It is to the advantage of private
business run for private gain, to control creative effort for the
purpose of appropriating the product, and to inhibit free creative
expression as an uncontrollable factor in the enterprise of
exploitation.
The appalling and wanton sacrifice of life which are incident to the
evolution of machinery and the division of labor seem to demand at
times their elimination. In weariness we are urged to retrace our
steps and go back to craftsmanship and the Guilds. But it is idle to
talk about going back or eliminating institutionalized features of
society. We cannot go back, we have not the ability to discard this or
that part of our environment except as we make it over. The result of
this making over might be vitalized by methods which had belonged
to earlier periods, but neither the methods nor the periods, we can
safely say, will live again. Neither our own nor future generations
will escape the influence of modern technology. It will play its part.
It may be a part which will lead away from some of the destructive
influences which developed in the era of craftsmanship and which
dominate the present. But a society too enfeebled to use its own
experience will not have the power to use the experience of another
people or of another time. It is beside the point to look to some
other experience or scheme of life and choose that because it seems
good, unless the choice is based on a people's present fitness to
adapt that other experience or other scheme of life to their own
experience.
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