ABSTRACT
The introduction of labour-saving devices, especially on a massive scale, in an important productive sector, has generally produced a dilemma for the policymaker. On the one hand, there are the important benefits in the form of reduced costs and prices, and, for a trading nation, the not unimportant consideration of increasing the competitiveness of exports. On the other hand, there is the social cost of structural unemployment, which becomes of even greater importance when the society is already operating at a less than full employment level. Furthermore, structural unemployment, due to lack of labour mobility in the full sense of the word, has always been painful to the workers involved and has generally led to considerable labour unrest.1 It is therefore not surprising that this question was discussed at length by some of the best economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
