THE FEAR OF TOMORROW

...The third phase is the use of computers, not for data compilation, or as the brains of automatic machine tools, but, in combination with control systems, to operate "process" plants—those plants whose end products result from a continuous process of measured procedures, applicable in such industries as chemicals, petroleum, electric power, and atomic energy...

...We don't know what the educational needs are in terms of 1965 or 1970...

...Some computer manufacturers believe that even this vastly expanded estimate is far too conservative...

...6,000 computers on order—and computers are only the first phase of automation...

...Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, believes that automation and technology will displace twenty-eight million workers in the next ten years...

...As yet the Federal government has not voiced its judgment...

...As is true of most industry spokesmen today, Allied Chemical is careful to point out that the RW-300 is only "a control device" and that it will have no appreciable effect on plant employment...

...THE FEAR OF TOMORROW by BILL FRANCOIS MAN, in his finite wisdom, has created a force so powerful that for the first time in human history he holds in his grasp the means to end pestilence, poverty, and want throughout the world...

...They failed a generation ago...

...At least two plans to mitigate the damages of technological change and spread the costs more equitably are already in operation...

...Today we have 5,000 computers," Diebold says...

...nor can this nation easily or safely close its eyes to the fast-approaching impact of technology's offspring, automation...

...Steel, and the U.S...

...While it is still too early to assess this experimental project, at least one important fact is apparent: Fifty per cent or more of those seeking retraining cannot qualify because their basic education is inadequate...

...Labor Secretary Goldberg says we now need people to work in transistorized circuitry, inertial guidance, microminiaturization, and data telemetry...

...First, they want to control intelligently the use of machines "so that no one lives under the fear that tomorrow is the end...

...The problem eventually filters down to the question of man's mastery over his own destiny...

...The House subcommittee, in its report, hopefully pointed out, "Many of the proposed solutions can best be carried out by private companies and free labor unions working together...

...Since most unions do not take the position that automation should be strenuously resisted, what do they seek...

...The PMA agreed to pay into a jointly-managed fund the sum of $29 million, over a five and one-half year period...

...Neither of these two extremes can be accepted...

...It still has not been determined whether those retrained will be able to find jobs utilizing their presumed new skills...

...But by mid-January only 200, of an estimated 7,000-8,000 unemployed in Cabell and Wayne counties, had been certified for retraining...

...In the summer of 1960, Armour closed its Oklahoma City plant, putting 431 employes out of work...

...Twenty-six million new young workers will enter the job market during this decade...

...There is no reasonable doubt that technology has caused considerable personal dislocation and suffering— on a large scale...

...Among them are the problems, for labor and management both, of technological displacement...

...There are already far too many unemployed welders...

...Railroads—Dieselization of Class I railroads plus automation has resulted in a drop in employment from 1,359,000 in 1946 to 720,000 in 1960, while productivity climbed sixty-five per cent...

...The net effect of this agreement, should the IRS approve, would merely mean that the taxpayer would be underwriting it, |n large part...

...This is fantastic...

...But in an age of computers, the great immediate need, as suggested by Representative Brute's skeptical comment, is lor substantial data that will shed a more delinitive light on how automation aliens workers...

...The need for soundly-based information is so vital that the subcommittee debated whether to use its subpoena power to force some of the large computer manufacturers to testify at the hearings...

...The same is true in many other trades and in a growing number of areas of production...

...Can he take ultra-modern methods of production, resulting largely from military research and development during and after World War II (although, in reality, the sum of all invention), and use them for the good of mankind...

...This Twentieth Century miracle is technology, in the broad sense of the word, or, when more narrowly defined, automation...

...Coal-mining—421,788 mine workers produced 445 million tons in 1937...

...But, he pointed out, there are at least eighty computer-process control systems now on order., Western Electric has unveiled a fully automatic production line at Winston-Salem, North Carolina...

...Chamber of Commerce...

...No vocational retraining program is aimed in any of these directions, and, even in those production fields, automation is swallowing an increasing share of the work...

...This statement committed him to nothing at all, although he went on to urge a free economy as the best possible solution...

...For example, no group of union workers has been harder hit by automation than the nation's coal miners...

...This is possible with the development of the things which are now in completed form except for building...

...There is an unhappy parallel between then and now...

...The union was to have the use of this fund to insure work benefits for its 15,000 members...

...But he adds, as a hedge, "Unquestionably technological improvement, as it creates higher living standards and better working conditions, does also create some local problems in economy...

...The United Mine Workers went along— at a price—but, nevertheless, went along to the extent of keeping coal a viable and profitable industry...

...But it is true...

...Welding...

...Retrain them, but for what new jobs...

...This is a question that won't be answered until later this year...

...Only three industry spokesmen appeared at the hearings—those representing Ford, II.S...

...John Diebold, president of Diebold Group Inc., and one of those credited with coining the word "automation," categorically states: "We have not yet really begun to feel the effects of automation in our society, and it can be a lot broader than it has appeared to be thus far...

...Managements and unions would be well advised to investigate these plans and adapt them, where possible, to their own particular circumstances...

...Electrical machinery — The number of production workers declined from 925,000 in 1953 to 836,000 by early 1960, while production climbed twenty-one per cent...

...If the coal industry had not poured billions of dollars into machines, it is doubtful whether coal could have survived the competition from other fuels...

...In October, 1960, the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reached agreement on how to deal with the impact of mechanization...

...The House subcommittee, in its final report, stated: ". . . There are a multitude of suggested solutions...

...The basis for Diebold's statement rests on predictions made in the 1940s that twelve large-scale electronBILL FRANCOIS has written widely on public affairs...

...This question is no longer academic, at least in the United States...

...Man-hours required to produce a ton of finished steel, which stood at 25.7 in 1937, dropped steadily to 12.1 in 1960...

...But the PMA entered the agreement on the condition of getting a favorable tax-deductible ruling from the Internal Revenue Service...

...Representative Elmer J. Holland, Pennsylvania Democrat and subcommittee chairman, said at the time: "We have been told that they may take the Fifth Amendment, and not give us the information that we are after, because they claim that they do not want to give us what they have on the drawing boards for fear that a competitor will grab it off...

...We are just beginning to apply this technology," Die-bold reported...

...Our high schools and business colleges," observed the president of the Office Employes International Union, "are continuing to prepare students for occupations in the business world which will cease to exist in the next few years...

...They do cause displacement of people...

...The second is numerical control systems for complete automation of machine tools...

...indeed, nuclear energy is but one manifestation of the revolutionary breakthrough of our age...

...This new force is not nuclear energy—the splitting of the atom with its unimaginable power...

...Twelve national labor leaders testified...

...Undreamed-of increases in productivity and joblessness bear testimony to the effects of technological change, according to labor leaders...

...trains will soon run without a crew...

...But an investigation of these two plans uncovers some disheartening facts...

...It is financed through the allocation of $15,000 from the Federal government...

...This is a pilot program with training courses in shorthand, typing, appliance repair, nursing aid, and automatic transmission repair, and instruction for prospective route salesmen, waiters, and waitresses...

...The National Planning Association estimates that last year's industrial output—which permitted an unemployment level of five per cent—can be produced this year with 1,800,000 fewer workers...

...What do you train a displaced miner to do...

...This novel interpretation of the intent and scope of the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination may indicate the depth of realization within management of the drastic effects of automation upon workers...

...New coal-processing plants are almost completely automatic...

...Automobile industry — More than 150,000 production workers knocked out of jobs since 1955...

...This is Buck Rogers stuff...

...What brought us out of the depression was government spending for armaments...

...In the case of the "West Coast Solution," as one writer has called it, there is as yet no "solution...

...Diebold, an expert in the field of automation, has said: "We don't know what people should be retrained for...

...Stanley R. Ruttenberg, AFL-CIO research director, claims that automation has eliminated more than three million jobs since 1953, with the result that in spite of a sharply rising population, and a concomitant growth in demand, unemployment rose from less than 2,000,000 in 1953 to more than 5,000,000 in 1961...

...Long before the shut-down, a pioneering union-management committee began to make plans to assist those unemployed...

...D. W Fox, Jr., coordinator of the trade school where some of the courses are being offered, stated the problem: "We may have to raise the educational level of many of the jobless before they can be retrained...

...R. Conrad Cooper, executive vice president of personnel services, U.S...

...This gradually is going to come about...

...in the late 1950s, experts estimated that fifty large computers would be the ultimate number necessary...

...A Thompson Ram" Woolridge RW-300 digital control computer reads instruments, performs calculations, and makes necessary adjustments...

...Machinery—166,000 jobs lost...

...McDonald, in testimony last spring before the House Subcommittee on Unemployment and the Impact of Automation, was only one of many labor, business, and government leaders who expressed grave concern over the impact—now and in the future— of the technological revolution...

...Meat industry—A drop from 191,000 employes in 1956 to 161,000 in 1961, with estimates placing the number at only 125,000 in 1965...

...It is possible to operate a coal mine with one man above ground...

...Of course they are...

...The level of unemployment fell below the five-million mark late last year only after the President had put into effect a sharply accelerated buildup in armaments...

...His articles have appeared in The Reporter, Science Digest, and a number of other publications...

...After eighteen months of study and experience the committee was forced to conclude that the retraining program had not been effective...

...Instead, two of the subcommittee's recommendations were carefully placed in the middle of the road: ¶Encourage and assist those unemployed who are qualified and willing to undertake further education...

...In return, management would have a free hand to use labor-saving devices...

...Instead, they say, new job opportunities have been created...

...At present there are at least...

...What are we retraining them for...

...And what kind of further education would they need...

...Daily output per miner has increased from 4.69 tons in 1937 to nearly thirteen tons in 1961...

...Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg says that nearly 2,000,000 persons will feel the impact of technological change in 1962...

...First, workers who have remained on their jobs have benefited through higher wages...

...Labor is not resisting the introduction of automation...

...The first retraining program under the New Frontier's Area Redevelopment Act has just begun in Cabell county, West Virginia...

...Facts on the coming "revolution" are so desperately needed that the Department of Labor recently established an Office of Automation and Manpower...

...As a result, more and more demands can be expected from labor during this decade in an effort to ease the plight of workers who are forced to sacrifice their jobs to the new electro-machine age...

...They cite statistics like these: ¶Steel—Production rose 171.7 per cent from 1937 through 1960, but the number of production and maintenance workers dropped ten per cent (from 512,900 to 461,800...

...What is needed, Meany emphasized, is not a "new statistical approach" by government, but "a new economic and political approach— one that will in the full sense put America back to work . . ." The truth about the effects of technological change and automation, simply stated, is this: No one knows...

...While management frequently disagrees with labor's estimates of human attrition caused by automation, there is almost unanimous agreement from all sides that technological advance is needed if America is to forge ahead...

...Some spokesmen in industry place themselves in the peculiar position of denying that technological change (including automation) has resulted in the loss of jobs...

...During the hearings, Representative Charles S. Joelson, New Jersey Democrat, asked: "Isn't there a kind of 'Alice in Wonderland' aspect when we say we should retrain people who are being displaced...

...in 1960, 197,000 mines produced 410 million tons...

...The problem of unemployment in steel results primarily from cyclical [rise'and fall of demand] rather than technological causes...

...Chamber of Commerce, goes all the way in declaring: "While it is generally argued that structural unemployment due to mechanization, including automation, is increasing, this conclusion may in fact be a myth...

...Textiles—500,000 employes have been phased out while man-hour productivity has increased four per cent to five per cent annually...

...If not, then he has indeed opened Pandora's box, and even hope may have escaped...

...Metal products industry—96,-000 jobs lost in the past five years...

...Railroad unions—in spite of either the real or propagandized degree of feather-bedding—have absorbed the body-blows of automation...

...Steel Corporation, claims that advances in technology have not cost any jobs in his industry...

...What the confusion of "solutions" and proposed actions—whatever they may be—must accomplish in reality is an expanding economy, one that will create ten million now nonexistent jobs during the 1960s...

...Can you imagine an America," asked McDonald, "with sixty-three million unemployed, with seven million people producing all the goods which America could use and sell abroad...

...Labor has not opposed automation itself for good reasons...

...ic computers would be all that this nation would ever need...

...Our entire history is one of rapid and basic change...

...These are the agreements between the Pacific Maritime Association and the Longshoremen's Union and between Armour & Company and the Meat Packers Union...

...The current "solutions" to the dislocations of automation being attempted by President Kennedy and the New Frontier are the old tools used during the depression of the 1930s by President Roosevelt and the New Deal...

...There are at least 800 such systems already installed, and sales of such systems are only beginning to soar...

...Vet the average hourly pay of soft coal miners climbed from $1.40 in ]946 to the present level of about $3.30...

...Early this year a fully automated plant was put into production at South Point, Ohio, by Allied Chemical Corporation...

...These run the gamut from letting the market adjust itself to these upheavals with no assistance, to virtually total economic planning with attendant controls...

...The purpose of the program is to retrain 325 jobless by June 30 of this year...

...Office workers—Some "350,000 white-collar positions will be permanently abolished by computer installations in 1961," according to Howard Coughlin, president of the Office Employes International Union, AFL-CIO...

...We know by now," he said, ''that the stepped up business activity, greater production, even a faster rate of economic growth—essential though they are—do not in themselves meet the need...

...Then they want to share in the benefits stemming from the new electronic machinery...

...One of the recommendations made by the House subcommittee concerns ways of gaining more information on the impact of automation...

...Emerson P. Schmidt, director of economic research for the U.S...

...In fact, to do so is one of their major purposes...

...Last December, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, told a Congressional committee that even if current unemployment were completely dissolved, 70,000 jobs a week would have to be found, "to keep the American people at work...

...Yet this power, rather than inspiring hope and excitement, fills us with anxiety and fear of tomorrow, because it is today creating human suffering...

...what is being resisted is the suffering to which so many displaced workers are exposed...

...How can high schools, junior colleges, or most of our universities go about training them for an industry or industries so new that few, as yet, know what to teach...

...Secondly, unions have recognized that industries have had to automate in order to remain alive...

...We will have about 20,000 by the end of the decade...

...Thus the savings resulting from automation would be shared...

...Even Representative Donald C. Bruce, Indiana Republican and one of the seven members of the House subcommittee studying this problem, said in the June, 1961, minority report to the House Committee on Education and Labor: "I do not believe that the [committee] hearings . . . devloped any pattern of scientifically acceptable evidence concerning the actual impact of automation upon the total employment force...

...Yet anyone who knows of such a simple and obvious example of the results of automation as the replacement, by automatic controls, of tens of thousands of elevator operators (30,000 in New York City alone in the last four years), must be aware of the tremendous changes which are coming...

...Similar increases, proportionately, hold in other automated industries...

...But the ways of dealing with a "monster," as one labor leader fearfully called automation, are not clear-cut...

...Unless the installation of automation and technological change can be so managed as to minimize its human impact," David J. McDonald, president of the United Steelworkers Union, has predicted, "we may well find ourselves faced with a hideous Frankenstein which can destroy the human and economic progress so laboriously built in recent years...

...In contrast, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., president of IBM, has stated: "We can't argue that technological change and automation are not labor-saving processes...

...At the end of that time further negotiations would decide future action...

...The day is near when the slaughter and processing of livestock will be accomplished without the direct aid of manpower...

...Retrain persons displaced from their jobs by automation...

...Vocational training tests were taken by 170 of the workers, but only sixty were found who showed promise of benefiting from job retraining...

...This is a cycle that is going on in industry after industry, not only in the United States, but overseas, too...

...Railroads have turned to automation to compete with the trucking industry...