152 FOR BETTER CROPS 



government, and-the struggle for deliverance from the tyranny 

 of despotic nature, are manifestations of the same craving after 

 independence and individual sovereignty. There is a close kin- 

 ship between the spirit which combats the arbitrary authority 

 of man over man, and the spirit which seeks to establish the 

 mastery of man over material agents. Free institutions do not 

 quench man's intuitive ambition for power; they rather tend to 

 substitute a different object for that ambition — power to serve 

 the race instead of power to oppress it — power to invent mechan- 

 ical agents instead of power to enthrall human agents— conquest 

 over nature rather than conquest over mankind. 



When it began to be recognized that the authority which 

 kings had for centuries exercised under the solemn awe of 

 "divine right" rested rather upon the ignorance and subser- 

 vience of their subjects, it was natural to inquire whether the 

 fetters which nature seemed to have placed on primitive man 

 might not yield to his intelligence, whether he might not domi- 

 nate each and make its force responsive to his commands 

 through the instruments which his will should summon into 

 action and direct to his service. The complete realization of 

 man's independence required that inanimate substitutes should 

 supplant the liberated slave or serf in the irksome and menial 

 tasks. So long as food and raiment and whatever contributes to 

 sustenance, cultivation, and development, are procurable only 

 through the unaided toil of the individual, each is limited to the 

 most meager necessaries of life. Facilities for education and 

 refinement, and the leisure which they require, were in centuries 

 past possible only through the forced servitude of the many to 

 the few. The inventor of machines prepared the way for politi- 

 cal emancipation and deserves to share the honor which is freely 

 accorded political liberators. He has multiplied artificial ser- 

 vants until the average citizen to-day enjoys the service of a 

 corps of mechanical slaves more efficient, more capable, and 

 more subservient to the will of the master, than the gangs of 

 human chattels which served the planters of the South fifty 

 years ago, or the retinue of vassals that ministered to the barons 

 of medieval Europe. 



We little realize the extent to which we are served by mechan- 

 ical servants, the extent to which they relieve man from the 

 more burdensome forms of physical toil, and promote him to a 

 sphere where his mental faculties rather than his physical 

 strength measure his earning capacity. If we were to banish 

 the labor-saving machines which invention has provided, we 

 would abandon civilization and reduce ourselves to a condition 

 far more intolerable than that of the primitive savage, for we 

 should have his limitations imposed upon the craving and aspira- 

 tion to which he was a stranger. An invention, such as the 

 reaping machine, which blazed the trail to higher achievement, 



