MACHINES AND JOBS.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19013, 2 August 1933, Page 6

MACHINES AND JOBS.

In retrospect, it does seem that after all the technocrats accomplished one result of positive value, comments the Christian Science Monitor. Their writings and their interviews did make clear the imperative need for accurate information on technological unemployment.

. One of the first thorough and calmly reasoned presentations of 'this subject was made about two years ago by Professor P. H. Douglas in his book, “ The Problem of Unemployment.” Now, with, the publication of Dr. Elizabeth F. Baker’s “ Displacement of Men by Machines,” there is made available a factual analysis of the impact of machines on men in a single major industry, commercial printing. This study, while not pretending to constitute the whole key to the problem of technological unemployment in all industry, offers important new material'on the subject, upsets a number of generally accepted theories and establishes a significant criterion for future research.

The technocrats talked glibly of the staggering rate of displacement of men by machines and of a new social and economic scheme that would derive from their “ energy surveys.” Dr. Baker found that it was impossible, in the printing industry, to make an “ energy survey ” possessed of any remotely reasonable accuracy. Probably the printing industry is not unique in presenting considerations that too hopelessly. complicate; the determination of individual production in terms of mechanical energy.

Again, Dr. Baker established the fact that in the printing industry the rate of displacement of men by machines was considerably lower than had been believed, with indications that the same reconsideration must be made for estimates in other industries. Jn the fifteen years from 1914 to 1929, employment in book and job printing increased by one-third, despite the fact that this period was one of unprecedented mechanisation in the industry. It may well be that the chief merit of this study is to he .-found in its emphasis on the social values concerned in the problem of technological unemployment. Certainly the Federal Government now setting into operation powerful forces designed to effect economic recovery, should consider the need for examination on a national scale of industries in which displacement of labour by machines is most likely to occur; for standards aiming at gradual introduction of technological improvements; for establishment of national employment agencies; and for revamping vocational education to anticipate tho effects of invention. -