Part XXIX
4 VITAL STATISTICS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION
5 Industrialization may be delineated
6 in two important ways.
7 The first, most obvious and most frequently employed, is by per capita annual production in tons or dollars.
8 The second is by dynamic measurement.
9 The first method shows the per capita resources rates of production, and a representative sample for instance
10 of manufactured articles of the U.S.A, compared with the rest of the world.
11 But this first method constitutes a static measurement of the economy.
12 Even when it shows growth over a period of years, it does not show the reasons for growth or the meaning of growth.
13 For these we must turn to dynamic measurements. In dynamic measurement matter is combined with energy by disciplined brainpower.
14 Dynamic measurement reveals for instance
15 the entire trend of U.S.A, industry:—which is
16 TO PRODUCE MORE WITH LESS—for the SATISFACTION OF ALL MEN.
17 This trend appears first in terms of what might be called perishables.
18 Industrially speaking, coal is a perishable, inasmuch as it is consumed by industry for the release of energy;
19 and the energy that can be released from a ton of coal
20 has increased threefold in the last twenty years alone.
21 Therefore, statically speaking, a piece of coal is just a piece of coal;
22 but, dynamically speaking, a piece of coal may become ‘‘three pieces’’ in respect to performance and in respect to man’s derived satisfaction.
23 And if that piece which has become three pieces in potential power release,—is not used until necessary, it may through new science gains become four pieces, dynamically, in potential power release,—Was this the meaning in the parable of the loaves and fishes?
24 This trend is even observable in food which is also consumed for the useful release of energy to operate the ‘‘integral mechanisms’’ of man which in turn relay the initial brain operation to the ‘‘external mechanism’’ for the amplification of force or increase in precision of ultimate work to be done.
25 U.S.A, man now eats recordably less, having less requirement of energy as physical work and less requirement of energy as integral heat to maintain the preferential thermal conditions to the best functioning of the elaborate processes of his integral mechanics, in his now atmospherically better mechanical extended and controlled environment,
26 yet he jumps higher and runs faster than his father
27 and circles the world in days against his father’s year.
28 The trend is also visible for instance in the number of miles yielded per pound of tire rubber, increased five fold in the last twenty years. And one of the most fascinating manifestations is to be found within the oil industry where the viscosity index of lubricating oil remained at 100,
29 (that of the best natural Pennsylvania oils misassumed to be the best that would ever be known) until 1930—
30 and has since shot nearly up to 200
31 by synthetic molecular design of researching man. But the viscosity index has also to do, among other things,
32 with the life, pressure, and temperature limitations of the moving parts that are being lubricated;
33 also of course with the life of the oil.
34 Thus it is seen that the dynamic gains compound in their ramifications.
35 Another way to observe the dynamic trend is in the constant reduction
36 of manufacturing cost per ton of bituminous coal; cost per pound of electrolytic copper;
37 dollars per auto horsepower.
38 Or, to speak of cost in more human terms, in constantly reducing
39 automobile, railroad, and airplane deaths per passenger mile traveled, despite both increased speed and increasing population of road and rail cars and planes as well as of people;
40 by decreasing deaths per capita caused by infectious diseases or by industrial accidents;
41 and sum totally,
42 with increasing life expectancy at all the various ages
43 of the human beings in the U.S.A.
44 The high point of the charts illustrating this trend
45 shows graphically
46 what the American standard of living really is.
47 This is done by showing
48 how much more than a subsistence
49 is the advancing standard of living, that is by charting
50 what the U.S.A, man can buy
51 over and above the absolute necessities
52 for a given amount of work hours rendered to industry by him.
53 This will be seen to be
54 more than favorably comparable with such excesses of other countries.
55 A second way in which industry delivers more for less
56 is graphically illustrated in the economic behavior of what might be called the ‘‘non-perishables,’’ chiefly the industrial metals, but also the organic materials, such as fiber, rubber.
57 The central factor here
58 is scrap material
59 which is salvaged, separated, and used over and over again.
60 The result of this recirculation is
61 that as time goes on
62 less new raw material is required to make a given weight of product.
63 Scrap in this sense is not ‘‘shoddy’’ for the pure chemical elements iron or copper may be refined-out endlessly to ingot from discarded use forms.
64 In fact steel scrap becomes progessively enriched to higher ultimate strength with minor alloy constituents not worth separating out.
65 Scrap has been a special tactical factor in recent war economy though of great economic importance throughout all old industrial countries.
66 In the U.S.A, for certain reasons other than war scrap is highly important.
67 Here copper, for instance, seems almost to have reached what might be called a ‘‘scrap-point;’’ that is, the scrap supply is almost sufficient to meet all present domestic non-war needs, and very little copper has, therefore, to be mined for domestic use.
68 Also about 90 per cent of U.S.A, domestic consumption of steel is derived from scrap.
69 There is enough tin in the U.S.A, recirculating cycle to constitute a larger ore body than that in the Malay Straits Settlement whence it mostly originated.
70 Of course, practically speaking, scrap both as ‘‘new’’ and as combined old-and-new metal is both domestically consumed and exported so that these statements are only true in the terms of a net fact accounting.
71 The most interesting scrap situations are as already noted those of copper and steel, (though scrap is playing an important role in all non-perishable categories), for one reason among many, that it renders basic monopoly impossible.
72 Scrap also places economic emphasis upon business turnover rather than upon ownership.
73 Thirdly,
74 industry delivers more for less by causing a given amount of non-perishable material to do more work or to be more effective.
75 Sometimes this is achieved
76 by combining it more efficiently with energy; thus the average horsepower and cruising speed of automobiles have been constantly increased, without adding weight.
77 In the U.S.A. 1920--1940 there has been a vast increase in the proportion of energy consumption to that of tonnage consumption of industrial raw materials.
78 While one may find it difficult to ‘‘see’’ energy as constituent in products—in a pencil, a phonograph record—the energy component is nevertheless there and grows ever larger by numerical proportion to the tangible components.
79 Sometimes, if not always consciously more for less is effected by a better combination of materials through exercise of brainpower.
80 Thus by alloying or synthesizing elements under varying conditions, new stronger alloys are evolved whereby the same basic materials acquire a strength many times that indicated by their isolated properties;
81 for instance, two per cent of beryllium alloyed to copper
82 and thereafter jointly heat treated jumps copper’s tensile strength tenfold and provides a non-fatiguing metal, which however, may happily be worked before heat treatment with all the facility of pure annealed copper.
83 Thus also by mental ingenuity a two-hundredfold increase in messages per unit of telephone wires is effected.