248 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



alone would displace more than 1.5 million farm workers in the next 

 10 years, and ahnost 3.5 million (or a third of our farm jobs) over 

 the next 20 years. Chemical weed killers can do in 12 minutes what 

 it would require 20 hours to do with a hoe. Chemicals can prevent 

 premature shedding in fruit trees and increase yield. Others can 

 induce shedding and replace hand thinning. Chemicals can destroy 

 the foliage to hasten ripening or facilitate picking. Fungicides, 

 growth hormones, and soil conditioners will help increase crops. 

 Most cotton is already picked by machine. One of our western elec- 

 tronic companies is currently field testing an electronic crop thinner, 

 which automatically detects and removes unwanted plants four rows 

 at a time. The experiments conducted by the Bureau of Mines in 

 burning unmined coal underground in its natural seams may lead 

 to another form of automation. 



What will be the impact of automation on our society, our economy, 

 our way of life? In the first place, automation should be recognized 

 as a gradual and progressive development, an extension of changes 

 which have been underway for over 150 years. Furthermore, there 

 are whole segments of commerce and industry wliich will see only 

 a limited application. This is not to minimize its importance. His- 

 torians may well point to automation as the heart of the second in- 

 dustrial revolution. In the first, machines replaced man's muscle 

 in plant operations. In the second, controls will replace his brain. 

 But although there will be an accelerated use in the near future, there 

 is no reason to think that widespread automation will come overnight. 



Commonly associated with technological development- is the fear 

 of unemployment. But Factory magazine points out that if we are 

 to continue to increase our standard of living and to support the 

 current defense program, we will have to increase output per man- 

 hour 43 percent by 1960, or over twice the increase which took place 

 between 1940 and 1950. This hardly bespeaks widespread unem- 

 ployment! If medical science continues to make advances in com- 

 batting the diseases of old age comparable to those made against 

 infection, communicable diseases and the like, the support of the non- 

 working elderly population will in itself demand a large portion of 

 our increased productivity. Add to this the defense program, the 

 increased proportion of children bursting the seams of our school 

 system today, and the demands of other nations whose aid we have 

 undertaken, and there seems more reason to fear a shortage than a 

 surplus of workers. Barring a serious depression, there should be 

 adequate opportunity for reabsorption of displaced workers. Tech- 

 nology has always created more job opportunities than it has de- 

 stroyed. A. much higher standard of living and a shorter workweek 

 are both likely when and if automation reaches its full potential. 



