A FIRST EXPERIMENT
23
Following these conditions, therefore, the experimenter
was first of all conducted on extensive tours through the
various shops, and the various types of work were explained
to him. After six or seven trips of this kind, two
types of work, conducted side by side in the same room,
were settled on as the most fruitful field for the experiment.
The work chosen was that of inspecting shells
before they had been loaded, and gauging them for headthickness.
This work was being done in two long, welllighted
rooms, by about 330 girls, two-thirds of whom
were engaged in inspection and one-third in gauging. This
large number of girls offered the opportunity of conducting
a sufficiently extensive series of observations, thus
meeting the third condition stated above. Most of the
girls, at the time, were inspecting the same kind of shells,
and this fulfilled the fourth condition; namely, a highly
standardized type of work. A further advantage offered
by this type of work, and one that was absolutely essential
to the success of the experiment, was the fact that it
offered a basis for comparing the activity of the various
workers. For instance, it was possible, at the end of each
day, to find out exactly how many pounds of shells each
girl had inspected or gauged during the day as well as to
find out how many good shells she had thrown out as
a yy
scrap .
The above might be called the preliminary steps of the
experiment. We now come to the details of the experiment
itself.
The general purpose of the experiment was, as has been
stated, to discover a set of tests which would guide the
employment office in selecting new candidates. The more
specific purpose, at this stage in the experiment, was to
discover a set of tests in which the performance of the
