MACHINE FACTOR

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 60, 12 March 1934, Page 8

MACHINE FACTOR

WHAT IT IMPLIES

INDUSTRY'S NEW SPIRIT

NOT MERELY MERCENARY

; What is a machine-tool? When Professor John Hilton travels half of mii dustrial England, inspects hundreds of . plants, and reduces his preliminary sur--1 vey to an article of about 3000 words, he has no space in which to define machine-tool, but the reader gathers that it is a machine whicii does work that hand-tools used to do, or try to do. From the chisel to the lathe was almost as big a step as from the ape to the man. Going from the ape. to the man, homo sapiens learned how to use his hand. Latterly he has been learning how to save his hand. Hence the machine-tooL / Professor Hilton visited at least a hundred factories. At one time they would have been called manufactories ("manu," French from Latin, meaning "by hand"). So there is a significance in the clipped word "factory," though the clipping was probably due to carelessness of speech, not to intelligent anticipation of the machine-tool. DEPRECIATION EQUALS WAGE. Pofessor Hiltpn, at one time an engineering apprentice, has seen at least two ages.in the progress of machinetools. Of his apprentice days he writes:—-Little was known in those days of the hardened and ' ground spindle, the micrometer adjustments, the electrical controls, the special purpose tools. The finishing of hardened surfaces by grinding was in its infancy. Our cutting tools were mostly carbon steel; we had a steel called Mushet, a marvellous steel that you hardened in the blacksmith's blast instead of in water; but we knew nothing of the high-speed diamond-hard alloys that are now the familiars of every turning shop, and that cost their weight in silver. "Tho modern machine-tool, being much more elaborate, is more costly than its predecessor. One can see many a man working'a lathe or a boring and turning mill that has cost a thousand pounds. ■ I should -say that in a modern engineering shop the equipment costs, ' per man employed, from three to four times as much as it did at the beginnj"g of the century. Now the interest ahd depreciation on a thousand-pound machine comes to something like three pounds a week—as much as tho man's wages. I just mention that now; I shall have to go into its implications by and by. And when you come to the full automatic lathe, which turns out screws and bolts and what-not incessantly hour after hour, day after day, with no more attention than is required to keep, the tools sharp, the adjustments right, and the machine fed and cleared, the capital sunk per man employed is even greater, for one man can look after a battery of automatics. "This greater elaborateness of the ' machine-tools which men are working, and the greater ease of their control, ': together with the reduction in thenum- ; bers of labourers, gives one a very i definito impression that the shops are more thinly populated than .they used to be. The manager of one great works, with whom I had just finished the round of tho shops, summed it up in these words: 'Men are not as thick on the ground as they were in our young days.' Not as thick on the ground;that's the right phrase. And remember that this was the industry that makes | the machines that cause people to be even less thick on the ground.in other industries. Does that mean that people ar.e being permanently supplanted by machinery, and that we are in for perpetual heavy unemployment? I don't , think so. For one thing, much more ] ground is covered by industrial plants; , for another, there are industries such as ( motor-ear and other mass-production in- . dustries, iv which men and machines ' are so close packed upon the ground that you wonder they don't bump ; elbows. Everywhere an increase in the capital value of the equipment used i by workpeople; but not everywhere a reduction in the number of work- ] people employed." j KNIGHTS OF INDUSTRY. 1 From the above it will be seen that Professor Hiltpn has further conclusions yet to draw concerning the rising, machine factor and its effect on the man factor—conclusions that may not coincide with all the deductions made by technocracy a year ago. But the Professor sums up his preliminary survey with two definite | and clear-cut impressions:—"And now two general impressions. The first impression is that during the' time of adversity industry has been in a refining and overhauling process. It has become better shaped and tuned for its task of supplying the needs of man; and when you show the will to demand * its products in full measnre, it will re- .* spbnd with, goods of better quality and E in greater volume than ever before. The s second impression is, that there are r appearing, in industry administrators, s controllers, sensibly different in their ! ruling motives and aims from many * of those whom we once knew, and ° from some of those whom we'still know. fi I have been meeting in industry large numbers responsible for the direction of businesses large and small, whose Wing passion was not the making of money with which to cut '• a dash in the world, but the making of a fine organisation, running smoothly and efficiently on sound lines and sound principles. I know there are others; but be aware of these, for tho future ofindustry lies with them or nowhere. You have a part, a great part, in this, for you, too, I find, are respecting and envying less and less the man who has screwed a fortune out of some wretched concern and is splashing it about, and r you are admiring more and more the c man who has made a concern that is d itself admirable. To my mind the a chances of our economic system evolv- s ing along an unbroken line of develop- h ment depends on whether this type C of employer, administrator, magnate, continues to increase."