Abstract
A I M3E habit of producing goods whether they are needed or not, of applying power whether it is effective or not, of utilising inventions whether they are useful or not, pervades almost every department of our present civilisation. The untoward consequences of this materialistic habit, as seen for example in employment, have led to increasing attention being given to the social consequences of mechanisation in recent years. We are at last coming to realise that social inefficiency may be too high a price to pay for mechanical efficiency and that, from the point of view of the community as a whole, industrial efficiency must take account of the effects on the worker and the community as well as of the purely mechanical or chemical efficiency of its processes. Although the social and cultural aspects of mechanisation have received a certain amount of attention, there has as yet been no detailed account of the process of mechanisation in a broad economic setting, interpreting the details in regard to mechanisation as a whole and to related processes of economic life. Some such account Dr. Jerome attempts to give us in the present study, particularly in relation to the nature and significance of current changes in the degree of mechanisation. He emphasises the wide range of consequences which must be traced if we are to measure accurately the effects of a mechanical change, and his careful technique of treatment should supply a further corrective to hasty or ill-founded assumptions regarding the effects of mechanisation.
Mechanisation in Industry
By Harry Jerome. (Publications of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., No. 27.) Pp. xxxi + 484. (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 1935.) 15s. net.
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BRIGHTMAN, R. Mechanisation in Industry. Nature 136, 659 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136659a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136659a0