CLERKS 
79 
at this work, she was first given the sorting of factory time 
t'tkets. So far she has done so poorly on the simpler work of 
the section that her section head is ready to discharge her. In 
the tests, I noticed at once that she was the poorest one in the 
e ntire group, and if these tests had been applied at the time 
°f her employment, I presume that she would not have been 
hired, in spite of the other things in her favor. She may still 
he valuable for simple work, but she has started with a false 
es timate of herself and a wrong kind of encouragement from 
Us - We have other cases in mind where clerks have done ex- 
eeptionally well, although first impressions have been poor 
°wing to an estimate made from their general appearance and 
deportment rather than from a knowledge of their technique.” 
It was at the suggestion of the office manager making 
^is statement that the tests given in this experiment 
^ere classified under the head of tests for technique and 
te sts for intelligence. The distinction is by no means clear 
Cu t, but it has a certain practical value which every office 
Manager will recognize. By technique is meant the speed 
atl d accuracy shown by clerks in sorting tickets and papers, 
posting and adding columns of figures, indexing and filing, 
a ^d in other routine clerical operations. In short, tech- 
ni que is the degree of mechanical perfection which is de- 
sirable in all kinds of routine office work. The tests 
Ca lculated to give an index of a clerk’s technique were 
tests numbers 4, 10, 12, and 15, all of which are given 
^’th appropriate directions in the Appendix. The term 
lnte lligence was interpreted to designate the facility and 
SUc cess with which a clerk could master new tasks and 
follow directions about new work assigned from time 
to dme. One of the tests used for this purpose was 
*- es t number 13, the well-known Woodworth-Wells hard 
directions test. (See Appendix. This test has since