The Iron Man in Industry

AT Flint, Michigan, where Mr. Arthur Pound has been engaged in newspaper work, he has seen the amazing development of the automobile industry through the use of the automatic machine — the ‘Iron Man.’ Watching the Iron Man turn a village into a city and a state into a workshop, Mr. Pound has tried to visualize the social significance of the automatic machine to the masses. The thought stimulated by an environment dominated by the Iron Man is crystallized in this

The old bar to easy entrance into the skilled trades of the city, the apprenticeship necessary to skill in a craft, has been broken by the automatic machine whose operation can be learned in a few hours or days. This fact, as Mr. Pound shows, makes a transition from country to city work simple, and gives rise to a constant shitting of population in response to the flow and ebb of industrial tides. Furthermore, by eliminating the requirements of skill, the Iron Man tends to level all wages, first among factory workers, then among office forces, and finally in all society. The machine thus becomes potent in the realization of the socialist’s dream of equalized incomes.

But the new machinery fails to satisfy the minds of workers, since it calls for monotonous, standardized, repetitive operations without va-

riety and with no incitement to intellectual curiosity or mental ingenuity. Two results follow. On the one hand, the hours of work must be reduced arid the leisure time spent in furnishing the mind with the activities it craves. As a consequence of the latter, young people must be educated to use their leisure beneficially by guidance away from obsolete vocational training toward the artistic, the ethical, the philosophical, the literary, and the religious. On the other hand, without properly spent leisure the Iron Man will lead to lowered mentality, the employment of the subnormal, the survival of the unfit, and the final submergence of our Western white civilization.

Inasmuch as the automatic machine is peculiarly affiliated with the corporate form of business, it is necessary to reason about the relationship of the corporation to the state, as well as to consider how men may be trained as executives who shall manage these corporations in such a way as to make them of most social good, and most democratic in their relation with their employees.

This is a book that challenges attention. It ought not to be read in a hurry, but thoughtfully. Nearly every page gives material for much deliberation. Yet, unlike most such books, the Iron Man is readable; the author has an easy humorous style, and is especially gifted in the use of unusual figures of speech. A wide audience may be predicted for it.

Nevertheless, this review would be incomplete if the reviewer should fail to indicate his feeling that Mr. Pound has committed a logical fallacy by assuming a whole from a part, and making generalization from a particular. Automatic machinery is not now, nor is it likely to be, universal in American manufacturing industry. It happens that the automobile industry, with which Mr. Pound has been most, intimately associated, is the outstanding example in the use of the Iron Man. But some of our important industries are still in the hand-stage, and there will always be enough new industries to furnish stragglers in the industrial procession. Consequently, the promise of universality for the Iron Man, upon which Mr. Pound proceeds to reason, results in exaggeration.

The book serves a useful purpose, however, in throwing tendencies into high relief, so that one may more accurately judge their import, but one must not be misled into believing that magnification never distorts.

MALCOLM KEIR.