The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-06-23
THE FARMER AND
NEW MACHINERY
What Will Be Some of the
Conditions Ninety Years
Hence.
advertiser Correspondence. Copyright
by Frederic J. Haskin.)

advertiser Correspondence. Copyright
by Frederic J. Haskin.)
That the life of the world has chang
ed more in the last century than in a
thousand years before that time is di-
rectly due to the influence upon indus
try of the modern system of manufac-
turing When the butcher, the baker
and the candlestick maker passes off
the stage to make way for the Beef
Trust, the Cracker Trust and the Steel
Trust-the change affected every soul
! in Christendom. The development of
machinery and power which substi-
tutes the modern shoe factory for the
old fashioned cobbler's bench is respon-
/ sible for many changes, some of them
evil but most of them good. What
ever our private opinion may be as to
the preponderance of good or evil, tho
change has come and the era of in
dividuaI industry is as much part of
the memorable past as the reign of
Rameses II.
The full effects of the changes
wrought by the modern system of col
lective or social industry do not yet
appear. The United states is in the
front rank of the development by vir-
tue of its greater ingenuity in invent
ing machinery. 1t is passing through
transitory stage in which many ques-
tions are being discussed and few de-
termined. During the next ninety
necessary to a readjustment of life to
new industrial conditions will be COM
pleted. BY the year 1000 practically
every serious question affecting indus
try will have been settled, and the two
component factors of industry-capitaI
and labor-will be at peace.
The very first piece of machinery in
vented in the United States which
tended toward creating the modern
system of industry was provocative of
great evil, yet its good triumphed in
the end. When Eli Whitney made the
first cotton gin he undoubtedly be-
lieved he had invented great labor
saving device. But he did not foresee
that it would make the growing of cot
ton so profitable that it would restore
the dying institution of African sIav-
cry. He did not foresee that it would
plunge the American people into four
years of bloody internecine strife. He
did not foresee that it would inject into
the American politics of today never
settled race problem. Yet if it had not
been for the cotton gin the South would
not have planted cotton fields, slavery
would have died as it did in New Eng
land-of its own unprofitableness-and
the whole course of our national his
tory would have been different.
When the steam railroad first came
to take the place of the ancient wagon
road and towpath transportation
routes the advantages were so great
that the people everywhere willingly
From the increased facilities of trans
portation and communication resulted
the most modern development of in
dustry. Early in the century the fac
tory in which a hundred men worked
took the place of the hundred shops in
which one man worked. Then came
the second development in which a
hundred factories with a hundred men
in each We're consolidated under one
management-the trust was born.
Every political question which ex-
cites the people of this country in this
campaign year is direct product of
the invention of the steam railroad and
the second stage of collective or social
development of manufacturing. The
problems which resulted from the birth
of the cotton gin have been practically
settled. The problems resulting from
these later and infinitely more import
ant changes wrought by industrial de-
velopment will be settled long before
the American nation becomes full
grown in the year 1000.
While life and civilization depend
upon the farmer, the conditions of liv-
ing depend upon those industries which
we associate under the general heading
of Manufacturing" If the reader Of
this article Will look about him in the
room he is now occupying it is unlikely
. that he will see a single object which
would have been possible in its present
form to the America of ninety years
ago 1t is entirely probable that the
American of ninety years hence will be
unable to find anything of the vintage
of 1908 except in a museum.
Look about YOU The glass in the
window is made by a process entirely
unknown century ago 1t is much
| clearer, but it is also much more brit
| tie and much cheaper. Glassmaking
I