Claim: Diebold, “A Condensation of the Book Automation, in Automation and…

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Claim and evidence

A Condensation of the Book Automation, in Automation and Technological Change: Hearingsarticulates ↓Automation lowers the labour share, wages or employment

Diebold, “A Condensation of the Book Automation, in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings” (1955-10-14) articulates M06a. Under “Labor resistance” the condensation says that when automation makes a specific human skill obsolete it works a hardship on the individual worker who is displaced.

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 1955-10-14 · event
Role: Earliest located in tier 2
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Tier: Tier 2. Witness who is not an economist: John Diebold, management consultant (president, John Diebold & Associates), author of the condensed book.

Scope and limitsAdded on 2026-10-25 after the same-family and cross-family re-checks of the economics admission (maintainer decision of 2026-10-25). A condensation by the Controllership Foundation, which Diebold inserted into the record; it is not verbatim oral testimony. It concerns displaced workers whose particular skill becomes obsolete, not economy-wide unemployment: in his oral statement (p. 28) Diebold says he is personally acquainted with very few cases of layoffs due to automation and describes mainly shifts of jobs within firms.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

A Condensation of the Book Automation, in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings

U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization. (1955). Automation and technological change: Hearings … 84th Congress, 1st session, October 14–28, 1955. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 14–27 · 1955-10-14

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Source excerpt · shown only with its context

“When automation makes obsolete a specific human skill it works a hardship on the individual laborer who is displaced.”

Read it with this context. Its scope (individual workers whose specific skill becomes obsolete) and Diebold’s oral qualification on p. 28: he knows of very few layoffs due to automation; mostly people shifted jobs within firms.

Why: Shown alone, the sentence can read as a claim of widespread technological unemployment.

Location in source printed p. 24, ch. VI "What Will Automation Mean to Business?", section "Labor resistance"

Machine-checked · 2026-10-25

Source details and check notes

Authors: John Diebold
Version: Internet Archive OCR text (djvu.txt) of a scanned copy, retrieved 2026-10-25 from https://archive.org/download/congress-automation-and-technological-change/congress-automation-and-technological-change_djvu.txt; identical to the copy checked at the 2026-10-14 admission. OCR errors possible; quotes checked only against clean stretches. The cross-family check of 2026-10-25 also inspected the page scans. Current copy; no earlier capture compared. SHA-256 3962809fbb923be62bf986addb0014ee147934a8767475c1f7cfe051959bff90.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-25
Language: English (en)
Attribution: John Diebold, “A Condensation of the Book Automation, in Automation and Technological Change: Hearings”, U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization. (1955). Automation and technological change: Hearings … 84th Congress, 1st session, October 14–28, 1955. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 14–27, 1955-10-14.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Matched on 2026-10-25 in the Internet Archive OCR text (SHA-256 3962809fbb923be62bf986addb0014ee147934a8767475c1f7cfe051959bff90, identical to the copy checked at admission); the cross-family check of 2026-10-25 also compared the page scans.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.

Date. Printed with Diebold’s statement on the hearing day of 14 October 1955. A condensation of his book Automation (copyright 1952) by the Controllership Foundation, inserted, he says, "with a few minor revisions"; the book’s wording was not compared, so the wording is dated by the hearings, not by the book. Checked in a current copy; an archive capture was not available, so earlier bytes are not authenticated.

Record ID ec-m06a-diebold-1955-automation-condensation-a

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