SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— F. 379 



benefit, rather more than a third get unemployment assistance, and the rest 

 get neither. Some of them are men otherwise qualified who have been 

 disqualified for social reasons or disallowed under the Means Test, but they 

 include also a proportion of people with little record or prospect of employ- 

 ment, a ' personal hard core.' 



4. By ages. The risk of losing one's job does not increase appreciably 

 with advancing years from 35 to 64 and is highest before 35, but the diffi- 

 culty of finding fresh employment, once a job has been lost, whether through 

 general depression or through individual misfortune, does increase materially 

 with age. Social steps seem to be called for to help older men of proved 

 industrial capacity to find new openings, and to counteract as anti-social 

 the common tendency of employers to snatch at youth. 



Mr. Stephen W. Smith. — Place and function of the administrative and 

 technical worker in the new forms of economic organisation (11.30). 



The post-war developments in industry have been — as everyone knows — 

 immense. 



Changes in manufacturing method, developments in industrial organisa- 

 tion, improvements in technique, the steady replacement of steam by 

 electricity as the power basis of industry, the increasing employment of the 

 technician and the scientific worker — these and other phases of the new 

 revolution in industry have modified tremendously the personnel of those 

 employed. 



Emergence to a new and increasing importance of 



(a) the technicians and scientific workers ; 



(b) the administrative staffs. 



Simultaneous reduction, both in proportion and in significance, of 



(a) ' unskilled ' labour ; 



(b) controlling and directing ' owners.' 



Frequent replacement of latter, consequent upon group amalgamations 

 or upon creation of large ' public utility ' corporations, by salaried works- 

 managers and similar responsible chiefs. 



Simultaneous growth of municipal enterprise — as water, trams, electricity, 

 baths, libraries, housing, aerodromes, etc. 



What is the effect of all this manifest enlargement of the clerical, technical, 

 supervisory, administrative, and professional grades ? 



(a) Statistics reveal steady increase in ratio of such workers. 



(b) Provided he is reasonably and adequately paid the salaried technician 

 and administrator tends to be interested in the work for its own sake. 



(c) Corresponding advance of the functional outlook as compared with 

 the profit-seeking motive, of the interests of the public versus the privateering 

 interest, of the sense of trusteeship versus the pull of proprietorship. 



(d) Other considerations that emerge. 



Afternoon. 

 Session on Business administration : 



Mr. C. A. Lee. — Some problems of a small manufacturing business 

 (2-30). 

 Of all the problems that are common to many small businesses, perhaps 

 the more important are those concerned with the cultivation of a team- 

 spirit among the staff. 



