SCIENTIFIC METHODS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20968, 3 September 1931, Page 16

SCIENTIFIC METHODS.

EFFECT ON Ef^PLOYMENT.

POPULAR BELIEF DISCOUNTED.

In England, as well as in America, industrial executives are finding it necessary to refute again and again the timeworn fallacy that improved machinery and mora scientific methods tend to decrease employment, comments the Australasian Manufacturer in a recent article.

A case in point is cited by Mr. C. R. F. Englebach, works director of the Austin Company, Limited, who stated that his company by the expenditure of £1,143,400 over a five-year period (1925-1930) reduced the number of workers per car from 63 to 13, but the total number employed was increased from 7486 to 12,200, At the same time the retail price of the product was reduced 47 per cent. It could also have been pointed out that hundreds of workers outside the actual plant were employed in building the new machinery which the company installed. Moreover, workers numbering hundreds of thousands were to-day employed in repairing cars, refining and selling fuel, manufacturing tyres and doing a great variety of other work of a kind almost unknown a generation ago, largely because the Austin and other companies in England, America and the Continent had been enabled to build inexpensive cars on a scale which would never have been possible without constantly improved methods and machinery.