64 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



f. 



duction over the area of a continent and seeks to incor- 

 porate the world. 



The direct result of these changes has been that 

 articles in all lines of production are made more cheaply 

 in large factories with power machines than in the small 

 shops by hand labor. The demand for the latter, except 

 in some lines of artistic production, has ceased. The 

 master workman dismissed his journeyman and appren- 

 tices, and eventually betook himself with his household 

 to the city, to become factory operatives. 

 / The final outcome has been an almost inconceivably 

 great increase in material production, together with a 

 general advance in conditions of living, but with lament- 

 able failure to reap the full advantage in human welfare 

 of the new conditions. The strain of toil has been light- 

 ened, hours of labor have been shortened, scarcity of the 

 necessities of life has largely ceased; men are housed 

 and clad and fed with such comfort^nd plenty as our 

 forefathers never knew^" But at every step of the pro- 

 cess the persons displaced have suffered hardship. 

 Wealth has increased enormously, but an undue share 

 of the reward has gone into the hands of the few. New 

 realms are made subject to our command, but in the pro- 

 cess the human element has been too much disregarded. 

 A .system which gives us the automobile, but which also 

 gives us the rubber atrocities in Congo and Peru for the 

 sake of our automobile tires and wrongs more wide- 

 spread if not so deadly here at home demands control 

 in some way by the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. 

 Yet the modern industrial system is not the cause, 

 but merely the occasion of such failure. It has furn- 

 ished some with a greater engine of oppression than 

 any had ever before possessed, only because it has 



