DO MACHINES MEAN UNEMPLOYMENT?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VLI, Issue 3421, 18 December 1935, Page 7

DO MACHINES MEAN UNEMPLOYMENT?

In the course of an interesting article on the subject of mechanisation, a contributor to the “Burntisland Shipyard Journal” says that while there are many instances in which there is self-evident proof that a machine operated by one man now does the work of so many more men under some older method of performing the work, it rarely occurs that attention is drawn to the great extension of employment that has followed mechanisation. Mechanisation, it is claimed, has led to a tremendous expansion of transport services and encouraged the development of many other industries “giving increased employment to millions.” In manufacture, it has made mass production possible with the resultant cheapening of the article, “in many cases turning it into an everyday requirement rather than a luxury, as previously it was.” It has made possible the millions of motor cars, wireless appliances, and a hundred-and-one other things that to-day are commonplace and purchaseable at modest prices. “One of our motor manufacturers,’’ the writer goes on to say, has stated “that to produce one car per week in 1922 required 22 employees, and that in 1934 only eight were required for the same output. The saving of 14 men per car did not cause unemployment, as some who cease to inquire further into the effect of mechanisation would seem to assume. The improved economic output reduced the selling price of the product; a larger demand for it was thereby created, and the result was that, whereas 3,200 persons were employed in 1922, the figures became 16,000 in 1934.” It is claimed by the journal’s contributor that “without the fruits of mechanisation our unemployment problem would be far worse than it is.” The unemployment problem, he continues, “lies within the export trades and is due not entirely to ‘world depression’ in itself, but also to our inability to sell to the world at prices which it can afford to pay. Just as some industries have increased employment with the help of mechanisation, from which resulted a lower selling price for their products, so also must the export trades reduce their selling prices with the aid of mechanisation and every other means available, not excluding the large burden of public expenditure which, in any event, must, by means of taxation, ultimately be provided from the result of industry.”