Henderson daily dispatch., 1936-06-01
BY ROGER w. BABSON.
Copyright 1886, Publishers
Financial Bureau. Inc.


Babson Park, Mass, June There
are a large group in the United States
who feel that chronological unemploy-
ment can never totally be eliminated.
1 have been taken to task for saying:
1t is bV no means certain that our
permanent load of unemployment dur
ing the next period of good times will
be heavier than it was in 1929"
Unemployment Unnecessary
The Social Security Act seems to be
squirting employers to replace all I'M
necessary labor with automatic equip
ment. In certain operations in the
making of an automobile, one man
today is doing the work that twenty
men were doing in 1929. The sales
manager of a leading mail-order house
has recently invented gadget, run
by one person, which takes the place
of five workers. A paper mill is in
stalling a one-man machine which
will replace fifty operators. Will bus
mess have to be twenty times, five
times, and fifty times, respectively,
higher than in 1929 to provide en-
ployment for those people not being
thrown out of jobs? mo"
Is the increased use of labOr-Sav-
ing machinery the reason why unem-
ployment has not recovered as rapidly
as industrial activity? The answer
emphatically is, mo" Our job pro-
hlem could be solved tomorrow if the
building industry were operating at
the 1929 level. In my article of two
weeks ago I said that fifty to seven
ty-five per cent of our real unemploy-
ed are normally allied with the build
ing industry But what is to happen
to the technologically jobless? The
answer rests with the churches and
the research laboratories.
More New Inventions Coming
An illustration of the possibilities
in research is the electric refrigerator
In 1929-the boom year-840,O00 cleo
trio refrigerators were sold, while last
year statesmen delivered 100000. In
the roll of embryonic industries to-
day, many will undoubtedly turn IN
an equally remarkable performance
in the next ten years. Others may far
OutStrip the accomplishments of cleo
trio refrigerators. These modern bust
nesses will provide new jobs for mil
lions of workers in factories, offices,
and on the road. The real task which
faces the workers in a "down-hill' in
dustry is making the shift to new
line of employment. AS it was hard
for teamsters to f1ecome truck drivers,
so it is equally hard for ice-men to
become electric refrigerator statesmen.
In the vanguard Of new industries
is the Diesel engine. Last year the
output of this industry was two and a
half times that of the 1929 boom.
Trade authorities are forecasting that
the 1885 output will be doubled this
year Diesels are most popular in the
tractor field, but many are also used
for generating electric power. Truck
owners, excited by their skyrocketing
tax bills, are looking at Diesels for
fuel savings. The most spectacular use
of this engine SO far has been in the
railroad industry although I am in
clined to believe that the streamlined
train is largely an advertising stunt.
More practical is the possibility of a
double-decked Diesel train for high
speed Communication travel.
100 Miles a Gallon"
In addition to the Diesel engine in
the motor field, there are several 9th
err new departures. One of my asso-
ciates saw recently at the Winckler
Engineering Laboratories an internal
combustion engine with only four