His estimate of the life of the nineteenth century made me catch my
breath a little; and I said feebly, "But the labour-saving machines?"

"Heyday!" quoth he. "What's that you are saying? the labour-saving
machines? Yes, they were made to 'save labour' (or, to speak more
plainly, the lives of men) on one piece of work in order that it
might be expended--I will say wasted--on another, probably useless,
piece of work. Friend, all their devices for cheapening labour
simply resulted in increasing the burden of labour. The appetite of
the World-Market grew with what it fed on: the countries within the
ring of 'civilisation' (that is, organised misery) were glutted with
the abortions of the market, and force and fraud were used
unsparingly to 'open up' countries OUTSIDE that pale. This process
of 'opening up' is a strange one to those who have read the
professions of the men of that period and do not understand their
practice; and perhaps shows us at its worst the great vice of the
nineteenth century, the use of hypocrisy and cant to evade the
responsibility of vicarious ferocity. When the civilised World-
Market coveted a country not yet in its clutches, some transparent
pretext was found--the suppression of a slavery different from and
not so cruel as that of commerce; the pushing of a religion no longer
believed in by its promoters; the 'rescue' of some desperado or
homicidal madman whose misdeeds had got him into trouble amongst the
natives of the 'barbarous' country--any stick, in short, which would
beat the dog at all. Then some bold, unprincipled, ignorant
adventurer was found (no difficult task in the days of competition),
and he was bribed to 'create a market' by breaking up whatever
traditional society there might be in the doomed country, and by
destroying whatever leisure or pleasure he found there. He forced
wares on the natives which they did not want, and took their natural