The Daily Alaska empire., 1937-09-08

growing in ingenuity devised new and better ma- machine destroy his job. This problem has never been solved but has grown more complicated as society and the machines it demands for its services has likewise grown more intricate.
 But if this problem has never been solved, it is comforting to reflect that the disaster which it seem ingy forecasts quite arrives with all its press agented intensity
 For example, Way back in the shades of an- tquity some smart chap made the first wheel. Soon a good many of his fellows who had been carrying burdens on their backs or driving pack animals may have lost their jobs Thus technological unemploy- nlent was born. No doubt the man with the wheel was called dangerous innovator. He may have had his head bashed by neighbors who predicted dire re- suits from this unwarranted and mpious disturbance of the status quo all the while bewailing the passing of the good old days" Yet wheels still being lused
 Bring the example down to date. Four years ago the Technocrats predicting the Grand Ultimate Crash in eighteen months result of the inability of industry to re-hire more than 45 percent of the unemployed That didn't happen either, although there certainly to feel complacent con- cerning current progress in unemployment
 Hence the importance of the 45oO00-word report which the Presidents National Resources Committee submits under the imposing title Neurological lTrends and National Policy, Including the Social Im- plications of New Inventions It is not excursion in alarms after the model of the Technocrats or those Tories who VleWeQ the cart Wneel Wlll suspicion.
 It s rather a sober recognition that the recent acceations of the processes of mechanizo present social challenge which has not yet adequately been met It calls attention more to the soberng fact
 that the physical sciences mainly devoted to the ad- vancement of the machine constantly tend to out strip the development of the social sciences It is forecast not of disaster but of the possibilities Of bet ter and saner controls which will help to win at least round two in the ageold battle of man versus machine.
 Obviously these rounds must be won if is to continue to be master of the machine. Equally evil dent is the fact that such victories are not so easy today they when the social and economic structure was less complex
 Thus the comfortable idea that the worker who lost his job because of technoogical improvements in industry would speedily find another was ten able when America still had many frontiers. The temporarily surplus worker would move on. take up a farm free cheap land, open a shop where shops were lacking. Now the geographical frontiers are gone and the industrial more difficult to find.
 This is why the unemployment problem created by the depression which began in 1929 far exceeded
 that of any previous period of hard times, and why many of the old remedies failed to meet it. Laissez faire theories cannot keep in suspended animation the millions cast loose by a maladJusted national economy
 President Roosevelt stresses this point in his ment the committees report:
 IL ment caused by the technical advance is absorbed by new occupations born of industries it is equally that in the meantime labor may pay very heavy price and employers likewise affected by swift
 echnological changes producing obsoescence and dis placement of capital investment"
 So both worker and employer have stake in this effort to make the future secure by profiting from the mistakes of the past. Invention will not cease, nor should any sane person want it to. The
 long record of human progress in large the story of successful improvement of the machine. Sometimes the consequences unexpected. Frank lin. toying with his kite vsioned the day when electricity would be the universal chore boy Whitney could not dream of Civil War consequence of the cotton gin.
 Human progress is sometimes best described as steady by jerks but still it is progress. Men find new wants and machines enable more persons to satisfy them In America particularly, is there grow
 ing recognition that n purchasing power lies stability for prosperity In the long the worker
 is the best customer of his employer, whatever the product. The machine will continue to be mans best servant so long man is intelligent master Where No One Has a Friend