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Chapter 06 Job Design and Performance Answer Key
1. The term "job redesign" specifically refers to any instance in which management specifies the duties
and responsibilities of a job.
FALSE
Job design refers to the first instance in which management creates a job by specifying its duties and
responsibilities. Subsequent instances are called a redesign.
2. As used in the text, the term job design refers to a one-time, static process.
FALSE
Job design is an ongoing, dynamic process.
3. The trade-offs between the gains in human terms from improved quality of work life and the gains in
economic terms from revitalization aren't fully known.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-02 Summarize the key components in the general model of job design.
Topic: Job Design and Quality of Work Life
4. According to the "General Model of Job Design" perceived job content leads to job performance.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-02 Summarize the key components in the general model of job design.
Topic: A General Model of Job Design
5. Performing a job can sometimes result in health problems for the worker.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 06-03 Identify the key elements linking job design and performance.
Topic: Job Performance Outcomes
6-1
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
6. Jobs can provide intrinsic or extrinsic outcomes, but not both.
FALSE
Most jobs provide opportunities for both intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes.
7. Job satisfaction depends on the levels of intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes and how the job-holder views
those outcomes.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-03 Identify the key elements linking job design and performance.
Topic: Job Performance Outcomes
8. It's generally held that extrinsic rewards reinforce intrinsic rewards in a positive direction when the
individual can attribute the source of the extrinsic reward to her own efforts.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 06-03 Identify the key elements linking job design and performance.
Topic: Job Performance Outcomes
9. Job depth reflects the amount of control that an individual has to alter or influence the job and the
surrounding environment.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-04 Compare the job design concepts of range and depth.
Topic: Job Designs: Range, Depth, and Relationships
10. Job depth reflects the number of operations that a job occupant performs to complete a task.
FALSE
The number of operations that a job occupant performs to complete a task is job range.
11. An employee with the same job title, who is at the same organizational level as another employee, may
possess more, less, or the same job depth.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-04 Compare the job design concepts of range and depth.
Topic: Job Designs: Range, Depth, and Relationships
6-2
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
12. Without the opportunity to communicate, people will be unable to establish cohesive work groups.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 06-04 Compare the job design concepts of range and depth.
Topic: Job Designs: Range, Depth, and Relationships
13. Product, territory, and customer departments are comprised of jobs that are quite similar (homogenous).
FALSE
Jobs in product, territory, and customer departments are quite different (heterogeneous).
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-04 Compare the job design concepts of range and depth.
Topic: Job Designs: Range, Depth, and Relationships
15. Managers cannot understand the causes of job performance without considering the social setting in
which the job is performed.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-05 Give examples of how managers can influence how employees perceive their jobs.
Topic: The Way People Perceive Their Jobs
16. Employees with relatively weak higher-order needs are more concerned with performing a variety of
tasks than are employees with relatively strong growth needs.
TRUE
Employees with relatively weak higher-order needs are less concerned with performing a variety of
tasks than are employees with strong growth needs.
17. Managers expecting higher performance to result from increased task variety will be disappointed if the
jobholders do not have strong growth needs.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 06-06 Explain the differences between job rotation; job enlargement; and job enrichment.
Topic: The Way People Perceive Their Jobs
6-3
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
18. Performance will turn down as individuals reach the limits imposed by their abilities and time.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-06 Explain the differences between job rotation; job enlargement; and job enrichment.
Topic: Designing Job Range: Job Rotation and Job Enlargement
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 1 Easy
Learning Objective: 06-06 Explain the differences between job rotation; job enlargement; and job enrichment.
Topic: Designing Job Range: Job Rotation and Job Enlargement
20. The relationship between performance and task variety is likely to be linear.
FALSE
The relationship between performance and task variety (even for individuals with high growth needs) is
likely to be curvilinear.
21. Job enlargement strategies focus on dividing work into more specialized tasks.
FALSE
Job enlargement focuses on increasing the number of tasks a worker performs, not on dividing work.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-06 Explain the differences between job rotation; job enlargement; and job enrichment.
Topic: Increasing Range in Jobs: Job Rotation and Job Enlargement
FALSE
Job enrichment necessarily involves job enlargement.
6-4
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
24. Higher-level needs regain importance when the economy moves through periods of recession and high
inflation.
FALSE
During periods of recession and high inflation, lower-level needs, such as obtaining food and shelter,
regain importance.
25. Self-managed teams (SMT) represent a job enrichment approach at the group level.
TRUE
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation
Difficulty: 2 Medium
Learning Objective: 06-06 Explain the differences between job rotation; job enlargement; and job enrichment.
Topic: Increasing Depth in Jobs: Job Enrichment
26. The impetus for designing job depth was provided by _____________ theory of motivation.
A. Vroom's
B. Locke's
C. Maslow's hierarchy
D. Herzberg's two-factor
27. The concept of quality of work life (QWL) is widely used to refer to a philosophy of management that
does all of the following except:
6-5
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McGraw-Hill Education.
28. Job design attempts to ______________.
A. Job design
B. Individual differences
C. Social setting differences
D. All of the above.
30. According to the "General Model of Job Design" job performance is influenced by:
31. All of the following are typically thought of as "objective" measures except:
A. Output
B. Tardiness
C. Turnover
D. Job satisfaction
6-6
Copyright © 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
32. Contemporary job design theory defines intrinsic motivation in terms of the employee's
_______________ to achieve outcomes from the application of individual ability and talent.
A. potential
B. empowerment
C. incentives
D. directives
33. All of the following are considered extrinsic outcomes of a job except:
A. Pay
B. Co-workers
C. Feeling challenged
D. Working conditions
35. Job __________ has been defined as the feelings beliefs and attitudes that employees have regarding
their jobs.
A. satisfaction
B. depth
C. joy
D. EQ
6-7
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McGraw-Hill Education.
36. An individual who executes eight tasks to perform a job has a wider job _______ than a person
executing four.
A. specification
B. range
C. diversity
D. richness
37. Mike's position requires the use of more discretion than Jack's. Mike's position could be characterized as
having greater job _______.
A. depth
B. range
C. diversity
D. "Q"
38. An employee with the same job title who's at the same organizational level as another employee may
possess __________ job depth because of personal influence.
A. more
B. less
C. the same amount of
D. All of the above
39. Job designs specify all of the following job characteristics except:
A. Range
B. Depth
C. Relationships
D. Specific duties
6-8
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McGraw-Hill Education.
40. Which of the following jobs would have the highest job depth?
A. Assembly-line worker
B. Bookkeeper
C. Chief of surgery
D. Anesthesiologist
41. A management initiative is increasing the number of tasks jobholders perform. Management is
increasing _________.
A. job range
B. job depth
C. task diversity
D. task range
42. A management initiative is increasing the amount of discretion individuals have to decide job activities
and outcomes. Management is increasing _________.
A. job range
B. job depth
C. task diversity
D. task range
43. There are ____________ precise equations that managers can use to decide job range and depth.
A. multiple
B. specific
C. no
D. three
6-9
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44. A position with a wider ______________ means it has more direct reports.
A. job depth
B. job span
C. span of control
D. control depth
45. It is easier for people with _______________ backgrounds, skills, and training to establish social
relationships that are satisfying with less stress.
A. university
B. heterogeneous
C. homogeneous
D. dissimilar
46. Individuals who work in __________ departments experience feelings of dissatisfaction and stress more
intensely than those in ________, functional departments.
A. heterogeneous, homogeneous
B. homogeneous, heterogeneous
C. heterogeneous, heterogenic
D. heterogenic, hologynic
47. Highly specialized jobs are those having all of the following except:
6-10
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48. In _______________ departments, people will be doing much the same specialty.
A. customer
B. functional
C. product
D. territory
A. perceived
B. objective
C. true
D. All of the above
50. Taylor proposed that the way to improve work is to determine _________.
51. The pioneering effort to measure perceived job content through employee responses to a questionnaire
resulted in the identification of __________ characteristics.
A. two
B. three
C. five
D. six
6-11
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McGraw-Hill Education.
52. RTAI is an acronym for _____________.
53. Organization behavior researchers have attempted to measure perceived job content in a variety of work
settings, primarily through _______________.
A. face-to-face interviews
B. observation
C. questionnaires
D. time and motion studies
54. Variety, task identity, and feedback are perceptions of job _______________.
A. range
B. depth
C. relationships
D. autonomy
55. Employees sharing similar _______________ should report similar job characteristics.
A. perceptions
B. job designs
C. social settings
D. All of the above.
6-12
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56. Managers of General Electric, Ford, and Deloitte Services LP all utilized different forms of the
_______________ strategy.
A. job enlargement
B. job rotation
C. job redesign
D. job enhancement
57. Research studies have pointed out, how one perceives a job is _______ affected by what other people
say about it.
A. generally not
B. weakly
C. inversely
D. greatly
59. A pioneering Walker and Guest study found that many workers were dissatisfied with their highly
specialized jobs. In particular, they disliked:
A. Mechanical pacing
B. Repetitiveness of operations
C. A lack of a sense of accomplishment
D. All of the choices are correct.
6-13
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60. Increasing task variety should, according to recent studies, do all of the following except:
61. If employees are amenable to job enlargement and have the requisite ability, then job enlargement
should _______________.
63. If employees are able to carry out enriched jobs and managers are willing to delegate authority,
performance gains can be expected. This positive outcome is the result of all of the following except:
6-14
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64. Employees with a strong need for _______________ will respond more positively to job redesign
efforts than those with relatively weak growth needs.
A. accomplishment
B. learning
C. challenge
D. All of the choices are correct.
66. When switching from a traditional hierarchy structure to work teams, two notable barriers are resistance
and _______________.
A. misunderstanding
B. distrust
C. increased personnel needs
D. insufficient communication
67. One of the earliest forms of alternative work arrangements was _______________.
A. flex-time
B. telecommuting
C. the compressed work week
D. job sharing
6-15
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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
We walked along the beach of the lagoon and found a road that
paralleled the one we had come. It was lower than the other and the
rain had flooded it. The water was brown and stagnant, even red in
pools, like blood. Uncanny things shot past my feet or crawled upon
them, and once something that had not the feel of anything I knew
of climbed the calf of my leg, and when I turned and saw it dimly I
leaped into the air and kicked it off. I heard it plop into the dark
water.
Down this marsh we plodded and paddled, floundered and
splashed for half a mile. The cocoanut-palms arched across it, but
there was not a person nor a habitation in view. I wondered why
“she the great cook” had led me into this morass. Momuni looked at
me mysteriously several times, and his lips moved as if he had been
about to speak.
He studied my countenance attentively, and several times he
patted and rubbed my back affectionately and said, “You damafina.”
Then, slimy and sloppy as I was, covered with the foul water up to
my waist, when we were in the darkest spot Momuni halted and
drew me under a palm.
He would either seek to borrow money or to cut my throat, I
thought hastily. Again he scanned me closely, and I, to soften his
heart and avert the evil, tried to appear firm and unafraid. To my
astonishment he took from his pocket five five-franc notes, those
ugly, red-inked bills which are current in all the Etablissements
Français de l’Oceanie, and held them under my nose. He smiled and
then made the motion of pulling a cork, and of a bottle’s contents
gurgling through his loose mouth and down his long neck.
I shuddered at my thoughts. Could it be that in this dry atoll, with
intoxicants forbidden, and prison the penalty of selling or giving
them to a native, this hospitable Niauan had offered me his bread
and shown me his oven, and the glories of the isle, and was
displaying those five red notes to seduce me into breaking the law,
into smuggling ashore a bottle of rum or wine?
I was determined to know the worst. I drew from my drawers (I
had worn no trousers) an imaginary corkscrew, and from my
undershirt an unsubstantial bottle. I pulled a supposititious cork, and
took a long drink of the unreal elixir. Momuni was transfixed. His
jaws worked, and his tongue extended. He squeezed my hand with
happiness and hope, and left in it the five scarlet tokens of the
Banque de l’Indo-Chine.
“Wina damafina; rumma damafina,” he confided. The man would
be content with anything, so it bit his throat and made him a king
for an evil hour.
Tomé was dealing out tobacco when we reached his store. His
wife and baby, an Irish-Penrhyn baby, were now eating a can of
salmon and Nabisco wafers.
“Who is this gentleman, Mr. Eustace?” I asked, pointing to
Momuni.
“He’s an omadhaun, a nuisance, that he is, sure,” said Tomé. “He’s
a Mormon deacon that peddles bread an’ buys his flour from some
one else because I won’t trust him. He’s the only Mormon in this
blessed island. Every last soul is a Roman Cat’lic, except me, and I’m
a believer in the leprechawn. Has that hooligan been thryin’ to work
ye for a bottle of rum? He’ll talk a day for a drink.”
“What’s Momuni and Popay?”
“Momuni is the way they say ‘Mormons.’ The other’s the pope wid
the accint on the last syllable. It’s the name for Cat’lics all over these
seas, because they worship the pope iv Rome. The Popays run this
island, but the Momunis have got Takaroa and some others by the
tail.”
I turned to look at my guide, the bread-maker. I had new
admiration for him. It took courage to be the one Mormon among a
hundred Catholics, and to try to sell them the staff of life. But he
could not withstand the withering glances of Tomé, and fled, with
gestures to me which I could only hazard to mean to meet him later
in the fearsome swamp, with the rum.
“Does Momuni owe you any money?” I asked the trader, who was
lighting his wife’s cigarette.
“Does he? He owes me forty francs for flour, and I’ll nivir see the
shadow iv them. I’ll tell ye, though, he’s the best baker in the Group,
an’ they’re crazy about his bread.”
Eustace had no cargo for us, and McHenry and I caught the last
boat for the Marara, Moet having stayed for one trip only.
“Come an’ shtay wid us a month or two,” said Tomé in farewell.
“We’ll make ye happy and find ye a sweetheart! ’Tis here ye can
shpend yer valibil time doin’ nawthin’ at all, at all.”
He laughed heartily at his joke on virtue, and as we dashed
through the surf to climb into the boat I turned to see him telling the
assembling villagers some story that might provoke a laugh and
keep their copra a monopoly for him.
CHAPTER III
Lacour’s wife had a yellowish baby in her lap, and she wore
earrings, a wedding-ring, and a necklace and bracelets.
The boat was plying from the schooner to the shore, and I
watched its progress. Piri a Tuahine held the steering oar, laughing,
calling to his fellows to pull or not to pull, as I could see through a
glass. A current affected the surf, increasing or decreasing its force
at intervals, and it was now at its height. The boat entered the
passage on a crest, but a following wave struck it hard, turned it
broadside, and all but over. A flood entered the boat, but the men
leaped out and, though up to their shoulders in the water, held it
firm, and finally drew it close to the beach. The flour and the boxes
and beds of native passengers were wetted, but they ran to the boat
and carried their belongings near to the copra shed, and spread
them to dry. Lacour cursed the boat and the sailors.
Near Lacour’s store was a house, in which lived Captain Nimau,
owner of a small schooner. Nimau invited me to sleep there and see
the moving pictures. We had brought Lacour a reel or so, and in
anticipation, the people of Anaa had been gathering cocoanuts for a
week. The films were old ones that Tahiti had wearied of, and Lacour
got them for a trifle. The theater was his copra house, and there
were no seats nor need of them.
He set the hour of seven for the show, and I alone stayed ashore
for it. By six o’clock the residents began flocking to the shed with
their entrance-fees. Each bore upon his back twenty-five cocoanuts,
some in bags and others with the nuts tied on a pole by their husk.
Fathers carried double or even triple quantities for their little ones,
and each, as he arrived at Lacour’s, counted the nuts before the
trader.
The women brought their own admission tickets. The acolyte, who
had inveighed against the cinematograph, was second in line, and
secured the best squatting space. His own cocoanuts were in
Lacour’s bin.
When the screen was erected and the first picture flashed upon it,
few of the people of Anaa were absent, and Lacour’s copra heap was
piled high. There were a hundred and sixty people present, and four
thousand nuts in the box-office.
The first film was concerned with the doings of Nick Winter, an
English detective in France, a burlesque of Sherlock Holmes, and
other criminal literatures. The spectators could not make a head nor
tail of it, but they enjoyed the scenes hugely and were intensely
mystified by many pictures. An automobile, which, by the trickery of
the camera, was made to appear to climb the face of a sky-scraper,
raised cries of astonishment and assertions of diablerie. The devil
was a very real power to South Sea Islanders, whether they were
Christians or not, and they had fashioned a composite devil of our
horned and cloven-hoofed chap and their own demons, who was
made responsible for most trouble and disaster that came to them,
and whose machinations explained sleight of hand, and even the
vagaries of moving pictures.
What pleased them most were cow-boy pictures, the melodramatic
life of the Wild West of America, with bucking bronchos, flying
lassos, painted Indians whom they thought tattooed, and dashes of
vaqueros, border sheriffs, and maidens who rode cayuses like
Comanches. Tahiti was daft over cow-boys, and had adopted that
word into the language, and these Anaans were vastly taken by the
same life. Lacour explained the pictures as they unrolled, shouting
any meanings he thought might pass; and I doubted if he himself
knew much about them, for later he asked me if all cow-boys were
not Spaniards.
This was the first moving picture machine in these islands. Lacour
had only had it a few weeks. He purposed taking it through the
Group on a cutter that would transport the cocoanut receipts.
Lacour, Nimau, and I sat up late. These Frenchmen save for a few
exceptions were as courteous as at home. Peasants or sailors in
France, they brought and improved with their position that striking
cosmopolitan spirit which distinguishes the Gaul, be he ever so
uneducated. The English and American trader was suspicious, sullen
or blatant, vulgar and often brutal in manner. The Frenchman had
bonhomie, politeness. England and America in the South Seas
considered this a weakness, and aimed at the contrary. Manners, of
course, originated in France.
“This island is on the French map as La Chaîne,” said Captain
Nimau, “but we who traverse these seas always use the native
names. Those old admirals who took word to their king that they
had discovered new islands always said, too, that they had named
them after the king or some saint. A Spaniard selected a nice name
like the Blessed Sacrament or the Holy Mother of God, or some
Spanish saint, while a Frenchman chose something to show the
shape or color of the land. The Englishman usually named his find
after some place at home, like New England, New Britain, and so on.
But we don’t give a sacré for those names. How could we? All those
fellows claimed to have been here first, and so all islands have two
or three European names. We who have to pick them up in the
night, or escape from them in a storm, want the native name as we
need the native knowledge of them. The landmarks, the clouds, the
smells, the currents, the passes, the depths—those are the items
that save or lose us our lives and vessels. Let those vieux capitaines
fight it out below for the honor of their nomenclature and
precedence of discovery!”
What recriminations in Hades between Columbus and Vespucci!
“Take this whole archipelago!” continued Nimau. “The Tahitians
named it the Poumotu or pillar islands, because to them the atolls
seemed to rise like white trees from the sea. But the name sounded
to the people here like Paumotu, which means conquered or
destroyed islands, and so, after a few petitions or requests by proud
chiefs, the French in 1852 officially named them Tuamotu, distant,
out of view, or below the horizon. That was more than a half century
ago, but we still call them the Paumotu. There’s nothing harder to
change than the old names of places. You can change a man’s or a
whole island’s religion much easier.”
Near the little hut in which we were, Nimau’s house, a bevy of
girls smoked cigarettes and talked about me. They had learned that
I was not a sailor, not one of the crew of the Marara, and not a
trader. What could I be, then, but a missionary, as I was not an
official, because not French? But I was not a Catholic missionary, for
they wore black gowns; and I could not be Mormoni nor Konito,
because there in public I was with the Frenchmen, drinking beer.
Two, who were handsome, brown, with teeth as brilliant as the heart
of the nacre, and eyes and hair like the husks of the ripe cocoanut,
came into the house and questioned Lacour.
“They want to know what you are doing here,” interpreted Lacour.
“I am not here to make money nor to preach the Gospel,” I
replied.
The younger came to me and put her arms about me, and said:
“Ei aha e reva a noho io nei!” And that meant, “Stay here always and
rest with me!”
After a while the acolyte joined us, and I put them all many
questions.
The Paumotuans were a quiet people, dour, or at least serious and
contemplative. They were not like the Tahitians, laugh-loving, light-
hearted, frenzied dancers, orators, music worshipers, feasters. The
Tahitians had the joy of living, though with the melancholy strain
that permeated all Polynesia. The folk of the Dangerous Archipelago
were silent, brooding, and religious. The perils they faced in their
general vocation of diving, and from cyclones, which annihilated
entire populations of atolls, had made them intensely susceptible to
fears of hell-fire and to hopes of heaven. The rather Moslem
paradise of Mormonism made strong appeal, but was offset by the
tortures of the damned, limned by other earnest clerics who
preached the old Wesley-Spurgeon everlasting suffering for all not of
their sect.
Had religion never affected the Paumotuans, their food would
have made them a distinct and a restrained people. We all are
creatures of our nourishment. The Tahitians had a plentitude of
varied and delicious food, a green and sympathetic landscape, a
hundred waterfalls and gentle rills. The inhabitants of these low isles
had cocoanut and fish as staples, and often their only sustenance for
years. No streams meander these stony beds, but rain-water must
be caught, or dependence placed on the brackish pools and shallow
wells in the porous rocks or compressed sand, which ebbed and
flowed with the tides.
To a Tahitian his brooks were his club, where often he sat or lay in
the laughing water, his head crowned with flowers, dreaming of a life
of serene idleness. Once or twice a day he must bathe thoroughly.
He was clean; his skin was aglow with the effect of air and water. No
European could teach him hygiene. He was a perfect animal,
untainted and unsoiled, accustomed to laving and massage, to
steam, fresh, and salt baths, when Europeans, kings, courts, and
commoners went unwashed from autumn to summer; when in the
“Lois de la Galanterie,” written for beaux and dandies in 1640, it was
enjoined that “every day one should take pains to wash one’s hands,
and one should wash one’s face almost as often.”
Environment, purling rivulets under embowering trees, the most
enchanting climate between pole and pole, a simple diet but little
clothing, made the Tahitian and Marquesan the handsomest and
cleanest races in the world. Clothes and cold are an iron barrier to
cleanliness, except where wealth affords comfort and privacy.
Michelangelo wore a pair of socks many years without removing
them. Our grandfathers counted a habit of frequent bathing a sign of
weakness. In old New England many baths were thought conducive
to immorality, by some line of logic akin to that of my austere aunt,
who warned me that oysters led to dancing.
The Paumotuan, before the white man made him a mere machine
for gathering copra and pearl-shell and pearls, had a very distinct
culture, savage though it was. He was the fabric of his food and the
actions induced in him by necessity. Ellis, the interesting missionary
diarist of Tahiti and Hawaii, recorded that in 1817, when at Afareaitu,
on Moorea, he was printing for the first time the Bible in Tahitian
“among the various parties in Afareaitu ... were a number of natives
of the Paumotu, or Pearl Islands, which lie to the northwest of Tahiti
and constitute what is called the Dangerous Archipelago. These
numerous islands, like those of Tetuaroa to the north, are of coralline
formation, and the most elevated parts of them are seldom more
than two or three feet above high-water mark. The principal, and
almost only, edible vegetable they produce is the fruit of the
cocoanut. On these, with the numerous kinds of fishes resorting to
their shores or among the coral reefs, the inhabitants entirely
subsist. They appear a hardy and industrious race, capable of
enduring great privations. The Tahitians believe them to be
cannibals.... They are in general firm and muscular, but of a more
spare habit of body than the Tahitians. Their limbs are well formed,
their stature generally tall. The expression of their countenance, and
the outline of their features, greatly resemble those of the Society
Islanders; their manners are, however, more rude and uncourteous.
The greater part of the body is tattooed, sometimes in broad stripes,
at others in large masses of black, and always without any of the
taste and elegance frequently exhibited in the figures marked on the
persons of the Tahitians.”
One who traveled much in the isolated parts of the world was
often struck by the unfitness of certain populated places to support
in any comfort and safety the people who generation after
generation persisted in living in them. For thousands of years the
slopes of Vesuvius have been cultivated despite the imminent horror
of the volcano above. The burning Paumotu atolls are as undesirable
for residences as the desert of Sahara. Yet the hot sands are
peopled, and have been for ages, and in the recesses of the frozen
North the processes of birth and death, of love and greed, are as
absorbing as in the Edens of the earth. Hateful as a lengthy enforced
stay in the Paumotus might be to any of us, I have seen two
Paumotuan youths dwelling abroad for the first time in their lives,
eating delicious food and hardly working at all, weep hours upon
hours from homesickness, a continuous longing for their atoll of
Puka-ruhu, where they had half starved since birth, and where the
equatorial typhoon had raped time and again. Nature, in her
insistence that mankind shall continue, implanted that instinct of
home in us as one of the most powerful agents of survival of the
species. Enduring terrible privation, even, we learned to love the
scenes of our sufferings. Never was that better exemplified than in
these melancholy and maddening-atolls of the half-browned
Archipelago.
CHAPTER IV
My friend, the poet, Rupert Brooke, had been made very ill by
coral poisoning. He wrote from the Tiare Hotel in Papeete: “I’ve got
some beastly coral-poisoning into my legs, and a local microbe on
top of that, and made the places worse by neglecting them, and
sea-bathing all day, which turns out to be the worst possible thing. I
was in the country, at Mataiea, when it came on bad, and tried
native remedies, which took all the skin off, and produced such a
ghastly appearance that I hurried into town. I’ve got over it now and
feel spry.” His nickname, Pupure, meant leprous, as well as fair, and
was a joking double entendre by the natives.
I was later, in the Marquesas, to see a man die of such poison
received in the Paumotus. But, in Kaukura, I had to make the best of
it, and after a short rest began to see the sights. There was a crowd
of people about, men and women, and still more children, all lighter
than the Paumotuans in complexion and stouter in body. They were
dressed up. The men were in denim trousers and shirts, and some
with the stiff white atrocities suffered by urbanites in America and
Europe. The women wore the conventional night-gowns that
Christian propriety of the early nineteenth century had pulled over
their heads. They were not the spacious holokus of Hawaii. These
single garments fitted the portly women on the beach as the skin of
a banana its pulpy body—and between me and the sun hid nothing
of their roly-poly forms. I recognized the ahu vahine of Tahiti.
“Ia ora na i te Atua!” the people greeted me, with winning smiles.
“God be with you!” was its meaning, and their accent confirmed their
clothing. They were Tahitians. I spoke to them, and they
commiserated my sad appearance, and pointed out a tall young
white man who came striding down the beach, his mouth pursed in
an anxious question as he saw me.
“Got any medicine on that hay wagon?” he asked. “We’ve got a
bunch of dysentery here.”
I knew at once by his voice issuing through his nostrils instead of
his mouth, and by the sharp cut of his jib, that he was my
countryman, and from the Middle West. He had the self-satisfied air
of a Kansan.
“The trade-room of the Marara is full of medical discoveries,
perunas, Jamaica ginger, celery compounds, and other hot stuff,” I
replied, “but what they’ll cure I don’t know. We have divers patent
poisons known to prohibition.”
“That’s all rotten booze. My people don’t use the devilish stuff,” he
commented, caustically. He continued on, wading to the boat, and,
after a parley, proceeding with it to the schooner.
McHenry had half determined to plant himself, at least temporarily,
in Kaukura, and left me to spy on the store of a Chinese, who had
brought a stock of goods from Papeete. I walked toward an
enormous thatched roof, under which, on the coral strand, were
nearly a thousand persons. The pungent smoke from a hundred
small fires of cocoanut husks gave an agreeable tang to the air; the
lumps of coral between which they were kindled were red with the
heat, the odors rose from bubbling pots. All the small equipment of
Tahitian travelers was strewn about. Upon mattresses and mats in
the shed, the sides of which were built up several feet to prevent the
intrusion of pigs and dogs, lay old people and children, who had not
finished their slumbers. Stands for the sale of fruits, ice, confections,
soda-water, sauces, and other ministrants to hunger and habit
bespoke the acquired tastes of the Tahitians; but most of the people
were of Kaukura and other atolls.
Kaukura alone had nearly a thousand inhabitants. Its lagoons
were the richest in pearl of all the group. Being one of the nearest of
the Paumotus to Tahiti, it had been much affected by the
proselytizing and commercializing spirits of that island—spirits often
at variance but now and again joined, as on a greater scale trust
magnates capitalize and direct missions and religious institutions
with the left hand, while their right takes toll of life-killing mill and
mine.
The village was as attractive as a settlement could be in these
benighted islands, the houses stretching along one or two roads,
some in gala color. A small, sprightly white man was donning shirt
and trousers on the veranda of the best residence at the end of the
street. He was about forty years old, with a curiously keen face, a
quick movement, and an eye like an electric light through a keyhole.
“Hello,” he said, briskly, “by golly, you’re not an American, are
you? I’m getting my pants on a little late. We were up all hours last
night, but I flatter myself God was glad of it. Kidd’s my name;
Johnny Kidd, they call me in Lamoni. I’m glad to meet you, Mr.
——?”
“O’Brien, Frederick O’Brien, of almost anywhere, except Lamoni,” I
replied, laughingly, his good-natured enthusiasm being infectious.
He looked at me, inquiringly.
“Not in my line, are you?” he asked, with an appraising survey of
me.
My head bleeding and aching, my body quivering with the biting
pain of its abraded surface, I still surrendered to the irony of the
question. I guessed that he was a clergyman from his possessive
attitude toward God, but he was so simple and natural in manner,
with so little of a clerical tone or gesture, that I would have thought
him a street-faker or professional gambler had I had no clue to his
identity. I remembered, too, the oft-quoted: “In my Father’s house
are many mansions.”
“I’m merely a beachcomber,” I assured him. “I take a few notes
now and then.”
“Oh, you’re not a sky-pilot,” he went on, in comic relief. “You never
can tell. Those four-flushing Mormons have been bringing a whole
gang of young elders from Utah to Tahiti to beat us out. I’m an elder
myself of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints. They usually call us the Josephites. In these islands we are
Konito or Tonito. We’ve been having a grand annual meeting here.
Over sixty from Tahiti, and altogether a thousand and seventy
members. They’ve been gathering from most of the Paumotus for
weeks, coming with the wind, but we’re about over now.”
“But I thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was
the Mormons,” said I, puzzled.
“Mormon!” There was such vigor in his explosive catching up of
my query that I may well be pardoned if I thought he placed the
common name for Sheol after that of the sect. But it stands to
reason that he did not. His whole training would stop such a word
ere it escaped him.
“Mormon! I should say not! Those grafters and polygamists are
not our kind. They stole our name. We were the same until Brigham
Young split off and led his crowd to Utah. Our headquarters is at
Lamoni, Iowa, but I. N. Imbel, who’s gone to the schooner, my
partner, and I are the missionaries in these islands. We’re properly
authorized ministers who make this our regular and whole business.
My pal and I live in Papeete, but run through the Paumotus when
there’s anything doing.”
The reverend fellow had no airs about him.