And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has
been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is
something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a
machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of
course, the result of our property system and our system of
competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five
hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of
employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to
thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps
it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and
probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than
he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one
would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the
community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour,
all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant
conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us
in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of
steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and
do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery
competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve
man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of
machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is
asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying
cultivated leisure--which, and not labour, is the aim of man--or
making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply
contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will
be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that
civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there.
Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting
work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human