Abstract
AT the recent annual meeting of the London branch of the Association of Scientific Workers, the chairman, Mr. R. W. Western, read a paper on “How Scientific Research may best help in the Present World Crisis”. Mr. Western pointed out that there ia a widespread belief that the progress of science tends to create unemployment by substituting machinery for men and replacing highly-trained operatives by unskilled labourers. Innovations resulting from scientific research are generally found to have injurious secondary effects because: (1) land formerly employed in production may be rendered useless, for example, that utilised for a railway ia spoilt for other purposes, while ferro-concrete constructions cost nearly as much to demolish as to erect; (2) fixed capital sunk in superseded processes is rendered obsolete; (3) the number of workers required to produce a given output is reduced; (4) innovations may necessitate costly expenditure on advertisements to get the product known but the trading community is reluctant to undertake this and prefers to advertise opportunities for gratifying wants already realised. These considerations lend support to the view that what is most wanted are new ways of meeting unsatisfied needs by adapting available capital, rather than innovations which save labour or supersede capital assets. If an innovation founded on the results of scientific research is to produce good results, free from immediate drawbacks and therefore wholly beneficial at the present time, it should render possible the application of idle plant to the commercial utilisation of the waste products of existing processes by employing labour now surplus. The best help that scientific research can give in the present crisis will consist in exploring the channels least subject to the drawbacks previously enumerated.
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Scientific Progress and Employment. Nature 133, 680 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133680a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133680a0