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The Automatic Factory. Businessmen already envision a day when the brains will be used not only for paperwork problems, but to operate factories, to run auto production lines or any plant where a process can be reduced to a preset, repetitive system. Swiftly and obediently, the big robot will start and stop production lines, supervise all the machines, correct faulty workmanship, inspect the finished product, package it and ship it out to U.S. consumers.
The mere vision of such total automation for industry has touched off a siren of alarm among U.S. labor unions; they fear that the already swift spread toward automation will throw thousands of workers out of jobs. Before a congressional committee investigating the stock market last week (see WALL STREET), General Motors President Harlow H. Curtice took special care to debunk the bugaboo. Said he: "Automation is the making of tools to produce more efficiently . . . It's progress."
In such progress, some workers may indeed be displaced by machines. But for every job lost, a dozen more interesting, better-paying jobs will open up in the making and servicing of machines. Says Tom Watson Sr.: "Automation will develop as all other forms of power. Primitive man had only his hands, then animal power, then wind power—windmills and sailing ships—then came steam and electric power, and gasoline and oil power, and now, atomic power. Not one of these powers ever canceled out the powers we already .had. In every development we made, the original power—manpower—became more valuable than ever. Never in history has man gotten higher rates of pay for his work than he is getting today."
The Perennial Fallacy. Nowhere is the fallacy of unemployment from automation more evident than in offices. There, automation has made its greatest strides, helped along by dozens of whirring, clicking machines. Yet the number of office workers has actually risen from 5,100,000 to 8,100,000 in the last ten years. Only the new machines have made it possible for U.S. businessmen to keep up with the increasing flood of paper work. There are automatic time clocks, electric typewriters, card punchers, sorters, analyzers, tabulating machines and accounting machines. They do everything from keeping records to servicing bank accounts and writing checks. The U.S. Government alone uses 23,150 tabulating machines (more than 90% made by IBM).
To fill new needs, IBM has just brought out a "Cardatype" machine, which can do a complete accounting job, has electric typewriters type out the finished accounts from punched cards, all automatically. They can do and type as many as five separate accounts simultaneously. IBM also has a new super-time-clock system, in which one master clock regulates all lights, air conditioning, heating, doors and vaults in a plant. For example, a few minutes before 9 o'clock each morning, the machine can open the doors, flick on lights, turn on heat or the air conditioner; at closing time it shuts up shop without human help.