[49] He sent to 8000 workingmen in the mining
industries, textile industries, and metal industries, blanks
containing 26 questions, and received more than 5000 replies. The
questions referred to the pleasure and interest in the work, to
preferences, to fatigue, to the thoughts during the work, to the
means of recreation, to the attitude toward the wages, to the
emotional situation, and so on. The 5000 answers allowed manifold
classifications. The various mental types of men could be examined,
the influence of the machine, the attitude toward monotony, the
changes of pleasure and interest in the work with the age of the
laborer, the time at which fatigue becomes noticeable, and so on. Many
psychological elements of industrial life thus come to a sharp focus
and the strong individual differences could not be brought out in a
more characteristic way. Yet, all taken together, even such a careful
investigation on a psychostatistical basis strongly suggests that a
few careful experimental investigations could lead further than such a
heaping-up of material gathered from men who are untrained in
self-observation and in accurate reports, and above all who are
accessible to any kind of suggestion and preconceived idea. The
experimental method is certainly not the only one which can contribute
to reforms in industrial life and the reinforcement of industrial
efficiency, but all signs indicate that the future will find it the
most productive and most reliable.
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