A grim portrayal of the merciless power of predatory wealth, which crushes the life and aspiration of mankind, both its youth and its maidenhood. (A painting by George Frederick Watts.) MAN CHAPTER I THE MAN AND THE MACHINE 1. The Tool Maker AN has been called the tool-making and toolusing animal. Among living creatures, he alone has supplemented his powers by the use of tools. The tool augments man's possibilities. "Without tools, he is nothing; with tools, he is all," writes Carlyle. Ideas, taking shape in the tool, have placed man far in the lead of his competitors. Even the king of beasts falls an easy victim to his weapons. With neither defensive armor nor offensive powers, man, without tools, must rank as one of the weakest of earth's inhabitants. Armed with the tool, he is able to place all living things under his domination. Nature and all of her creatures bow before the toolmagic. The kingdom of man rests upon the tool, which, in its turn, depends upon the thumb, the forefinger and the forehead. Among all the animals, none, except man and the man-like apes, can place the end of the thumb against the ends of all of the fingers; therefore, except for the anthropoids, no animal can make or successfully use a tool. This mechanical possibility, guided by the light of intelligence that burns in the frontal lobe of the brain, organized and co-ordinated through man's reason, has built civilization. The tool gives man his power over the universe. He fashions the tool; wields it; owns it. A sense of possession goes with the fashioning of the tool. The savage who hollowed his canoe from the log or chipped the flint for his spear head owned the thing he had made. It was his because he fashioned it. Men love the work of their hands, because their hands have done the work. The man who wields a tool feels the power of his mastery. It is his. Backed by the strength of his arm and guided by the light of his brain, it pulsates to its task. He pushes, swings, pulls, directs. The tool user is master of his tool. Ownership carries with it a sense of proprietorship. The man has fashioned and wielded the tool. He owns it. It is his. The title, the right of possession remains in the man to whom the tool belongs. The power of the tool, backed by man's master guidance, is the title to his kingdom. He has the earth. He has been told to master it and possess it. 2. The Tool and the Machine The modern tool is the machine. Ever since the first rude wooden spear was fashioned, ever since the first fish bone was shaped into a needle, the first clay was molded into a bowl, and the flint was chipped and fitted to the arrow; from the most primitive beginnings down to the present day, man has been perfecting the tool. He has seen in it new possibilities and dreamed into it new wonders of invention. Only yesterday, the man made, wielded and owned the tool. Today—what transformation! The tool has left the narrow confines of its age-long prison and appeared in its true form as a machine. Between the tool and the machine there is this most fundamental difference. The tool user fashioned, wielded and owned the tool; the machine user neither fashions nor wields his machine. Robert Burns describes the cotter, leaving his work on Saturday night. He "collects his spades, his mattocks and his hoes," throws them over his shoulder and trudges homeward. How unlike this is the picture presented by modern industry. Even on the farm, in these last few years, the mattocks and hoes have yielded place to plows, cultivators, potato diggers, seeders and a host of other horse-power machinery that performs the work that was formerly the product of the cotter's back and arms. Carry the parallel one step further and make it in terms of industry. "Collects his electric cranes, locomotive engines, steam rollers and blast furnaces.” The words bespeak the contrast. Electric cranes, locomotive engines, steam rollers and blast furnaces are machines-intricate, huge, costly. They are the product of an age-long evolu |