Do you want a better life? Sure! We all do. But how can we get that better life as midcentury America flexes its industrial muscles, yawning as it greets a new day filled with new consumer products and new markets? Well, comic books may have the key. And we don't mean buying a lot of comic books, throwing them into a giant pile, and wallowing around in them, which is only PART of a better life.


Are YOU a white American couple with two point five children, a car, and a little bird poking his little head out of his little birdhouse to happily chirp away? Well, by golly, maybe you don't need a better life, you got it pretty good already. I'm just saying. But for the sake of argument, let's continue.


The scene of Bill Winthrop meeting his employee representatives barely starts before WHAM we're in the middle of a pajama party in Pete Burton's kitchen. Maybe some new machines would help with this whiplash.


The plant's going to install some new machines to cut costs, and the men are worried. Maybe they're familiar with how in fiction this sort of scenario always ends with a super computer seducing someone's wife!


Just show the men what the machines have done for us already! The blessed machines have helped us in oh, so many ways. Surely they deserve our respect and perhaps our unthinking obedience, he said unblinkingly, the circuits and gears of the machine body inside his human being disguise whirring and clicking softly.


Nothing better than an earnest late night debate about which particular merit of industrial capitalism is the most incredibly awesome.


It's okay Pops, we believe you, there's no need to haul out the graphs and charts and... too late.


Suppose a man gets a dollar an hour, and then suddenly he's ten times more productive, but is still only making that dollar an hour? You think he might feel a little weird about that?


Less cost per unit means the company will sell the items cheaper, and... oh. I see the flaw in this reasoning already, in that the company will instead charge whatever the market will bear for their widgets, regardless of cost, and when the company becomes unprofitable, venture capital will roll up, buy the outfit for pennies on the dollar, use it as collateral for huge loans, and then let it default and go bankrupt. But I'm getting ahead of the story, America won't be into that particular cycle until the 1990s.


You were up awful late last night cheerleading the mechanization of American industry, Pete! Better have some more of those trimmings, whatever they are!


It's just important business conversations at every breakfast table in town this morning!


Send your man off to work with a confident, hearty "that should help, dear."

By the way, what is it with these houses with front doors that open right onto the driveway? Are they TRYING to get half the family run over?


He can perfectly recall the six workers and the machines and the shed, but can he remember exactly what this company produces? Can anyone?


New machines, latest models, the best and fastest equipment, all aimed at one goal - figuring out exactly what the hell we're making here.


"Take the automobile! Used to be they were playthings of the wealthy! But with assembly lines, never-ending advertising, and government funded superhighways, now more than a million people are building enough cars for everybody to drive everywhere their heart desires! My only worry is what would happen if overseas oil got more expensive. But that'll never happen."


If we produce too much product and flood the market, no worries. The company's always working on new sales methods! I understand the subliminal perception division is working night and (drink Coke) day figuring out the (drink Coke) exact length of time it takes to (drink Coke) embed a message into the human (drink Coke) subconscious. Thirsty?


Folks, we're here to tell you that when we install machines it means more work and more product sold so that we'll have to install even more machines, which will sell even more product, which means we're trapped in an endless cycle of uncontrollable growth that will not stop until the surface of the Earth is covered in a three foot layer of whatever it is we make here. So be ready.


Once there were only a few Pony Express riders - today there are millions! Millions of Pony Express riders, retrained for new careers in the cutting edge technology of (checks notes) telegraph operation. Meanwhile, six cans an hour?? Come on, artisinal tin can makers, speed it up! We have Etsy orders to fill!


Lower prices mean more people can buy more things! For instance we were able to buy not one, but TWO reasonably well behaved children!


"May" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this last sentence. Now please excuse me, since this is the future, I have to put down my fishing pole and head out to my five hour a day, three days a week job.


Want to be a more effective public speaker? Step one: choose extremely stupid audiences.


It wasn't easy, and it took time, but eventually the carefully calculated plans of our machine overlords came to their inevitable fruition.


Two handsome guys in various stages of undress talking about the wheels of progress turning the levers of prosperity? And people say the 1950s were boring!


We've been making fun of this comic's rosy predictions of the future, but to be fair, TVs have in fact been getting larger while prices do indeed keep going down. Let's all praise the machines, I guess.


More machines means a better life and shorter work hours for everybody! Except for the ladies. Not much is going to change for them. Now where's my dinner?


Do you know???? It's possible to create an entire public information comic book extolling the virtues of mechanization and its positive effect on employment, without ever offering a citation or a reference or even a Bureau Of Labor Statistics quote! Why, this whole thing might just be baseless corporate propaganda commissioned by some giant conglomerate eager to soothe their workforce and ease their fears about looming mechanization. Now hurry and get dressed, the boss wants to see us!

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