30 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



he would require nearly the same length of time to learn its operation as is 

 required by the farm boy, and when he had learned it, would not be able to 

 turn out with it any more work, or work of better quality, than the farm boy. 

 This is the essence of automatieity in machinery. The full automatic tool 

 reduces the man factor in production, that is, the human element, to the 

 irreducible minimum. 



Of course, it is not to be inferred that this fact of producing commodities 

 with wholly unskilled labor by the use of the automatic tool, entirely dispenses 

 with the need of trained skill in industry. That would be a wholly erroneous 

 conclusion. To this I will refer later. But it does have, nonetheless, a 

 definite social significance. The automatic tool has made possible the employ- 

 ment not only of unskilled men and boys, but of women and girls and, if we 

 might be permitted to digress, it would be exceedingly interesting to point out 

 that it was the American automatic tool which in reality was one of the prime 

 factors in the final winning of the war. Perhaps we might rightly say this 

 was both a social and an economic effect of the tool, but I shall not attempt 

 to follow that phase of it this morning. 



From what I have said, you will understand that the modern automatic 

 tool is necessarily the result of a long growth. This growth began in many 

 lines very early after the industrial revolution. In fact, inventions which 

 are commonly considered to have constituted the industrial revolution were in 

 themselves the incorporation into machinery of functions that had previously 

 been exercised manually. Nonetheless, this growth was a very slow develop- 

 ment during the entire nineteenth century. It was, indeed, not until almost 

 the decade of the "OO's that what we now designate as automatic machinery 

 really made its appearance. The turning point came in the first decade of the 

 present century, and so swift was the change that we might be justified in 

 designating it as a second industrial revolution. At least, it was one of those 

 departures that must ultimately impart to civilization a new direction. It is 

 in this sense that we are to consider the social and economic significance of 

 the automatic tool. I propose to discuss its effects more or less under specific 

 heads. I say "more or less" because it is very difficult to precisely determine 

 where an effect may be social and where it may be economic and again where 

 it may partake of both. 



Increase of Human Power. The cost of anything made by man is at 

 bottom the total quantity of human brain and muscle which go into its pro- 

 duction. Inasmuch as we have seen that the automatic tool enables an article 

 to be produced with the least total of human functioning, therefore it enables 

 man to produce a given thing for the least cost. We may resolve this fact 

 -into either of two practical results. First, as the automatic principle is 

 applied in industry, we are able to maintain any given standard of living with 

 a continually decreasing quantity of total human effort, or second, we may 



