railroad, a steamship, an airplane. As we cut out useless parts and
simplify necessary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is
simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process starts with a
cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a simplifying of the
article. The start ought to be with the article. First we ought to find
whether it is as well made as it should be--does it give the best
possible service? Then--are the materials the best or merely the most
expensive? Then--can its complexity and weight be cut down? And so on.

There is no more sense in having extra weight in an article than there
is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. In fact, there is not as much.
For the cockade may help the coachman to identify his hat while the
extra weight means only a waste of strength. I cannot imagine where the
delusion that weight means strength came from. It is all well enough in
a pile-driver, but why move a heavy weight if we are not going to hit
anything with it? In transportation why put extra weight in a machine?
Why not add it to the load that the machine is designed to carry? Fat
men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as
though dead-weight fat increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of
the carriage of excess weight. Some day we shall discover how further to
eliminate weight. Take wood, for example. For certain purposes wood is
now the best substance we know, but wood is extremely wasteful. The wood
in a Ford car contains thirty pounds of water. There must be some way of
doing better than that. There must be some method by which we can gain
the same strength and elasticity without having to lug useless weight.
And so through a thousand processes.

The farmer makes too complex an affair out of his daily work. I believe
that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per
cent of the energy that he spends. If any one ever equipped a factory in