Science and Industry 



comforts and the luxuries, the smaller size, the 

 fluctuating and irregular character, of the markets 

 limit the economical use of machinery, the highest 

 forms of luxury containing, as a rule, a minimum 

 of machine production. The difference is well 

 exhibited in the book-industry, where, side by side 

 with the most elaborated machine productions, we 

 have a demand for books made of hand-made 

 paper, with hand-made type, printed, folded, and 

 bound by handicraftsmen. 



The mechanisation of all carrying processes, with 

 the attendant abolition of beasts of burden and of 

 draft, has no assignable limit. Confined at first 

 to large routine traffic along main roads of com- 

 merce, it extends its area until the most irregular 

 demands of individuals are supplied by public or 

 private transport companies, operating huge areas 

 by their minutely reticulated services. When to 

 the mechanical distribution of water and lighting 

 we add the modern telegraphic and telephonic 

 apparatus, we recognise that the largest single 

 service science has rendered to modern man lies 

 in the mechanisation of processes of transport ; 

 by extending, quickening, regularising, securing, 

 and cheapening the carriage of men, materials, 

 and information, it has within three generations 

 enlarged enormously the liberty of man. 



Refractory and irregular materials or conditions 

 of work have prevented so large a standardisation 

 of the extractive as of the manufacturing arts. 

 Agriculture and mining can never be reduced to 



mere routine ; for in the one case the production 



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