shortening the hours and of reducing more and more the number of
workers, with the final outcome that thirty-five girls did the work
formerly done by a hundred and twenty, and that the accuracy of the
work at the higher speed was two thirds greater than at the former
slow speed. This allowed almost a doubling of the wages of the girls
in spite of their shorter working-day, and at the same time a
considerable reduction in the cost of the work for the factory. This
excursion of an efficiency engineer into the psychological laboratory
remained, however; an entirely exceptional case. Moreover, such a
reaction-time measurement did not demand any special development of
new methods or any particular mental analysis, and this exception thus
confirms the rule that the followers of scientific management
principles have recognized the need of psychological inquiries, but
have not done anything worth mentioning to apply the results of really
scientific psychology. Hence the situation is the same as in the field
of vocational guidance. In both cases a vague longing for
psychological analysis and psychological measurement, but in both
cases so far everything has remained on the level of helpless
psychological dilettantism. It stands in striking contrast with the
scientific seriousness with which the economic questions are taken up
in the field of vocational guidance and the physical questions in the
field of scientific management. It is, therefore, evidently the duty
of the experimental psychologists themselves to examine the ground
from the point of view of the psychological laboratory.




VII