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 itself
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 finished
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 mechanical
skill, although it did require more speed and nimblen
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 considered
sufficient to do this by asking questions and observing
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 describing
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
