see and her fingers have become stiffened.

But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really enjoy being a slave
driver, either of human or animal slaves, although he can be hardened to
it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He
prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses.
He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
bending his back over a scythe.

The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler
also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An
aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and
distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or
costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence
the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles
and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well
dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made
clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There
is often no difference perceptible to the ordinary eye between cheap and
high-priced clothing once the price tag is off. Jewels as a portable
form of concentrated costliness have been in favor from the earliest
ages, but now they are losing their factitious value through the advance
of invention. Rubies of unprecedented size, not imitation, but genuine
rubies, can now be manufactured at reasonable rates. And now we may hope
that lace may soon be within the reach of all, not merely lace of the
established forms, but new and more varied and intricate and beautiful
designs, such as the imagination has been able to conceive, but the hand
cannot execute.