Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-12-07
THIRTY SLAVES
Bv DR.. Frank Crane

There is something picturesquely ap-
pealing in slavery. Most of us in our I'M
restrained moments have dreamed Of own
ing a slave or two, just somebody we
could browbeat or kick on the shins with
impunity, and thus give vent to our
tyranny complex, if Mr. Freud recognizes
such in his list of suppressed cussednesses.
1t therefore gives us certain psyche
logical relief to read in the Motor Truck
company's "Sales Generator" that science
proves every person has thirty slaves
To wit: "Take away all our machinery
and steam and electrical power, and it
would require 3,000,000,000 Woodworking
slaves to duplicate the work done by Amer
leans. The use of power and machinery
gives to every man, woman. and child in
our country the equivalent Of thirty slaves
This is figured out in the latest bulletin
of the Smithsonian Institution.
"Why envy the nobleman, back In an
cient Egypt or Bagdad, with thirty slaves
toiling for him? He had swift running
slaves to bring him fish from the ocean
and bird tongues from the mountains.
Today, with a few dimes you can get
tin can of shrimp brought from Japan,
a package of dates from Syria, bag of
nuts from Brazil, sardines from Norway.
Your slaves-machinery and power-bring
them. a.
'Plenty of old settlers now living can
recall the days before matches, when they
ran a mile from the nearest ne1ghpor
with a shovelful of blazing Goals"
This brings to mind great silent law
of which we are not always aware, the
law that little by little the mechanical
forces of nature are doing away with the
necessity of the physical forces OF man
Man is essentially brain, just as Mr.
Wells showed the visitors from Mars In
his story to be so purely brains that they
were almost bodiless.
All the real use we have for our bodies
is to carry about our spirits. So FAR, We
have found no other spiritual containers.
Sir oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle
have hardly succeeded yet in Harvesting the
ectoplasm or other psychic vehicle
We are all spirits, and our bodies are
but tools, as typewriters and sewing ma
chimes are tools, although of greater ex-
cellence.
If we will only quit fighting each other,
If we spirits will only quit hating each
other and envying each other, and learn
the vastly greater efficiency and comfort
of cooperating with and loving each other'
we might be sitting around as the proper
lords of creation and making the robots Of
electricity, steam, and atomic energy 40
all our dirty work.
We already make the dumb giant OF
electricity carry our thought across con-
tinent instead of walking ourselves ana
delivering the message in person, ana qu1te
recently we nave devised podIS 1A"I NoA ~"
navigated without human crews, ana 10
comotives that can be run without an
engineer.
There is nothing improbable in the
prophecy that mere hand and foot labor
without intelligence will some day no longer
be needed, and that we shall be able by
pressing a button to have all our manual
work done, from the polishing OF our shoes
to the serving of our meals.
Human slavery will cease to exist in any
form when we have learned perfectly how
to enslave tue non-human forces.
For slaves we must have.
copyright, 1929 81 ISL