Thames Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1937. MACHINERY OR MEN?

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 20091, 20 August 1937, Page 2

Thames Star

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1937. MACHINERY OR MEN?

“With marie# toward# non# 5 with charity for all; with firmn### in th# right, a# God fliv## ua to ••• th# right."—Lincoln.

Probably in Thames it is possible to find any number who would argue that men are displaced in jobs by machinery. They will assert with impressive assurance that workers are deprived of jobs in various calling by modern mechanical inventions. The acceptance of this explanation of much of present-day unemployment is general and has the approval of many persons of high intellectual authority. Yet there is another side to the argument, and this opposito view is backed by some hard facts. The facts are stated with effectiveness in an American scientific journal, which says: “One of the most mechanised of all manufacturing processes, the making of a modern motor car, now requires 25 per cent, more employment per unit car produced than it did in 1929. The dial telephone in 1929 may have seemed to forecast the passing of the telephone operator, but the number of telephone operators increased fi*om 190,000 in 1920 to almost 249,000 in 1930. Typewriters, adding machines, dictating machines and calculators have revolutionised office work in the last 20 years, but employment in these fields has increased from 615,000 in 1920 to 811,000 in 1930, for without these machines much of this office work would not ha've or could not have been done, and thousands of jobs would not ha've existed. Remember the cry that went up when sound-motion pictures and the radio turned out half the musicians employed in theatres. The then unforeseen result was that many people came to appreciate music. The number of musicians and music teachers has increased from 130,000 in 1920 to 165,000 in 1930. Actors have increased in number from 20,000 to 37.000, and theatre ushers from 5000 to 12,500. There are 15,000 people on the radio payi-olls in jobs that never existed before.” The contention that the machine has given more jobs than it took away has some substantial support.