22 
II 
A FIRST EXPERIMENT 
The general purpose of this experiment was to discover 
a set of mental tests which could be used by the employ 
ment office in selecting applicants for certain kinds of 
work. Just where and how, specifically, this was to be 
done was a somewhat hazy problem at the outset. Hith 
erto, the work of the experimenter had been confined to 
the orthodox experiments of the psychological laboratory. 
Factory conditions and factory problems were therefore 
novel to him, no more, however, than his purposes and 
methods were to the factory. In the midst of this some 
what hazy and intricate problem, four distinct conditions 
were discernible. First, in finding the proposed set of 
tests, it was primarily necessary to go out among the 
shops and make a general survey of the types of work 
for which applicants were being chosen. Secondly, it was 
necessary to make an intensive study of one or two op 
erations at the start, rather than an extensive study of 
a large variety of operations. Thirdly, a large number 
of workers all engaged in the same work had to be 
studied in order to make as wide a series of observations 
as possible (obviously, the tests tried on a hundred 
workers would give more conclusive results than those 
tried on only ten or twenty). Fourthly, it was advisable 
to try out these tests where the work was simplest 
and most automatic, on the assumption that the more 
standardized the work the more easy it would be to dis 
cover a standard set of tests.