Jobs Galore for Robots

Abstract

This essay examines the hotly-debated issue of 'technological unemployment' in the 1920s and 1930s by analysing the remarkable take-off and publicity surrounding coin-operated machines, specifically vending machines, pinball games, and jukeboxes. These machines were commonly described in anthropomorphic terms as 'robots', and were alternately hailed as liberating workers from dreary jobs or castigated for tossing salesclerks and entertainers out of work. In their effort to rebut charges that their machines were responsible for exacerbating unemployment, 'coin men', as those in the industry dubbed themselves, began to emphasize that Americans ought to consider themselves primarily as consumers, not workers. Far from undercutting workers' jobs, coin machines enhanced the position of consumers by eliminating middlemen and inefficiency in the distribution of goods and entertainment, and enabling consumers to register directly their preferences for particular consumer items, games, and songs. Thus, coin men circumvented the contentious issue of technological unemployment by focusing on leisure, rather than labour, as the key to stoking the vast 'machine' of prosperity in America's nascent consumer economy.