LABOUR-SAVING MACHINERY.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20271, 13 August 1937, Page 9

LABOUR-SAVING MACHINERY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Mr Burnley claims that my illustration of harvesting machinery displacing labour is not conclusive enough, and suggests that, the manufacture of the said machinery must hgve created at least as much work as it subsequently saved. The obvious reply is that such a Heath-Robinson device, Intended to save labour and which causes more work that it saves, would n*ver be sold or used. If that point Is not clear enough we can take for an example a hay-stacker which requires 100 mah-houis to complete its construction from the first to the last detail. If such a machine saves only 50 man-hours during the whole of its period of use, then it is not a labour-saving device at all, and humanity is better off without it. Personally I do not know of such a machine, except perhaps my neighbour’s lawnmower.

To return to milking machines: The fact that they have liberated labour to fight weeds and pests is certainly something in their favour, as Mr Burnley points out. One can go further and say that the flame-thrower and the ragwort seed fly will prove another great benefit in again liberating this labour for digging post-holes until the pointed steel post that only requires to be hammered in liberates it for road-making, and the road-making machine liberates .it again, and so on until there are more men on sustenance than there are in work.

The thesis I have put forward that the avowed object of soience and Invention is to displace human labour as much as possible, and that the growth of efficiency which has resulted is more rapid than the growth of production as a whole; the result, of such an unequal race mus£ be that fewer and fewer people are required to take part In production. Whether this takes the form of unemployment for many or increased leisure for everyone is dependent upon the nondistribution or distribution of the wages of the machine. —I am, eto., VENATOR. Hamilton, August 11-