The New York herald., 1922-12-31

"As for the signals, it is no new criticism
nor one to be made solely of your company
that their visibility no longer corresponds
to the speed of the train. The speed has
always increased; the signals have not
been changed At night they are still
lighted with oil. These lamps do not give
sufficient light for trains moving at one
hundred kilometers an hour and of three
hundred tons burden. Between the moment
when one sees the light and that when one
reaches it it is impossible to check ade-
quately the speed of the train. The engi-
neers keep up to their schedules only
because they expect to find the signals
favorable. If they expected to find them
set against them they could never hold the
prescribed speed The safety of the train
depends upon the vision of a man. He has
other things to do as we'll as to watch the
track. He must care for his engine The
Federation of Engineers and Ffremen has
for long time been asking you to put
upon express trains an agent who will
have nothing to do but TO watch the track.
You are saving on personnel, and this
means all of a sudden the loss of fifty
lives"
l find much in "Un Nouvel Honneur"
which reminds me of Hamps previous
writings. but the distinguishing feature of
this last vOluEne lies in the peculiar de-
velopment given to an idea suggested in
one OF the passages quoted above, namely.
that work must occupy a higher position
in popular French esteem. Hamp here
lays greater stress upon the appeal which
work-the apparently ugly, uninspiring
work of modern industrial and commercial
nations-may have for the life of the
spirit. The discomfort of our time is
due' he writes, ito an increase in the ma
chinery Of the trades and decrease in
their spirituality. This distaste for all
the great tasks of civilization would de-
grade it, whereas in reality its aim is to
make civilization more powerful. We
must create a new faith in work" In Les
Meters Blesses" Hamp has recognized
that one of the great obstacles to the de-
velopment of trade and industry in France
has been the traditional cast of the French
mind. which is that of the artist and the
artisan. The French workman of the
old type dislikes the monotonous repeti-
ton of an unchanging mechanical act He
must satisfy his desire to create He must
feel that he is devoting himself to an ideal
In his new book Hamp carries further
his contention that this dislike of factory
production is the last phase of a mis-
taken crusade against machinery. Rather
than object TO the development of machin-
cry and of factory methods, the workman
should do what he can to favor them; for
they are one of the instruments of his
greater freedom. ITO perfect the mechan-
ism of industry is to free man from the
work of the slave. The machine which
seemed to John Ruskin a monster, op-
pressing the modern world. is the only
force capable OF abolishing the physical
slavery of humanity. One of the
shames of our time is not the machine
but the habit of debasing a human being
by making it do that which a machine
could do in its place. to allow a woman
of Paris to wound her body by dragging
a cart full of artichokes to Belleville when
a motor would do the same task in ten
minutes. The automobile. like the train. is