MACHINES THAT OUST MEN

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160639, 4 May 1920, Page 2

MACHINES THAT OUST MEN

MARTELS OF MASS PRODUCTION

The British working man is going to hear a lot about mass production very soon (says an -English paper). It is the new dominant factor in world trade, and it is going to affect him in all manner of ways he perhaps little dreams of. American workmen, of course, have been up against it for a long time. American manufacturers turned out cheap Waltham and Elgin watches by the million many years ago, each watch, and each Individual part of each watch, being an exact duplicate of every other timepiece of that grade, and of every corresponding individual part. Later, Henry Ford applied the same principle to the manufacture of motorcars, with the result that he was able in a very little while practically in monopolise the American market for cheap cars, and seriously to threaten the European market. To-day, over there, they are applying similar methods to the making of all sorts of dtlier commodities and articles in common use. Human labour is in many instances being almost wholly eliminated. One mechanical wonder, once started, .will Continue working without pause, day in and day out, Sundays included—a 16&-hour week. The newest American mass production factories employ very few workmen. Here and there a man may l>e seen gliding silently about the vast shops crammed with intricate machinery, clicking a lever here, pressing a button there. The mechanism does the rest.

To cite but one instance. A machine has been invented which can turn out a quarter of a million electric light bulbs, every twenty-four hours, and all the human element in connection, with it is represented by three shifts of three men each.

Twenty-four steel arms gather the glass from a tank, each arm virtually taking the place of a pair of human hands, and the rest of the processes are similarly performed and expedited. One man mixes by machinery the whole of "the liquid glass required to feed six of the furnaces

The efforts of several hundred skilled workmen, spread over an entire w?ek, would have been requisite in order to produce a like output, working in the old-fashioned way.