MACHINES AND MEN

Hokitika Guardian, 10 April 1930, Page 6

MACHINES AND MEN

(Auckland Star.) The president of the American Federation of Labour has just submitted to the Senate some startling figures hearing on the problem of funemployinent. According to Mr Greene, who has at his disposal all the data lor forming a correct estimate, there were 3,700,000 workers unemployed in February in the United States. For the first three months of 1030 one worker out of every four, in Mr Greene’s opinion, was idle, and the relief of unemployment lor this short period cost over £‘200,000,000. The industrial crisis in America is certainly acute and menacing, and Mr Greene —who is strictly moderate and anti-Communist in his •vfip.ws—is probably not exaggerating the dangers latent in the situation when he utters a warning of “the possibility of revolution.”

. The statistics that we have quoted are portenous enough! in themselves, but they become all tlie more alarming and amaV'ing when wo remember that America is by far the richest and most highly industrialised •country in the world. If such is the economic condition of the United States, we need hardly be surprised to discover that practically every country with well-developed industries is displaying the same symptoms of industrial dislocation. Unemployment is quite as serious relatively in Britain and Germany, in Australia and Ne\v Zealand, as. in America, and this one fact suggests, that, behind the unemployment thus widely;diffused there must me operating some invariable force or factor which tends to dispossess men of work without finding them any adequate substitu to.

Such a factor has been indicated l»v many leading economic and industrial experts in the extensive and increasing use of labour-saving machinery. The “Daily News” published recently some interestsing evidence compiled by its New York correspondent to explain the spread of unemployment; and among the primary factors that Mr Cruikslfank emphasised were “improvements in machinery, the invention of labour-saving devices and the extension of cheap power.” These facts, he maintains, go a long way toward explaining what he-terms the “wholesale scrapping of wage-earners,” and he holds I but ‘“this growing army of workers displaced by machines and unable to find alternative jobs” consititutes a far more serious economic and administrative problem than any fall in prices or any temporary fluctuation of the stock market.

The rather vague generalities may be illustrated by figures recently supplied to the Senate’s Committee on Unemployment by the President of the Federation of Labour. Mr Greene testified that in machine shops one man in control of o or 10 semi-aut-omatic machines can now replace 2o .skilled workers; that the use of the ox\ -acetylene torch alone has enabled four men to do in three or seven hours the same amount of repair work on locomotives as 'previously occupied eight men for three week; that while In years ago it took lb to 30 hours to turn one pair of locomotive wheels, today the same number of men can turn out six pairs in eight hours; that in the glass industry an automatic machine makes as many bottles of a certain grade per hour as 41 inen; that in the making of electric bulbs the automatic nmcliiitt} does more than the work of 31 mein; After all this, it is hardly surprising to have Mr Greene’s assurance that since 1919, one million workers have been driven out of United states factories by the introduction rif nv'chinerv.

It may he argued that the displacement of workers by machinery is no new feature in the modern economic system. Rut, even when the effects of the Industrial Revolution were diffusing themselves throughout the world a century ago. the wage-earnens r, isnlaced in one direction could usually find employment in another. To-day the situation seems radically different. - 'he “Daily News” American correspondent puts it; “Tn the past wherever machines have displaced men new industries have ultimately sprung up to absorb the unemployment. Now. for the first time in history, there are indications that this compensatory process may have come to an end, and that the trend oT modern invention may he ta JiJivke less work for idle hands instead of more.” This is indeed ail ominous reflection. If it is true that, n,s Stuart Chase interprets the situation Vn his latest work on the industrial nroblem, machinery, though it did not, 'unprurate the phenomenon of unefnnlovmont. has “promoted it from a minor irritation to one of the chief plangcs of mankind,” it boomed a most serious question to what extent its use can he regulated and what prerant ions can he taken on behalff of the wage-earners and the eommunitv at lm-o-c to obviate the worst effects of labour-saving devices.