A FIRST EXPERIMENT 
23 
Following these conditions, therefore, the experimenter 
was first of all conducted on extensive tours through the 
various shops, and the various types of work were ex 
plained to him. After six or seven trips of this kind, two 
types of work, conducted side by side in the same room, 
were settled on as the most fruitful field for the experi 
ment. The work chosen was that of inspecting shells 
before they had been loaded, and gauging them for head 
thickness. This work was being done in two long, well- 
lighted rooms, by about 330 girls, two-thirds of whom 
were engaged in inspection and one-third in gauging. This 
large number of girls offered the opportunity of conduct 
ing a sufficiently extensive series of observations, thus 
meeting the third condition stated above. Most of the 
girls, at the time, were inspecting the same kind of shells, 
and this fulfilled the fourth condition; namely, a highly 
standardized type of work. A further advantage offered 
by this type of work, and one that was absolutely essential 
to the success of the experiment, was the fact that it 
offered a basis for comparing the activity of the various 
workers. For instance, it was possible, at the end of each 
day, to find out exactly how many pounds of shells each 
girl had inspected or gauged during the day as well as to 
find out how many good shells she had thrown out as 
a yy 
scrap . 
The above might be called the preliminary steps of the 
experiment. We now come to the details of the experi 
ment itself. 
The general purpose of the experiment was, as has been 
stated, to discover a set of tests which would guide the 
employment office in selecting new candidates. The more 
specific purpose, at this stage in the experiment, was to 
discover a set of tests in which the performance of the