ART AND THE MACHINE 
(a reply to “the beauty of machine-made things,” published in the 
SEPTEMBER NUMBER OF HOUSE AND GARDEN) 
By WILLIAM L. PRICE 
I N the discussion of any subject, it is worth 
while to make one’s self reasonably clear 
as to the terms employed. To attack all 
machinery without ‘question of its powers or 
the method of its use, would be absurd, and 
to discuss the relative advantages of the 
hand-made and the machine-made article, 
without consideration of the effects on man¬ 
kind, both of the article made and the method 
of making it, upon the user and the maker, 
would seem to me to be equally a mistake. If 
there were no other questions involved than 
the number and design of our possessions, 
it might be easy to make out a good case 
for the machine per se, without any further 
discussion. It is evident that if the machine 
be set up to make a certain pattern of what 
is called a good design, it can make the 
article so designed in enormous quantities, 
which if properly distributed would give all 
great wealth in such things. If this is the 
end and aim of production, the more nearly 
automatic the machine can be made, the 
better. 
But some of us are not willing to admit 
that this is the end of man’s activities. Man 
was not born to live by bread alone. As 
soon as the pinching needs of the stomach 
are even partially satisfied, as soon as a rude 
shelter for the body has been fashioned, 
man sets his hopes upon something higher 
and beyond these things. The making of 
such crude objects to meet a pressing want 
has awakened at once the desire for devel¬ 
opment and has supplied the means by which 
he may grow. 
If we dig to the root of all man’s activ¬ 
ities and of his growth, we will find the desire 
for development. In creative thought and 
work we discover the method by which de¬ 
velopment comes. By this road and no other 
has man traveled up from the merest sav¬ 
agery to what we have of civilization today, 
and by this road shall the children of men 
reach the higher and higher planes of devel¬ 
opment from which they may, let us hope, 
see an unending succession of possibilities. 
Now the machine is an incident in this 
development, not an end to which it has 
attained ; and no thought of industrial rev¬ 
olution need fright us or bid us pause in 
our eternal questioning. No doubt the 
churchman of the Middle Ages thought 
that the rack and thumbscrew had come to 
stay, and that these were the only means by 
which Christ’s kingdom could be brought and 
maintained upon the earth, and that the good 
old order would pass away if the sacrilegious 
hand of the unelect should be raised against 
the tools of their heavenly craft. The machine 
is the expression of some man’s or some 
men’s thought out of which he or they may 
have gotten great joy and great development, 
just as did the builder of rack or thumb¬ 
screw. Let us therefore pause a moment 
to consider the kind of machine we are 
to discuss in its relation to man’s develop¬ 
ment and happiness. 
To dismiss all machines on the ground 
that their product has in the main been un¬ 
satisfactory, would be absurd, because all 
machines are not of the same type. There 
are two broad classes into which machines 
may be divided, as were the sheep from the 
goats in the parable. There is the machine 
that is automatic in its operation, and which, 
simple or complex, makes a fixed product not 
due to the thought or control of the oper¬ 
ator ; and there is the machine which, sim¬ 
ple or complex, remains a tool to be guided 
by the thought and volition of the artisan 
who works, not it, but with it, expressing, 
not the thought of the designer either of the 
machine or of the fabric, but his own thought. 
We are not now discussing the compara¬ 
tive values of the various products of machine 
or tool, but the effects upon mankind of 
their use. Let us suppose for an instant 
that the Mecca of the machine tendency had 
been reached, and that all mankind, with the 
