As we hear more and more about AI’s (Artificial Intelligence) growing influence in American business, there is genuine concern about how many jobs will be lost to this newest branch of technology. While we can be certain that those numbers will be high, we can also surmise that based on the historical evidence of job evolution, new avenues of employment will open to many whose current means of livelihood will disappear over the next few decades.
The demise of certain jobs that were carryovers from the 19th century were easy to remember and understand.
The “Ice Man” was a job that employed many people during the later part of the 19th and well into the first two decades of the 20th century. Ice was cut from ponds and stored in insulated ice houses during the winter months and then delivered throughout the year prior to electric and gas-powered refrigeration becoming the norm by the middle 1920’s.
Coal was delivered, first by wagon, and then by motor trucks. The job was dirty, and it required a fair amount of manual labor, as the coal had to be shoveled into chutes that deposited the product into basements where the boilers that consumed it were located. As natural gas pipes were installed in many cities, the job of coal hauler slowly disappeared. It is estimated that one in forty jobs in the United States around the turn of the last century were in some way related to the coal industry – either in mining, transporting it, or shoveling it into furnaces or steam producing boilers. By 1910, coal accounted for a whopping 75 % of America’s energy production.
“Firemen” on locomotives shoveled coal into a boiler that produced steam. As trains transitioned to oil and electric power, the 75,000 men who were once employed in that position as of 1910 began to seek new careers.
The first modern job to come to mind that no longer exists from my own youth is that of the “Milkman”. A regular staple on the American scene from the late 19th century until the mid-1980’s, the milk delivery man was seen on virtually every street, in every neighborhood in every town across the land. Most either delivered daily, or at least two to three times each week. In the early days, fresh bottled milk was swapped for the empty reusable glass containers that had been left in a wire basket on the rear door stoop. Later, an insulated tin clad box with the dairy’s name and logo replaced the wire basket, making it less of a necessity for the homeowner to retrieve the new delivery almost as soon as it had been deposited. In addition to milk, most dairies also sold butter, eggs, orange juice, and even ice cream.
In many cases, the milkman was such a familiar face that he was allowed to walk right into the kitchen and place his product directly into the family’s refrigerator. Increasing transportation costs, large supermarkets and the proliferation of neighborhood convenience stores eventually led to the demise of this form of home delivery. As the number of customers steadily shrunk, those who made their living delivering the milk were forced to find other means of employment.
Gas station attendants were another group whose numbers steadily decreased throughout the middle years of the twentieth century. Initially, big brand, company owned stations heavily promoted their full-service means of delivering their fuel and keeping their customers’ automobiles operating safely by having as many as two or three neatly uniformed attendants tend to each car’s needs while the gasoline was being pumped into the tank. “Trust your car to the man who wears the star” was the slogan used by Texaco.
Most cars of yesteryear burned or leaked a certain amount of motor oil between changes. Checking the oil in the crankcase wasn’t just an amenity provided by the gasoline station, it was an absolute necessity. Fan belts cracked or wore out at regular intervals, the acid level in the battery needed to be checked, and the radiator needed topping-off during the hot months of summer when it wasn’t filled with alcohol based year-round anti-freeze and the water within boiled and evaporated when the engine temperature exceeded 212 degrees. Windshield wipers were made of thin strips of natural rubber that began to deteriorate almost as soon as a new blade was installed on the wiper arm. Dirty windshields were regularly cleaned by attendants, as many cars were not equipped with built-in windshield washers.
As the tolerances of the internal parts of automobile engines became more precise and oil consumption became less of a worry, the need for opening the hood at every fill-up became a thing of the past. Batteries became sealed units, fan belts were made wider and grooved to prevent slippage and premature wear, and windshield washers became standard equipment on every car and truck. When gasoline pumps were made to accept credit cards that facilitated self-service pumping, the days of the gasoline attendant quickly became numbered.
In the days when tobacco companies were allowed to advertise their products in every available medium known to man, nearly 60 percent of the adult male population were regular users of their products. Smoking was permitted virtually everywhere. As a result, almost any decent sized restaurant, bar, or nightclub employed at least one “Cigarette Girl,” usually a younger, attractive woman who dressed in a somewhat provocative manner and then walked around selling a variety of tobacco products that were displayed in a tray that hung around her neck. As tobacco usage declined and regulations were enacted to limit where people could smoke, the job of hawking Lucky Strikes and White Owl cigars eventually disappeared.
Along the same lines of employment was the “Hat Check Girl”. When almost every well-dressed male wore something other than a baseball cap on his head, there was a need to store those hats while not outdoors. When dressy hats went out of style, so did the jobs for those pretty young women who made their living putting hats on shelves while men dined in the better eateries and clubs.
Nearly every drug store in America – big or small – had a soda fountain during the first half of the 20th century. Prior to the wide-spread adoption of home refrigeration, ice cream was a low-cost treat that allowed merchants to add to their income. Those who dispensed soft drinks and ice cream dishes were known as “Soda Jerks,” not because of their lack of intelligence, but because they “jerked” the handle of the soda dispenser towards them as they prepared the customer’s treat. Many a successful young man began his career behind the counter of those establishments.
Prior to every piece of information under the sun being available 24-7 online, most parents were convinced that their children’s successful education depended upon their having the ability to do research at home. The source of that research was a giant and very expensive set of encyclopedias. And the only way to obtain those wonderous volumes of knowledge was via a very aggressive door-to-door salesman who didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, “No thank, you.” While not a job for someone with thin skin, it was certainly one of the more lucrative sales jobs available for those who were up to the task of getting their foot through the front door.
During the time when newspapers were considered the king of reporting current events, the type was set by hand, a tedious task that took a good deal of concentration along with the ability to spell correctly. Since many metropolitan papers printed multiple editions throughout the day, seven days a week, there was a real need for skilled typesetters. As newspapers lost their ability to compete with the internet, and modern machines supplanted humans when it came to printing, those jobs have all but disappeared.
Telephone companies employed “Operators” who manually connected calls through their switchboard during the first seventy-five years of operation. Electric switching came into practice shortly after WWII and many local operators saw their jobs either shrink or disappear entirely. They were still employed to make difficult connections for long distance calls and assist callers who needed to make connections through pay-phones where the recipient of the call would agree to pay for the service. But slowly, over time, the job of telephone operator went by the wayside.
Collateral telephone related jobs that have also mostly disappeared over the years include such rarely thought of positions such as the coin collectors who traveled to the various locations that held coin operated pay phones. Those phones, much like parking meters, needed to be emptied of their change on a regular basis.
Most multi-storied public buildings that were located within America’s cities had elevators that were operated by uniformed men or women. You could either tell them which floor you wanted to be delivered to or tell them the name of the company and they would manually close the door and then turn a lever that would take the elevator to the desired floor number.
Movie theaters had ushers equipped with flashlights who would lead you to an empty seat. Bowling alley’s had young men who manually set the pins after each roll. Western Union had uniformed messengers who hand delivered each and every telegram.
Every large hotel, barber shop, train station, bus depot, and airport had rows of raised seats where people could sit while a “Shoe Shine Boy” would polish their leather footwear. The elevated seats were always a good place for local conversation and people watching. As footwear became more casual, those jobs slowly faded and those seats became nothing but a memory for most people.
Leather footwear was both costly and durable. While people still repair and resole shoes and boots today, in the early days the shoe repair business employed thousands of workers in small mom & pop sized ventures. As times changed and more and more footwear was mass produced, many of those businesses disappeared. Today’s soft fabric footwear has greatly lessened the need for skilled cobblers.
Throughout most of the twentieth century there was an entire industry devoted to travel planning and the booking of tickets and reservations for hotels, cruise ships, trains, and airlines. When those industries discovered they could electronically handle those tasks without the need for a commissioned middleman, thousands of travel agencies closed and the agents working within needed to find another means of putting food on their tables.
With the ability of overhead road scanners to read license plates and record EZpass numbers, the toll collectors along our nation’s highways have been mostly eliminated. While another casualty of technology, this advance has also lessened congestion and made our highways safer.
Computer programs hastened designs from everything from automobiles to the machinery used in building them. Skilled draftsmen were mostly supplanted by multiple CAD (computer aided design) programs that were capable of doing the job faster and much cheaper. Architects and engineers could suddenly create their own drawings and plans for their designs without the need of the thousands of well-paid draftsmen who had long been employed in those industries. While the job hasn’t been completely eliminated, the number of people in the trade has greatly diminished.
Additional categories of traditional jobs that have been decimated are related to the demise of some of the professions listed above. With so many service jobs that required uniforms eliminated over the past few decades, the uniform industry has far fewer employees than it did thirty years ago, and the embroiderers who hand stitched name tags on those uniforms have also had to find new employment opportunities.
As times change so do employment needs.
So, while there is little doubt that AI will cause a certain amount of disruption in the work place, history shows us that we will likely survive and that the new positions that evolve will allow people to flourish in the future. So, rest easy, America, all is not quite lost yet!
