hands
brains down, and that directs the machinery of the world. The time of
alternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted
differently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principle
would be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, in
this evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for the
mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in
the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual
organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting
it at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out,
evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing
him for his own particular place.

CHAPTER X

THE MACHINE-TRAINERS

The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion.

The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery.

Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the cooeperative action of
individuals.

If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together
according to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by
putting them together according to their nature.

So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in
precisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. We
have thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexible
men-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and
instincts of the materials of which they are made.

We have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We have
let our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our iron
machines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in the
nature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men.

A man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that has
to be reproduced by somebody else.

In a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be
allowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own
acts.

In society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are individuals.
Society is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and upon
what each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself.

The result is, the first principle of success in constructing and
running a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man
who is, as we look him over and take him up, and pro