54

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

that  the  existence  of  these  three  functions  should  soon
become  apparent.  The  first  experiment  was  concerned
with  inspectors,  and,  although  it  was  originally  confined
to  one  shop  only,  its  scope  rapidly  extended  oyer  a  group
of  other  shops  which  were  devoted  entirely  to  inspection
of  a  very  similar  nature.  The  present  experiment  was
made  in  the  field  of  assembling  and  consists  of  an  attempt
to  discover  tests  bringing  out  the  essential  qualities  which
go  to  make  a  successful  assembler.
The  assembling  with  which  this  experiment  was  concerned ­
  was  that  of  small  gun  parts.  The  particular  influence ­
  which  led  up  to  the  experiment  was  the  belief  that
a  large  amount  of  the  assembling  hitherto  done  by  men
could  be  done  just  as  well  by  women.  This  was  at  the
time  when  the  substitution  of  women  for  men  had  become
a  critical  matter  in  the  war  industries.  The  experimenter
found  that  this  opinion  had  already  been  conceived  and
worked  out  by  the  general  foreman  of  the  assembling  shops.
This  foreman  had  made  a  careful  analysis  of  the  work  and
had  made  up  a  program  according  to  which  women  were
to  be  introduced.  However,  the  question  which  still  remained ­
  to  be  answered  was:  What  kind  of  girls  will  be
able  to  do  this  work  and  how  are  they  to  be  obtained?
This  was  the  question  which  the  psychologist  was  particularly ­
  anxious  to  answer.
Since  there  were  no  girls  doing  this  work  at  the  time  it
was  impossible  to  do  what  had  been  done  in  the  previous
experiment;  that  is,  try  out  a  set  of  tests  on  a  group  of
workers  in  order  to  discover  certain  significant  tests.  If
a  sufficiently  large  group  of  men  had  been  doing  this  work,
it  might  have  been  possible  to  try  tests  out  on  them.  Then,
if  any  tests  were  discovered  to  have  a  high  correlation,
they  could  be  given  to  girl  applicants  on  the  assumption