saving devices but
as substitutes for human initiative and effort. They have not, indeed,
saved labor to the advantage of labor itself, and they have
inhibited interest in production. Outside of business enterprise and
diplomacy--the political extension of business--mechanical devices
have lost the surprise reaction and resentment which they originally
set up. As a competitor with human labor they have established
themselves as its fit survivor. The prophesy of Theophrastus Such
seems to have been already fulfilled, and any new machine added to
those already in power in the Parliament of Machines can scarcely add
to the worker's sense of his own impotency. The business valuations
which were evolved out of craftsmanship and which were further
developed under the influence of the technology of the last century
and a half, emphasized the value of material force, and repressed
spiritual evaluations, such as the creative impulse in human beings.

Modern industrial institutions are developed by an exclusive
cultivation of people's needs and the desire to possess. They are
developed independently, as we have seen, of any need or desire to
create. The desire to possess is responsible for the production of a
mass of goods unprecedented and inconceivable a century and a half
ago. The actual production of all of these goods is unrelated to
the motive of men's participation in their production; the actual
production in relation to the motive is an incident. The sole reason
for the participation in the productive effort is not the desire for
creative experience or the satisfaction of the creative impulse; it
is not an interest in supplying the needs of a community or in the
enrichment of life; it is to acquire out of the store of goods all
that can be acquired for personal possession or consumption. There is
no more fundamental need than the need to consume; but for the common
run of men as a motive in the creation of wealth, it is shorn of
adventure, of imagination and of joy.

The ownership of many things, which mass production has made possible,
the intensive cultivation of the desire to own, has added another
element to the corruption of workmanship and the depreciation of its
value. Access to a mass of goods made cheap by machinery has had its
contributing influence in the people's depreciation of their own
creative efforts. As people become inured to machine standards, they
lose their sense of art values along with their joy