rs--noted
how a new labor-saving device threw out so many men at a time. I looked
back at the development of machinery and saw that a very large part of
machinery is driven by steam-power, which meant largely coal-power, and
I knew with the getting and burning of the coal there was not only a
terrible waste of human labor, but 90 per cent. of the heat generated
escaped unused, and not more than 5 per cent. of the stored energy in
the coal became available for human needs. Even the finest quadruple
expansion engines, with all the modern devices for super-heated steam to
augment their capacity, did not utilise more than 15 per cent. We
engineer workers knew that if an engine were invented to economise this
waste there would be a further reduction of labor--and this device came.
It came in the Diesel motor."

"This wonderful engine meant the production of power from crude oil at a
cost of one-eighth of a penny to a farthing per horse-power, far beyond
the economy of any other form of engine and five times cheaper than the
ordinary steam engine. Its only rival was water-power--and water-power
is not everywhere.

"We could see, at no distant day, nine-tenths of the workers of the
world supplanted by the machine! We could see that new labor-saving
machinery would mean a fearful catastrophe in the labor markets of the
world. Think of it. We could see wonderful engines, put together by the
hands of the workers in the factories, pushing out the useless laborer,
pushing him out into the crowded avenues of unemployed. We could see
this awful Frankenstein of machinery--a huge soulless metal monster,
stalking through the world, bringing starvation, anarchy and destruction
in its wake. 'It should not be--it must not be,' we said, and lots were
drawn."

Then he stopped short and sat upon a bank at the roadside.

I watched him stare in thought at an ant creeping over a twig at his
feet.

"Well?" I said.

He started and looked at me with lowered head. He peered at me beneath
his long grey eyebrows and quietly whispered--"Diesel had to die."

"Then he was killed!" I said, starting up. I remembered he had
mysteriously disappeared in October, 1913.

"Yes," he replied, "and it was my task."

He turned from me and looked across the peaceful Rhine. In the silence
faint booms seemed to come from the western battlefield, but it may have
been the throbbing of my brain. I looked at the man with his hard-set
jaw and quivering lips.