MACHINERY AND THE MAN.

North Otago Times, 22 May 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

MACHINERY AND THE MAN.

HOW HAND-WORKERS ARE BEING OUSTED.

This is the Age of Machinery. Man makes most wonderful machines, mainly, too, nowadays, by the use of machine tools; and when the machines are made, he manipulates them lo the'compassing of the work which men did formerly by manual effort. llt is calculated rounaly that the J energy of man in the mass is six times as great ns it was before the j introduction of power. j THE SAVING OP TIME. j Perhaps in no respect arc the ttmrl vels of machinery exhibited more (strikingly than in relation to print- ' ing and publishing, One of the latest sextuple stereotype perfecting . presses possesses an aggregate running capacity of 108,000 eight-page papers per hour. That is to say, ; on 6of these perfecting presses, run I by one pressman and four skillod laI bourcrs, will print, cut at the top, j fold, pnslc and count, with a sup- ' plemcnt inserted, if desired, 108,000 ' eight-page papers in one hour. To do the presswork alone for this number of papers would' take, under the old hand system, a man and a boy working ten hours a day, about 180 days; so a paper now'published in tho morning, printed, folded, cut, and pasted before breakfast, would, before the edition was completed under the old system, become, at best, a quarterly. . Then 10,000 copies of a sixty-four page magazine can be printed and folded in about fifteen hours by machinery, while the same processes would have required Under hand methods ?„170 hours. The composition of type is expedited enormously by the employment of machine processes in lieu of handsetting. The time required to set up by hand 20,000 "ens" of the sizes of the types used in newspaper work would be, to strike an average 15 hours; by the best-approved machine methods, two hours and thirtyeight minutes.

In producing, 1,000 copies of a lithograph in" ten colours, 10, in. by 15Jin., five operations by hand and ten by machinery are required, fifteen different workmen by band and sixtyfive by machinery ; but it would require the handworkers to expend 166 hours, while thirty hours are all that would be necessary to produce that quantity of lithographs by machinery. IN THE HOOT FACTORY.. In making the linings for boots and shoes a certain amount 0 f work can bo done in two hours and forty minutes with a machine 'which would take thirty-three hours and more by hand, In sewing the linings to quarters, the ratio in favour of the machine is thirty-seven to four, and in sewing the vamps to the quarters a difficult part of the upper stitching work, the efficiency of the machine over hand is about forty to one.

The operations employed in cutting the insoles and outsoles vary according to different qualities. Under the hand-method, by the use of a knife and a pattern, n certain number of insoles can bo cut in three hours and twenty minutes, and after being tempered, fitted to the last, hammered, and rounded to proper shape, eleven hours and forty minutes were consumed while by the aid of a solecutting machine itself the work can be done in fifty minutes.

'ln lasting 100 pairs of n given class of boots it takes by machine eighteen hours as against eighty-six hours and forty minutes by hand. In sewing the outsolcs to the welts the ratio is about fifty-four to one in favour of the machine method. The greatest efficiency in the operation of nailing heels on the shoes is shown by the ( a ct that in nailing 100 pairs of heels it required only thirty-nine minutes and Ihrce-lcnllis for trimming them, while it takes fifty-three hours and twenty minutes to do the same by hand.

To sum up, a little over forty years ago to make 100 pairs of men's huh-grade, calf-welt lace boots, single soles, it required seven-ty-six different operations by hand, while in later years when machinery did the greater part of the work, there were HG different operations. Ono man performed all the operations in the earlier period, and there were 140 different workmen employed in the machine process ; and while the time to complete the 100 pairs by one man would have been 2,225 hours, by machinery the time required Is 290} hours.

CLOTHINC, COLLARS, 'AND BUTTONS.' In ready-made clothing manufacture, the use of dies for cutting out a large number of pieces of cloth at ono operation effects n tremendous time and labour saving. To make 100 men's jackets of woollen material there arc required by hand twen-ty-eight and six different workmen under the hand method, and seventyone under the machine method; but when it comes to the time necessary to complete this number of garments wc find that under the hand system it would require 8,381 hours and under machinery 1,375 hours.

In manufacturing men's collars, it would require to produce 100 dozen eleven operations by hand and twenty-live by machinery, while it would take the two men 1,350 hours to produce this number, as against 191 hours by machinery.

CIGARETTES, MATCHES, 'AND STATIONARY. The tobacco manufacturing industry furnishes conspicious examples of labour saving by the introduction of machine processes. One hundred thousand paper-wrapped cigarettes, ten in a box, can be turned out by hand in 990 hours, while only 149 hours arc uccessary by machinery. . The reduction of the price of matches is well illustrated by the difference between hand and machine power, the time required to produce a certain quantity being 259 hours by hand and only:twenty-nine by machine.

In the manufacture of 100,000 plain white business envelopes, under the hand method there are only four different operations, and under machinery nineteen. To produce this number of envelopes would require under tile h a nd method four different workmen, and under machinery twen-ty-nine; but it would require the four persons to work 434' hours, while the 100,000 envelopes could be produced by machinery in'thirty-one hours.

And man still goes on inventing and making machines to do the work he himself was wont once to do.—"Scraps."