New Britain herald., 1930-10-20
MINISTER DOES NOT
 FEAR MACHINE AGE
Has No Fear It Will Eventually
 Destroy Society

and civilization and the whole scheme of living have been changed thereby. there is no danger of science creating a Frankenstein monster which will eventually destroy so- ciety, according to Rev. Theodore A. Greene. pastor of the First Con- gregational church.
 In sermon on God and the Machine" yesterday morning, Rev. Mir. Greene pointed out that baci. of all machinery there lies the per- sonality of q human being. and that therefore any machine age of the present or future, must depend upon the human intellect.
 He continued:
 50 far as this city and this church are concerned, practically all of us depend for our bread and butter upon the machine age and it's pro- ducts. For us, therefore. there is no denying of the fact that this is a machine age and ours is machine city. Take fo" example, a single day in the life of any man of aver age means in this city.
 "The first thing he hears in the morning is a machine, a patented alarm clock. It calls and he obeys. But, if he does not. feel like obey ing, he can touch it on the back and it relapses into silence. He arises and goes into the bathroom, warmed already by an electric heater. There. after lathering his face, he takes a second machine, inserts a piece of pigskin between the rollers, moves it briskly up and down and shortly scrapes his face with it. Then, as sisted by various mechanical inven- tions, an oil furnace or motor Stoker, an electric stove, toaster, or copper-coffee percolator, as the case may be, he proceeds to warm his house and cook his breakfast. Be- fore he leaves home. the whine ot the vacuum cleaner is already in his ears. He then takes another ma chine, starts a series of explosions in six or eight cylinders of an ln- ternal combustion engine and sets out for the office or the shop. With foot and hand he pilots this machine down street. passing or halting be- fore three sets of automatic signal lights as he proceeds. But why should l prolong the story? Are we not all the slaves or masters Of .aachinesr And must we not all submit to daily drudgery, aided and abctted or tied hand and foot to the machinery which we have made!
 The hours of our slavery or de- pendefce on machines will vary, ot course. with our calling. 1 suspect that on the distaff side, the modern housewife lives and works as much by machinery as her husband. Be that as it may, most of us do not appear to be suffering from what the psycopathic doctors call pro longed monotonies, fatigues, and re- pressions.'
 Probably our worst moments with machines arc confined to dodg ing traffic downtown, listening to it's roar by day and night. or perhaps performing the committal service, dust to dust, ashes to ashes every morning and evening for the fam fly furnace.
 "The depressions which we' con- monly suffer from direct contact with machinery are certainly com pensated by the helping hand which it holds out We do not often feel like slaves, however we may appear to others. Our clocks and watches are still hard masters, to be sur2. But so they have always been. There is nothing n,yw or ominous about their -.sya-ar,ly. No individual liv- ing in social groups is ever free, except within a limited area. But l wonder, seriously now, if our mechanical hours today put more shackles on us than were to De found on the average citizen of Rome in the year l A. D. or in the year 900 A. D. in China? Certain ly. both these cultures were largely innocent of engines as we know them today. Yet, you and I man age to keep our ideas that God is good and that the universe is friendly. Some of us, it may be, py the very nature of our daily bus. ness in this industrial city are occu- pied 10 hours a day with the oper- ations and products of machines and yet I wonder if for us this ma chine age is as bad as it is pictured
 There is no denying, of course that the minds of Henry Adams and many other thoughtful men today are troubled by the question, "li God in the saddle or the machine :! There is no doubt others are puzzled by it's corallary, Is man the master of the machine, which he has made CT has it mastered him?' At least three points of view on this smuch mooted question deserve some rec ognition here in our picture.
 First. there come those writers who are afraid of this machine civ ilzation and do not hesitate to say 50. Samuel Butler was the father of them all But I will pass by his 'Erewhom' here. and cite more modern critic. E. M. Forster, as he pictures the bitter end of our mo- chanical evolution in a single grl- phic paragraph from The Machine Stops
 Imagine, if you can, a small room, heXagonal in shape, like the cell of bee. It is lighted neither by window or by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance Ther: are no apertures for ventilation. yei the air is fresh. There are no musi- cal instruments and yet the air is throbbing with melodious sounds An arm chair is in the center, by its side reading desk. In the arn char sits woman about five feet high with a face as white as a fun. gus. It is to her that this room be, longs. There are buttons anl