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Promise of American Production
From Labor Action, Vol. 10 No. 38, 23 September 1946, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
What are the factors which have made possible the recent increase in America’s productive capacity? They fall into one general category: improvements in technology. But they may be subdivided into several groups. For instance:
1) New Machines. During the war years, under the press of the campaign constantly to increase production, a number of new machines were developed which greatly cut down the time required to perform a certain operation. Fortune Magazine for January 1946 describes one such machine:
“A milling machine, especially designed for work on the awkward, extruded parts of aluminum alloy, can work at speeds of three to eighteen feet per minute, removing as much as forty-two cubic inches of dural every sixty seconds. A job previously requiring ninety production hours takes two hours and twenty seconds.”
In the production of Pratt and Whitney aircraft engines, the new “spot miller” can now finish fifteen holes in a cylinder-barrel flange in one and a half minutes where previously a hand-operated machine required three to four minutes to finish one hole.
While the new miller was one of the more spectacular technological advances, there have been many others. At Pratt and Whitney a new multi-operation machine was developed which is actually composed of twenty separate machines, performs twenty operations at once – and requires the labor of two men for work which formerly required thirty.
2) New Metals. Since the beginning of the war, the production of light metals has gone up tremendously. In 1939 the total production of primary aluminum in the U.S. was 300 million pounds a year. At the wartime peak it had jumped to 1.8 billion. Post-war consumption as forecast by ALCOA will at least double the pre-war figure. Likewise, with magnesium, the lightest of all structural metals, which was being produced at a rate of six million pounds a year in 1939 and which now has a productive capacity of 600 million pounds a year.
The lightness of both metals – they are now used in additional parts of aircraft and experiments are also under way to determine their usability in railroads – results in quicker work and therefore higher productivity. It takes much less time to machine aluminum alloys than steel.
3) New Methods. The War Production Board lists 800 new and improved production techniques developed during the war. Among the most spectacular of these are the new methods of welding. Fortune magazine for January 1946 describes one of these:
“Arc welding by machine, as applied to Liberty and Victory ship building, was a component in the sharp drop in man-hour requirements for merchant ship construction. The index of man-hours required per vessel in Liberty-ship construction fell from 100 in December 1941 to 45 in December 1945.”
The most sensational development in welding, however, is in resistance welding. In this operation, writes Fortune magazine, “no additional or filler metal is used, but a fusion of metal parts is made by electrical resistance. An example is the spot welding of aluminum sheet metal in aircraft. One machine can make 100 welds per minute, in comparison with the prewar record of 800 rivets per man per eight-hour shift.”
4) Mass Production. Quite the most dramatic instance of the increase in productivity as a result of new mass production methods took place in the aircraft industry. In Ford’s Willow Run plant, for instance, the fuselage nose sections of B-24s were divided into four parts, later to be rejoined; this improvement lowered man-hours from 6,000 to 1,000 per unit
“Douglas Aircraft,” writes Fortune magazine, "provides an excellent example. It produced in 1944 a total of 180 million pounds of airframe and parts, 60 per cent more than in 1943. Production was achieved with 43 per cent less man-hours per airframe pound.”
And costs were reduced by one-third.
Just what do these new developments mean to America’s workers? As with all developments resulting in technological progress, they are two-sided. On the one hand, they make even clearer the possibility of a society in which machines will work for men, will provide us with the plenty and leisure to make possible the good life. But on an immediate basis, these developments cast over the working class the shadow of technological unemployment, for that is the tragic paradox of capitalism: the discoveries which make possible a better life often result in greater misery.
Chairman Krug of the War Production Board (now Secretary of the Interior) declared a year ago that “output per worker in April 1944 is from 30 to 50 per cent over December 1942.” This increased output has been characteristic of the whole recent period in American history. In the years from 1919 to 1939 – partly as a result of increased productivity, though mainly due to the unionization of the mass industries – hourly wages, in the terms of real purchasing power, went up 45 per cent. But annual total wages, in these same terms, went down 20 per cent. Due to the inability of the capitalist system to utilize technological advances in behalf of the common welfare, the total earnings of the workers went down despite the fact that their rate of pay went up.
Two important conclusions follow:
Next week: the new techniques and machines which will increase America’s productivity in the coming years.
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