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Show THE MACHINE. In a recent article, Dr. James S. Thomas, of the Commonwealth and Southern corporation, analyzed the machine's effect on mankind. Dr. Thomas' deductions are quite different from those of the critics of the machine, who blame it for all the ills of mankind from the Flood to the World War. He shows that it constitutes consti-tutes the basis of our modern economic eco-nomic world that it has liberated men from arduous tasks, not enslaved enslav-ed them; that during most of its brief history, it has created employment, not unemployment; that it has cut down accidents, not increased them; that it makes for wealth, comfort and a finer civilization, not a poorer one. During a recent period in American Ameri-can history, 1,957,000 people were displaced from jobs because of increased in-creased mechanical efficiency and at the same time new trades and professions, pro-fessions, largely resulting from the machine, gave jobs to 2,537,000 directly di-rectly and 2,000,000 indirectly. In 1401 years we increased our national income from $400,000,000 to $80,-000,000,000, $80,-000,000,000, and our national wealth from five hundred million to three hundred and seventy-five billion because be-cause of that machine. The machine, after all, is simply a medium to make use of natural forces. forc-es. It is part of evolution an inevitable inevit-able step in the march of the world from the Stone Age to the present and whatever may be in the future. And, after the debts and credits have all been entered, and the cancellations made, it is found that the machine has been the friend, not the enemy, of the "common man." |