6 4 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
construction of the room makes it impossible to give a 
rigid surface to a hinged table, and a table on four legs 
is therefore being secured. The portable room is further 
fitted out with devices providing for the necessary com 
bination of electric currents. Its equipment includes an 
electric fan, a necessary adjunct to a room otherwise de 
void of ventilating mechanisms. 
In this laboratory only such apparatus is carried as is 
necessary for the experiment in hand. This apparatus 
is stowed in a large but lightly constructed chest. In this 
way it can easily be carried around or stored. The bulk 
of the apparatus is kept in a permanent laboratory where 
new apparatus is constructed and tried out before it is 
sent out for use in the portable laboratory. 
As was expected, the use of this room provoked some 
scoffing and ridicule among the shop men and their over 
seers at the outset. All kinds of queer names were given 
to it by the men such as “pill box”, “monkey cage”, 
“star chamber”, etc. However, it was never abused and 
the experience which those who were examined had with 
this room tended to transform their contempt into cu 
riosity and often into admiration. 
“Do you know,” said one man who had been given 
tests, “I have much more respect for that place in there 
(pointing to the portable room) than I did before. At 
first I thought it was a lot of monkey business, but it got 
me. It made a monkey of me all right. It showed me 
that I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.” 
After the expiration of a few days, the laboratory is 
taken as a matter of course in the shop where it has been 
set up. No one pays any more attention to it than to the 
permanent shop fixtures. This has been the case wherever 
the room has been used. The first few days provoke a