§ 12

I remember the arrival of a threshing machine into “the street” of one of the most attractive villages in Kent, Otford. It was greeted with stones; the people did not want the noisy, smoking monster which was to take pleasant and healthy labour from so many. And they were right! The flail no longer threshes, reapers no longer reap, the sickle and scythe are rarely seen in the fields now, the plough is rarely drawn by oxen and horses. Machinery does it all now, and hundreds of thousands of agricultural labourers have had their work grabbed from them. Who can wonder, then, that Agriculture is understocked while Industrialism is overstocked? Hundreds of miles of corn-growing land are in disuse, waste land, once glowing with golden corn; a land of ashes and unproductive has taken its place. Where orchards stretched for miles once, flowering and fruiting abundantly, hideous factories have risen, belching out foul smoke destructive to man, beasts and vegetation. Where once copses, even small forests were, now a few skeletons, black and blasted, remind us of the beauty that was and the devastation that is. Rivers and lakes which once sparkled with clean water under a bright sun, whose pools were filled with salmon and trout, have become little better than sewers. A greasy scum thickens the once glittering surface, and not a fish can live in its natural element, and, moreover, the water is poisoned, so we may not drink it. The spread of Industrialism means the spread of poison—poisoned land, water, and air, which, if not checked now, will cause serious deterioration of the health of England. When England was mainly agricultural, rosy-cheeked maidens and well-bronzed youths attested a healthy, vigorous life. Now, under Industrialism, the girls and youths are pale, sad-looking, and unhealthy. Why? Agricultural life is natural, industrial life is artificial! Of what use is money to a nation deprived of vigour and health? Rather is it an incubus than an incentive to real progress. Ill-health means idleness, slackness and inefficiency. Nothing can compensate for its departure.

But it is not the body only that suffers; it is the soul of the nation that is in danger. Discontent is caused by mental distress, unsatisfied and perfectly justified longings which are inherited or spontaneous are blunted. Be the purse full of gold, be every physical sense gratified thereby, the hunger of the soul for more enlightenment, for more joy, for higher enterprise will continue, and the whole being, even that part which is physical, will suffer. The atmosphere of factory life is bleaching bodies and souls wherever it is in the ascendant; the people become hollow-cheeked, their manners surly, their wits atrophied. They are not free, they are slaves to Plutus. So sensitive to environment is the mind of man, even at the simplest and least initiated, that it grows in harmony with its employment. In constant touch with machinery a man becomes like his machine! Iron enters in his soul. He becomes a kind of bolt or screw, a wedge or wheel. No wages, however high, can compensate for what industrial life has robbed. The greater cities and towns hardly know of the fields of Enna or the paradise that God made. They think, if they think at all, that the filthy air they breathe, the hideous smoke under whose canopy they exist but don’t live, is “alright,” and that there is nothing else.

And yet somehow, although perhaps they cannot define it, they feel a want, a yearning for something better, and it is that which makes their souls discontented, hard, and unsympathetic. Their souls are caged as the soaring eagle is caged in a menagerie. Cinders, refuse, evil smells, foul air; instead of flowers, the life-giving sun, pure air, and sweet scents of spring. God made these, the descendants of Tubal Cain made the others. Their birthright has been seized by jerry builders, exploiting companies, who care just about as much for the people as a butcher cares for the animal whose throat he is about to cut. To keep the industrial slave in a good humour he is treated to unhealthy excitement of cinema shows, which to “catch on” must partake of the Newgate Calendar, or if any Art is presented to him it must be “of his level.” Of his level?

Is that the attitude to be assumed by those who should know better? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to kill a soul, but it can be wounded and degraded till it is seemingly dead, has lost all power of progression, and, like a wingless bird, can only creep on the earth. And that is what an artificial life does, first to an individual, then, in time, to a whole nation.