I stumbled upon this free gem from 1929 a few hours ago:
THIS UGLY
CIVILIZATION
by
RALPH BORSODI
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303c...i.toc.html
An appetizer:
If mankind is not to be made into appendages to machines, then domestic machines must be invented capable of enabling the home to meet the competition of the factory--the right kind of machinery must be used to free man from the tyranny of the wrong kind of machinery.
It is not the machine, therefore, but the factory which needs consideration at the hands of thoughtful people.
It is the factory, not the machine, which proliferates at a rate which man has found impossible to control, and which is so relentlessly mechanizing the whole of life and reducing all (except the relatively few blessed with administrative genius) to mere cogs in a gigantic industrial machine.
It is the factory, not the machine, which makes railroads and steamship lines absolute necessities and which makes city and country dependent upon our lines of mass-transportation.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is reducing all men and all commodities to a dead level of uniformity because the factory makes it impossible for individual men and individual communities to be self-sufficient enough to develop their own capacities.
It is the factory, not the machine, which destroys both the natural beauty and the natural wealth of man's environment; which fills country and city with hideous factories and squalid slums, and which consumes forests, coal, iron and oil with a prodigality which will make posterity look back upon us as barbarians.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the fact that we now make things primarily for sale rather than primarily for use; that we make things as cheaply as possible instead of as substantially as possible.
It is the factory, not the machine, which encourages wastefulness and which makes us measure products in terms of money instead of in terms of the labor involved in making them and the worth of the materials of which they are composed.
It is the factory, not the machine, which tends to decrease the number of men engaged in production and which condemns more and more people to the idiotic task of flunkeying for one another.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the class antagonisms and for the foolish and often bloody strikes which disgrace the supposedly enlightened and progressive industrialized countries.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is destroying the skilled craftsman to whom work is a means of self-expression as well as a means of support.
It is the factory, not the machine, which creates the citizen who lacks a sustained interest in government; which destroys the initiative and self-reliance of men by making them into mere machine-tenders and clerks in factory offices.
It is the factory, not the machine, which has transformed man from a self-helpful into a self-helpless individual and which has changed mankind from a race of participators in life to a race of spectators of it. By destroying the economic foundations of the home it has robbed men, women and children of their contact with the soil; their intimacy with the growing of animals, birds, vegetables, trees and flowers; their familiarity with the actual making of things, and their capacity for entertaining and educating themselves. If we live in flats and hotels, eat from tin cans and packages, dress ourselves in fabrics and garments the design of which we only remotely influence, and entertain ourselves by looking at movies, baseball and tennis and listening to singing arid music, it is due to the fact that we have applied the factory technique, not the machine technique, to sheltering, feeding, clothing, and entertaining ourselves.
Finally, it is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the extension of the soul-deadening repetitive labor that is the greatest curse of this civilization. Not only are the natural-born robots of the nation condemned to perform the same identical operation hour after hour and day after day, but those who are capable of creative work in the crafts, the arts and the professions are forced to conform to repetitive cycles because the factory leaves open no field in which they may exercise their talents and live. In some cases it entirely destroys the market for their services; in others, it limits the market to a small part of what it should be in a great civilization. We have a great market only for the mass-producers of culture--for mass-art: rotogravure; for mass-literature: newspapers and magazines; for mass-drama: movies. This is the ugliest crime of which the factory, not the machine, is guilty. Accepting the democratic dogma that the individual, no matter how gifted, must be subordinate to the welfare of the mass, mankind is forgetting that the destruction of conditions which make it possible for superior individuals to impose their tastes upon society means the destruction of any really desirable way of life for all of the race.
THIS UGLY
CIVILIZATION
by
RALPH BORSODI
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303c...i.toc.html
An appetizer:
If mankind is not to be made into appendages to machines, then domestic machines must be invented capable of enabling the home to meet the competition of the factory--the right kind of machinery must be used to free man from the tyranny of the wrong kind of machinery.
It is not the machine, therefore, but the factory which needs consideration at the hands of thoughtful people.
It is the factory, not the machine, which proliferates at a rate which man has found impossible to control, and which is so relentlessly mechanizing the whole of life and reducing all (except the relatively few blessed with administrative genius) to mere cogs in a gigantic industrial machine.
It is the factory, not the machine, which makes railroads and steamship lines absolute necessities and which makes city and country dependent upon our lines of mass-transportation.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is reducing all men and all commodities to a dead level of uniformity because the factory makes it impossible for individual men and individual communities to be self-sufficient enough to develop their own capacities.
It is the factory, not the machine, which destroys both the natural beauty and the natural wealth of man's environment; which fills country and city with hideous factories and squalid slums, and which consumes forests, coal, iron and oil with a prodigality which will make posterity look back upon us as barbarians.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the fact that we now make things primarily for sale rather than primarily for use; that we make things as cheaply as possible instead of as substantially as possible.
It is the factory, not the machine, which encourages wastefulness and which makes us measure products in terms of money instead of in terms of the labor involved in making them and the worth of the materials of which they are composed.
It is the factory, not the machine, which tends to decrease the number of men engaged in production and which condemns more and more people to the idiotic task of flunkeying for one another.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the class antagonisms and for the foolish and often bloody strikes which disgrace the supposedly enlightened and progressive industrialized countries.
It is the factory, not the machine, which is destroying the skilled craftsman to whom work is a means of self-expression as well as a means of support.
It is the factory, not the machine, which creates the citizen who lacks a sustained interest in government; which destroys the initiative and self-reliance of men by making them into mere machine-tenders and clerks in factory offices.
It is the factory, not the machine, which has transformed man from a self-helpful into a self-helpless individual and which has changed mankind from a race of participators in life to a race of spectators of it. By destroying the economic foundations of the home it has robbed men, women and children of their contact with the soil; their intimacy with the growing of animals, birds, vegetables, trees and flowers; their familiarity with the actual making of things, and their capacity for entertaining and educating themselves. If we live in flats and hotels, eat from tin cans and packages, dress ourselves in fabrics and garments the design of which we only remotely influence, and entertain ourselves by looking at movies, baseball and tennis and listening to singing arid music, it is due to the fact that we have applied the factory technique, not the machine technique, to sheltering, feeding, clothing, and entertaining ourselves.
Finally, it is the factory, not the machine, which is responsible for the extension of the soul-deadening repetitive labor that is the greatest curse of this civilization. Not only are the natural-born robots of the nation condemned to perform the same identical operation hour after hour and day after day, but those who are capable of creative work in the crafts, the arts and the professions are forced to conform to repetitive cycles because the factory leaves open no field in which they may exercise their talents and live. In some cases it entirely destroys the market for their services; in others, it limits the market to a small part of what it should be in a great civilization. We have a great market only for the mass-producers of culture--for mass-art: rotogravure; for mass-literature: newspapers and magazines; for mass-drama: movies. This is the ugliest crime of which the factory, not the machine, is guilty. Accepting the democratic dogma that the individual, no matter how gifted, must be subordinate to the welfare of the mass, mankind is forgetting that the destruction of conditions which make it possible for superior individuals to impose their tastes upon society means the destruction of any really desirable way of life for all of the race.
Deus vult!