The Three Clerks

Answers

• Q12JUDGMENT

  Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?

  No. tests miss character. Satirizes competitive examination for the civil service through the examiners Sir Gregory Hardlines and Mr Jobbles and a clerk who passes the test but proves dishonest.

  This gentleman was a worthy clergyman from Cambridge, one Mr. Jobbles by name. Mr. Jobbles had for many years been examining undergraduates for little goes and great goes, and had passed his life in putting posing questions, in detecting ignorance by viva voce scrutiny, and eliciting learning by printed papers. He, by a stupendous effort of his mathematical mind, had divided the adult British male world into classes and sub-classes, and could tell at a moment's notice how long it would take him to examine them all. His soul panted for the work. Every man should, he thought, be made to pass through some 'go.' The greengrocer's boy should not carry out cabbages unless his fitness for cabbage-carrying had been ascertained, and till it had also been ascertained that no other boy, ambitious of the preferment, would carry them better. Difficulty! There was no difficulty. Could not he, Jobbles, get through 5,000 viva voces in every five hours--that is, with due assistance? and would not 55,000 printed papers, containing 555,000 questions, be getting themselves answered at the same time, with more or less precision?

  Published 1857 (Wikipedia; some sources say 1858); satire of Trevelyan and Jowett confirmed at Victorian Web; Gutenberg #7481.