SELECTING GIRLS AS ASSEMBLERS 55 
that if they indicated the necessary qualities in men they 
would indicate them in women as well. However, this 
was impossible because the process of assembling had it 
self been entirely rearranged to meet the conditions of 
greatly increased quantity production. Hitherto, guns 
had been assembled in their entirety by one man. Now 
>t was proposed to break up this operation into a large 
number of steps, so that one assembler assembled one 
small part, another some other part, and so on, up to the 
'ast step which consisted of putting together into the fin 
ished product all the parts that had been assembled. The 
°ld operation required a mechanic of considerable skill 
a nd long training. It will readily be seen that the new 
method did not require nearly the same degree of mechani 
cal skill, although it did require more speed and nimble- 
n ess in assembling a large number of relatively small and 
simple parts. Because of this change in the method of 
assembling, a standard on which to base the significance 
°f the tests was lacking. And consequently, the finding 
°f significant tests had to be something of a leap in the 
dark. 
The first step was to go into the shop and examine the 
ex act nature of the proposed operations. It was not con- 
sidered sufficient to do this by asking questions and ob 
serving the work from a little distance. A first hand 
knowledge was obviously the best, and therefore the 
ex perimenter actually performed the various operations 
at a bench and in the customary way, until he was able 
to do them with some degree of celerity. Instead of de- 
scribing this work in technical minuteness, it will be best 
km the purposes of this exposition to describe it in terms 
°f the tests which were finally devised. 
The work of assembling gun parts as it is now done