"Is their work fairly accurate?" asked one of the visitors, breaking the spell.
"Let's go and see," said Mary, leading the way.
The cones left the grinders upon an endless conveyor which carried them to an inspection room. Here at long tables were lines of attentive women, each with a set of gauges in front of her. The visitors stopped behind one of these inspectors just as she picked up a cone to put it through its course of tests.
First she slipped it into a gauge to see if it was too large. A pointer on a dial before her swung to "O.K." Almost without stopping the motion of her hand, she inserted it into another gauge to see if it was too small. Again the pointer swung to "O.K." The third test was to verify the angle of the cone, and for the third time the pointer said "O.K." The next moment the cone had been dropped into a box and another was going through the same course.
"How many have been rejected today?" asked one of the visitors.
"Two," said the inspector.
These two unfortunates lay on a rack in front of her. Interrupting her work she picked up one of them. At the second operation the pointer turned to a red segment of the dial and a bell rang.
"I don't hear many bells ringing," commented the visitor, quizzically looking around the room.
Mary smiled with quiet pleasure.
"Next," she said, "I'm going to take you to a department where women never worked before."