DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 254, 17 January 1928, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE MACHINE (Copyright , 1928) A LDOUS HUXLEY, grandson of the famous English scientist, says that modern machinery is ruining civilisation. He claims that it will put democracy on the junk heap, scrap our school and crucify culture by mass production, and all sorts of things. It is a relief to turn from this prophet of evil to the words of Secretary Davis at the National Labour Convention recently. The secretary said: “We know that the machine destroyed human slavery. It transformed the worker into a man. It has been said that but for the invention of machinery we should have a few kings and a body of lords and their armed retainers bossing the world. It was the machine that wiped out feudalism, created democracy and handed the average man more luxuries than kings enjoyed 300 years ago.” v There has always been an outcry from some high-brow source against the machine. Writers love to hark back to the good old days when mother wove the linsey-woolsey and the farmer ploughed behind a team of oxen instead of using a tractor. Some people always look back with a great deal of satisfaction to the days of mediaevalism. The facts, however, are against them. Humanity is much better off since the advent of the machine than before. Time was when the labourers of the spinning towns in England rose up and destroyed the spinning machines because they were taking jobs out of labouring men’s hands. Labour has learned better. The machine puts certain people out of jobs, but it replaces them at better jobs. Such wages as Henry Ford pays his workmen are unheard of in Europe, and the luxuries of an American home surpass the luxuries of the nobility abroad. Instead of smothering culture the machine - promotes it. It gives th ■ labouring class more leisure time, and culture is the product of labou . The time will probably come when the machine will do all of the i work of humanity and leave men free for higher things.