With this average rank list, we compared the practical results of the telephone company after three months had passed.  These three months had been sufficient to secure at least a certain discrimination between the best, the average, and the unfit.  The result of this comparison was on the whole satisfactory.  First, the skeptical telephone company had mixed with the class a number of women who had been in the service for a long while and had even been selected as teachers in the telephone school.  I did not know, in figuring out the results, which of the participants in the experiments these particularly gifted outsiders were.  If the psychological experiments had brought the result that these individuals who stood so high in the estimation of the telephone company ranked low in the laboratory experiment, it would have reflected strongly on the reliability of the laboratory method.  The results showed, on the contrary, that these women who had proved most able in practical service stood at the top of our list.  Correspondingly, those who stood the lowest in our psychological rank list had in the mean time been found unfit in practical service and had either left the company of their own accord or else had been eliminated.  The agreement, to be sure, was not a perfect one.  One of the list of women stood rather low in the psychological list, while the office reported that so far she had done fair work in the service, and two others to whom the psychological laboratory gave a good testimonial were considered by the telephone office as only fair.

But it is evident that certain disagreements would have occurred even with a more ideal method, as on the one side no final achievement in practical service can be given after only three months, and because on the other side a large number of secondary factors may enter which entirely overshadow the mere question of psychophysical fitness.  Poor health, for instance, may hinder even the most fit individual from doing satisfactory work, and extreme industry and energetic will may for a while lead even the unfit to fair achievement, which, to be sure, is likely to be coupled with a dangerous exhaustion.  The slight disagreements between the psychological results and the practical valuation, therefore, do not in the least speak against the significance of such a method.  On the other hand, I emphasize that this first series meant only the beginning of the investigation, and it can hardly be expected that at such a first approach the best and most suitable methods would at once be hit upon.  A continuation of the work will surely lead to much better combinations of test experiments and to better adjusted schemes.  But it would be most desirable that such studies be undertaken at various places according to various schemes in order to come nearer to the solution of a problem which is economically important to the whole public and to many thousands of employees.  As soon as methods are really perfected