The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-10-10
A CENTURY BEHIND THE TINES.

A CENTURY BEHIND THE TINES.
If man were to announce a lecture
in st. Paul to prove that the sun moves
around the earth, or that witchcraft
exists and witches should be burned at
the stake, he would hardly be able to
gather together an audience. Yet a
man does succeed in doing that whose
subject is the assertion that labor-sav-
ing machinery is the great foe of man.
1t is an astonishing thing that here at
the end Of the century single individ-
ual should be found to hold that belief
as much as if he should yield to
any of the weird superstitions of the
distant past There would be no excuse
for him, indeed, in that direction, be-
cause all of us have a little weakness,
on the side of the unmeasured and the
unknown.
The place of machinery in the prog
ress of the world and in human devel-
opment is not at all in doubt Witt.
every increase in the substitution Of an
inert mass of matter, moved by mans
intelligence to perform mans work TO
him, the outlook for humanity has beer
elevated and broadened. Release from
the tasks of material conquest the
world imposes in the way of the heavy
burdening of the physical frame is one
of the conditions of progress. From il
we must gain the leisure that is neces-
sary to the full strength of the body
and the cultivation of the mind. Out
of it comes the plentitude of riches by
which the average standard of COM
fort is raised and the individuals ideas
of life are made at once more dignified
and more ambitious.
We have but to cast a glance back
ward to the ages before labor-savine
machinery was to understand the great
gulf that lies between us and then. We
find there peasantry-hewers of wood
and drawers of water-living in a con-
dition very little superior to that of
the beasts of burden that shared will
them their mud novels. We find a few
men of rude habits of violent passions
and the utmost contempt for human
rights, even if such an idea could be
comprehended by them at all, directing
the movements and absolute masters
Of the fortunes and lives of this PIE
tude of ignorant and degraded human
beings Read any chronicle of the days
Of early England or feudal France OF
Germany, or of any other country on
the face Of the globe before the era of
machinery began, compare it's condi-
ton with the present and you may see
cause and effect standing over agains
each other Indeed one has not to go
into the past to make the comparison.
but only to look at the domestic organ
ization and the mental and moral
status of thespeople of China today.
That is the paradise of the anti-ma-
chinery people. China has alone re-
sisted successfully the march of inven-
ton and improvement. They have lit
tie or no labor-saving machinery there.
Life is too cheap and too mean to be
spared. That civilization is the type to
which ours and all others would be re-
duced If the Ideas Of those who hold
that the multiplication of machinery
is an evil could be carried out.
teeming multitude of paupers engaged
in competition for.wages on which it is
inconceivable that any man should
subsist, with the rudest appliances for
living and the lowest grade of thought
and feeling among the people. are tn.
marks of this community, which tic
socialist agitator recommends to us as
a model
1t is proved by history that the
introduction of machinery everywhere