GOVERNMENT: Machines for Jobs

As shy as a window washer of a new-style safety belt is the Temporary National Economic (monopoly) Committee of advancing technology. Its chairman, Wyoming’s Senator Joe O’Mahoney, is so fnghtened of better machinery that he has introduced a bill in Congress providing tax penalties for any employer who makes a “more than average” use of machinery.

Last week TNEC heard why improving technology makes jobs from the No. 1 inheritor of that art: lean, hawk-faced Edsel Ford, president of Ford Motor Co., Henry’s only son. It was two days after the 28,000,000th Ford had run off the assembly line in Edgewater, N. J. that he sat down before TNEC’s microphone.

Two of his points:

> Three million men are employed in making, selling and servicing automobiles “because with machinery cars can be produced at prices people can pay.”

> Machinery begins to create employment before it ever produces. Example: to build a $115,000 machine for stamping hub caps required 16,428 man-days. For Ford it does the work of 2,160 men, cuts cost of a hub cap from $2.50 handmade to 12¢ Ford made. If all such technological improvements were eliminated cost of a Ford would top $17,000, most of Ford’s 125,000 workers would have no jobs.