Abstract
THE fact that definitely anti-social actions have been committed under the cloak of rationalisation is responsible for many of the misgivings with which labour regards the rationalisation of industry. Moreover, the displacement of workers by machinery has led to some distrust of science by labour. Labour-saving machinery is too often labour-displacing machinery, and although mechanical science is gradually eliminating from industry many of the most unhealthy and exacting conditions of labour, notably in the mining and metallurgical industries, science is often held responsible for creating unemployment. Labour frequently fails to realise that originative discoveries of science create new demands and open fresh avenues of employment in which displaced labour is absorbed. Such discoveries are, of course, those with which science is most closely associated. In this connexion, addresses such as that given by Sir Richard Gregory on Sept. 7, in connexion with the Bristol meeting of the British Association, before the Bristol Branch of the Independent Labour Party on “Science and Labour”, are particularly valuable at the present time as tending to bridge a gulf which, since the days of Darwin, Huxley, and Kingsley, has gradually developed between science and labour.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
[News and Views]. Nature 126, 409–413 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126409b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126409b0