Several years before we embarked on our journeys to the two Americas, my wife had begun a long and deep study of modern machinery and of the great mechanical industry. Though a daughter of Cesare Lombroso, who was a great inventor, she is temperamentally inclined to the ancient more than to the new, and therefore little disposed by nature to admire the gigantic disorder of modern society which other minds find so intoxicating. Her innate antipathy to the civilisation of steam and electricity had been increased a thousandfold by observation of the profound perturbation which the great mechanical industry has caused in a country of ancient civilisation like Italy, densely populated and living on the resources of a small territory devoid of great natural riches. But when she at last made of machinery an object of methodical study, her researches and the evidence she had patiently accumulated transformed this antipathy into a complex and bold theory, the cardinal idea of which I think I can express as follows. Machinery produces only apparent wealth and prosperity, because instead of diminishing the effort necessary to produce the things we need, and therefore their price, in reality it increases it. The mechanical industry demands immense capital to construct the machines and set them going; immense quantities of raw material to keep the machinery always busy; the concentration of the industry in places where combustibles or the motive forces abound; consequently an enormous development in the means of communication, for the exchange of products and raw materials, and a dense population accustomed to produce and consume as much as possible. Therefore, the civilisation of steam- or electricity-driven machines cannot develop without rapidly exhausting nature, so to speak—mines, or forests, or the fertility of the soil. That explains why it flourishes chiefly in vast and naturally wealthy territories, which it rapidly exploits and impoverishes. Indeed, it explains why it is always seeking for new, rich territories, seeking to penetrate unexplored continents, like Africa, as soon as it has conquered America. Nor is it difficult to understand why nations which live in countries of limited natural resources get more harm than good, and often become involved in vexatious crises, from the introduction of mechanical civilisation. It is clear, too, how that civilisation must result in making life ever more and more expensive, and therefore forcing men to despoil the earth and to work ever harder, without ever attaining to satisfaction.