The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1907-04-13
IS MACHINERY 4 CURSE
INTERESTING DISCUSSION
The Pros and Cons Of the Ques-
ton Ably Set Forth, and
Machinery's Rights Pretty
Clearly INDICATED.

L u6 app44CdLAOu " uAeaA 3 SeuAuS W
the invention Of machinery has been
fraught with loss, rather than, gain,
to the true moral and intellectual pro-
gress Of the race" Machinery. he
asserts, has destroyed our inherent love
for beautiful forms, it has discouraged
the use of local building materials, 1t
has replaced beautiful and artistic con-
structlons with ugly Ones 1t has dis
placed workers in thousands Of edu-
cative employments. Our laborers, the
writer thinks, are not the fine race
that they once were, and he lays 1t
all to the increase of machinery.
These conclusions are vigorously de-
MED by writer in Engineering don-
DOM, who sums up in pretty effective
fashion machinery's blessings. He
says:
LAS matter Of fact, rural laborers
were not always the fine outstanding
race Of giants that poetic pens would
picture them. Their lean old, toll
worn faces were too often made pre-
maturely old by the pinch of,poverty;
their forms bent, their chests hollow
ed and shoulders rounded by the ma
ture Of their toll. So far as actual
operations are concerned, we should
back the manufacture Of machinery to
produce the finer men. We must,
however, allow to the former the ad-
vantage of open air and sunshine; but
against this, again, must be set damp
and rheumatics-the curse of rural
populations, since their dwellings were
'sprinkled along the water courses in
the 'bottoms,' or struggled up the little
stream" and had "the vegeta BILE thatth
the wall Of local stone, clay, or mud
and often floors of the latter material
also. No! Thank God! we say-and
the rural laborer will say also-that
machinery has made good cheap bricks
for walls; has sawn those monoton-
ously straight boards for floors; has
given us glass for windows and Port
land cement for damp-resisting con-
crete foundations; has even rolled the
galvanized sheets for roofs; has spun
wool, flax, and cotton, and woven them
into fabrics; has reaped the crops and
ground corn; and, finally, has brought
all these and a thousand other cor
poreal blessings to our very doors by
the aid Of those ultimate triu1nphs 1of
machinery-the locomotive and the
steamship; upon both Of which Mr..
Weeks poufs out the walls Of his
wrath"
How would the poetic and artistic
admirer Of the old-style laborer's cot
tage like to live in one? asks the
writer, and he answers the question
with the following picture:
ITO eat and sleep in its dark and
damp little rooms, to feel the 'rheu-
matiz' growing on him year by year;
to drink the polluted water of It's
shallow well; to see his children
stricken by diphtheria, and no train
or motor car to bring the one doctor
who administers the widely spread dis
trict; or to have scarlet fever in the
room, with the one little window,
| where the whole family-man, woman,
and children-sleep We wonder If
Mr.. Weekes ever read any of the old
parish records of the era that preceded
the Introduction of machinery, when
| England was Merrie England them
according to the poetic and picturesque
legend. How the rural laborers, OF
whose enviable lot he speaks so en-
on the verge Of famine; how a very
considerable part Of the rural popula :
ton were in receipt Of parish relief
! and how hand-spun, hand-woven, and
hand clothing was so dear that
all but very few-the squire and the
parsOn and some others-looked for
ward to the tabled season of feasting
| and good cheer with dread Of the fros1
and snow that would be torture tc
starved bodies"
II That the work Of the mechanical in
| ventor has taken something from the
| rural picturesqueness, the writer &C.
knowledges. This, he says, has beer
| inevitable, and the right-minded en-
gineer regrets it; but he may fine
consolation in the thought that with
out 1.-The curse Of machinery" as ap.
| piled to printing, he would not have
! the opportunity of reading Mr.. Weeke's
| article in The Nineteenth Century. Tt
| quote his conclusions:
Indeed, when one comes to think
deeper, had it not been Mr.. weekes
lot to wander very far from the ma.
ture from when he came he, or his
equivalent contemporary, might, in.
stead Of writing philosophic disserta.
lions on the crumpling of rose-leaves
have been searching, in a state of ma
ture, the hedges and bitches for &
dinner Of frogs and caterpillars; while
the corporal embodiment of some DO.
tential engineer, proud in the posses.
sion Of flint AK might have beer
waiting on the other side Of the hedge
intent On more substantial meal"
PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE,
| Hnnasf c0,,r+shjo +ho oreo~