Show COTTON PICKERS the other day a ponderous new machine 10 feet high lumbered through a southern cotton field although though still imperfect it picked in eight hours as much cotton as 75 or 80 men could have picked by hand at once there arose the cry here is another machine that will rob men of jobs the new york times remarks that the immediate effect of the widespread use of this machine might be to take jobs away from some but it adds to concentrate our attention solely on these possibilities would be to regard the perfection of the mechanical cal picker as a calamity but this would be to overlook the immense mense benefits that mechanical improvement brings no ne ine would wish to cancel eli wh whitneys Whit invention of the cotton gin nearly a century and a half ago no one regrets the invention of the wheat heat harvesting and threshing combine which reduced labor on the operations involved it has been estimated about 84 per cent we do not want vant to out the whole industrial revolution which has ha S created a hundred jobs for one it has taken away the mechanical picker would begin it is true by displacing labor but it would also greatly re duce cost coit of production A the m machine achin e wi will 11 make possible cheaper cotton so cheaper cotton in turn will either cither encourage the increased consumption of cotton goods thus benefiting the cotton textile industry or it v vil 21 1 leave consumers consume is with moie purchasing power for other goods we must not forget that the lowest standard of living the greatest wretchedness the greatest single source of child labor in the united states is amona among g the tenant farmers and shar sharecroppers mainly negroes of the south perhaps the greatest single reason for their low standard of living is that handpicked hand picked cotton is uneconomic mechanized cotton fields would have fewer workers but they would be wage labo reis much better off |