African negro," he writes, "the British sub-man is in several respects
markedly inferior. He tends to be dull; he is usually quite helpless
and unhandy; he has, as a rule, no skill or knowledge of handicraft,
or indeed knowledge of any kind.... Over-population is a phenomenon
connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is mechanism which
has created conditions favorable to the survival of the unfit and the
elimination of the fit." The whole indictment against machinery is
summarized by Dr. Freeman: "Mechanism by its reactions on man and his
environment is antagonistic to human welfare. It has destroyed industry
and replaced it by mere labor; it has degraded and vulgarized the
works of man; it has destroyed social unity and replaced it by social
disintegration and class antagonism to an extent which directly
threatens civilization; it has injuriously affected the structural
type of society by developing its organization at the expense of the
individual; it has endowed the inferior man with political power which
he employs to the common disadvantage by creating political institutions
of a socially destructive type; and finally by its reactions on the
activities of war it constitutes an agent for the wholesale physical
destruction of man and his works and the extinction of human culture."

It is not necessary to be in absolute agreement with this diagnostician
to realize the menace of machinery, which tends to emphasize quantity
and mere number at the expense of quality and individuality. One thing
is certain. If machinery is detrimental to biological fitness, the
machine must be destroyed, as it was in Samuel Butler's "Erewhon." But
perhaps there is another way of mastering this problem.

Altruism, humanitarianism and philanthropy have aided and abetted
machinery in the destruction of responsibility and self-reliance among
the least desirable elements of the proletariat. In contrast with