The Tyranny of Mass Production

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 65, 8 June 1927, Page 7

The Tyranny of Mass Production

AMERICAN INDUSTRY DOCILE WORKER AND CONSUMER Press Association. WELLINGTON, To-day. The extent to which the American manufacturer has gone to make the American people take what lie wants them to take, and thus established a. j wonderful docile home market, is illustrated by Mr. H. G. Adam, who Is in j Wellington on his way back to Australia from the United States, where he has been investigating, on behalf of : the Australian Industrial Mission. The attitude of the American manufacturer, Mr. Adam said, was that individual tastes were uneconomic, and he simply eliminated some of them and ; standardised the others. This was certainly an economic achievement but was disastrous to character. Such a ! thing would be impossible out here. With a docile consumer and a docile foreign element among the working population, the American employer was enjoying conditions that carried with them certain obvious drawbacks and dangers. It was admitted that when foreign elements were more assimilated, and when labour became more strongly unionised, mass-produc-tion methods might have to be revised. Each man had to preserve his place or the earnings of all would be reduced. In the circumstances, if a man failed, it generally did not devolve on the boss to “sack” him. His mates would induce him to leave. Workers reconciled to “the survival of the fittest” made hard taskmasters. In combination like that the co-opera- ; tion that existed between employer and employee in mass production was mostly based on a system of rewards that caused men to compete.