Edward Joseph Garland
United Farmers of Alberta
Mr. GARLAND (Bow River):
I will let
my hon. friend answer that, he is an authority on that question. In the steel industry, to which reference was made by the hon. member who preceded me, seven men now do the work of sixty in the casting of pig iron and two men do the work of 125 in its loading. One man replaces forty-two men in the open hearth furnace. In the machine and repair shops of the railways you will find the following condition: One man replaces 25 men, using
five to ten semi-automatic machines; four men in five to seven hours can do what it took eight men three weeks to do in the repairing of locomotives. This latter change is due almost entirely to the introduction of the acetylene torch. In 1914, which is the basic year with which most of these comparisons are made, it took from fifteen to thirty hours to turn one pair of locomotive tires. To-day, in eight hours the same man power can turn six pairs of locomotive tires. Why, Mr. Speaker, I could go on almost inimitably illustrating the extraordinary change in production capacity which machines have made in our modern human life. One more illustration: A single machine in the city of Chicago produces 40,000 bricks an hour. Formerly it took one man eight hours to produce 450 bricks.