The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 29

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Wr-- -in 111 1,11 -yt'1 -Mi mrTfyw ir ii i.iHi wn i 1 mi a THIS IS THE DEVOURING MONSTER INVENTED BY TECHNOCRACY am come that they might have life, and that they might liave. it more abundantly." HOSE words, from the tenth verse, i tenth chapter of St. John, apply to modern machinery. It has come not "to kill and to destroy," but that men may "have life, and that they may have it more "Technocracy" is the bugbear that frightens some modern minds, an ingenious invention that lends passing notoriety to a few, the excuse of the feeble. The greatest blessing of mankind, THE POWER OF MACHINERY, is, called by technocracy the cause of all our woes, industrial, financial.

We produce TOO MUCH, therefore, we are unhappy. Men have invented machines that free them from the slavery of pick and shovel, ax and broom, and so they lack work and are hungry. Nothing could be more preposterous than technocracy's teachings. Machinery, science, inventive genius are blessings. But we do not know how to use them or control them and make them what they should be THE SALVATION OF MANKIND.

that the ghost of her grandmother might reside in one of those flies. She is wrong about that, and technocracy it wrong. It is your duty to read all that you can on the subject of technocracy. To know and judge FOR YOURSELF if the only way. Mr.

Scott tells you that the United States has installed one thousand million horsepower of machinery, and if all that were operated at full capacity, night and day, "its out. put would be equivalent to the hump.n labor of over five times the present total world population." In other words, United States' machinery alone could produce five times as much as all the human beings in the world could produce by their own labor. SO MUCH THE BETTER. The people of the United States NEED five times as much as all the people in the world could produce by their own labor. We need, in good times, and should have in all times, five to eight million new automobiles a year.

All the skillsd mechanical labor in the world, fifty years ago, could not have produced our present supply of automobiles. Is that any reason why we should walk instead of riding? Sawing by hand, Mr. Chase tells you, two mei can cut out six boards in one day's hard work, while two men with a power gang saw can cut "60.000 feet of boards a day, and the hardest work they do is to press an electric button. Their output would construct four six-room houses." This country needs MANY six-room houses, and press-ing that electric button, as experienced carpenters will tell you, is more pleasant work than sawing out boards by hand. Also, "in the boiler room of the liner California three white uniformed firemen, presiding over valves and gauges, replace the usual fire room crew of 120 men." Indeed? Which is better three men comfortably at.

tending to their work as engineers or 120 miserably-paid, half-naked slaves shoveling coal into a furnace? Three cheers for technocracy! IT FREES SLAVES. The frrat technocracy threat conn down to thit. Men' engineering lei It. innti powef advance rapidlr. Me' generoaity, their detire to help their fellow advance SLOWLY.

Industry, business, civilisation, human happiness are no! threatened by machinery, but by HUMAN SELFISHNESS, which is fastened to industry, holding it back like a ball and chain tached to the leg of a prisoner. Eventually civilisation will end selfishness, lose iU interest in mere money accunvilation, forever seeking more than it need. A race that ha ende3 cannibalism, slavery, torture of witnesses, imprisonment for debt will gradually repUce SELFISHNESS with ALTRUISM, and there will be then no mors "technocracy problem." Meanwhile, shall get out of thia depression, then into another, and so on, with gradual, steady improvement, and real civilization IN THE END. The things that menace human happiness aro IGNORANCE AND SELFISHNESS. They will not last foreverj men ara grad.

u.lly becoming civilized. They will take pride in that human beings need, rather than getting MORE THAN In NEED FOR THEMSELVES. Ignorance, meanness, grasping selfishness will pass away. Sc.ence and its noble product, irachmery, will remain. And th hum.n race will be a happy race, free from slavery, poverty.

aa aad (ear. Millions of women sat, straining: their eyes, sewing by hand. The sewing- machine set them free. It was a great blessing. Now you are asked to believe that this invention was, in reality, A CURSE.

The farmer, far from the city or town, lived in isolation. Insane asylums were filled with farmers' wives, alone all day, with men in the fields. Then came rural mail delivery, that improved conditions; then the telephone, enabling isolated farmers to talk to their neighbors. Then, equally marvelous, came the automobile, that brought every farm near the city, the mountains and the water. And with these magnificent inventions and endless others began the real era of civilization.

And yet you are asked to believe that all this is a curse, the terrible curse of machinery. "Technocracy" means the rule of technical skill and machinery, inventive genius and modern high production methods ruling the world, destroying our ocial and industrial systems by enabling machines to do all the work, making human labor unnecessary. In brief, technocracy means MACHINES CROWDING OUT MEN. More and more about technocracy will be used as an excuse for everything hard times, depression, lack of em- ployment, foreclosed mortgages, railroads in collapse, threat of revolution, and heaven knows what. To pay no attention to technocrat warnings would be folly.

On the other hand, to accept literally the technocrats' dreadful prophecies would be to give up hope and admit that civilization is to be destroyed by its own intelligence and science. According to technocracy, machines have been developed so fast that men are deprived of work. National prosperity demands that a great deal of money shall be earned and a great deal spent. Men with no work have no money to spend. Machines have driven them from their tasks, and, therefore, civilisation itself is in danger.

For modern purposes, the technocracy "scare" started when Veblen. learned American economist, published his book. "The Engineers and the Price System," fourteen years ago. After Veblen, who attracted little attention, cauia nothing to do, they will starve. To make such a machine is a crime." The inventor destroyed his model.

"Somebody else made a sewing machine and where one woman formerly sewed with a needle, ten are using a sewing machine today and earn ten times as much as the old sewing woman got, on the average, although one electrically-driven sewing machine can do in an hour what one sewing woman could do in a week. Stuart Chase, usually a level-headed observer, hastily admits that "human labor is beginning to pr.ss out of the picture," because "in an automobile selling for S3000 the direct labor cost was found to be $180 a beggardly six per cent of the whole price." That is true, and it is also true that in the United States ten men can produce as many automobiles as it takes one hundred men to produce in England. BUT the American automobile industry created FOUR MILLION NEW JOES, AT GOOD WAGES, by creating a dsmand for twenty-five million automobiles now running in the United States. Technocracy and this civilization will discover that public needs, the demands for luxury, pleasure, improvement, will increase even more rapidly than the productive-power of machines. Our depression is only an interruption.

It will pass. Technocracy tells the human race to shiver and tremble. WHY? Because a day may come when men will have leisure to think, read, look at the sky, study the stars, enjoy the company of their children, travel and see the earth. In Egypt, for centuries, women carried water on their shoulders in huge jars. When "technocracy" developed "an infernal machine," a water wheel that enabled two or three natives to pump hundreds of gallons of water on their land, there was doubtless much shaking of heads.

What do the Egyptians say now, with England budding gisrrntic rlms, water flowing onto the land and into houses bv The Egyptian mother for ages h's rcfned to brush disease-carrying flies from the eyes of her baby, believing Howard Scott, who Is to modern technocrats what Mohammed was to Allah. He wrote a technocracy "Koran," that frightens some of our "best minds," able to think a little, not very much. A small pamphlet by Stuart Chase, called "Technocracy, an Interpretation," published by the John Day Company for 25 cents, will tell you all you want to know about technocracy up to date. It will frighten only those that let others do their thinking for them. A Greek philosopher said slavery was necessary, because without slaves there could be no intelligent class with leisure for philosophy, art and science.

He did not know that machines, the "technocracy that frightens geese," would replace slaves of flesh and blood, and eventually give leisure to all. The idea back of technocracy is older -than Veblen, Scott or Chase, older than the Constitution of the United States which, according to some technocrats, is threatened by technocracy; older even than the banking system, which technocrat tell you must succumb when technocracy forces us to give up gold, silver, money that we know, and replace it with units of electric force. So many nnits of electric force for a pair of shoes. The first bow and arrow started technocracy talk. Wise old men of the tribe, seeing "that modern machine," predicted ruin for young men.

"They will get game too. easily, there will be too much meat, not" enough hunting. Young men of the tribe will no longer be able to run down the game. What shall we do with all our young men when ten men, with bows and arrows, can supply the camp with food? Ninety per cent of our young men will be idle, nothing to do, and all the game will be killed off soon." Civilization has overcome that bow and arrow difficulty; even the repeating rifle has not killed off all the game, or made young men idle. Another "technocrat" was the wife of the man who first invented the sewinj machine.

She h'm: "Your machine will take work from poor sewing women. With.