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Darker Shadows : 
[May, 
Before boasting, as some of us are apt to do, of our 
“ labour-saving ” inventions,- — commonly so called, — let us 
remember that there are two distinct ways in which such 
appliances might have been utilised. We have made our 
choice of the one, and the other is no longer at our option. 
An illustration will make my meaning clearer. Let us go 
back to the time when factories were literally manufactories. 
In the village of Elsewhere dwells, say, a weaver, who, by dint 
of working at his hand-loom for twelve hours daily, contrives 
to earn that vague something which outsiders term a “ decent 
livelihood.” It is plain that he is one of those men above 
mentioned whose lives are in vain. When his daily toil is 
ended he has little scope, little ability for anything save rest 
in its extreme form of bodily and mental inaction. Let us 
now suppose that he invents and constructs a machine of 
which others are ignorant, by means of which he can get 
through his day’s work in six hours. He stands now at the 
crossway, and asks V To the right or to the left ?” A mo- 
ment, and he has decided to take the left-hand road. He 
resolves to do double the work he formerly did, to earn 
double the money, and to “ rise in the world.” I need not 
describe in detail all that ensues, since it has passed, and is 
still actually passing, before our eyes. Let us therefore return 
to the inventive weaver whom we left pondering at the cross- 
way. Suppose he turns to the right ! Suppose that he is 
content to earn the same amount of money as he did before 
— to live in the same plain style, and to employ his machine, 
not for increasing production, but literally for saving labour. 
Suppose that similar inventions are brought to bear in other 
trades, and are applied on the same principle. What then 
will be, or rather would have been, the result ? No very 
rapid increase of population or of wealth ; but a people vi- 
gorous, healthy, unworn with anxiety, working to live but 
not living to work, and possessing full opportunity for self- 
culture. Would not such a state of things have been pre- 
ferable to the feverish struggle into which we have been 
plunged ? 
I will now take a glance at some of the more prominent 
phases under which the failure of modern civilisation makes 
itself manifest. We have under its inspiration stript our 
own country, over a great and increasing part of its surface, 
of every beautiful feature. We have blackened its skies 
with smoke-clouds, polluted its air with sulphurous acid, 
filled its streams with liquid filth, covered its hills with 
“ spoil-banks,” blighted its green fields, cut down its woods, 
and extirpated many of its most lovely animal and vegetable 
