The Machine and the Recovery Program

Report Outline
Machine Efficiency and Industrial Depression
Displacement of Labor by Machines
Machinery in the Emergency Construction Program
Machinery Control Provisions in N. R. A. Codes
The Machinery Industry in Prosperity and Depression
Special Focus

Machine Efficiency and Industrial Depression

Readjustment of Production to Consumption

Failure to coordinate production and consumption has been recognized, since the depression became acute, as one of the fundamental causes of the country's economic difficulties. In the field of agriculture a I readjustment of output to demand has been sought through an actual destruction of growing crops and a leasing of millions of acres of farm lands out of production. In industry safeguards against over-production and destructive competition in the disposal of surplus stocks are being sought through restrictions upon the use of present equipment, and limitations upon the enlargement of existing plant capacities and the introduction of new machinery.

Even before the onset of the present depression, it was pointed out by economists that the rapid expansion of the productive capacity of the country, brought about by the continuous introduction of new and more efficient machinery, would lead to unfortunate results unless purchasing power and production were in some manner harmonized. Virtually all of the schemes for national planning brought forward since 1929 have included proposals for adjusting the output of the machines to the ability of the country to purchase their product as one means of preventing or mitigating future depressions.

The New World Made Possible by the Machine

Secretary of Agriculture Wallace, in a speech at Muncie, Indiana, November 14, pictured a “standard of living two or three times that which we had in 1929” as being within reach of the American nation. To attain such a standard, however, intelligent planning on a national scale was necessary.