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Henry C. Link

Henry Charles Link was born Karl Heinrich Link on August 27, 1889 in Buffalo, New York, United States. He was the son of George Link and Martha Kraus Link, german protestants who immigrated to the United States after their marriage. George Link was a carpenter who eventually started his own construction company. By the time Henry was born, the family had attained middle-class status, and its upward mobility influenced his social outlook.

Link spent two years at North Western (now North Central), a small denominational college in Naperville, Illinois, before transferring to Yale in 1910. He majored in philosophy and graduated in 1913. Two years later he earned the Master of Arts, and in 1916 the Doctor of Philosophy also from Yale.

ink began his career at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Connecticut, where from 1917 to 1919 he supervised psychological tests designed to measure the qualifications of job applicants and the performance of employees. From 1919 to 1923 he did similar work for the United States Rubber Company and also published two important studies on industrial psychology and related aspects of corporate communication. During this period businessmen were clamoring for information about psychological testing because of its highly publicized use by the army in World War I. This interest was met by an increase in the number of people claiming psychological expertise and by the growth of pseudodisciplines promising easy solutions to hiring and employee-management problems. A horde of prospective advisers, armed with an array of tests, offered magical solutions to industry's much-discussed "human problem. " In a field plagued by quackery and careless boasting, Link's books were models of sobriety.

In Employment Psychology (1919) he explained how testing could systematize employment policy but warned that the selection of the appropriate test and its proper evaluation were difficult tasks requiring expert judgment. Moreover, even the best tests were limited; they could neither measure moral qualities nor select outstanding executives. In Education and Industry (1923) Link asserted that, like testing, industry-supported education programs could help reduce labor turnover and thus cut costs. They also could help Americanize immigrant workers. But once again he was cautious, warning of the many difficulties involved in communicating with employees: paternalistic propaganda stuffed into the pay envelope might do more harm than good.

From 1923 to 1928 with Lord and Taylor in New York City and from 1928 to 1930 with Gimbel's in Pittsburgh, Link worked in advertising and merchandising. He drew upon his department-store experience and other data for The New Psychology of Selling and Advertising (1932), in which he held that the impersonal, scientific approach was replacing personal salesmanship. From 1931 until his death, Link was an executive with the Psychological Corporation, a New York-based organization composed of some of the nation's leading psychologists. Founded by James McKeen Cattell in 1921, the corporation's aim was to make psychological findings available to business and to fund further research. It foundered during its first decade, but in 1930-1931 it was revamped and began to prosper. Link became head of the marketing and social research division, which was responsible for business research. He drew upon this experience for his four books on character and society: The Return to Religion (1936), which sold over 500, 000 copies; The Rediscovery of Man (1938); The Rediscovery of Morals (1947); and The Way to Security (1951).

Link believed that intellectual contemplation and the open-minded skepticism of the liberal were the enemies of the well-developed personality. People should think less and act more; they should cultivate such sociable pastimes as sports and bridge, and eschew self-absorption. He now saw education, especially on the college level, as a threat to personal happiness and social stability because, he said, it developed the mind at the expense of the personality and fostered a flippant cynicism toward such immutable guides as the Ten Commandments. Link asserted that security could come only from within and that federal Social Security, union-won job security, and excessive parental support sapped moral fiber. A staunch conservative, he insisted that America should return to laissez-faire and self-reliance.
- Henry C. Link

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