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By W. F. Ogburn
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American Library Association
CHICAGO · 1933
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARIE
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6331
.034
EXPLORING
Ev
VENTS follow each other in such rapid succession
in these exciting days that one who tries to
interpret them is likely to become bewildered.
And finding good interpreters in print is not easy
for the very reason that there is so much available.
One does not know where to begin. So, paradoxi-
cally, we add to the flood by the publication of
these booklets, designed to point the way to good
reading and intelligent thinking on current prob-
lems. In each case an authority has been chosen
to present his subject and he has been asked to
do so from his own point of view.
Librarians will be glad to suggest other books,
pamphlets and articles, presenting all sides of these
most pertinent and important questions.
Five booklets in the series, Exploring the Times,
are being published simultaneously. They are:
World Depression-World Recovery
LY H. D. GIDEONSE
Collapse or Cycle?
THE
THE TIMES
BY PAUL H. DOUGLAS
Living with Machines
BY W. F. OGBURN
Meeting the Farm Crisis
BY J. H. KOLB
Less Government or More?
BY LOUIS
ASCHER
Price: 25c each; set of five, $1.
!
BROWNLOW AND CHARLES S.
THE AMERICAN
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
520 N. MICHIGAN AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
•
katat i E
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LIVING
WITH MACHINES
BY
WILLIAM FIELDING OGBURN
Up

LIBRARY
A·LA
MARICAN
ASSOCIATRY
AMERICAN
LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
CHICAGO
1933
:
COPYRIGHT, 1933,
BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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THE LAKESIDE PRESS
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY
CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA AND
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
~
Finest
7-17-33
LIVING
WITH MACHINES
Are Machines Our Masters or Our Slaves?
Talking pictures almost overnight snatched away the jobs of
ten thousand musicians. A new road-making machine lays a hard
surface in sixty seconds that formerly required hours. A modern
brick-making machine will cut four hundred thousand brick per
man per day; the average production was previously around one
thousand. Machines are taking jobs from men and increasing the
already swollen ranks of the unemployed. Employers, it is said,
put in labor-saving machines during hard times in order to save
wages. Perhaps millions of men out of work will never work
again even though economic recovery bring new jobs. There is
an occasional automatic store without any sales clerks at all.
There are several almost automatic factories. If these are signs of
what is to come, do they not forecast great difficulties ahead, ob-
stacles to overcome as we make the big pull toward better times?
Unemployment is not the only thing the machine has brought
with it. On all sides are evidences of the many ways in which it
has modified our lives. On the one hand, machines bring diseases
and disasters. On the other, they create riches for us and move
us vast distances at marvelous speeds. They force us into a pace
of living that is ominously associated with nervous breakdowns.
They furnish us comforts and luxuries and serve us like slaves.
Indeed, the total machine power in the United States is the equiv-
alent of about one hundred slaves per person. But are machines
slaves to men? Men sometimes behave as though they were slaves
to machines. It is true the automobile does the owner's bidding as
does slave. But the automobile also commands us. It makes us
reorganize our railroads. It makes us commute long distances from
4
EXPLORING THE TIMES
•
our homes to our work. It makes us increase taxes greatly. It
multiplies the number of police. It seems to be the master of our
youth. The machines in factories issue orders and the wage slaves
obey. Will the machines of the future be our masters or our serv-
ants? They are strange creatures with which modern man has
chosen to live, stranger than the ox and the dog which ancient
man domesticated, and stranger even than the wild beasts which
he did not domesticate. Machines indeed have created a new en-
vironment.
Machines Take Jobs Away
Machine
I
718
Never before has there been so much unemployment as there
was in the winter and spring of 1933. To what extent was it
caused by machines? What is the relationship of machines to un-
employment? It is undoubtedly true that machines throw many
men out of work, and it is not easy to say how long they will
stay out of work before finding other jobs. Should recovery be
relatively slow, for many it might be years. If they are old, they
may never get another position. If they have a specialized kind
of work like glass-blowing or playing a musical instrument, it
will be difficult to fit into new work. In the past, this unemploy-
ment caused by technological progress has been in general tem-
porary. Most displaced men found some kind of work after a
time. But the past was particularly favorable because the United
States was a young growing country. There were so many oppor-
tunities that we had to import workers from Europe. Industries
were expanding. Printing, an industry which has been expanding
somewhat in recent years and which has been adopting new in-
ventions, was studied by Elizabeth Baker. She shows that in
the short space of five years there was a net displacement of press
assistants of six per cent by new machines, but there was a net
increase of eight per cent in employment in the press room during
the same time and in the same plants. In other words, there were
more new jobs created than old ones lost. However, unlike print-
L
LIVING WITH MACHINES
5
1
ing, many old industries like the coal and textile ones are not
expanding as rapidly as new ones like the electrical and chemical
industries. The United States is getting older, the free land has been
taken up, population is growing less rapidly, and the future will
not in these respects be so favorable for labor as the past.
Is the claim true that in the trough of the business depression
more labor-saving appliances are installed? There are undoubtedly
instances where this is true, but in general the falling off of
markets does not encourage the purchase of new equipment. The
Southern planter, for instance, is not likely to buy a cotton pick-
ing machine when cotton is selling at the low figure of six cents.
He hasn't the money. Furthermore Negro labor is very, very cheap
at such times. He will more probably mechanize his plantation
when labor is high and cotton is bringing a good price. Records
show there was a much smaller sale of machinery in the depres-
sion than in the times of the preceding prosperity. In the better
days ahead, there will be an increasing adoption of new ma-
chinery, slowly however, because so many industries are over-
equipped. In Europe the low price of labor has acted, it is claimed,
as a barrier against the machine as compared with this country
where the price of labor is high. In times of depression it is not
only the workers who are idle, but also the machines. Machines
not working, it is apparent, are not doing the work of men,
When machines do not' run, employers hardly buy more of them.
Machines Make Jobs, Too
In lean years when there are no jobs to be filled, we forget
that machines create employment. Such has been the case with
the radio, for instance. The radio did not take away jobs. On the
contrary, it created a whole series of new jobs. The automobile
took away the work of drivers but created work for chauffeurs.
It brought technological unemployment to blacksmiths, harness
makers, stock raisers and wagon manufacturers, but it furnished
new work in automobile factories, oil fields, gasoline stations, and
it increased labor in textile factories, steel mills, machine shops and
6
EXPLORING THE TIMES
on rubber plantations. Of the new inventions listed in Chapter
III of Recent Social Trends, S. C. Gilfillan estimates that only
about one-third are chiefly labor saving. It is sometimes difficult
to say whether an invention saves or makes more labor, but
certainly a very large percentage of the new inventions make new
jobs.
How will it be in the future? In the near future with the pass-
ing of the very hard times, employment will increase, of course.
But in the course of the long time trend will that great terror
of the working man, unemployment, grow? If labor-saving ma-
chines come faster and faster, or if more inventions of labor-
saving machines are made than of labor-making machines, then
technological unemployment will pile up more and will last
longer. But if the many new inventions of the future give more
work than they take away, the balance will be favorable. With
the prospect of a declining population in thirty or forty years
there will be fewer persons who will want work. But also there
will be fewer people to buy goods which men and machines
make. The influence of a smaller population will be fewer jobs
as well as fewer job seekers. We cannot foresee the future very
well because we do not know what new inventions will be made.
The new ones that have already been shown to be practical will
spread still further and extend their influence over the lives of
the coming generations.
Suppose we should come to have many automatic factories,
what kind of work would the men and women who are not in
factories then do? They would become salesmen, office workers,
government employees, school teachers. They would thus find
many other kinds of work than changing the raw materials of
nature into forms which man can eat, wear, or otherwise use.
Something like this is happening and has been for some time.
In 1870, three out of every four persons at work in our country
were engaged in making consumable commodities out of nature's
gifts. By 1930 there were only two out of four. Perhaps in the
future there will be only one in four. But by that time more
J
1
LIVING WITH MACHINES
7
I
machines will be used in occupations other than making com-
modities, occupations such as selling goods, doing office work,
domestic service, teaching, acting. In fact nearly all of the fields
of human activity will be invaded, though some will resist. It is
difficult to think of a machine practicing law, for instance.
Though machines will make machines and repair machines, it will
take man to invent them and administer them. More leisure and
recreation may be expected.
Are They Responsible for Depressions?
It is clear that not all of the ten or twelve million out of work
are unemployed because machines are doing work for them. The
estimates of the number of such technologically unemployed are
usually no higher than ten or fifteen per cent of the total without
jobs. There have been various times in the past when great pro-
portions of our people have been unable to get work; the pro-
portion in cities has been higher than one in three or four. Such
hard times occurred, for instance, in the 1870's and the 1890's.
Why are such great masses of men out of work? The answer is
discussed in the booklet by Paul H. Douglas, Collapse or Cycle?,
and the one by Harry Gideonse, World Depression-World Re-
covery, and in the books to which these authors refer. It is shown
that so many workers are idle because there is no market for
the products they make, at least at the prices offered. It is the
economic system rather than the machines that is responsible.
The machines may be indirectly the cause, for without machines
we should not have our present economic system, and hence there
would be no business depressions, as we know them.
These remarks will acquaint the reader with one phase of the
most important human problem of the present decade, unem-
ployment, and will introduce him to
a much fuller discussion of machines
and jobs found in Part Three of
the book, The Problem of Unem-
ployment, by Paul H. Douglas and
● THE PROBLEM OF
UNEMPLOYMENT
by Douglas and Director
8
EXPLORING THE TIMES
Aaron Director. In it they show that there are many other
causes of unemployment than the introduction of machinery,
such as the changes in the weather for some occupations, the
seasonal nature of certain industries, the transition from one occu-
pation to another, and especially fluctuations in business. It is
very probable that even though good times are on the way, yet
for many years there will be millions of unemployed. Thus the
question of some kind of insurance against unemployment for this
nation will be a practical issue before us; particularly since we
should have learned our lesson from the depression of the 1930's
and shall want to be better prepared for caring for the unemploy-
ment that will be caused by the business depression in the 1940's.
Douglas and Director's study explores this whole question and
discusses the important subject of unemployment insurance.
II
Machines Create Problems
Machines do more than make and unmake employment. They
affect our lives in countless other ways. Before their coming most
of the population lived on farms and produced on the farm nearly
everything they consumed. There was little trade, little money,
and few wages or profits, because man ate and wore one year what
he, himself, produced the same or previous years. Each worker
was a jack of all trades, and one person could do about what an-
other could. But the machines changed all this. They put one
worker to doing nothing but cutting a piece of cloth, another
to doing nothing but stitching on leather soles. These workers
were paid wages in money with which they bought the things
they needed. Everybody was now buying and selling goods;
roads and ships were being used extensively. The machines were
too big for one person to own; the corporation was formed.
Goods were sold for a profit. Cities grew up and exchanged their
wares for foods, and the farmer exchanged his produce for the
city man's goods. Such is the outline of the structure that the ma-
chine built.
f
LIVING WITH MACHINES
9
Will the machine further change this structure which it has
built up? In communist Russia there are big machines, division
of labor, distribution, exchange of goods, railroads, ships, money,
wages, farms, and cities. These same fundamentals are found in
fascist Italy. There are no clear indications of a radical change in
these fundamentals in the near future though trends are being
accentuated and these bases are being built upon. There is at
times some wild speculation about doing away with money. We
may go off the gold standard permanently or we may regulate
it by international action, but society will hardly do away for
long with so great a convenience as money, or with these other
necessary bases of the machine economy.
The quarrel is not over this fundamental structure, but rather
over who is to own it, how shall it be controlled, and shall the
prices be regulated. That the answers to these questions will be
dictated by the machine is not at all clear. Conceivably Russia,
Italy and the United States might have the same machinery, the
same type of fundamental structure described above, and yet
each have a different system of ownership and regulation, at least
for a time. The tendency, no doubt encouraged by the machine,
is toward concentration of ownership in the hands of a smaller
number of large groups and toward prices set less freely by com-
petition in the open market. This tendency is due partly to the
development of our wonderful communication and transportation
systems. With giant industries the problem of their control be-
comes acute.
A
The great public question before the American people now and
during the next few decades is: What shall the state do with the
business organizations that the machines
create? Few realize the full magnitude of
this; Stuart Chase has a vision of its im-
portance which he presents in The New
Deal. He considers there the alternatives that society faces. Will it
be communism, fascism, technocracy or some other form of social
organization?
THE NEW DEAL
by Stuart Chase
10
EXPLORING THE TIMES
Economists or Engineers?
Our industries are well equipped. In fact the capacity of most
of our factories to produce far exceeds our capacity to purchase,
and in some cases even to use all of their products. The simple
thought occurs that if the wheels would only turn to the extent
that they were built to turn, there would be enough for every-
one. But the wheels do not turn. Their output is not given away;
it has to be paid for somehow. That is the trouble. It is eco-
nomics, not engineering. Because the engineers have given us
machines and because the economists have not given us purchas-
ing power, the simple thought is to put the engineers in charge
and they will give us purchasing power; but just how is not so
simple. In sober truth, the economic problem is far more com-
plicated than the mechanical one. However, society is very much
concerned as to how to get the most out of its magnificent
technological equipment and there is much discussion of plans
to that end. The New Deal is concerned with the engineering
and economic problem, as well as the social and political one. It
is the 1933 model. But the reader should remember that the
literature of the past, particularly that of socialism, communism,
and of social reform, contains records of much careful thought
on these subjects. Times change and
new contributions are made. Old
problems are seen in new settings.
Engineering and inventions are making
us revise our ideas. The modern social-
ist point of view is excellently set
forth in the John Day pamphlet by Norman Thomas, The
Socialist Cure for a Sick Society.
The regulation of our behavior was exercised in the past largely
by the church, the family, and the small local community. But
science and the machine have caused the influence of these in-
stitutions to decline. At the same time the machine has caused
two other institutions, industry and the state, to grow in power.
The control of human behavior is being exercised a good deal
• THE SOCIALIST CURE
FOR A SICK SOCIETY
by Norman Thomas
!
1
LIVING WITH MACHINES
II
by these two great social organizations. A problem of the future
that will tax our resourcefulness to the utmost is what will be
the relationship of these two forces, government and industry,
and there are no more profitable fields of reading than on this
subject.
*
What Do Machines Do to Us?
Machines have not only revolutionized our economic life but
they have greatly modified our social life. Men and Machines, by
Stuart Chase, is the best general intro-
duction to the direct effects of ma-
chines upon us. There the reader will
find set forth with extraordinary vivid-
ness the effect upon man of the flood of cheap goods, the stand-
ardization of life, the substitution of mechanical men, the loosing
of so much power behind the machines, referred to as “a billion
wild horses."
MEN AND MACHINES
by Stuart Chase
The influence of science is more far-reaching than these less
remote effects which Chase discusses, as is shown in the para-
graphs immediately following.
Steam, for instance, took away from the family many house-
hold activities such as spinning, weaving, soap making, canning,
baking, sewing, and placed them in factories, leaving cooking
and laundering and the care of the house. It has placed women
at work outside the home. Family life is greatly changed. Divorce
is growing rapidly.
Machines gave us modern cities, which have increased crime
and changed manners and morals, and made city people less
healthy than country people.
Machines have multiplied our wealth many times. The rich
nations are those with coal and iron, without which there are few
machines. The standard of living is much higher than it was a
hundred years ago. How much each of us has to live on is not
determined solely by the productivity of machines. It depends on
how many there are in a nation to feed, and with what sort of
I 2
EXPLORING THE TIMES
I
gifts nature endows a particular country. But if inventions are
made as fast as they have been in the past, with our small popu-
lation and abundant natural resources we may look forward
to a time perhaps not so far away when we will have a society
without poverty. But this favorable turn may not be made soon.
For several years following the panic of 1933 there may be a
lower standard of living and more of poverty.
In our international relations, transportation inventions have
made the nations of the world our neighbors. We trade with
them, lend them money, borrow from them, and set up busi-
nesses within their borders. We make them friendly visits; and
when we fight them we use bigger and better machines for the
purpose.
● LEISURE IN THE
MODERN WORLD
by Delisle Burns
¥
Technology has profoundly affected many other institutions.
It has centralized governments and extended their functions,
altered the church, diminished the hours of labor, supplied us
goods at low prices by virtue of mass pro-
duction, modified the nature of recreation,
affected the curricula of schools, revolu-
tionized rural life, made literature more real-
istic, and influenced modernistic tendencies
in art. Two of these influences may be singled out for comment
because of their generalized significance: mass production and
increased leisure. Both are the occasion of some very wise re-
flections by the Scotch philosopher and political leader, Delisle
Burns, in his book, Leisure in the Modern World. What shall we
do with our leisure, that growing amount of time which is the
gift of inventions? The possibilities seem infinite for good or bad.
The answer to the machine may be found in how we use our
leisure.


The House that Jack Built
The influence of an invention often spreads out fan-like in
many directions. Thus the radio affects music, education, sports,
business, newspapers, agriculture, medicine, shipping, air trans-
LIVING WITH MACHINES
13
t
portation, and other interests, in hundreds of different directions,
touching the various institutions of mankind. The influence of an
invention also extends outward somewhat like the links of a
chain. Thus the new mechanical stokers, which feed coal to
furnaces, when used on locomotives increase the size and power
of the engine and thus the length of the train, which increases the
distance a passenger must walk, which increases the number of
porters, which encourages, however slightly, the migration of
Negroes to cities, which affects the Negro problem, and so on.
The hundreds of thousands of inventions start in motion millions
of waves across the sea of our social life. Some of these are large,
but most of them are small. The combination of a few large
ones and the accumulated influence of a vast number of small
ones make our journey through life a somewhat turbulent one.
The creation year after year of countless new machines keeps us
always changing with very little time to rest. What some of
these great inventions are is told by
Waldemar Kaempffert in his Mod-
ern Wonder Workers. It is easy to
see from the magic pages of this
book how the inventor of the auto-
mobile, for instance, has had more influence on human life than,
say, Napoleon, Caesar, and Ghengis Kahn taken together.
III
⚫ MODERN WONDER
WORKERS
by Waldemar Kaempffert
Can We Keep Up with Machines?
There is a lesson for us all when we remember that the inven-
tion of machines comes first and their social effects later. Thus
dangerous whirling machinery came first and only some time later
did we get the workmen's compensation laws. Meanwhile millions
had been killed and tens of millions maimed. Fast ships are in-
vented that take our tourists, money, and goods across the At-
lantic Ocean in five days. Yet it is a long time later when we begin
to abandon our isolationist policy and to set up adequate organi-
zations for dealing with international relations. The automobile
14
EXPLORING THE TIMES
has rendered the boundary lines of counties too small, yet the
counties do not consolidate, though millions of dollars could be
saved the taxpayer by so doing. The telephone and the automobile
have made the city spill over for miles into the surrounding
metropolitan region, yet no adequate government has been de-
veloped for this area. The inhabitants are often without needed
governmental services in regard to health, public welfare, educa-
tion, police protection, and the costs of many small govern-
mental units are much more than they would be under consoli-
dation.¹ Machines have given us new occupations and a new
community life. Yet the curricula of many of our high schools
and colleges remain far out of date. Steam has changed the
family, which has as yet made no satisfactory adjustment.
Which Way Are We Headed?
G
Our mechanical inventions come first, and it is some time after-
ward that our connected social institutions change. The machines
are setting us a dizzy pace. It is as though we were always behind
time with our social life, because technology changes first. Our
government, our church, our family, our community life, our
laws, our schools, do not keep up with the changes. We use a
machine like a slave. It brings us added comforts, more money,
greater speed. Nevertheless machines drive us, also. They crack
the whip over our lagging institutions. Man as an individual is
master over the machine which he owns, but the institutions of
mankind are far from being master over technology. Rather the
other way round. Civilization is en route-we do not know just
where. But we do know that the different interconnected parts
are traveling at unequal rates of speed. The result is that our
civilization is out of joint. The trouble is largely because tech-
nology moves so fast and sociology so slow. It has been suggested
that we should declare a moratorium on mechanical invention
until society could catch up. But that could not be enforced.
•Pad whe
¹ See Brownlow's Less Government or More? in this series.

LIVING WITH MACHINES
15
What we need is more speed in social invention. Until we have
it, talk of controlling our progress is idle speculation. We need to
glimpse the future machines. We need to foresee their social
effects. These are basic to any social planning worthy of the
name.
In truth, machines have created a huge material culture, with
which our social institutions are trying to keep pace. It is in
reality a new environment to which we must adapt ourselves.
The lower animals have only nature to adapt themselves to, which
changes very slowly. But man has a vast mechanical environment
to which he must make adjustment. It is a great huge mass
whirling through time at a faster and faster speed. This is the
real meaning of the machine.
The influence of the machine is thus seen to be revolutionary,
almost miraculous; and its effects are infinitely more far reach-
ing than merely taking jobs away from men, serious as that is.
The future will very probably produce many new machines as
strange to us and unexpected as were the radio and the motion
picture to the men coming out of the 19th century. If the reader
wants to know the future, let him study the inventions, for it is
their influence that will do much toward shaping it.
C
There is a fascination to be found in looking to the future in
an attempt to determine what it holds. What will our schools
be like? Will the family continue to disintegrate? Will govern-
ment control business or business control government? Shall we
live beyond 70 or will no remedies for the degenerative diseases
of men and women past middle age be found? It is toward the
future that we must look, and it would
seem that machines, that is, science and
invention, hold the clue to much of
the future. But it is difficult to see
the details. In Whither Mankind, edited by Charles Beard, the
various contributors, each an expert in his field, try to look into
the future of mankind and his institutions. They make no spe-
cial effort to relate what they see to machines, but the discerning
SERE

• WHITHER MANKIND
Edited by Charles Beard
16
EXPLORING THE TIMES
}
reader, as he follows through the pages containing pictures of
the future of the family, of religion, of business, of education,
will readily see how scientific discoveries are shaping these great
social activities.
CONCLUSION
As we have seen, new machines have deprived many of their
jobs, but in the long run have given us all more of the good things
of life. There must be a constant human adjustment to machine
progress. In what direction is it leading? What can be done to
mitigate the evil caused by the machine and how increase the
good? How can we protect the involuntarily unemployed? As
you read the books I have mentioned these questions and others
will present themselves to your mind. You will wish to formulate
your own answers to them. I hope you will pursue the subject of
the machine age and its meaning to society through other books
忄
​and pamphlets that are appearing from time to time, and through
articles in current magazines. The librarian of your public library
will be able to direct you to this supplementary literature.

RECOMMENDED READING
THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT
Douglas and Director
MACMILLAN, 1931. $3.50
A NEW DEAL
Stuart Chase
MACMILLAN, 1932. $2

THE SOCIALIST CURE FOR A SICK SOCIETY
Norman Thomas
JOHN DAY, 1932. 25C
524
MEN AND MACHINES
Stuart Chase
MACMILLAN, C1929. $2.50
LEISURE IN THE MODERN WORLD
C. Delisle Burns
CENTURY, 1932. $2.50
MODERN WONDER WORKERS
Waldemar Kaempffery
BLUE RIBBON, C1924
WHITHER MANKIND
Charles Be
LONGMA
Ge
vs.

THE AUTHOR
F WE were to give a list of all Professor Ogburn's activities
and accomplishments, the reader would probably jump to
the conclusion that he has been teaching, writing and
speaking for half a century. As a matter of fact he is not yet
half a century old so we must conclude that his years have
been crowded ones. A Georgian, he has taught at half a dozen
universities, east and west, and has been professor of sociology
at the University of Chicago since 1927. His varied interests
have led him to serve on several important committees: On
the Costs of Medical Care, the White House Conference on
Child Health and Protection, the White House Committee
on Home Building and Home Ownership, the President's
Research Committee on Social Trends. On the last he was
research director and therefore largely responsible for that
monumental report, Recent Social Trends.
Dr. Ogburn spent two years making a study of the eco-
nomic development of post-war France; he has served as
president of the American Statistical Association and of the
American Sociological Association. He is the author of
several books and numerous articles in his special fields of
inquiry-the family, and inventions. He is a scholar who
knows how to talk to miscellaneous groups, as witness his
popularity as a lecturer, and one who knows how to write
for general readers, as witness his articles in the New York
Times-and this booklet!