MACHINES THAT OUST MEN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2125, 8 May 1920, Page 1

MACHINES THAT OUST MEN.

MARVELS OP MASS PRODUC- • TION. * , ''" n ' tY' The British working man.is going to hear.a lot about mass production very soon (says an English paper). It- is the new, dominant factor in world trade, and it is going to affect him in all manner of ways he perhaps little dreams of, American workmen, of course, have been up against it for a long time. American manufacturers turned out cheap ’Waltham and Elgin watches by the million many years ago, each watch, and each individual pari of each,.watch, being an exact duplicate of every other timepiece of that grade, and of every corresponding individual part. Later, Henry Ford applied the same principle to the manufacture of motor cars, with the result that he was able in a very little while practically to monopolise the American market for cheap cars, and seriously to threaten the European market.

To-day, over there, they are applying similar methods to the making of all sorts of other commodities J and art icles in common use. Human labour is in many instances being almost wholly eliminated; One mechanical wonder, once started, will continue working without pause, day in and day out, Sundays included —a IGS -hour week. The newest American mass production factories employ very jew workmen. Here and there a man

may be seen gliding silently a hour the vast shops crammed with intricate machinery, clicking a lever here, pressing it button there. The mechanism does the rest. To cite but one instance. A machine has been invented which can turn out a quarter of a million electric light bulbs every twentyfour hours, and all the human element in connection with it is represented by three shifts of three men each.

Twenty-four steel arms gather the glass from a lank, each arm. virtually taking the place of a pair of human hands, and the rest of the processes are similarly performed and expedited. One man mixes by machinery the whole of the liquid glass required to feed six of the furnaces.

The efforts of several hundred skilled workmen, spread over an entire week, would have been inquired in order to produce a like output, working in the old-fashioned way.