r for his
muscular service, but when we thus speak, we are thoughtless, stupid, or
insincere. What we look for in the worker is his _control_ of his muscles;
mechanical work is or can be replaced almost entirely by machinery. What
we will never be able to replace by machinery is a Man, because man
belongs to the level of a dimension above machinery. Engine-power, sun
man-power, and capital--mainly the work of the dead--are inanimate; they
become productive only when quickened by the time-binding energies of
living men and women. Then only are the results proportional to the ever
growing magnitude of exponential power. In nature's economy the
time-binders are the intelligent forces. There is none else known to us,
and from the engineer's point of view, Edison and the simplest laborer,
Smith or Jones, are basically the same; their powers or capacities are
exponential, and, though differing in degree, are the same in kind. This
may seem optimistic but all engineers are optimists. They deal only with
fact and truth. If they make mistakes, if their bridges break down, then,
no matter how clever their sophistry, they are adjudged criminal. Like
severity must be made the rule and practice toward all those who control
the institutions and great affairs of human society. Periodical
break-downs must be prevented. The engineers of human society must be held
responsible, as the bridge engineer is held to-day.

Things are often simpler than they appear at the first glance. There may
be fire and plenty of coal in a stove, yet no heat; the fire does not burn
well; an engineer will remove the natural causes of obstruction of the
natural process; even such a simple thing as the removal of ashes may
solve the problem. It seems simple enough. The truth is often clear and
simple, if only it be not obscured and complicated by sophistry.

"Capitalistic" reasoning and "Socialistic" reasoning--Nature does not know
such things. Nature has only one "reasoning" in all its functions. Our
falsifying of nature's laws makes the controversy. Socialism exists as an
_ism_ because Capitalism exists as an _ism_; the clash is only an
expression of the eternal law of action and reaction.

We are living in a world of wealth, a world enriched by many generations
of dead men's toil; between the lust of the one to _keep_ and the lust of
others to _get_, there is little to choose; such contentions of lust
against lust are _sub_-human--animalistic; such ethics i