against machinery is
summarized by Dr. Freeman: "Mechanism by its reactions on man and his
environment is antagonistic to human welfare. It has destroyed industry
and replaced it by mere labor; it has degraded and vulgarized the
works of man; it has destroyed social unity and replaced it by social
disintegration and class antagonism to an extent which directly
threatens civilization; it has injuriously affected the structural
type of society by developing its organization at the expense of the
individual; it has endowed the inferior man with political power which
he employs to the common disadvantage by creating political institutions
of a socially destructive type; and finally by its reactions on the
activities of war it constitutes an agent for the wholesale physical
destruction of man and his works and the extinction of human culture."

It is not necessary to be in absolute agreement with this diagnostician
to realize the menace of machinery, which tends to emphasize quantity
and mere number at the expense of quality and individuality. One thing
is certain. If machinery is detrimental to biological fitness, the
machine must be destroyed, as it was in Samuel Butler's "Erewhon." But
perhaps there is another way of mastering this problem.

Altruism, humanitarianism and philanthropy have aided and abetted
machinery in the destruction of responsibility and self-reliance among
the least desirable elements of the proletariat. In contrast with
the previous epoch of discovery of the New World, of exploration
and colonization, when a centrifugal influence was at work upon the
populations of Europe, the advent of machinery has brought with it a
counteracting centripetal effect. The result has been the accumulation
of large urban populations, the increase of irresponsibility, and
ever-widening margin of biological waste.

Just as eighteenth century politics and political theories were unable
to keep pace with the economic and capitalistic aggressions of the
nineteenth century, so also we find, if we look closely enough, that
nineteenth century economics is inadequate to lead the world out of the
catastrophic situation into which it has been thrown by the debacle
of the World War. Economists are coming to recognize that the purely
economic interpretation of contemporary events is insufficient. Too
long, as one of them has stated, orthodox economists have overlooked
the important fact that "human life is dynamic, that change, m