MORE MACHINES, MORE JOBS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 172, 7 August 1937, Page 4

MORE MACHINES, MORE JOBS.

It is a common argument that machines have taken the place Oi men and deprived workers of eniployment. The acceptaace of this explanation of much of present-day unemployment is general and has the approval of many persons of high inteliectual authority. Yet there is another side to the argument and this opposite view is backed by some hard facts. The facts are stated with effectiveness in an American scientific journal, which says; Oue of the most mechanised of all manufacturing processes, the making of a modern motor car, now requires 25 per cent. more employment per unit car produced than it did in 1929. The dial telephone in 1929 may have eeemed to forecast the passing of the telephone operatox, but the number of telephone operators increased Croin ' 190,000 iu 1920 to alwost 249,000 in 1930. Typewriters, adding machines, dictating machines and ealculators have revolutionised office work in the last 20 years, but employment in these fields has increased from 615,000 in 1920 to 811,000 in 1930, for without these machines much of this office work would Aot have or could not have been done, and thousands of jobs would not have existed. Remember the cry that went up when sound-motlon pictures and the radio turned out half the milsicians employed in theatres. The then unforeseen result was that many more people came to appreciate music. The number of musieians and music teachers has increased from 130,000 in 1920 to 165,000 in 1930. Actors have increased in number from 20,000 to 37,000, and theatre ushers from 5000 to 12,500. There are 15,000 people on the radio payrolls in jobs that novcr existed before. The contcntion that the uiiachiiie has givon moro jobs than it took » .v ay_ has some. snhstanlial support. 1 t