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Nye 7

Are we going to get to the point where we don't need to work because machines will do our work for us?

work day shortened from 12+ to 8 hours from late 19th century to 1920s
concern about technological unemployment--machines replacing people--some saw the solution as a shorter work day
concern strong in the 1930s and the 1970s
more products and more things to do mean we don't work less

Technology has made work less physically strenuous and more efficient, but not necessarily less.

technological innovation tends to mean:

these days outsourcing is often cheaper than robots
unemployment for some people whose skills are no longer needed
monotonous, low wage work for others
workers on an assembly line felt they were turned into machines
high wages for a few whose skills are still needed
number of new jobs has kept up fairly well with the number of jobs lost, but may need qualifications older workers lack
overall there are more good jobs, but often ones for which the people who lose their jobs are unqualified

October 1920 cover

In the 1890s, conditions for American workers were particularly bad

technology was making workers more replaceable--skill was being built into the machines
immigration meant there was a surplus of workers

Consider workers in the early 20th century who protested the way work was changing. The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), often known as the Wobblies, was founded in 1905

the goal was to organize all workers into one big union, not divided by skill or industry or class or race. Earlier trade unions had been by skill, but skill meant less and less.
"Trade lines have been swallowed up in a common servitude of all workers to the machines they tend."
wanted control of the factory by the worker but they were anarchists (no government) more than Marxists. They did want to do away with capitalism and abolish the wage system. They did not advocate violence but workers fought back when attacked.
message to workers: why should the fat cats get rich off you? Wanted workers to share in profits. When a factory makes a profit because technology increases efficiency why is it the stockholders who get all the profit (above and beyond a reasonable return on their investment)? Why don't the workers get a share? Remember the story of Ford as an exception to this pattern.
leaders-- Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Hill --traveled around helping organize and giving speeches to encourage strikers.
This often turned into a fight over the right of free speech (source). In several places (eg. mining camps in Montana and lumber towns in Washington state) laws were passed prohibiting union meetings or street meetings and people who gave pro-union speeches were arrested. The IWW would send in more and more speakers until the jail couldn't hold any more.
Some leaders advocated sabotage.
- they mostly meant soldiering--work slowdowns
- creative techniques like the open mouth strike--follow every rule to the letter and work slows down
in 1912 the IWW supported a successful strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Mass.

World War I put an end to the movement

immigration had already been reduced
IWW opposed the war as only for the benefit of the rich
low unemployment (1.4%) meant that workers got what they wanted without radical fights--by 1919 almost 50% of workers had 8 hour day, wages go up, often to a family wage (the husband can work and make enough money to support his wife and children)
IWW leaders were accused of treason and executed or deported (most were immigrants who did not have American citizenship)
this is where we went to a system where workers also saw the benefits of the capitalist system--they now had some leisure time and they had wages high enough to be able to buy more things

cartoon celebrating deporting of radicals

Society has sometimes looked to engineers for efficiency--make human life more rational with the idea that this will make progress possible.

scientific management sought to rationalize worker behavior
home economics sought to bring rationalization to the home
On a larger scale this became the technocracy movement
- Engineers in the 1920s thought that what government needed is more efficiency and that government should be run more by engineers and other technical experts and less by politicians (engineering progressivism). We have indeed gone in this direction. (The best book on this is Walter McDougall, ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age)
- In 1932, in the height of the depression, there was a lot of talk about Technocracy--a movement whose leaders proposed to end the depression by a dictatorship of engineers. Present day members of Technocracy Inc. say this description is an exageration, but the rhetoric at the time came close.
- An alternate view: "The most powerful supporters of stasis are technocrats - people, often in position of power, who believe that the future can and should be engineered." Technocracy RIP

Why haven't we seen robots replacing workers as much as expected?

we thought that machines would give us a life of leisure
some simple jobs are hard for a robot to do because it is hard to program a robot to adjust to small variations
workers are often cheaper than robots--would it be worthwhile for McDonalds to replace all its workers with robots?
workers are particularly cheaper in other countries--eg. outsourcing of computer programing to India
we may say we want to interact with people, but there wasn't much resistance to the replacement of bank tellers with machines
computerization gave workers more information rather than taking away control
hours worked per year has actually been increasing since 1970, not continuing to decrease
efficiency has tended to mean fewer workers are expected to do more (this is true of professionals as well as factory workers)
technology gives us more and more things to buy
would you rather work longer hours or make less money? (see voluntary simplicity)

Melvin Kranzberg's six laws of technology state:

1st - Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
2nd - Invention is the mother of necessity.
3rd - Technology comes in packages, big and small.
4th - Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
5th - All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
6th - Technology is a very human activity - and so is the history of technology.

This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack

HIST 122
last updated 11/27/06