Robots Have Been About to Take All the Jobs for 100 Years

Welcome to REDUNDANT, a project by Pessimists Archive exploring the history of fears about technological unemployment. We will be publishing 10 posts for the last 10 decades exploring fears of automation. This introductory post gives a short - but by no means comprehensive - synopsis of each decade: The rise of horseless carriages, mass production and other new forms of automation in the first two decades of the 20th century created anxieties about the future of work and employment. A short and sharp depression in the first year of the new decade helped create unease too. In a 1922 commencement speech at Wellesley College, President of the Rockefeller Foundation - Raymond B. Fosdick pondered: “Can education run fast enough” for people to beat the machines. A number of books would be written regarding the subject. ‘Social Decay and Regeneration’ - published in 1921 - would be reviewed by the New York Times under the title ‘Will Machines Devour Man?’, accompanied by an provocative illust

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• Nick Jiang