MAY 1957

MACHINE BRAWN--"The word 'automation,' a journalistic coinage, has undeservedly become 'a source of fear,' according to the Earl of Halsbury, an English authority on industrial technology. In the British journal Impact he attempts to correct the impression created by journalists that automatic processes in industry 'will cause widespread unemployment.' Machines require trained men to maintain them. Displacements occur mainly in the ranks of the unskilled, who have a high rate of turnover anyway. Lord Halsbury is concerned for the man who is not going to be affected by automation--the coal miner, the stevedore and others 'who do the heavy laboring work for a society which does not know how to lighten their task.'"

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