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Trials of Technology

Changing technology can shift the balance between the needs of employers and those of their workers. Sometimes, it lets employers eliminate skilled workers and replace them with fewer or less-skilled employees as when electric trolleys began taking the place of horsecars.

Other times, new technology demands that workers retrain, as jobs once done by hand might now require computer experience. In the 1950s, containerized cargo simplified the task of loading and unloading ships, letting 20 people do in two hours what once took 100 workers a full week.