1.   Sampling techniques were refined throughout the early decades of the twentieth century by Bowley, Hilton, and others.

2.   Even the much-vaunted Charity School Movement of the early decades seems only to have helped stop a poor level becoming worse.

3.   FAST assumed that the attainment of a biosociety by the early decades of next century was crucial.

4.   In the early decades of this century, the hotel was a favoured haunt for kings, queens, movie stars, authors and other notables.

5.   Bothered by a guilty conscience for his periodic bouts of alcoholism, he abandoned his family more than once during the early decades of their marriage.

6.   By the early decades of this century, similar social effects accompanied the invention of the electric light, the automobile, the telephone, the airplane.

7.   During the early decades of the century, Dunaway became one of the best known and highest-paid actresses on the Chautauqua circuit of summer theater.

8.   During the early decades of this century, when national musical traditions still meant something, the German pianist Walter Gieseking steeped himself in the culture of his country.

9.   If NASA goes ahead with plans to bring Martian rocks back to Earth early next decade, Earth barely has enough time to get ready.

10.   In its early decades, ETS cultivated the atmosphere of a university.