham, Angell, Clothier, Dodge, Gardner, Shepard, 
 Strong, Terman, Watson and Yerkes. 
 
 At the conclusion, September 18, 1918, the Committee consisted 
 of: Messrs. Scott, Thorndike, Bingham, Angell, Clothier, Coss, 
 Dodge, Hale, Reilly, Russell, Strong, Swan, Watson and Yerkes. 
 
 II. MILITARY ASSOCIATES IN THE WORK OF 
 THE COMMITTEE 
 
 Major, later Lt. Col., Grenville Clark, A.G.D., Military Repre- 
 sentative, August 5, 1917, to April 23, 1918. 
 
 Lt. Col., later Colonel, A. M. Ferguson, A.G.D., Military Repre- 
 sentative, April 23, 1918, to September 18, 1918. He continued 
 in charge as Chief, Miscellaneous Section, Personnel Branch, 
 Operations Division, General Staff, until November 23, 1918; then 
 as Chief, Classification Division, Adjutant General's Office. 
 
 Brig. Gen. R. I. Rees, General Staff. 
 
 Colonel D. Y. Beckham, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Lt. Col. R. H. Kimball, General Staff. 
 
 Lt. Col. Royal Mattice, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Lt. Col. E. N. Sanctuary, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Major C. R. Coffin, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Major S. A. Friede, Quartermaster Corps. 
 
 Major J. W. Hayes, Medical Department, S. C. 
 
 Major B. J. Kempter, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Major J. Perry Moore, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Major D. W. K. Peacock, Coast Artillery Corps. 
 
 Major H. M. Rayner, General Staff. 
 
 Major John W. Sorrelle, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 Major Lawrence H. Whiting, Adjutant General's Department.
 
 APPENDIX 673 
 
 Major George T. Wilhelm, Adjutant General's Department. 
 Captain E. O. Buhler, Adjutant General's Department. 
 Captain C. C. Dilley, Adjutant General's Department. 
 Captain James Gregg, Adjutant General's Department. 
 Captain Joseph M. Larimer, Adjutant General's Department. 
 Captain M. II. Trabue, Adjutant General's Department. 
 1st Lt. J. W. Dissette, Air Service, DMA. 
 1st Lt. J. F. Haas, Adjutant General's Department. 
 1st Lt. H. J. Ryon, Adjutant General's Department. 
 1st Lt. J. R. Sedgwick, Adjutant General's Department. 
 2nd Lt. R. J. Byrnes, Adjutant General's Department. 
 
 III. CIVILIAN SUPERVISORS AND CAMPS IN 
 
 WHICH THEY ORIGINALLY INSTALLED 
 
 PERSONNEL WORK 
 
 * Indicates those that served throughout the life of the work. 
 Philip Brasher, Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven. 
 
 Camp Jackson, S. C., Camp Hancock, Ga., and Camp Wheeler, 
 
 Georgia. 
 William Clark*, International Harvester Co., Chicago. 
 
 Camp Travis, Tex., Camp Logan, Tex., and Camp McArthur, 
 
 Texas. 
 J. Walter Dietz, Western Electric Co., Chicago. . 
 
 Camp Pike, Ark., Camp Beauregard, La., and Camp Shelby, 
 
 Miss. 
 
 C. R. Dooley, Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co., East Pitts- 
 burgh. 
 
 Camp Sherman, O. 
 N. F. Dougherty, Pennsylvania Railroad, Philadelphia. 
 
 Camp Lee, Va., and Camp Mills, N. Y. 
 M. M. Jones, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., Orange, N. J. 
 
 Camp Upton, N. Y. 
 Robert B. King, Hyatt Roller Bearing Co., Newark, N. J. 
 
 Camp Meade, Md. 
 W. S. MacArthur*, Armour and Company, Chicago. 
 
 Camp Custer, Mich., and Camp Cody, N. M. 
 R. H. Puffer*, Larkin Company, Buffalo. 
 
 Camp Grant, 111., Camp Bowie, Tex., and Camp Doniphan, Okla. 
 
 Later commissioned Captain, A.G.D., and placed in charge of 
 
 personnel work, Headquarters, S.O.S., London, England. 
 Philip J. Reilly*, Dennison Mfg. Co., Framingham, Mass.
 
 674 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Camp Devens, Mass., and Camp Greene, N. C. 
 Dr. William Alfred Sawyer, American Pulley Co., Philadelphia. 
 
 Camp Dix, N. J., Camp Sevier, S. C., and Camp Wadsworth, 
 
 S. C. 
 J. E. Sheridan, Crane Co., Chicago. 
 
 Camp Funston, Kansas. 
 Dr. E. K. Strong, Jr.*, George Peabody College for Teachers, 
 
 Nashville, 
 
 Camp Taylor, Ky., and Camp Kearney, CaL 
 Arthur J. Turner*, Washington Water Power Co., Spokane. 
 
 Camp Lewis, Wash., and Camp Fremont, Cal. 
 Kendall Weisiger*, Southern Bell TeL and TeL Co., Atlanta, 
 
 Camp Gordon, Ga., Camp McClellan, Ala., Camp Sheridan, Ala., 
 
 and Camp Forrest, Ga. 
 C. J. Whipple, Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett Co., Chicago. 
 
 Camp Dodge, Iowa. 
 
 IV. CIVILIAN SUPERVISORS ASSOCIATED WITH 
 THE COMMITTEE AS THE WORK EXTENDED 
 
 C. F. Axelson, Northwestern Mutual Life, Chicago. 
 
 C. R. Beard, Sears Roebuck Co., Chicago. 
 
 C. R, Chase, Ford Company, Chicago. 
 
 O. L. Davis, Jr., O. L. Davis Lumber Co., Trinidad, Colo. 
 
 E. M. Delabarre, Library Bureau, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 Alvin E. Dodd, Retail Research Association, New York City. 
 (Supervisor in connection with personnel specifications for 
 officers.) 
 
 H. E. French, Edison Co., Chicago. 
 
 C. M. Fuess, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass. 
 
 A. A. Goes, Goes Lithographing Co., Chicago. 
 
 Harry Gregg, Textile Manufacturer, Nashua, N. H. 
 
 S. J. Gummere, Pennsylvania Railroad, Philadelphia. 
 
 (Later commissioned Captain, A.G.D., and appointed Per- 
 sonnel Adjutant, Camp Humphreys, Va., subsequently being 
 ordered abroad and made Personnel Adjutant, Base Section 
 No. 5, Brest, France.) 
 
 E. R. Halliday, Real Estate, Columbus, O. 
 
 J. W. Harrison, Farm Loans, Fort Worth. 
 
 L. B. Hopkins, General Electric Co., Pittsfield, Mass. 
 (Supervisor in connection with trade tests.) 
 
 G. M. Leonard, Real Estate and Law, Springfield, Mass. 
 
 W. H. Lillard, Tabor Academy, Marion, Mass.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 675 
 
 S. B. Mathewson, Southern Bell Tel. and Tel. Co., Atlanta. 
 
 N. H. Noyes, Eli Lilly and Co., Indianapolis. 
 
 D. J. O'Connor, Swift & Co., Chicago. 
 
 J. F. Page, A. M. Collins Mfg. Co., Philadelphia. 
 
 Beardsley Rural, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. 
 
 (Supervisor in connection with trade tests.) 
 Harry Wellman, The Lowney Co., Boston. 
 
 (Supervisor in connection with development battalions.) 
 
 V. CIVILIAN ASSISTANTS 
 
 J. A. Balcom (T.T.) 1 
 Wm. H. Barnes (P.S.) 
 Ralph T. Bickell (C.D.O.) 
 Albert G. Borden (R.S.I.) 
 Wm. B. Bosworth (C.D.O.) 
 Storm V. Boyd (T.T.) 
 Lawrence L. Brown (W.S.E.) 
 Norman K. Bryant (W.S.E.) 
 John C. Burg (C.D.O.) 
 W. A. Caperton (R.S.I.) 
 Walter M. Case (P.S.) 
 J. Crosby Chapman (T.T.) 
 E. M. Cummins (C.D.O.) 
 Francis M. Currier (P.S.) 
 Ithel B. Davies (C.O.) 
 T. M. DeBlois (T.T.) 
 L. H. Dodge (R.S.I.) 
 Roger F. Evans (T.T.) 
 John Norris Field (T.T.) 
 Mervin G. Filler (W.S.E.) 
 Lewis R. Frazier (C.D.O.) 
 E. H. Furman (P.S.) 
 P. N. Golden (T.T.) 
 Benj. H. Gordon (C.O.) 
 Edgar B Graves (C.O.) 
 T. S. Hanson (W.S.E.) 
 Walter B. Hill (C.D.O.) 
 Chauncey G. Hobart (C.D.O.) 
 Thomas F. Holgate (R.S.I.) 
 
 G. B. Hotchkiss (C.O.) 
 James A. James (R.S.I.) 
 Carl W. Jones (W.S.E.) 
 Truman L. Kelley (T.T.) 
 T. J. Kirby (T.T.) 
 Paul J. Kruse (T.T.) 
 I. H. Lehman (P.S.) 
 Gabriel I. Lewis (C.O.) 
 James H. Lewis (C.O.) 
 Robert D. List (W.S.E.) 
 C. K, Lyans (T.T.) 
 Geo. W. Mabey (T.T.) 
 W L. MacCoy (C.O.) 
 Hugh F. Magee (W.S.E.) 
 Robert McDougal (R.S.I.) 
 Franklyn Meine (T.T.) 
 W. J. Moore (T.T.) 
 Leonard Outhwaite (C.O.) 
 Geo. F. Parsons (T.T.) 
 Gilbert S. Pattillo (C.O.) 
 Rudolph Pintner (T.T.) 
 A. U. Pope (R.S.I.) 
 C. L. Procter (W.S.E.) 
 Leo Ranney (C.O.) 
 R. M. Reinhold (T.T.) 
 Sidney Rheinstein (W.S.E.) 
 A. C. Robinson III (C.D.O.) 
 E. S. Robinson (T.T.) 
 Stanley Roth (W.S.E.) 
 
 1 The abbreviations stand for the following divisions of the Committee's 
 work: (C.O.) Committee Office. (T.T.) Trade Test Division. (W.S.E.) War 
 Service Exchange. (C.D.O.) Central Distributing Office. (P.S.) Personnel 
 Specifications. (R.S.I.) Rating Scale Instructor*.
 
 676 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 H. O. Rugg (C.O.) L. L. Thurstone (T.T.) 
 
 Archie H. Samuels (C.O.) Hathaway Watson (C.D.O.) 
 
 Milton M. Samuels (C.O.) Max Watson (T.T.) 
 
 F. E. Schuchman (T.T.) Harvey E. Weeks (W.S.E.) 
 
 J. H. Sengstaken (T.T.) Graham C. Wells (W.S.E.) 
 
 Walter P. Shatts (T.T.) G. M. Whipple (R.S.I.) 
 
 Henry P. Shaw (C.D.O.) E. A. Wood (R.S.I.) 
 
 Gothair Smith (R.S.I.) S. E. Wright (C.D.O.) 
 
 C. W. Stone (T.T.) A. T. Wylie (T.T.) 
 Herbert A. Toops (T.T.) 
 
 ORIGINAL PERSONNEL OFFICERS 
 NATIONAL ARMY 
 
 September, 1917 
 
 Camp Division Personnel Officer 
 
 Custer 85th Capt. Wm. Hendrie 
 
 Devens 76th Capt. Lawrence Ewing 
 
 Dix 78th Capt Frank Knox 
 
 Dodge 88th Capt. B. R. Honeyman 
 
 Funston 89th Capt. J. O. Strutz 
 
 Gordon 82nd'. Capt. Richard L. Boyd 
 
 Grant 86th Capt. L. H. Whiting 
 
 Jackson 81st Capt Frank W. Ehrlich 
 
 Lee 80th Capt J. Straughan Downing 
 
 Lewis 91st Capt D. J. Coman 
 
 Meade 79th Capt. T. S. Dunn 
 
 Pike 87th Capt James T. Dortch 
 
 Sherman 83rd Capt. Wayman C. Lawrence 
 
 Taylor 84th Capt C. A. Edwardsen 
 
 Travis 90th Capt. J. Perry Moore 
 
 Upton 77th Capt Francis W. Perry 
 
 ORIGINAL PERSONNEL OFFICERS 
 NATIONAL GUARD 
 
 November, 1917 
 
 Camp Division Personnel Officer 
 
 Beauregard 39th Capt. D. E. Beams 
 
 Bowie 36th Capt P. R. Crippen 
 
 Cody 34th Capt N. W. Larimore
 
 APPENDIX 677 
 
 Doniphan 35th Capt. W. D. Moreland 
 
 Hancock 28th Capt. C. B. Altemose 
 
 Kearney 40th Capt. B. J. Kempter 
 
 Logan 33rd Capt. W. C. Grierson 
 
 McArthur 32nd Capt. E. H. Allen 
 
 McClellan 29th Capt. D. W. Simons 
 
 Mills 41st Capt. G. S. Tait 
 
 Sevier 30th Capt. W. H. Kyle 
 
 Shelby 38th Capt. J. R. MacManaway 
 
 Sheridan 37th Capt. Royal Mattice 
 
 Wadsworth 27th Capt. E. E. Gauche 
 
 Wheeler . ..31st., ..Lieut. F. A. Feld
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 ADDRESS BY NEWTON D. BAKER, SECRETARY 
 OF WAR AT EIGHTH SCHOOL FOR PER- 
 SONNEL ADJUTANTS, AUGUST, 1918 
 
 It is a very great pleasure to me to be here this morning and 
 meet this class. You represent a novel contribution to the making 
 of armies. War is essentially revolutionary to a people whose arts 
 hare been those of peace and whose occupations have been for the 
 most part those of industry. The revolution is widespread, funda- 
 mental and thorough-going, and I can perhaps illustrate to you 
 more fully what I mean by telling you of an incident which recently 
 took place in France, than by any further attempt to define the 
 thought. This incident deals with the change in the attitude of men, 
 of young men, toward life as brought about by their preoccupation 
 in a war for a sacred cause. Mr. Fosdick told me that the Y. M. C. A. 
 Director had assembled a group of 600 or 600 men, and was having 
 one of those composite evenings which are characteristic of the 
 social and semi-religious activities of the Y. M. C. A., when it sud- 
 denly occurred to him that he did not know what was in the minds 
 of those soldiers. If he had been in the United States he would 
 have known the virtues to which young men aspired, and the vices 
 against which they struggled, but here was a new group. It was 
 no longer the civilian company that he used to see in the Y. M. C. A. 
 halls of the United States. And so for ins own guidance and in- 
 formation he passed around papers and pencils and asked each 
 man in that company to write and pass up to him what he regarded 
 as the three cardinal sins. When the vote was taken it was unani- 
 mous on No. 1; nearly unanimous on No. 2; very largely preponderat- 
 ing on No. 3, and those sins were as follows: 
 
 The sin upon which they were unanimous as No. 1 was COW- 
 ARDICE. 
 
 The sin upon which they were substantially unanimous, No. 2, 
 was SELFISHNESS not sharing with your partner in the trench, 
 not taking your share of the hardships of the military life. And the 
 sin upon which they agreed by majority for the third choice was 
 BIG HEAD. Now that is a complete revolution in the mind oJ 
 
 678
 
 APPENDIX 679 
 
 youth toward life. Those 600 young men, if they had been in the 
 United States, and there had been no war, would have been en- 
 gaged in getting ahead, each for himself, probably making money, 
 preparing for or making a career, ambitious and struggling. The 
 sins which they would have regarded*s essentially the most to be 
 avoided would doubtless have been the evils of intemperance, the 
 social evils, lying, stealing, and that sort of thing; but here, caught 
 up in the clouds, as it were, by this great concentrated enterprise 
 which requires a new set of virtues, an unused set of talents, these 
 men are no longer thinking about the things which in private and 
 civil life are the things which they have to struggle about, but they 
 are ambitious now to be brave, they are struggling now to be gen- 
 erous and unselfish, and they are filled with a fine desire to be 
 lowly. 
 
 I think that illustrates the point I want to make, it illustrates it 
 in this way: the army is a new calling to nearly everybody in 
 it. The men are no longer assorted and assessed now by their 
 ability to do the things which in private life make success. 
 A man might have the ability to accumulate money, which, say Mr. 
 Rockefeller had, and might be totally devoid of the talents required 
 of a soldier I don't know whether Mr. Rockefeller has any military 
 talents or not, there is nothing personal in the illustration but he 
 might have Mr. Rockefeller's ability to organize, business and in- 
 dustry and accumulate wealth, and yet not have the sort of talent 
 which in this emergency would entitle him to a commission. 
 
 And in making this assortment of persons we are under the 
 unhappy inhibition of taking any man's judgment of himself. There 
 are very few of us, even in normal circumstances, where we hav* 
 devoted a lot of time to the study of talents, who know what we 
 are fitted for. We begin in our childhood to drift in a sort of way. 
 I suspect many of you could reproduce my experience in that. 
 When I was very little I was sure I was going to be a preacher, 
 because my mother told me so. A little later I was sure I was 
 to be a doctor, because my father was a doctor. When I began to 
 stand a little on my own feet about the business I had an ambition 
 to be a college professor, and it took me a long time to adjust 
 myself to the fact that I did not know enough to be a college pro- 
 fessor. And finally I studied law, and practiced law, as the result, 
 perhaps, of a continuous practice of self-appraisement and self- 
 assessment and seeking to find the place in life where such talents 
 or capacities as I thought I had in any degree might be of a maxi- 
 mum usefulness. And yet it is true with me as with most other 
 people, there always remains a doubt as to whether the career chosen
 
 680 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 and brought about by them is the wisest career after all, and we 
 constantly see in life men who have achieved success in the pro- 
 fessions who regard their professional occupation as a very sorry 
 excuse for the things they could have done best. ... I have no 
 doubt that all of you have fed the same experience, many of you, 
 perhaps, that I have had not daily but hourly, of men coming to 
 me and saying: "I am doing so and so." I say "Yes, you are doing 
 it well," and they say, "but if I was just permitted to turn aside 
 and do that thing I would do it so much better." It's the same 
 spirit as when men are playing checkers. The bystander is quite 
 sure he knows how to win the game. It is the occupation we see. 
 over the fence and not that in which we are absorbed that seems 
 to us the true field for our endeavors. So that in making an army 
 we are not in a position to accept a man's own estimation of his 
 fitness. And no matter if a man has set his heart on the job, that 
 is no assurance of his fitness. 
 
 And so we come down now to the things you gentlemen are to do. 
 Here we are making a cross-section or series of cross-sections of 
 the United States. We are taking men from the forests of the 
 Northwest, and the cotton fields of the South, from every trade and 
 occupation, from every economic and social status of life and 
 grouping them advantageously. We are not getting the men of 
 the same size in the same place, but all sizes in all places. We 
 are getting this agglomerate of men, selected vicariously and by 
 chance, as it were, into great groups. We have no time for men 
 to grow up into those groups evolved by association, but we have 
 to have a selective process by which we will get the round men 
 for the round places, the strong men for the strong tasks and the 
 delicate men for the delicate tasks. We have got to evolve a process 
 by which that sort of assortment will take place. Always heretofore 
 in armies that has been a matter of chance, it has been a matter 
 of individual judgment of commanding officers. Even when com- 
 manding officers are exercising their judgment, humanly speaking 
 most dispassionately, it is quite impossible for them not to be 
 aifected by elements which do not enter into the accounting. 
 
 If one were to select, for instance, a general to command an 
 expedition, he would be quite likely to select a man whom he liked 
 as a man, and not with any relation whatever to his capacity to 
 command the expedition. And this is true generally, so that some 
 system of selection of talents which is not affected by immaterial 
 principles or virtues, no matter how splendid, something more scien- 
 tific than the haphazard choice of man, something more systematic 
 than preference or first impression, is necessary to be devised. When
 
 APPENDIX 681 
 
 Dr. Scott presented to the War Department the question of calling 
 in psychology in this work we all realized that that science had a 
 particularly unfortunate name; it sounds very highfalutin' and 
 cloud-stepping as it were. It is the skyscraper, so far as it it 
 name is concerned, of modern science,*and there is a certain revul- 
 sion in the ordinary man's mind when you speak to him about a 
 thing that sounds as pretentious as that. -I -commend to my good 
 friend Dr. Scott that he try to see whether they can't change that 
 term to the study of human action or something with a popular ap- 
 peal. I am sure that the impediment would be so much less if that 
 could be done. But when you come down to it the psychology which 
 Dr. Scott has applied in the methods of the Committee on Classifi- 
 cation of Personnel in the Army is simply applied common sense, 
 and those of us who are familiar with the work of this Committee 
 with the thorough interview, the trade tests, the intelligence ratings, 
 the use of Trade Specifications, the Tables of Occupational Needs 
 we all realize that we have in this scientiiic procedure an un- 
 rivaled and effective substitute for the irrational and impulsive per- 
 sonal judgment which up to recent times had obtained. 
 
 Now we have this great mass of men,' these millions of our fellow 
 citizens, each one of them filled with the patriotic desire to do the 
 things which he can do best, but each one inhibited from finding that 
 place by reason of his previous inexperience or by some lack of 
 standard of comparison between himself and someone else. Com- 
 manding officers probably have no natural uniformity of judgment 
 in the mere matter of personal judgment of men, and the problem 
 is to weld those millions not merely into an army which will fight-- 
 any American army will fight, we have discovered that; not merely 
 into an army which is willing to die, if necessary, in order to main- 
 tain its position and uphold its traditions we have discovered now 
 that this is true of Americans everywhere; but an army which 
 will fight with the least wastage, the most effective execution, the 
 most intelligent cooperation, the most complete because the most 
 understanding subordination, and that sort of an army comes only 
 when men are doing the things for which they are by nature and 
 training best adapted. Now that is a very high task, it is a task 
 of contributing the finishing touches of efficiency to tin's great Ameri- 
 can army. 
 
 I have myself been tremendously stimulated, not only by the care 
 and wisdom employed in assigning each enlisted man but also by 
 the result which Dr. Scott and his associates have obtained in the 
 officer selecting tests which they have devised. The Rating Scale 
 has been enthusiastically received by the Army, but I am told
 
 682 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 officers have occasionally objected to answering some of the Binet 
 test questions the doctor has put up to them; I have been rather 
 afraid to take a Binet test myself, but when you finally come down 
 to it, the Rating Scale and tests for mental alertness are the 
 application of a perfectly rational method to the great problem of 
 putting a man in the position where he can be of the most service 
 to the country and to the common cause. Now that is a perfect 
 parallel to the story about the boys of the Y. M. C. A. I told you 
 at the beginning; they have a new set of virtues, a new outlook on 
 life. The soldier must be helped and guided into the right place for 
 the best use of his talents. And that is the task which is set before 
 you in the various organizations to which you belong. 
 
 It is a wonderful army we have on the other side. We are 
 already beginning to hear what we expected to hear about it. 1 
 am not speaking now about its movements as a mass of men, but 
 we are beginning to hear that the individuality of the American 
 soldier is attracting attention, that the individual marksmanship of 
 the American soldier is telling on the adversary. I have seen some 
 confidential reports of examinations of American prisoners made 
 by German Intelligence Officers, and intended to be transmitted to 
 the German General Headquarters for the information of Hinden- 
 berg & Company, but before they could be transmitted they were 
 captured with their authors. Such of them as I have seen have com- 
 mented on two or three things about the American soldier: that he 
 is more of an individual than is customary among soldiers; that 
 he has a naive confidence, a fundamental moral basis for his par- 
 ticipation in this war; and that he seems to be quiet and undismayed 
 even when alone under conditions which the German officers say are 
 usually regarded as too severe a test for men as individuals. So 
 that we have an entirely different problem from that of the German 
 Government. For forty years it has been making all Germans very 
 much alike, suppressing individuality except in particular lines; 
 men have been permitted to be as individual as they chose about 
 religion and about chemistry, but not about themselves or their 
 relations to one another or about the State, and as a consequence the 
 raw material of the German soldier is every man of a uniform 
 type. But we have the individual American; we have the wide/ 
 diversity of occupations and talents which America produces. 'And 
 we have to discover in the man whose occupation up to now has 
 been felling trees in the great Northwest the mode of converting 
 his native talents and native virtues into military talents and virtues. 
 It is a splendid occupation, a very necessary undertaking, and your 
 attendance at this school for the purpose of acquiring the rules ano
 
 APPENDIX 683 
 
 regulations, attempting to systematize this process, is a very vital 
 and efficient thing for the American Army. 
 
 I hope that you will remember all the time this one word of 
 caution I want to give you about your task. We deal with people, 
 when we have millions of them, too much as the census taker does; 
 we deal too much with them as though we were making a city 
 directory of them. I went out to Fort Leavenworth a few days 
 ago, and while I was at the Disciplinary Barracks I wanted to see 
 some of the interesting cases of personality of young men who have 
 been drafted in the Army and, carelessly, have fallen afoul of the 
 military regulations. I wanted to get their statement and their 
 attitude towards military life, and after I had been at it for perhaps 
 an hour I found myself asking them the same questions in the same 
 order. I asked them how old they were, whether they were married, 
 if they had ever been in love, and whether their girls had gone back 
 on them, but before very long it was obvious to me that it was be- 
 coming mechanical. Now the danger that we have in this Person- 
 nel Division is that with the size of the task and the frequency of 
 the repetition of our contact with individuals, it is likely to make 
 us fail to remember that each man wilh whom we deal is more than 
 a card in the index, and is individually a man, that he is an individual 
 American and that no straight- jacket set of questions will reach his 
 ultimate possibilities. 
 
 Now if we can approach the task as though he were in a chemi- 
 cal laboratory, a research laboratory, not seeking to reproduce 
 some striking experiments which other chemists have taught us how 
 to do by putting together some sort of ingredients which look blue and 
 look brown when mixed, but making a research and putting together 
 nncombined elements, trying by experiments to get new products, 
 I am sure that the work will be even more useful than it would 
 otherwise be. I am not a lecturer in this clasg; I have no right 
 to attempt to add anything to the very full and wise course by 
 Dr. Scott. My presence here today is chiefly to give an expression 
 of complete approval to this really great innovation, and to help 
 the innovation in the formation of a military army.
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 ADDRESS BY MAJOR-GENERAL R. HUTCHISON, 
 C.B.,D.S.O.. DIRECTOR OF ORGANI- 
 ZATION, BRITISH ARMY 
 
 BEFORE PERSONNEL OFFICERS' SCHOOL, CAMP MEIGS, 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 1, 1918 
 
 General and Officers: 
 
 We "over there" have been at war for some three and one-half and 
 going on to four years, and during that time we have gone through 
 many changes and developments of our military system and machine. 
 One of the greatest changes we have made is in the way we are 
 now dealing with this question of Personnel. By "Personnel" we 
 mean all the main officers, under officers, non-commissioned officers 
 and men that we use in our military machine. 
 
 At the beginning of the war, or rather during 1915, when Lord 
 Kitchener started to expand our all too small regular army, he, 
 without knowledge of the difficulties of personnel, drew into the 
 military net every man who would voluntarily come forward, and, 
 as a result, we had skilled mechanics and apprentices, men in all 
 forms of trade, laborers, university graduates, politicians in fact 
 every kind of man serving in infantry formations. 
 
 They made very good infantry soldiers, but this plan very seriously 
 interfered with the output of many vital things. In addition there 
 soon existed a shortage of skilled trades, so that our various engi- 
 neer units and repair units were soon short of the necessary type 
 of men to fill their ranks. 
 
 As you know, our shipbuilding yards gave their quota of men to 
 the army, the result being that the output of ships fell down very 
 seriously in 1916. That at the moment did not concern us, because 
 we had an apparently ample supply of ships. 
 
 The same took place in our coal fields and collieries. These 
 colliery men came forward patriotically, thereby reducing the output 
 of coal necessary for all our various munition and other factories. 
 
 Fortunately we had your great country behind us in the produc- 
 tion of the necessary munitions during that critical period when 
 we were in the process of building up our army. You came for- 
 
 684
 
 APPENDIX 685 
 
 ward nobly and provided us with a great deal of what we wanted 
 then. However, the effects of this policy of robbing trades fol- 
 lowed right through our building program. 
 
 In 1916, when we found it necessary to introduce conscription into 
 our country, and had to compel all those who did not wish to 
 volunteer to corne forward and do their share for their country, 
 the same unfortunate mistakes were made. Again the conscripts 
 were called out of all types of civil employment and placed in our 
 military machine without an\ consideration of what they had been 
 doing in civil life. Towards the end of 1916 we began to suffer 
 very severely indeed from the eflerls of this policy. We found 
 that we were unable to supply the number of men required for 
 munition factories, for the shipbuilding program, and for the neces- 
 sary Royal Engineer units, that were expanding every day and in need 
 of necessary men to turn out the proper amount of work for our 
 heavy batteries. We also suffered for the necessary railway engi- 
 neers to complete new engines and to repair the ones that had been 
 worn out, and so on. 
 
 I could talk for a long time on the various points which cropped 
 up at that time. The need was then so apparent that our General 
 Staff stated to our Adjutant General that something would have 
 to be done to get us out of the unfortunate mess that we were in. 
 You will understand what great difficulty we had to reorganize 
 when I tell you we over there were fighting for our lives all the 
 time. Consequently many in authority were opposed to any effort 
 to take tradesmen out of the active army and return them to in- 
 dustry at home. Naturally if you want to pull a man away from a 
 fighting organization, it is charged that you are interfering with 
 such and such a General's winning this or that battle; and it became 
 more and more obvious to us that if we were to get any result out 
 of reorganization it would have to be done by some authority who 
 was more or less supreme. 
 
 After various I was going to say futile attempts, but they were 
 not, they all had their result in the end we got the machine work- 
 ing. This result was accomplished through the agency of General 
 Sir William Robertson, our Chief of Staff, who was convinced that 
 such a reorganization in the army machine was necessary. After 
 two or three months in the initial stages, 1 was brought in and 
 given control of what we know as our Department of Organization, 
 with the title of "Director of Organization." 
 
 The first difficulty in starting this reorganization was to over- 
 come "vested interests." We had in our army a great number of 
 "vested interests," and I found that any attempt to arrne at what
 
 686 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 I thought was necessary was met repeatedly in this direction and 
 in that direction by I won't say direct opposition but a retard- 
 ing influence that rendered any efforts that I made too slow. So 
 I had to go to the Chief of Staff .-.gain and say that, unless I be 
 given a free hand, he must find somebody else to carry out the 
 reorganization; and after some discussion and arrangement I was 
 given, as far as possible, a free hand to carry out this reorganiza- 
 tion work. 
 
 From that point my job was fairly easy. The chief thing was to 
 consider every interest involved and work in as closely as possible 
 with the General Staff, and with the various general officers com- 
 manding troops in the field and at home. In this personnel work 
 you have really to set about educating your superior officers, and 
 telling them the reason why you have to do certain things. The 
 difficulty of educating those officers was that very few people were 
 in a position to educate, and it was only after you began training 
 your own officers and training the machine generally that they in 
 their turn were able to train others and distribute the knowledge 
 that they had acquired. 
 
 I take it that you here are assembled to be instructed and learn 
 personnel and organization work and go down as disciples amongst 
 the army and distribute what you learn and deal with your own 
 people. In addition to the hard and fast type of orders which, 
 after all, have got to be carried out, you will find the machine 
 improves out of all knowledge if you can carry your officers with 
 you, that is, if they realize that what they are ordered to do is for 
 the good of the -whole army. 
 
 Now, I would just like to point out to you, before I go any further, 
 one or two of the effects of our unfortunate action in the army in 
 neglecting proper selection and placing of men in the early stages 
 of the war, which we have had to correct since. 
 
 After enlisting and training and equipping and sending out to 
 the field fine types of man, "man power," we found it necessary 
 to draw from our army back to civil life some thirty or forty thousand 
 shipbuilders. Now those men were all fit and good soldiers, and 
 you can imagine the effect on the various divisional and corps com- 
 manders when they found those excellent men having to be drawn 
 out of the army and put back into plain clothes to work in the 
 shipyards. 
 
 We had to do exactly the same thing with our agricultural experts, 
 that is, people who had been accustomed to plow the land and work 
 tractors and things like that, because, you know, we were in danger 
 of going without food; and we had to develop all the available land
 
 APPENDIX 687 
 
 we could and put it under corn. To do that we had to draw from 
 the army a great number of men, I think something like seventy 
 thousand, from the army and put them into agriculture. 
 
 Well, that derangement and breaking up of the machine might 
 have been avoided, and I hope and trust that your personnel branch 
 will be able to avoid the various pitfalls and morasses we fell into 
 on the wayside. 
 
 It is difficult in dealing with the subjects for which I have such 
 an enthusiasm to limit my remarks to a reasonable time, and if you 
 find me getting beyond your endurance I hope you will tell me. 
 
 The great difficulty that we experienced in dealing with the reor- 
 ganization which we commenced in 1916 was to convince our superior 
 officers and when I say "our superior officers" I mean the various 
 officers who commanded the various corps of the armies when such 
 a reorganization was necessary. This was only done by writing very 
 carefully worded letters, explaining the great shortage in the various 
 types of trades, and asking them to co-operate with us and let us 
 know what members of the various trades they had employed in 
 their various formations. In infantry battalions, for instance, army 
 service corps units by army service corps units we mean what 
 you call quartermaster units in our medical units we wanted many 
 tradesmen returned to us for transfer to other arms or industry, 
 and we asked: "How many mechanics have you got? How many 
 skilled engineers? How many shipbuilders?*' How many of a thou- 
 sand and one trades? We found that on the whole we got very good 
 results from that 
 
 Hut our machine was not perfect, and we found by the time we 
 issued orders for certain men to be transferred from the thirty-fifth 
 infantry battalion, let us say, that those men had gone overseas or 
 gone somewhere else, and so it became a sort of hunt all through 
 the army to find out where these men had gone; and that led us 
 to the conclusion that it was undesirable to trust too much to the 
 various commanders of units for this information, and that we must 
 have that information in an independent way. 
 
 You will see when a battalion commander is judged, whether rightly 
 or wrongly, by the results that are produced by his command, 
 whether he has got a good battalion or a bad battalion, and whether 
 the men do their work well or not, he is very much opposed to giving 
 up what he calls his good men, whether they are wanted for the 
 good of the nation or for anything else. He considers that his bat- 
 talion is of first importance in his mind, and therefore we found it 
 very difficult to get a correct return from those commanding officers,
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 from divisional generals and other people who kept on hiding 
 people ! 
 
 We found mosl curious things going on. We found orderlies 
 who were very skilled mechanical engineers, very nice men, delight- 
 ful manners, always working efficiently, and the battalion commander 
 did not want to lose them. He kept them, and did not realize or 
 refused to realize the situation, saying, 'Well, the one or two men 
 did not matter so long as I gave up the others." This went on 
 through the army, and so we found it necessary to start our great 
 index system. 
 
 I understand that you have got this index system now in your 
 army, and that you have avoided all our earlier difiiculties. This 
 great index system is practically your system. The man is recorded 
 on a card where he is, that is, where he is in the army, what his 
 profession was before he came into the army, whom he was employed 
 by, the last two employers, and his home, that is, where he lived. In 
 our card index, which is in London and is kept up to date, whenever 
 a man went from one unit to another his card was moved cor- 
 respondingly to indicate where he went. For instance, he went from 
 Newcastle to London, or from London to Bristol his movements were 
 recorded in the large card index system for the whole army at home. 
 In that way we found out where our various skilled tradesmen were, 
 and in that way we have been slowly able to move them about, 
 gathering them up and putting them into their proper places, taking 
 skilled carpenters and putting them in the airplane units; taking 
 skilled tinkers from the cavalry and the infantry and putting them 
 in the artillery units, and so on. As soon as the man goes overseas, 
 his card is marked "overseas," and we take care that a skilled man 
 goes to a suitable unit in France. 
 
 This card index system gives us two things: it gives us a line as 
 to where we have got men misemployed, whether employed in units 
 that ought not to have that type of man power, and it also gives 
 us a check on the numbers of men, the total number of men we have 
 got in the country. 
 
 Now, when I came in to our directorate of organization in London 
 I found that nobody knew the number of men we had at home, so 
 that we were hundreds of thousands out. I do not mean to say we 
 had lost one hundred or two hundred thousand men, but there was 
 no one in authority to give me a return that told me the number of 
 men we had in the land within that figure. You say it is an 
 astonishing thing that in a small country like the United Kingdom 
 you did not know within two hundred thousand what you had. But 
 the fact remains that this was the case, for unmilitary people were
 
 APPENDIX 689 
 
 dealing with all types of returns. We found that some units did not 
 return anything at all. When I say they were asked by orders to 
 return certain papers, and they filled out a paper and stated the 
 number of men and officers they had and sent it into our war office, 
 that was quite simple. Some officers thought: "We will get criticism 
 from these things," and they did not send them in at all ! And 
 the result was like a return for income tax, as long as you don't 
 send any return nobody bothers ! Well, this went on. We then started 
 and collected from various units the different returns. By returns, 
 you understand, we mean a report stating what you've got, num- 
 bers of men, arms, munitions, anything in the form of a return. 
 
 I found that units were issuing or returning some thirty or forty 
 returns per week to all sorts of different authorities. The quarter- 
 masters wanted a return of this and that; the Adjutant General 
 wanted several returns; the district commander in which the unit 
 happened to be stationed also wanted similar returns. The brigade 
 commander said, "Oh, yes; we are having these; we will have some- 
 thing else," and they had returns; and so it mounted up like a snow- 
 ball a mania for returns. If a staff officer was suddenly ordered 
 by his General to report "how many men under seventeen or eighteen 
 have you got in the brigade or in the division?" he said "I don't 
 know." "Well," the General would reply, "it is your business to 
 know." Immediately he said, "Well, order a return." Well, that 
 is quite all right; "order the return," but it was never stopped and 
 went on repeating itself every week, and so these returns mounted up. 
 
 Well, to make a long story short, we had a meeting of the various 
 commanding officers, Adjutants, Staff Officers, and representatives 
 of the General Staff, the Quartermaster's Staff, the ordnance people, 
 Adjutant General people, and then said: "Now look here, what re- 
 turn do you want?" and then we made what we call a. "consolidated 
 return," and this return was made as far as possible to give all 
 the information that was required by the various branches and 
 departments, and also at the same time to satisfy the requirements 
 of the local district commander. The return was made up, giving the 
 body of it to an Adjutant General's return that is, it came to me, 
 the Director of Organization they all came in to me, giving the 
 number of officers and men that they had, whether the men were 
 fully trained or whether partly trained, whether fit for service or 
 unfit, whether doing special courses, and so forth, and the number 
 of officers that were fit and the ones unfit. On the edges of it there 
 are various returns showing the number of serviceable rifles the 
 unit has in its possession, and the amount of small ammunition. 
 Down another side probably the number of cars and vehicles and
 
 690 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 horses they have in their possession may be shown. On another side 
 some other form of return. 
 
 These pieces on the sides are perforated, and when they reach 
 my office, where all these returns are received, I tear off one par- 
 ticular portion and send it to the Quartermaster General, and 
 another slip and send it to the Genral Staff, and another slip and 
 send it to the Ordnance, and they get their slip containing their 
 portion of the return and file it, and I have my bit left, from which 
 I compile a complete return, a book about three-quarters of an inch 
 thick, a book which gives every unit we have got in the United 
 Kingdom, showing the number of officers, men, etc. As a matter of 
 fact, a consolidation of these weekly returns. After about two 
 months' working at this book I succeeded in getting an accurate 
 return of the men in the United Kingdom; and it is astonishing 
 how very accurate that book became, because of these returns being 
 made over the commanding officers' signatures. And we had one or 
 two inspectors who went around and said: "Where is your return for 
 week before last?" and they said: "Here is our return for week before 
 last." "How many men have you got?" and they checked it, and 
 said "All right. Let's have a look at these men." You have machine 
 gunners under training and you check up thoroughly, and if the 
 commanding officer is found to be issuing a return without check- 
 ing up properly, that is, using his signature simply to cover mis- 
 statements, he is dealt with accordingly, and in a short time we find 
 returns are very accurate. 
 
 Now, the commanding officers mean well, and they mean to give 
 you a correct return, but they have to catch a train or get to some 
 other barracks, and the return is prepared by some sergeant or 
 under officer, or someone else, and he is not very accurate, and the 
 General keeps on finding things that are not accurate. You will 
 have to deal with this also, and it is your business to see that the 
 number of men you have in the country is reported correctly, where 
 they are, where they live, what they are doing; otherwise you will 
 find that large numbers of men will live in your country on Govern- 
 ment pay, wear a uniform and not do one bit towards winning the 
 war. 
 
 I do not know why it is; I don't know where they go, but we found 
 that thousands and thousands of men got hidden in the country; 
 they got on the railways; they got into offices, they got into all sorts 
 of things. You won't believe the occupations they get into, but they 
 will go into them. They will drive tram cars. They will do all 
 sorts of things unless you get a return on them and get your hand 
 on them and use them to the best interest.
 
 APPENDIX 691 
 
 Now, I have rather been talking in a general sense of my direc- 
 torate, and I would rather like now to get down to the more impor- 
 tant part of my work on the other side, which concerns you; that 
 is, what we had to do and what we do now in the grading and the 
 directing of personnel into their proper channels. 
 
 Before doing so, I would just like to say this, that if you are going 
 to direct, and if you are going to guide, it has got to be done by one 
 man and one authority. You cannot have more than one man direct- 
 ing and showing, and his various subdirectors and individuals that 
 he employs throughout the country must be under his control. That 
 being so, if you go into a game like this, and one of you is concerned 
 in looking after personnel, you must be directly under one authority 
 and under nobody else. Otherwise you will get driven off your path 
 by other interests, and as far as I see of your machine here from 
 the top downwards, it's one of the lines where you will have to 
 strike out for yourselves and insist on recognition of the personnel 
 branch as the most important branch in the army, as it really is. 
 
 You cannot fight without men and you can't fight well unless the 
 men are properly Used, and no matter whether a General is a good 
 tactician or a good strategist, he will do no good unless he gets 
 the right type of men as soldiers, and the right type of men in the 
 various organizations that he is going to fight with; and it does not 
 matter whether the General has got ammunition or tanks or guna 
 or anything else, he can do no good without the men, and the right 
 kind of men; and it really depends on the personnel branch of 
 any country whether a country is going to be successful in war or 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 It's a long, long way the most important thing we have in our 
 country. So much so that it is on the correct use of our man power, 
 both in the army and in civil ranks that success depends, because, 
 after all, to get the results from a country you have got to use 
 men where they are most useful. If the country decides to build 
 more ships or to do this and that, they have got to get men to do 
 it with, and on the correct allocation of personnel among the various 
 branches of the army and in civil life depends the effort that a 
 country is going to put into a great venture like this. 
 
 Now, in order to visualize to you what our methods are, to vis- 
 ualize just how we get hold of a group of men who are working 
 in civil life in the United Kingdom and handle them until they ulti- 
 mately go overseas to take a part in the war, I will trace what 
 happens when we call up, or as you say draft, men. The actual 
 method of calling out the men from civil rank does not concern 
 you. They go as you do after getting notification. They are ex-
 
 692 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 ainined by doctors. If they feel that they have got a just right, 
 they probably protest and say, "Well, we ought not to be taken for 
 another three months." Their case is decided by a tribunal, but 
 after all that is decided they get their final calling out notice. They 
 then report to a "posting center." At that posting center they 
 arrive in plain clothes and go through the door or the gate of the 
 depot. They then come under my control. We put them into uni- 
 form if we accept them. In certain cases we think the man is un- 
 suitable for any employment whatsoever in the army. We then reject 
 him, and he goes back to civil life. But if we accept him, and we 
 accept the most of them, he goes into uniform; he is then interviewed 
 by a personnel officer. The personnel officer is part of the posting 
 establishment, and he decides in his own mind from what the man 
 looks like physically, and what his occupation has been in civil life, 
 into what branch of the service he is going to place this man. 
 
 We will take an example: A man has been doing, we will say, 
 what corresponds to your cowboy work, punching cattle, and our 
 officer decides that he will do well in the cavalry, as a cavalry soldier, 
 and he sends him along to the cavalry service. Another man comes 
 along, and the officer finds that he has been a watchmaker, and says, 
 "Now, what on earth wih 1 I do with this fellow? We don't make 
 watches in the army, but what will I do with him?" He looks up 
 the army need and says, "Well, he ought to make a good instrument 
 repairer, or he may make us a good man in dealing with telephone 
 work, or a man who has been working in very fine work like that 
 might become valuable in the Royal Engineer work." So he says, 
 "Very well, the most I can do now from what I see here is to send 
 him to a unit for training," so he sends him to a Royal Engineer 
 unit, and there he goes; but it's here that what you call "sifting 
 out" of the skilled men from the unskilled takes place. In these 
 training units where the man undergoes his preliminary training, 
 varying from fourteen weeks up to four or even five months in the 
 case of very skilled trades, this man is trained for his occupation. 
 
 As soon as he is fully trained, he is either drafted overseas as a 
 reinforcement that is, what you call a "replacement man" or he 
 is sent to a new unit at home preparing to go abroad. As far as 
 possible we avoid sending any man to a new unit, that is, to a divi- 
 sion that is going overseas, or a battalion going overseas, until he is 
 a "trained man" individually, and the reason is that, when he goes 
 to a unit, such a battalion or a battery, or a cavalry squadron per- 
 haps, he is then used as part of that organization and they do not 
 have to spend a vast amount of time giving individual instruction. 
 
 You get a collection of trained men, and you use them as a unit.
 
 APPENDIX 693 
 
 It is then the business of the officer commanding that unit to train 
 it as a unit. And so you go on to the formation or collection of 
 battalions, which is a regiment, and a collection of regiments into 
 a brigade, and a collection of brigades into a division, in all of which 
 collective or group training is necessary. You cannot at the same 
 time teacli him his trade and train him to be part of a division or 
 a battalion. That is our reason for having training centers. 
 
 To hark back for a moment to the man that comes to one of 
 these training centers. You will find there that the man either is 
 not what he said he was, or he is something else, or he has more 
 skill, and it's there during his training period, if the man is wrongly 
 placed, that we drop him out. 
 
 You get men who want to go to army service corps units to drive 
 a motor truck or car, and you will find all sorts of people who like 
 that sort of work, and you will find that by trade that man is some 
 form of skilled man you want very badly. For instance, the other 
 day I had to find within the army certain what we call "dental 
 mechanics" a man that makes a plate for false teeth for a lot 
 of our men we are calling out now have bad teeth, and in order to 
 eat the rather hard food in the trenches they must have their teeth 
 repaired, and in order to repair their teeth we have to have dental 
 mechanics. We had to search the army for dental mechanics, and 
 we found most of them in the army service corps driving cars. 
 We asked them why, and they said "they preferred to do that 
 work," so we had to shift them to their proper place. 
 
 During the training period we often have to sift men into more 
 useful occupations, and here it is that we have got to use what we 
 call our "trade testing." It does not always follow that if a man 
 says he is a skilled fitter that he is a skilled fitter, and, in order to 
 verify what a man says, we have to send men to a trade center 
 where the self-styled "skilled fitter" is put at a bench, and by look- 
 ing at his work a skilled instructor and practical man can very 
 quickly mark him a "skilled fitter," when he goes straight back to 
 his occupation. If he fails he may be "tested" for some other trade. 
 
 The most difficult thing we have to deal with in Trade Testing has 
 been the classification of a man within a -trade. Now, in civil life 
 you get men, we will say, with ten classifications in a particular trade. 
 You get them not according to their money value, but according 
 to what they can do. In the army it is not a business occupation and 
 you cannot classify to that fine degree, but what you can do is this: 
 You can classify the man as an expert at his trade or as what we 
 call semi-expert, skilled or semi-skilled, and in that way you can 
 use a man as a skilled man straightaway, or if semi-skilled you
 
 694 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 can send him to various workshops to get more training. He then 
 becomes good enough to take his place as a skilled workman in a 
 particular army unit, and it is this question of grading which :s 
 concerning us very much just now at home. 
 
 Here in your case, I take it, you will not be so critical for tlie 
 moment, as you have a great many skilled workmen of all sorts in 
 this country, and it is only a question of whether you can distribute 
 the several occupations and take those men for your army. We 
 have had to deal with all kinds and types of men that we could pos- 
 sibly put into a trade. For instance, now, we have been very short 
 of blacksmiths, and we have had to take, skilled farriers, that is, 
 men who make shoes for horses farriers-^and train them to be 
 blacksmiths, and they make very good blacksmiths, most of them. 
 In that way you get allied tradesmen going on helping you out in 
 a place where you have no men. If you go on long enough in this 
 war you will have to do it, and it is just as well to have your machine 
 so arranged that you can deal with such a situation. 
 
 The man that we cut out from our trade test, or fail to pass, is 
 reported as no good in that particular trade. He then goes back 
 to infantry or cavalry, as the case may be, or where an unskilled 
 man is required. 
 
 There is just one other point: Your personnel officers who work 
 in the various camps and divisions and other formations will have 
 many difficulties similar to ours. You will find a few unsympathetic 
 Generals, unsympathetic officers, who think you are a nuisance. 
 You have got to be tactful and carry them with you, and I have found 
 that the best way to deal with them is to make it to their interest 
 to arrange a suitable personnel and shift it about from one for- 
 mation to another so they can see the advantages coming to others 
 through a careful placing of men. 
 
 A good way to get a sympathetic hearing for personnel work is to 
 get your Director to have the General Staff to give a helping hand, 
 to say that it's to the interest of the army that these things should 
 be done, and that the personnel officers should be encouraged to 
 look about and search for the different types of tradesmen which 
 you want in the army; ^and when any General Staff officer goes 
 down to a division or a camp he ought to be instructed by the 
 Chief of the Staff or somebody under him to always mention that 
 point of Personnel, and say, "the Chief of the Staff attaches great 
 importance to this question of personnel and the correct placing of 
 this personnel, and he will hold you responsible. It is in his interest 
 and in the interest of the army that this proper grading of per- 
 sonnel be carried out by you." If an officer has done particularly
 
 APPENDIX 695 
 
 good work in a camp or a division I think it is up to you, the 
 Director and your people, to bring his name to the notice of the 
 General Staff, and say "this officer has been most helpful in placing 
 the personnel where it is required." A pat on the back from the 
 General Staff to whoever has been thus helpful is most encouraging, 
 and this officer becomes known throughout the army, and other 
 people desire to do likewise. 
 
 It's the only way. When it becomes known throughout the army 
 that the General Staff considers it is important and it is recognized 
 as good work if a man works in that direction, even though it is 
 against the interests of his own command, from the point of view 
 of the efficiency of his command, then I think you will get good 
 results. You must educate the army people who do not realize the 
 needs of modern warfare and tell them that this is the right thing 
 to be done for the army; they may not believe you and won't carry 
 it out unless helped along by their own superiors. 
 
 It is very desirable in dealing with this question of personnel not 
 only to think alike amongst yourselves, but also to keep very close 
 touch through your supervisors with the General Staff. 
 
 Now, the General Staff organization really is the controlling bodv 
 of the army, that is, it controls the kind of army you are going to 
 have, where you are going to employ it, how you are going to em- 
 ploy it, and a hundred and one other things, and therefore you 
 have to work very closely with the General Staff. It is of the 
 greatest importance, once you have arrived at a decision as to how 
 a particular thing is to be done, that is, how the men are to be 
 placed in their proper places, how the men are to be moved from 
 one organization to another, then to accept the plans until snoie- 
 thing better has been developed, and all preach the same gospel and 
 not say, "Oh, I could do it better than that, I would do it this way," 
 or again, "I should do it that way." Preach the same gospel, and 
 say: "This is the way it ought to be done until something better has 
 been devised." If you think you know a better way, bring it to the 
 notice of your Director. If there is anything of value in your sug- 
 gestion I have no doubt it will receive every consideration, but until 
 there has been some change in the system back the system you 
 have. 
 
 We have had great difficulty in our army through our officers who 
 have not what you call "military discipline," but always think they 
 can go one better, and they suggest other methods. Well, that leads 
 to doubt in the minds of the people you are trying to work with 
 that is, your various generals and camp commanders, and the like of 
 that. If you all preach the same gospel you will find that Mr.
 
 696 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Jones tells them this, and Captain Smith tells them the same thing, 
 and Captain So and So tells them the same thing, and the Chief of 
 the General Staff tells them the same thing, and finally they think 
 that is the right thing to do, and they do it. But if one tells them 
 one thing and another another tiling, they are in doubt and nothing 
 is done. So this unity of purpose is very, very important. 
 
 I cannot impress on you too much the very great importance of 
 this personnel problem, and you will find as you go on in this war 
 that it. will become, if not the dominating factor in your arihy, cer- 
 tainly one of the most dominating factors that you have got to meet 
 and deal with. I can only wish you every success in your efforts to 
 make an army of the right kind of men, and have them employed in 
 the right places, because it's the thing we have suffered from and are 
 suffering > from now, and we can't help it, simply because we did not 
 have a working Personnel Organization at the beginning of our 
 efforts.
 
 INDEX 
 
 NOTE Abbreviations used: CCP, for Committee on Classification of 
 
 Personnel in the Army ; EST, for Committee on Education and 
 
 Special Training; SATC, for Students' Army Training Corps; 
 
 PMGO, for Provost Marshal General's Office ; AGO, for 
 
 Adjutant General's Office 
 
 Abel, Maj. Chas. A., 109, 485 
 Achilles, Mr. Paul S., 44 
 Address 
 
 by Major General R. Hutchison, 
 
 684 696 . 
 
 by Secretary of War. 678-683 
 Adjutant General's Office, 
 
 CCP, under jurisdiction of, 56 
 consolidation of draft paper- 
 work by, 586 
 forms of, (See Forms) 
 muster rolls abandoned by, 585 
 officers' qualification card files 
 
 of, 591 
 
 paper-work, study by, 583-596 
 reports of changes instituted by, 
 
 585 
 service record changes by, 590- 
 
 591 
 
 special reports to, 592 
 statistical section of, 587-590 
 war service exchange of, 586-587 
 Aids for interviewers, 
 illustration of, 352 
 issue of, 371 
 
 TT-1, 78, 156, 353 
 
 TT-2, 351 
 
 Air Division of Signal Corps, 57-58 
 
 Air Service Military Aeronautics 
 
 classification for officers of, 630- 
 
 631 
 intelligence test enlisted men 
 
 in, 628-630 
 
 mental alertness test of, 614-617 
 personnel for, in peace, 631 
 personnel problems of, 476, 477 
 personnel specifications of, 190 
 qualities for aviator In, 620-628 
 qualities for flying In, 617-620 
 qualities for ground schools of, 
 
 608-613 
 
 selection of officers for, 604-608 
 services rendered the, by CCP, 
 
 632-633 
 
 Allen, Capt. E. H., 76 
 Altemose, Capt. C. B., 74 
 Allotment machinery, 529-531 
 Allotment sheet, 402 
 Allotment, sub-section of CCP, 108. 
 
 109, 112 
 
 Alton, Maj. R. M.. 487 
 American Expeditionary Forces, 
 occupational statistics of, 212- 
 
 216 
 
 personnel work in, 82, 83, 92 
 qualification cdrd in, 553 
 rating of officers in, 569, 570 
 American Federation of Labor, 349 
 American Psychological Associa- 
 tion, 54 
 Angell, Dr. James R., 57, 59, 79, 
 
 218, 533, 543, 596 
 Anthony, Mrs. Gladys G., 110 
 Applicants' qualification card, 152, 
 
 636 
 
 Applied psychology, 41-43 
 Army needs (See occupational 
 needs ; occupational special- 
 ists : personnel specifications) 
 Army paper- work (See paper- 
 work) 
 
 Army schooling, 200 
 Army training. 
 
 necessary to unit, 200 
 pre-enlistment. 128 
 pre-servlce. 128 
 post-enlistment. 128 
 school certificates of, 127 
 Army trade specifications (See 
 
 trade specifications) 
 Army trade tests (See trade tests* 
 Army unit, 
 
 balancing of skill and grades in, 
 198, 199 
 
 697
 
 698 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 function of, 193 
 
 placement of specialists in, 196, 
 
 197 
 
 subsidiary operations of, 194, 195 
 Artillery equipment expansion, 29 
 Assignment chart (limited service 
 
 men), 343 
 Assignment of men geographically, 
 
 240 
 Aviation section, Signal Corps 
 
 (See Air Service) 
 Axelson, Mr. C. F.. 102. 109, 591 
 
 B 
 
 Baker, Hon. Newton D.. 62, 678 
 Balancing a unit, 
 
 examples of, 117, 118 
 general principles of, 292 
 methods of, 295 
 new organizations. 293-304 
 occupational needs in, 293, 298 
 partially formed organizations, 
 
 305-307 
 
 requisitions in. 301-304 
 supply and demand factor in, 
 
 297-299 
 use of intelligence tests in, 295, 
 
 297 
 
 Balancing units. 84. 239-240 
 Balcom, Mr. J. A.. 351, 353, 375, 
 
 381 
 
 Beams. Capt. D. E.. 75 
 Beard. Mr. C. R.. 102. 107 
 Beckham. Col. D. Y., 275, 474 
 Bentley. Dr.. 54 
 Berres, Mr. A. J.. 349 
 Bickell, Mr. Ralph T.. 108. 399 
 Bigelow, Maj. Warren, 486 
 Bingham. Lt. Col. (Dr.) W. V., 42. 
 43, 55. 56, 57, 59, 64. 80. 101, 
 105, 107. 181. 203, 359, 409 
 Bjornstad. Brig. Gen. (Maj.) A. W., 
 
 46 
 
 Bowman, Capt. R. G., 487 
 Boyd, Capt. Richard L., 68. 71 
 Boyd, Mr. Storm V., 102. 106, 381 
 Brackett, Col. E. G., 513 
 Brasher, Mr. Philip, 66. 71. 75 
 Broadhead, Mr. J. W.. 376 
 Brooks. Lt. Com. Leroy. 653 
 Brown, Mr. L. L., 109 
 Bugge, Col. (Maj.) Jens, 65, 68, 
 
 69, 70 
 Buhler. Capt. E. O.. 107. 373 
 
 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 348 
 Bureau of Salesmanship Research, 
 
 41-43, 44, 56 
 Burg, Mr. J. C., 102, 402 
 Burnham, Capt. C. D., 477 
 Burtt, Capt. H. E., 54, 617, 620 
 Byrnes, 2nd Lt. R. J., 105 
 
 C 
 
 Cadets Air -Service (See Air Serv- 
 ice) 
 
 Camp commanders, 67 
 Camp Joseph E. Johnston, 
 
 division of personnel work at. 
 
 640 
 
 early personnel work at. 641-643 
 organization of, 640 
 procedure in receiving men, at, 
 
 646 
 
 rating scale instruction, at, 643 
 reorganization of personnel work, 
 
 at, 643-649 
 
 Camp medical officer, 257 
 Camp Meigs, 649 
 Camp procedure, 105 
 Campbell, Capt. E. H. (USX), 653, 
 
 656 
 
 Carberry, Col. J. E., 630 
 Carnegie Institute of Technology. 
 
 42, 44 
 
 Carruth, Mr. Wm., 638 
 Casuals. paper-work concerning. 
 
 465 
 Catlln, Brig. Gen. A. W., <U. g. 
 
 M. C.), 658 
 Cavalry, personnel specifications 
 
 190 
 
 Census, 595 
 Central distributing office. 
 
 cooperation of. with General 
 
 Staff, 403 
 cooperation of, with staff corps, 
 
 404 
 
 demobilization of, 112. 429 
 development of. 391-397 
 distribution of draft by. 405 
 early activities of, 391-394 
 first requisitions on. 391 
 function of, 389-390 
 industrial furlough section, 398 
 
 423-427 
 
 organization of, 108, 109, 398 
 planning group In, 105
 
 INDEX 
 
 699 
 
 plans to expedite procedure In, 
 
 427-428 
 
 priorities work in, 390 
 problem of limited service men, 
 
 427 
 requisition demand section of, 
 
 398-401 
 
 requisitions filled by, 408 
 statistical studies by, 109, 202- 
 
 211, 409-419 
 
 supplying chemists by, 420-421 
 supplying railroad men by, 422- 
 
 423 
 
 supply section of, 401-403 
 (See central personnel records 
 
 office) 
 
 Centralization of personnel organ- 
 ization, 95-100, 499-506 
 Central personnel division, 276 
 Central personnel record office, 78 
 Chapman, Dr. J. C., 364, 381, 382 
 Character of enlisted men, 137-139 
 Chart A, 74 
 Chart B, 74, 204, 239 
 Chase, Mr. C. R., 102 
 Chemical Warfare Service, 
 
 chemists supplied to, 420-421 
 personnel specifications of, 191 
 Chemists' questionnaires, 137, 138, 
 
 420 
 Civilians' qualification card, 636, 
 
 637, 639 
 
 Civil Service Commission, 348 
 Clark, Lt. Col. (MaJ.) GrenvIIle, 
 46, 52, 59, 62, 64, 69, 70, 78, 
 79, 80, 101, 390, 434, 529, 530, 
 559, 596 
 Clark, Mr. Wm., 66, 72, 75, 102, 
 
 107 
 Classification and rating of officers' 
 
 subsection, CCP, 109 
 Classification Division, AGO, 111 
 Classification officer, 
 
 creation of, 79, 276, 277 
 duties of, 277, 279 
 organization of office, of, 278 
 Classification of occupations (See 
 
 Occupations) 
 Classification of personnel, 
 
 commissioned, Air Service, 604 
 development of procedure of, 80, 
 
 81 
 enlisted, 61, 62 
 
 Classification system, operation of, 
 classifying cards, 155-159 
 interviewing, 153-155 
 standardization of, 155-157 
 tabbing cards, 159-161 
 tallying for report, 161 
 trade testing, 155 
 use of card by company com- 
 mander, 161-162 
 Clayton, Mr. C. T., 348 
 Clerical workers, 
 
 recruiting campaign for, 509 
 Clothier, Lt. Col. (Mr.) R. C., 57, 
 62, 63, 64, 66, 71, 75, 83, 92, 
 101, 104, 106, 146, 433, 665 
 Coast Artillery Corps, 
 
 cooperation of CCP, with, 58 
 installation of personnel system 
 
 in, 108 
 personnel organization In, 271- 
 
 272 
 
 personnel problems of, 477 
 personnel specifications of, 189, 
 
 190, 272 
 personnel work in, 76, 77, 269- 
 
 273 
 Coffin, Maj. C. R., 652, 653, 656, 
 
 658, 661 
 
 Colored draft, 402, 407 
 Coman, Capt. D. J., 72 
 Commissioned personnel, 
 growth of, 34-35 
 personnel work with, 217-222 
 Commissioned personnel branch, 
 
 275 
 
 Commissioned personnel adminis- 
 tration, centralized, 226 
 Commissioned personnel specifica- 
 tions, 
 
 causes of, 223 
 development of, 226, 227 
 explanation of, 228, 229 
 Illustration of, 230 
 preparation of, 224, 225 
 scope of, 231 
 use of, 227, 232 
 
 Commissioned personnel work (See 
 commissioned personnel specifi- 
 cations ; officers' qualification 
 card ; rating scale) 
 Commissioning, 
 
 change In method of, 226 
 in regular armj, 557 
 in reserve corps, 557
 
 700 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Committee on Classification of Per- 
 sonnel in the Army, 
 administrative sub-section of, 
 
 109, 110 
 
 allotment sub-section of, 108 
 armistice, effect on, 111-112 
 attitude of, on trade tests, 358, 
 
 362 
 
 beginnings of expansion of, 61 
 central personnel record office of, 
 
 78 
 
 change In function of, 61, 62 
 classification and rating of offi- 
 cers' sub-section of, 109 
 composition of, 10 
 cooperation of, with Surgeon 
 
 General, 79 
 early tasks of, 57-59 
 establishment of, 53-62 
 expansion of functions of, 145- 
 
 147 
 
 expansion of office of. 60 
 extension of work of, 63-77 
 field direction sub-section of, 107 
 forms of, started, 63, 64 
 liaison of, with American Expe- 
 ditionary Forces, 82, 83 
 liaison of, with Field, 81, 82 
 list of personnel of (inc. asso- 
 ciates and assistants), 671-676 
 location of office of, 60 
 militarization of, 101, 102, 104 
 organization of, after armistice, 
 
 110-112 
 
 organization of, at time of armis- 
 tice, 104-112 
 organization of, under General 
 
 Staff, 100, 101, 104-112 
 period of development of, 78-94 
 personnel of, 57, 671 
 planning sub-section of, 105 
 plans for organization of, 55-56 
 relationship of, to EST, 532, 533, 
 
 537-539 
 
 relationship of, to other depart- 
 ments (See Cooperation of 
 CCP. etc.) 
 statistics by, on man-power, 202- 
 
 216 
 
 training sub-section of, 109 
 trade test division of, 78, 347 
 transfer back of, to AGO, 110- 
 112 
 
 transfer of, to General Staff, 99, 
 
 100, 275 
 
 War Service Exchange sub-sec- 
 tion of, 109 
 
 Committee on Education and Spe- 
 cial Training (See Education 
 and Special Training, etc.) 
 Committee on Engineering and 
 
 Education, 80 
 Company commanders' paper-work, 
 
 253 
 Comparative strength of service 
 
 (See Strength of Army) 
 Congressional correspondence, 496 
 Cooperation of CCP with other 
 
 departments, 
 Adjutant General's Office (See 
 
 Adjutant General's Office) 
 Air Service (See Air Service) 
 Marine Corps (See Marine 
 
 Corps) 
 
 Medical Department (See Medi- 
 cal Department) 
 Navy (See Navy) 
 Provost Marshal General's Office 
 (See Provost Marshal Gen- 
 eral's Office) 
 
 Quartermaster Corps (See Quar- 
 termaster Corps) 
 Surgeon General's Office (See 
 
 Medical Department) 
 Conley, Col. E. T., 474 
 Consolidation of statistical, insur- 
 ance, and personnel work, 
 246-252 
 
 Cooley, Mr., 375, 376 
 Corbusier, Maj. H. D., 513 
 Coss, Lt. Col. (Dr.) J. J., 80, 101, 
 106, 227, 486, 492, 635, 643, 
 866 
 Council of National Defense, 40, 
 
 53-55, 80, 595 
 Crippen, Capt. T. R., 75 
 Crowder, Maj. Gen. E. H., 596 
 
 D 
 
 "Dally Letters," 434, 445-447 
 
 Daly, Col. Chas. P., 634 
 
 Dartmouth College, 40 
 
 Davies, Mr. I. B., 93, 110, 587 
 
 De Blois, Mr. J. M., 350 
 
 De Field, Mr. W. R., 79, 82, 245, 
 
 254, 583, 585, 586, 635 
 Delabarre, Mr. E. M., 102, 107
 
 INDEX 
 
 701 
 
 De Lancey, Mr. Darragh, 423 
 Demobilization, 
 
 cooperation with Department of 
 Labor, 670 
 
 duties of Central Distributing 
 Office, In, 429 
 
 early planning on, 665-666 
 
 English plans for, 665 
 
 general process of, 667-669 
 
 instructions on, 668 
 
 personnel office in, 669 
 
 plans on, proposed, 666 
 
 planning group on, 106 
 
 value of classification in, 158 
 Department of Labor, 348 
 Depot brigades, 
 
 establishment of, 395-397 
 
 functions of, 87, 259 
 
 officers of, 257 
 
 operation of, 87-90 
 
 shipping men out of, 266, 267 
 Detchon, Capt. D. C., 377 
 Development battalions, 
 
 authorization of, 336 
 
 board of control of, 514, 515 
 
 causes of, 512, 513 
 
 extent of growth of. 525-527 
 
 new order on, 520-525 
 
 organization of, 513-515 
 
 original classification in, 336-338 
 
 personnel work in, 515-518 
 
 physical findings in, 141, 149 
 
 planning group on, 105 
 
 plans for, 89, 90 
 
 projected improvement of, 518- 
 525 
 
 purpose of, 514 
 
 subsequent classification in, 339- 
 341 
 
 supervision of, 107, 108 
 Dietz, Mr. J. W., 62, 72, 75, 533 
 Dilley, Capt. C. C., 191 
 Dilution of personnel, 22 
 Disloyalty, suspected, 139 
 Dissette, 1st Lt. J. W., 107, 190 
 Distribution and supply of enlisted 
 
 men, 108 
 
 Dodd, Mr. A. E., 92, 184, 191, 227 
 Dodge, Lt. Com. (Dr.), 54, 57, 58, 
 
 101, 653, 654 
 
 Donnelly, 1st Lt. C. P., 486 
 Dooley, Mr. C. R., 66, 71, 533 
 Dortch, Capt. J. T., 72 
 Dougherty, Mr. N. F., 66, 71, 75 
 
 Downing, Capt. J. S., 68, 71 
 Draft, 
 
 analysis of, 533 
 
 operation of, 31, 32 
 
 receiving, the (See Receiving the 
 
 draft) 
 
 registration for, 29 
 statistics on, 409-419 
 Draft distribution, relation of per- 
 sonnel statistics to, 414-416 
 Draft increments, distribution of, 
 
 405 
 
 Dugan, Mr. F. F., 102 
 Dunn, Capt. T. S., 71 
 
 E 
 
 Easby-Smith, Col. J. S., 595 
 Economy of. personnel, 18-24, 26 
 Educational qualifications, 187-188 
 Education and Special Training, 
 
 Committee on, 
 assistance to, 409 
 causes of, 528, 529 
 connection of, with War Service 
 
 Exchange, 506 
 establishment of, 80, 203 
 organization of, 529, 530 
 origin of, 390 
 
 procedure followed by, 530-531 
 training program of, 533-536 
 use by, of occupational statistics, 
 
 202 
 
 Education, recording of, 127-130 
 Edwardsen, Capt. C. A., 68, 71 
 Ehrlich, Capt. F. W., 68, 71 
 Elementary trade examination, 539 
 Embarkation, ports of, (See ports 
 
 of embarkation) 
 
 Emergency fleet corporation, 595 
 Employers, former, opinions of, 
 
 135-138 
 
 Employment management, 89-41 
 Employment managers' associa- 
 tions, 40 
 Employment service (U. S.), 348, 
 
 670 
 Engineer Corps, 
 
 personnel specifications of, 190, 
 
 191 
 
 supply of railroad men for, 422 
 transfer of men to, 288 
 Enlisted personnel administration, 
 
 32-34 
 Enlisted reserve corps, 31
 
 702 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Evans, Mr. R. F., 364, 381 
 Ewing, Capt. Lawrence, 68, 71 
 
 V 
 
 Federal board for vocational educa- 
 tion, 80 
 
 Feld, 1st Lt., Fred A., 75 
 Fell, Mr. Albert D., 351 
 Fenton, Col. Chas. W., 48 
 Ferguson, Col. A. M., 51, 85, 97, 
 
 104, 110, 275, 435, 474 
 Field Artillery, personnel specifica- 
 tions of, 191 
 Field direction sub-section, CCP, 
 
 107, 111 
 
 Field, Mr. J. R., 350 
 Field, Mr. W. S., 375, 376, 634, 
 
 636, 638 
 
 Field supervision, 85 
 Fisher, Capt. Boyd, 40 
 Fisher, Mr. F. T., 78, 348 
 Flying ability, 618 
 Forerunners of Army personnel 
 system (See sources of Army 
 personnel system) 
 Former employers, letter to, 42, 43 
 Forms 
 
 AGO 22-2, 253 
 
 AGO 29, 590 
 
 AGO 525-527, 255 
 
 AGO 638, 255 
 
 beginnings of CCP series of, 63, 
 64 
 
 CCP, 109 
 
 CCP 1, 64, 118, 120, 121, 124, 
 125 
 
 CCP 3, 137, 138, 288, 425 
 
 CCP 4, 151, 172, 288 
 
 CCP 7, 172 
 
 CCP 8, 289 
 
 CCP 9, 286 
 
 CCP 11, 290 
 
 CCP 12, 636 
 
 CCP 14, 399 
 
 CCP 15, 161, 287 
 
 CCP 201, 322 
 
 CCP 203, 322-324 
 
 CCP 203-M. I., 561 
 
 CCP 207, 561 
 
 CCP 457-482, 190, 191 
 
 CCP 490, 232 
 
 CCP 504, 174, 356 
 
 CCP 601, 341 
 
 CCP 1102, 567-560 
 
 CCP 1102-S. C., 568 
 
 CCP 1105, 574 
 
 CCP 1110, 636 
 
 CCP 1120, j.50, 151, 224, 225, 
 227 
 
 CCP 1155, 575 
 
 CCP 1200, 637, 639 
 
 changes in CCP, 82 
 
 Chart A, 180 
 
 Chart B, 181, 239 
 
 CPB-GS, 150, 575 
 
 growth of CCP, 93 
 
 strength returns, 589, 590 
 
 TT-1, 156, 352, 353 
 
 TT-2, 351, 353, 371 
 Frazier, Mr. L. R., 80, 108, 181, 
 
 398, 412 
 
 Free, Miss M. L., 93, 110 
 French, Mr. H. E., 102, 107 
 Friede, Maj. S. A., 107, 638 
 Fuess, Maj. C. M., 268, 634, 640, 
 
 643, 645 
 Functionalization 
 
 in army, 95 
 
 in industry, 7 
 
 in military duties, 4, 8 
 
 in personnel, 5-8 
 Function of army unit, 193 
 Furman, Mr. E. H., 107 
 
 Q 
 
 Gardner, Mr. H. L., 57, 58, 78, 391 
 Gauche, Lt.-Col. (Capt.) E. E., 74 
 Gaugler, Maj. R. L., 376 
 General principles of personnel 
 
 definite personnel requirements, 
 11-16 
 
 economy of personnel, 18-24 
 
 .functionalization, 3-8 
 
 human differences, 8-11 
 
 morale, 24-25 
 
 organization, 16-18 
 
 summary of, 26 
 General Staff 
 
 CCP transferred to, 99, 100, 275 
 
 Operations Division of, 275 
 Gillmore, Lt. Col. W. E., 568 
 Glasgow, Col. Wm. J., 48 
 Glenn, Brig.-Gen. E. F., 51 
 Goethals, Maj.-Gen. G. W., 568, 634
 
 INDEX 
 
 703 
 
 Golden, Mr. P. N., 381 
 
 Gorgas, Surgeon-General W. C., 55 
 
 Graves, Mr. E. B., 93 
 
 Gregg, Capt. James, 92, 107, 184, 
 
 190, 227 
 Grlerson, Capt. W. C., 78 
 
 II 
 
 Haas, 1st Lt. G. F., 379, 382 
 
 Hahn, Maj. G. H., 636 
 
 Hale, Mr. W. B., 102, 105, 108, 391, 
 
 398," 412 
 
 Halllday, Mr. E. R., 102 
 Hayes, Maj. J. W., 106, 383, 601 
 Harris, MaJ.-Gen. P. C., 91, 245, 
 
 255, 474, 585, 591 
 Harrison, Mr. J. W., 104 
 Hayne, Maj. P. T., 69 
 Henderson, Capt. V. H., 476 
 Henmon, Capt. V. A. C., 618 
 Holbrook, MaJ.-Gen. W. A., 379 
 Hollerith card system, 143 
 Holt, Dr. E. B., 109 
 Honeyman, Capt. Bruce R., 72 
 Hoopingarner, Lt. N. L., 268, 377 
 Hotchkiss, Mr. G. B., 102, 109 
 Hopkins, Mr. L. B., 102, 106, 365, 
 
 375, 377, 383 
 Hughes, Miss D., 93, 110 
 Human differences in the Army, 
 
 8-11 
 
 Hunt, Maj. E. O., 48 
 Hutchison, Maj.-Gen R. (C. B., 
 
 D. S. O.) 
 
 address by, 684-696 
 effect of visit to U. S., 86, 474 
 
 I 
 
 Illiteracy, 141 
 Index of occupations 
 
 changes in, 123, 126, 127 
 
 development of, 13, 78, 83 
 
 nature of, 169-172 
 
 no application of, to officers, 217, 
 218 
 
 origin of, 348 
 
 preparation of, 354 
 
 use of, by PMGO, 595-598 
 Index of personnel demand (See 
 
 personnel demand) 
 Industry 
 
 furloughlng man to, 424 
 
 Industrial demobilization, 666 
 Industrial furlough section, 423-427 
 Infantry, personnel specifications 
 
 of, 191 
 
 Information sheet, 224, 225, 227 
 Inspection of units 
 
 final, 108 
 
 at ports of embarkation, 84, 85, 
 
 108, 458-465 
 Insurance work, consolidation with 
 
 personnel, 246-252 
 Intelligence qualifications, 187 
 Intelligence tests 
 
 air service enlisted men's, 628- 
 630 
 
 air service officers', 614-617 
 
 approval of, 79 
 
 development, 11, 600-602 
 
 early development of, 54, 55 
 
 experimental use of, 79 
 
 meaning of scores in, 132-134 
 
 recommendation of, 79 
 
 recording of score of, on CCP-1, 
 134, 155 
 
 separation of, from CCP, 59, 60 
 
 use of, 187, 295-297, 325, 344. 
 Interviewer's blank, 42, 43 
 Interviewing 
 
 by company commanders, 153 
 
 by enlisted men, 154, 155 
 
 by officers, 154 
 
 estimate of trade ability in, 119 
 
 procedure of, 119, 153-155 
 
 supervision of, 80, 81 
 
 supplementing with trade test, 
 347 
 
 See aids for interviewers 
 Intra-camp correspondence, 584' 
 Inventory of personnel, 636 
 
 J 
 
 Jenkins, Capt. S. R., 486 
 Jerremanus, Maj. H. W., 376 
 Jervey, Maj.-Gen. Henry, 101 
 Johnson, Brig.-Gen., H. S., 390, 
 
 529, 595 
 
 Johnson, Col. W. C., 374 
 Johnston, Col. W. T., 47, 52 
 Job Analysis 
 
 application of, to officers, 217-222 
 by unit commander 238, 239 
 extent of, applied to officers, 223- 
 226
 
 704 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 need for, 74 
 
 place of, in personnel work, 11-16 
 standardization of, 347 
 Jones, Mr. Carl W., 102, 493 
 Jones, Mr. M. M., 66, 71, 78, 156, 
 349, 353, 357, 358, 363, 364, 
 365 
 
 K 
 Kelley, Dr. T. L., 78, 79, 358, 359, 
 
 361, 381 
 
 Kempter, Maj. (Capt.) B. J., 76 
 Keppel, Mr. F. P., 45, 52, 62, 559 
 Kimball, Lt.-Col. R. H., 108, 404, 
 
 638 
 
 King, Col. Edward, 515 
 King, Mr. R. B., 66, 71 
 Kirby, Dr. T. J., 364 
 Kirk, Lt. G. C., 485 
 Knox, Capt. Frank, 68, 71 
 Kruse, Dr. P. J., 381 
 Kyle, Capt. W. H., 74 
 
 L 
 
 Labor, Department of, 177, 491, 
 
 595, 666, 670 
 Ladd, Brig.-Gen. (Col.) E. F., 45, 
 
 46, 559 
 Languages, ability to speak, 128- 
 
 130 
 
 Larimer, Capt. Joseph M., 107, 190 
 Larimore, Capt. N. W., 76 
 Lawrence, Capt. W. C., 68, 71 
 "Laws" of personnel administra- 
 tion, (See general principles, 
 etc.) 
 
 Leadership, capacity for, 186 
 Leadership experience, 130-131 
 Lentz, Lt.-Col. Bernard, 92, 512, 
 
 515 
 
 Leonard, Mr. G. M., 102, 591 
 Letter to former employers, 138 
 Lewis, Mr. G. I., 591 
 Lewis, Mr. James H., 102 
 Limited service men 
 
 authority to accept, 140 
 
 classification of, 335-341, 515 
 
 handling of, 402, 406 
 
 in Army, 331, 332 
 
 in British army, 332, 333 
 
 in industry, 330, 331 
 
 intelligence ratings in use of, 
 
 344 
 need for, 333, 334 
 
 personnel specifications for, 341- 
 
 344 
 
 use of, 91, 92, 512-514 
 See development battalions 
 
 Lindley, Lieut. Thomas, 486 
 
 Line Officers in development bat- 
 talions, 516 
 
 Local boards (See draft) 
 
 Lochridge, Col. P. D., 64 
 
 Long, Brig.-Gen. C. S. (USMC), 658 
 
 Loughran, Lieut. (USN), 653 
 
 Lyans, Dr. C. K., 382 
 
 Lytle, Lieut. H. S., 485 
 
 MacArthur, Mr. W. S., 66, 75, 76, 
 
 92 
 
 McCain, Maj.-Gen. H. P., 45, 56, 61, 
 62, 63, 69, 74, 75, 86, 474, 559 
 Machine Gun units, personnel spec- 
 ifications of, 191 
 Magee, Mr. Hugh F., 492 
 Man Analysis, 8-11, 115-169 
 Mann, Dr. Charles R., 533 
 Man-power supply, 30 
 Man's best usefulness, determina- 
 tion of, 19 
 
 Marine Corps, personnel work In 
 installation of, at Paris Island, 
 
 660, 661 
 installation of, at Quantico, 658, 
 
 660 
 
 installation of, requested, 658 
 Mathewson, Mr. S. B., 102, 106, 
 
 374, 375, 883 
 
 Mattice, Lt.-Col. Royal, 74, 85, 108 
 Maxfield, Dr. F. N., 617 
 Medical classification, 140, 141, 
 
 149 
 Medical Department 
 
 cooperation of CCP, with, 59, 60, 
 
 599-603 
 
 development battalions, 513-516 
 Division of Psychology, 600-602 
 Division of Physical Reconstruc- 
 tion, 602, 603 
 
 personnel specifications of, 191 
 Meine, Mr. F., 381 
 Mental alertness test (See intelli- 
 gence test) 
 
 Mental tests (See intelligence 
 tests)
 
 INDEX 
 
 705 
 
 Methods of rating officers (See 
 rating scale) 
 
 Methods employed to interest of- 
 ficers in proper placement ot 
 men, 308-317 
 
 Militarization of CCP, 101, 102 
 
 Military Aeronautics (See Air Serv- 
 ice) 
 
 Military associates of CCP, 672, 
 673 
 
 Military demobilization, 666 
 
 Military experience, 131 
 
 Military history, 131 
 
 Military policy, reversal of, 27 
 
 Miscellaneous Section, Personnel 
 Branch, Operations Division, 
 General Staff, 104, 110 
 
 Misfits, placement of, 512, 513 
 
 Miles, Dr. W. R., 54, 617 
 
 Miner, Dr. J. B., 42, 43 
 
 Mock, Lt.-Col. H. E., 92, 514 
 
 Moore, Maj. J. Perry, 72, 489 
 
 Morale, 24, 25 
 
 Moreland, Capt. W. D., 76 
 
 Motor Transport Corps, personnel 
 specifications of, 190 
 
 Mustering officer, 253 
 
 Myers, Brig.-Gen. J. P. (USMC), 
 660, 661 
 
 N 
 
 National army camps 
 
 civilian supervision in, 65-74 
 personnel work in, started, 64-74 
 National Army training detach- 
 ments, 402, 404, 407 
 National Association of Employ- 
 ment Managers, 41 
 National guard camps 
 
 civilian supervision in 75, 76 
 personnel work in, started, 74-76 
 National guard divisions, balancing 
 
 units in, 305 
 National Research Council, 43, 53- 
 
 55, 57 
 
 Navy, personnel work in 
 at Newport, 653 
 installation of, 652-654 
 need for, 650-652 
 plan for, 654-656 
 qualification card for, 656, 657, 
 
 659 
 Needs, standardization of, 191 
 
 Needs, Army (See occupational 
 specialists ; occupational needs ; 
 personnel specifications) 
 New divisions, creation of, 90, 91 
 Newport Naval training station, 
 
 653 
 
 Nicholson, Col. Wm. J., 51 
 Norris, 1st Lieut. E. C., 587 
 Northwestern University, 40 
 
 O'Connor, Mr. D. J., 102, 105, 643 
 Occupational census, 20.8, 594, 595 
 Occupational classification, expan- 
 sion of, 178 
 
 Occupational history, 118-127 
 Occupational index (See index of 
 
 occupations) 
 Occupational list, for PMGO, 172, 
 
 173 
 Occupational needs (Tables of) 
 
 analysis of, by QMC, 638 
 
 chart A, 180 
 
 chart B, 181 
 
 checking of, 182 
 
 Coast Artillery, 272 
 
 development of, 14, 179-181 
 
 divisional, 181-182 
 
 early beginnings of, 74 
 
 first issue of, 83 
 
 investigation of, by War Service 
 Exchange, 493 
 
 limitations of, 182, 183 
 
 need for* 531, 532 
 
 results achieved through use of, 
 201 
 
 revision of, 182 
 
 source of, 347 
 
 statistics on, 409-419 
 
 use of, 182, 293 
 Occupational organization, tables 
 
 of, 200, 201 
 
 Occupational qualifications, insuf- 
 ficiency of, .185-189 
 Occupational reports 
 
 development of, 161, 391-394 
 
 periodic, 285, 286 
 
 preferred occupations on, 288 
 
 special, 287, 288, 401 
 
 report of, 161 
 
 specifications for, 173-177 
 
 standardization of terminology, 
 173-177
 
 706 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 supplementary, 169 
 symbols for, 170-171 
 Officer material, first demands for, 
 
 223, 226 
 
 Officer material, selection of 
 final (SATC), 327-329 
 general methods of, 319-320 
 intelligence ratings In, 325 
 patriotism factor in, 327 
 problem of, 318-320 
 procedure of, at first series, 321 
 procedure of, at later series, 
 
 321-326 
 
 procedure of, in SATC, 327 
 procedure of, with civilians, 326- 
 
 327 
 
 rating scale in, 322-324 
 Officers 
 
 classification of, 79 
 classification of occupations of, 
 
 217-219 
 
 job analysis of duties of, 217-222 
 Officers' qualification card 
 disposition of, 554 
 first edition of, 217-218, 543-546 
 illustration of, 544, 545 548, 550, 
 
 552 
 introduction of, into the line, 547- 
 
 549 
 introduction of, in the staff corps, 
 
 553 
 later editions of, 218, 219, 546, 
 
 547 
 
 Occupational specialists- 
 American expeditionary forces, 
 
 statistics on, 212-216 
 assignment of rare, 90 
 classification of, among officers, 
 
 217-220 
 classification of, by PMGO, 595- 
 
 598 
 
 definition of needs for, 178 
 determination of needs for, 202- 
 
 216 
 
 distribution of, 398 
 handling requisitions for, 528, 
 
 529 
 
 methods of obtaining, 505-508 
 needs in, to May 1, 1918, 204- 
 
 207 
 
 placement of rare, 108, 109 
 priority of, 390 
 requisitions for, 78 
 
 staff corps demands for, 209-211 
 statistics of, by draft increment, 
 
 208 
 
 statistics on, 203 
 training of, 79, 80 
 Occupational terminology adopted 
 
 by PMGO, 596 
 Occupations 
 
 changes in, 166-169 
 
 classification of, 165, 173 
 
 definition of, 173-175, 354-356 
 
 index of, 169-172 
 
 listing of, 165 
 
 lists of, 166-168 
 
 need for expanded list of, 173 
 
 recording of man's, 119-127 
 
 list of occupations on, 217-222 
 
 origin of, 18, 217, 543 
 
 report on effectiveness of, 549, 
 
 551 
 
 request for, from American Ex- 
 peditionary Force, 549 
 suggested changes in, 220-222 
 tabbing of, 218 
 
 use of, by entire Army, 553, 554 
 use of, in American Expedition- 
 ary Forces, 553 
 use of, in Quartermaster Corps, 
 
 635 
 
 use of, made official, 551 
 uses of, 554-558 
 Officers' qualification card files, 
 
 591, 592 
 Officers' rating scale (See rating 
 
 scale) 
 Officers' training schools 
 
 commissioning candidates at, 327- 
 
 329 
 selection of men for (See officer 
 
 material, etc.) 
 Operations Division, General Staff, 
 
 78, 99, 100, 275, 390, 403. 
 Ordnance Department 
 officers' ratings in, 578 
 personnel problems of, 477 
 personnel specifications of, 191 
 personnel work in, 268 
 recruiting campaign of, 508 
 Organization commander, duties at 
 
 port of embarkation, 459-462 
 Organization of personnel force, 16," 
 
 17
 
 INDEX 
 
 707 
 
 Osborne, Mr. C. F., 348 
 O'Shea, Miss Harriet E., 381 
 
 Page, Maj. (Mr.) G. F., 92, 99, 107, 
 
 435 
 
 Palmer, Rear Admiral L. C., 653 
 Paper-work 
 
 early causes for increase of, 244- 
 
 24G 
 
 rise of, 93 
 
 study of, 78, 79, 245, 583-586 
 Parsons, Mr. G. F., 382 
 Parsons, Dr. R. P., 617 
 Pattlllo, Mr. G. S., 110 
 Peacock, Maj. D. W. K., 103, 106, 
 
 270 
 
 Performance records, 17, 18 
 Perry, Capt. E. R., 487 
 Perry, Capt. Francis W., 68, 71, 82, 
 
 253 
 
 Perry, Dr. R. B., 179, 348 
 Pershing's six-phase project, 208, 
 
 410 
 Personal habits, estimate of, 137- 
 
 139 
 
 Personal history blank, 42, 43 
 "Personnel" (publication) 
 beginning of, 447 
 circulation, of, 451 
 editorial policy of, 450 
 first issue of, 447-449 
 forerunners of, 445-447 
 later development of, 449 
 need for, 444 
 results of, 450-453 
 Personnel adjutent 
 
 duties of balancing units, 295 
 duties of demobilization, 667 
 duties of port of embarkation, 
 
 456 
 
 duties of requisitions, 283-291 
 regimental, 299, 300 
 See personnel office ; personnel 
 
 officer 
 Personnel administration 
 
 general principles of (See general 
 
 principles, etc.) 
 
 lack of centralization of, 93, 94 
 Personnel board, 557 
 Personnel branch (Operations Divi- 
 sion) General Staff, 99, 100, 
 104, 110, 223 
 
 Personnel Classification Division 
 
 Navy, 654-656 
 
 Personnel demand, index of, 413 
 Personnel Manual, 82, 83 
 Personnel methods, 30 
 Personnel office 
 
 changes in, 247, 248 
 
 early organization of, 243 
 
 early plans for, 235 
 
 early work of, 236-239 
 
 enlargement of, 258 
 
 increased authorization for, 261 
 
 organization of, 244 
 
 proposed reorganization of, 278 
 
 recognition of, in receiving the 
 
 draft, 258 
 
 rise of paper-work in, 244-252 
 trade test division of, 261, 262 
 See Personnel Adjutant ; person- 
 nel officer ; personnel work 
 Personnel Officers 
 
 as assistant to adjutant, 244 
 demand for, 470, 478 
 development battalion, 515-518 
 direct correspondence with, 435 
 duties educating superiors, 308- 
 
 317 
 
 list of original, 676, 677 
 relation to receiving draft by, 
 
 253-257 
 
 service rendered by, 244 
 supervision of, 436-443 
 training of (See personnel 
 
 school ) 
 
 Personnel organization 
 centralization of, 499-506 
 in camps, 82 
 
 personnel of. 671-677 . 
 Personnel records, 17, 18 
 Personnel requirements, officers 
 (See commissioned personnel 
 specifications) 
 Personnel requisitions by General 
 
 Pershing, 116 
 Personnel school 
 aim of, 485 
 
 Coast Artillery officers at, 271 
 discontinuance of, 112 
 effect of first, 475 
 effect of, on receiving the draft, 
 
 257 
 
 effect of, on staff corps person- 
 nel work, 269
 
 708 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 eleventh, 478-486 
 
 expansion of, 478 
 
 first, 470-475 
 
 instruction in interviewing at, 
 
 154 
 
 interviews at, 474 
 later series of, 475-478 
 need for, 469-470 
 operation of, 109 
 program at, 471-473, 485 
 results of, 490 
 selection of candidates for, 479- 
 
 484 
 
 source of supply for, 479 
 study of special problems at, 476 
 SATC, 486-488 
 trade test, 488 
 transport, 489 
 
 within personnel office, 488-489 
 Personnel specifications 
 
 Coast Artillery, 189, 190, 272 
 
 definition of, 178 
 
 examples of, 184, 185 
 
 expansion of, 189 
 
 limited service, 341-344 
 
 methods of preparation of, 191- 
 
 201 
 
 need for, 178, 179 
 need for centralizing preparation 
 
 of, 193 
 
 occupational needs precede, 179 
 origin of, 184 
 place of, In personnel system, 15, 
 
 16, 92, 178 
 
 planning group on, 107 
 qualifications considered by, 184- 
 
 189 
 
 scop% of, 190, 191 
 tables of occupational organiza- 
 tion, 200, 201 
 
 use of, in balancing units, 293 
 Personnel specifications, officers 
 
 (See commissioned personnel 
 
 specifications) 
 Personnel specifications unit, 190- 
 
 192, 227 
 
 Personnel supervision 
 districting of, 81, 439 
 expansion of, 92 
 extension of, 80, 81 
 group in charge of, 107 
 organization for, 433 
 
 Personnel supervisors 
 conferences of, 68-72 
 direction of, by central office, 436- 
 
 443 
 
 duties of, 439-441 
 early methods of supervision of, 
 
 445 
 
 educational work of, 317 
 list of, 71, 72, 673-675 
 military, 442 
 plans for, 65-67 
 report by, 436 
 securement of, 66 
 trade test, 442 
 traveling, 81 
 work in field by, 438 
 Personnel Supply 
 
 estimate of, for EST, 532 
 Navy, 650 
 
 PMGO study of, 595 
 statistics on, 409 
 war service exchange use of, 495 
 Personnel work 
 
 animosity toward, 308-311 
 
 at camp Johnston, 640-649 
 
 at ports of embarkation, 454-465 
 
 centralization of, 86, 95-103 
 
 consolidation of, with statistical 
 
 and insurance work, 246-252 
 educating officers to meaning of, 
 
 313-317 
 endorsement of, by War College, 
 
 64 
 
 extension of, to all divisional 
 camps, 242, 243 
 extension of, to staff corps, 92 
 In American Expeditionary 
 
 Forces, 83 
 In camps, 105 
 In Coast Artillery Corps, 76, 77, 
 
 108, 269-273 
 
 In demobilization, 667-670 
 In development battalions, SIS- 
 SIS 
 
 In England, 86, 474, 684-696 
 In Marine Corps, 658-661 
 In national army camps, 64-74 
 In national guard camps, 74-76 
 In Navy, 650-657 
 In Ordnance Department, 268 
 In Quartermaster Corps, 268 
 In regular army divisions, 76 
 in SATC, 106
 
 INDEX 
 
 709 
 
 In staff corps camps, 106, 268- 
 
 273 
 
 In training detachments, 535 
 initial conferences for, 68-72 
 introduction of, in camps, 63-77 
 introduction of, Into national 
 
 army camps, 236-243 
 keynote of, 313 
 methods to interest officers in, 
 
 308-317 
 
 organization of, for demobiliza- 
 tion, 669 
 
 passing of culls, 311-313 
 separation of, from Adjutant's 
 
 work. 274-279 
 standardization of procedure of, 
 
 93 
 supervision of (See personnel 
 
 supervision) 
 
 transfer of men, 260-267 
 transfer of, to General Staff, 275 
 with casuals, 465 
 Physical classification, 335-341 
 
 (See development battalions) 
 Physical condition, 140-142 
 Physical qualifications, 188, 189 
 Physical reconstruction, 602, 003 
 Placement of men, 16-18. 21, 22, SO, 
 
 81, 115, 134, 341-344 
 Placement chart, limited service 
 
 men, 343 
 
 Planning sub-section of CCP, 105 
 Plattsburg, 44, 49-51 
 Poem on personnel, 262-264 
 Pope, Mr. A. U., 93, 109 
 Port of embarkation 
 
 duties of unit commander at, 
 
 459-462 
 
 gangplank procedure at, 462 
 handling of casuals at, 465 
 Inspection report at, 462-464 
 Inspection of paper-work at, 84, 
 
 85, 458-465 
 
 insurance work at, 457 
 magnitude of, 455 
 paper-work requirements at, 454- 
 
 455 
 
 personnel work at, 454-465 
 statistical work at, 457 
 Post, Mr. L. F., 348 
 Powderly, Mr. T. V., 348 
 Preference, soldier's statement of, 
 136 
 
 Priorities, determination of, 78, 83, 
 
 108, 390 
 Procurement Section of Personnel 
 
 Branch (GS), 109, 227 
 Promotion on merit, 25 
 Provost Marshal General's Office 
 obtaining specialists through, 
 
 394, 505-507 
 occupational classification con- 
 
 ferences in, 594, 595 
 occupational list used by, 172, 
 
 173 
 
 personnel supply problem, 595 
 statistics for, 411 
 trade specifications to, 356 
 use by, of CCP occupational 
 
 classification, 595-598 
 Psychological examiner, 132, 257 
 Psychological tests, (See intelli- 
 gence tests) 
 Psychology, applied to personnel, 
 
 10, 11, 41-43, 54, 55 
 Puffer, Mr. R. H., 67, 72 
 Purpose of volume, f 6 
 
 Q 
 
 Qualifications (enlisted men) 
 
 sources of information on, 115- 
 
 142 
 
 Quartermaster Corps . 
 
 analysis of needs of, 638 
 applicants' qualification card, 636 
 civilians' qualification card, 636- 
 
 639 
 cooperation of CCP, with 58, 634- 
 
 649 
 
 files of qualification cards in, 636 
 indorsement of personnel by, 634 
 issue of supplies by, 256 
 officers' qualification card In, 
 
 635 
 
 organization of units, 638-640 
 personnel specifications of, 191 
 personnel work in, 268 
 personnel work in central office 
 
 of, 635-640 
 
 personnel work at Camp John- 
 ston (See Camp Johnston) 
 personnel work at Camp Melgs, 
 
 649 
 
 rating scale In, 634-636 
 requisitions for personnel by, 638- 
 
 640
 
 710 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 strength returns of, 638 
 trade testing in, 634 
 
 R 
 
 Rader, Mr. Alfred C., 354 
 Railroad men, transfer of, 288, 422 
 Rating of enlisted men, 139 
 Rating card (officers'), American 
 
 Expeditionary Forces, 570 
 Rating of officers 
 analysis of, 577-578 
 card used in American Expedi- 
 tionary Forces, 570 
 quarterly, 569, 574 
 quarterly rating sheets used in 
 
 576, 577 
 recording of, on qualification 
 
 card, 576 
 
 supervision of, 577 
 Rating scale, officers' 
 adoption of, 93, 569 
 changes in, 571-573 
 development of, 59, 571-575 
 early work o, 79 
 first changes of, 47 
 first form of, 44 
 instructions for use of, 93, 565- 
 
 569 
 
 military interests in, 44, 45 
 ' origin of, 44-56 
 
 place of, in personnel, 10, 42, 43 
 planning group on, 105, 106 
 quarterly use of, 569, 574-578 
 recommended changes In, 579- 
 
 580 
 
 rejection of, at Plattsburg, 44 
 supervision of use of, 109 
 testing of, 47-52 
 trial of, in eight camps, 55 
 use of, In Quartermaster Corps, 
 
 562, 563, 634-636 
 use of, in selection of officer 
 
 material, 322-324 
 us* of, in training camps, 559- 
 
 562 
 
 use of. to rate officers, 563-569 
 uses of, 573-575 
 Rayner, Maj. H. M., 404 
 Receiving the draft 
 
 coast artillery corps, 272 
 detailed plan for, 256 
 effect of personnel schools on, 257 
 Funston plan for, 256 
 
 instructions for, 255 
 personnel officer's part in, 253-257 
 Upton plan for, 253 
 Receiving depots established, 395- 
 
 397 
 
 Record of achievement, 118-132 
 Records, checking of, 85, 108 
 Recruit examination building, 264- 
 
 266 
 
 Recruiting campaigns, 508-510 
 Recruiting service, 30, 31 
 Rees, Brig.-Gen. (Lt.-Col.) R. I., 80, 
 
 97, 390, 529 
 Reeves, Col. I. L., 97 
 Regimental personnel adjutants, 
 
 299, 300 
 
 Regular army divisions 70 
 Reilly, Maj. F. C., 256 
 Reilly, Lt.-Col (Mr.) P. J., 67, 71, 
 
 76, 83, 101, 107, 433, 513 
 Reserve corps officers, 34, 35 
 Reports of changes, 585 
 Requirements, definite personnel, 
 
 11-16, 20, 21 
 Requisitions demand section, central 
 
 distributing office, 398 
 Requisitions 
 
 analysis of, 239 
 
 camp procedure on, 291 
 
 coordination of, 108 
 
 development in handling, 283 
 
 early, 391 
 
 filling of, 398, 528 
 
 improved forms for, 289 
 
 local (camp), 237, 238, 283-285, 
 
 315, 316 
 
 relation of EST to, 529, 530 
 transfer of 1,100,000 men on, 
 
 118 
 war department, 241, 242, 285- 
 
 290 
 
 See occupational specialists 
 Rice, Capt. D. E., 620 
 Rime of the Personnel, the, 262-264 
 Robinson, Mr. A. C., 78, 108, 391, 
 
 399 
 Robinson, Mr. E. S., 102, 106, 381, 
 
 382 
 
 Robinson, Capt. W. R., 638 
 Roth, 1st Lieut. (Mr.) Stanley, 493 
 Rugg, Dr. H. O., 105, 578 
 Ruml, Dr. Beardsley, 102, 106, 33, 
 381, 382
 
 INDEX 
 
 711 
 
 Russell, Mr. Winslow, 80, 102, 109, 
 
 492 
 Ryon, 1st Lt. H. J., 383 
 
 Sailors' qualification card, 656, 657, 
 
 659 
 
 Samuels, Mr. M. M., 110 
 Sanctuary, Lt.-Col. (MaJ.) E. N., 
 
 80, 492 
 
 Sawyer, Mr. W. A., 66, 71, 75 
 Schnchman, Mr. F., 382 
 School for personnel (adjutants) 
 
 officers (See personnel school) 
 Schultz, Capt, H. D., 48 
 Science, contribution of, to mobili- 
 zation, 53-55 
 
 Scott, Col. (Dr.) Walter Dill, 10, 
 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 
 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 59, 62, 
 64, 66, 79, 97, 101, 105, 109, 
 145, 348, 559, 560, 643 
 Secretary of War, 45, 56, 62 
 Secretary of War, address by, 678- 
 
 683 
 Secretary of War's annual report, 
 
 28, 29, 35 
 
 Selective service regulations, 335 
 Sengstaken, Mr. J. H., 353, 381 
 Separation of personnel from adju- 
 tant's work, 274-279 
 Seton, Capt. D. S., 380 
 Shannon, Lieut. (USN), 653 
 Sharpe, Maj.-Gen. H. G., 634 
 Shipping board emergency fleet cor- 
 poration, 177 
 Shipway, Capt. G. E., 108 
 Signal Corps 
 
 cooperation with, 57-58 
 personnel specifications of, 190 
 Sills, Maj. W. G., 51 
 Six-phase project, 208, 410 
 Shatts, Mr. W. P., 364, 381 
 Shaw, Mr. H. P., 108 
 Shepard, Dr. J. F., 57, 58 
 Sheridan, Mr. J. E., 66, 72 
 Simons, Capt. D. M., 74 
 Soldiers' qualification card 
 adoption of, 63-64 
 changes in, 122, 123, 126-129 
 classification of, 155-159 
 definition of, 143 
 early development of, 145-147 
 
 early use of, 73 
 
 estimate of self and others on, 
 
 135-140 
 
 filling out of, 236 
 first trial of, 147 
 illustrations of, 120, 121, 124, 
 
 125 
 
 intelligence score on, 134 
 in the coast artillery corps, 270 
 Interviewing for 119, 153-155, 
 
 242, 243 
 
 medical class on, 140-142 
 military record on, 148, 149 
 notations on, 147-149 
 occupational list on, 165 
 physical characteristics, 140-142 
 place of, in personnel, 10 
 record of achievement on, 118-132 
 record of education on, 127-130 
 record of occupational history on, 
 
 118-127 
 
 requirements for ideal, 143-145 
 score in tests on, 132-135, 155 
 statement of preference, on 136 
 statement on loyalty on, 139 
 tabbing ofi> 159-161 
 tallying of, 161 
 use of, by company commanders, 
 
 161-162 
 
 use of, in coast artillery, 177 
 use of, in local requisitions, 284 
 
 Sources of Army personnel system 
 applied psychology, 41-43 
 employment management, 40-41 
 traditional army practice, 39 
 
 Spalding, Maj. Geo. R., 48 
 
 Specialists, occupational (See occu- 
 pational specialists) 
 
 Special tests, soldier's score In, 
 132-135 
 
 Spengler, Maj. J. H., 634 
 
 Staff corps 
 
 cooperation with, 404 
 competition between, 223 
 needs of, investigated, 493 
 requisitions by, 78 
 
 Staff corps camps, personnel work 
 In, 268-273 
 
 Staff corps personnel work, plan- 
 ning group on, 106 
 
 Statistical adjutant, 276, 277 
 
 Statistical summary of occupa- 
 tional needs, 202-216
 
 712 
 
 HISTORY OF PERSONNEL 
 
 Statistical work, 216-252 
 Stebbins, Maj. F. F., 51 
 Stocksdale, Mr. T. B., 354 
 Stratton, Capt. G. M., 56, 617, 618 
 Strength of army, increase of, 28 
 Strength returns, 589, 590, 638 
 Strong, L,t.-Col. (Dr.) E. K., Jr., 
 
 57, 71, 75, 78, 82, 86, 101, 105, 
 
 106, 109, 171, 254, 471, 474, 
 
 486, 601, 635. 
 Strutz, Capt. J. C., 72 
 Students' Army Training Corps 
 
 (SATC) 
 
 authorization of 536 
 officer material selection in, 537, 
 
 538 
 
 personnel work in, 106 
 procedure for induction into, 538, 
 
 539 
 
 program of, 537 
 record card of, 149 
 Summary of personnel principles, 
 
 26 
 
 Supervisors, personnel (See person- 
 nel supervisors) 
 Supply and demand, study of, 108, 
 
 109, 202-216 
 Supply of men, recording of, 401- 
 
 403 
 Supply section, central distributing 
 
 office, 398 
 Surgeon General's Office (Also see 
 
 Medical Department), 11, 79 
 Swan, Lt.-Col. J. J., 78, 83, 92, 101, 
 
 106, 171, 173, 354, 355, 513, 
 
 515 
 Symbols, occupational, 126, 127 
 
 Tabbing qualification cards, 159- 
 161- 
 
 Tait. Capt, G. 8., 74 
 
 Tallying qualification cards, 161 
 
 Tanks corps, personnel specifica- 
 tions of, 190 
 
 Terman, Maj. L. M., 45, 57, 59, 600, 
 602 
 
 Thompson, Rev. Alexander, 109 
 
 Thorndike, Dr. E. L., 43, 46, 54, 
 57, 58, 105, 106, 359, 538, 539, 
 6OO. 604. 628. 631 
 
 Thorndike rating plan, 537-539 
 
 Thorndike test of mental alertness, 
 
 614-617 
 
 Thorne, Mr. Robert, 634 
 Thurstone, Dr. L. L., 364, 381, 382 
 Tompkins, Capt. E. R., 48, 49 
 Toops, H. G., 381 
 Tornquist, Lt., 383 
 Trade schools, 80 
 Trade skill, 122, 123 
 Trade specifications, 13, 14, 78, 83, 
 106, 173-177, 191, 348, 354-356 
 Trade terminology 78 
 Trade test building, 362 
 Trade test division, 347, 349-351 
 Trade test school, 377, 383 
 Trade tests 
 
 application of, in reconstruction, 
 
 603 
 assembly of information on, 350, 
 
 351 
 
 early development of, 78 
 first, 351-354 
 first attempt at standardized, 
 
 358-360 
 first experiments in standardized, 
 
 361-362 
 first plans for installation of, 
 
 371-374 
 
 force for operation of, 261-262 
 general nature of, 11, 134, 135 
 installation of, 107, 374-380 
 list of, 384-386 
 operation of, 155 
 part of, in occupational classifi- 
 cation. u47 
 preparation of, 106 
 procedure in making standard- 
 ized, 366 
 
 production of, 380-386 
 recording of, on qualification 
 
 card, 134, 135 
 revised method of preparation of 
 
 standardized, 365-370 
 sources of information for, 348, 
 
 349 
 
 standardization of, 92, 363 
 study of British, 382 
 summary of, 386 
 testing of standardized, 363 
 training officers for, 377, 383 
 two conceptions of standarized, 
 357
 
 INDEX 
 
 713 
 
 Training personnel (adjutants) of- 
 ficers (See personnel school) 
 Training sub-section, CCP, 109, 111 
 Transfer of CCP, 99, 100, 110 
 Transfer list, 290 
 Transfer of personnel 
 
 avoidance of unnecessary, 22-24 
 from national army camps, 88, 
 
 89, 309-311 
 
 paper-work Involved in, 266, 267 
 railroad men to Engineer's corps, 
 
 288 
 use of officers' qualification cards 
 
 in, 556 
 
 Transfer report, 289 
 Troland, Dr. L. T., 617 
 Tuck School, 40 
 
 Turner, Mr. A. J., 66, 72, 102, 107, 
 487 
 
 U 
 
 Unfit officers, removal of, 556, 557 
 
 Upton plan, 253 
 
 Use of personnel, 21, 22 
 
 V 
 
 Vanderblue, 1st Lt. H. B., 486 
 Van Horn, Maj., 58 
 Van Moss, Lt. D. (USMC), 658 
 Vocational Education, federal 
 
 board for, 128 
 Voluntary enlistment, 30 
 
 W 
 
 Walsh, Lt.-Col. (Maj.) J. O., 69 
 
 War Department 
 
 Circular No. 73, 575 
 General Orders No. 15, 529 
 General Orders No. 42, 245, 300, 
 
 585 
 
 General Orders No. 45, 338, 513 
 General Orders No. 46, 551, 553, 
 
 591 
 
 General Orders No. 60, 259 
 General Orders No. 78, 557 
 General Orders No. 80, 275 
 General Orders No. 85, 574, 578 
 General Orders No. 86, 262 
 telephone directory, 494 
 
 War Industries Board, 666 
 
 War Labor Policies Board, 666 
 
 War Service Exchange 
 
 absorption by, of intelligence 
 bureau, 498 
 
 centralized personnel organiza- 
 tion projected by, 97, 499-503 
 cooperation of, with military 
 training camps association, 
 498 
 
 correspondence work of, 495 
 discontinuance of, 112 
 establishment of, 80, 586, 587 
 expansion of activities by, 497- 
 
 499 
 
 information blank used by, 493 
 methods of, 495-499 
 operation of, 109 
 organization of, 491 
 personal interviews by, 497 
 purpose of, 491-492, 511 
 sources of supply used by, 495 
 telephone directory by, 494 
 transfer of, to General Staff, 
 
 510, 511 
 
 Watson, Mf. Hathaway, 108, 402 
 Watson, Maj. (Dr.) J. B., 57, 58, 
 
 351 
 
 Watson, 2nd Lt. J. E. (USMC), 661 
 Watson, Mr. Max, 78, 106, 156, 
 
 349, 364, 381 
 Weeks, Harvey E., 109 
 Weislger Mr. Kendall, 66, 71, 75, 
 81, 82, 85, 102, 108, 181, 471, 
 474, 486, 601, 636 
 Wellman, Mr. H. L., 102, 105, 108 
 Wells, Capt. E. L., 620 
 Wells, Mr. G. C., 109 
 Weston, Maj. E. H., 471, 474 
 Whipple, Mr. C. J., 66, 72, 102 
 Whipple, Dr. G. M., 42, 43 
 Whitely, Yeoman (chief clerk), 653 
 Whiting, Maj. (Capt.) L. H., 72, 83 
 Wigmore, Col. (Maj., Lt.-Col.), J. 
 
 H., 80, 97, 529, 595 
 Wilhelm, Maj. G. F., 107, 264 
 Willard, Col. Charles, 375, 376 
 Winship, Lt.-Com. Emery, 653 
 Wood, Brig. -Gen. R. E., 636 
 Woods, Mr. Edward A., 42 
 Woodward, Maj. F. C., 595 
 Woodworth, Dr., 54 
 Wright, Mr. S. E., 102, 109 
 
 Yerkes, Maj. R. M., 43, 54, 57, 600 
 Yoakum, Maj. C. S., 602
 
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