Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thoughtWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization; Communication and traffic; Social prediction; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
In quite a similar way the shareholding body will buy up all the clever
and more enterprising makers and designers of clothing and adornment, he
will set the fashion of almost all ornament, in bookbinding and printing
and painting, for example, furnishing, and indeed of almost all things
that are not primarily produced "for the million," as the phrase goes.
And where that sort of thing comes in, then, so far as the trained and
intelligent type of man goes, for many years yet it will be simply a
case of the nether instead of the upper millstone. Just how far the
influence and contagion of the shareholding mass will reach into this
imaginary household of non-shareholding efficients, and just how far the
influence of science and mechanism will penetrate the minds and methods
of the rich, becomes really one of the most important questions with
which these speculations will deal. For this argument that he will
perhaps be able to buy up the architect and the tailor and the decorator
and so forth is merely preliminary to the graver issue. It is just
possible that the shareholder may, to a very large extent--in a certain
figurative sense, at least--buy up much of the womankind that would
otherwise be available to constitute those severe, capable, and probably
by no means unhappy little establishments to which our typical engineers
will tend, and so prevent many women from becoming mothers of a
regenerating world. The huge secretion of irresponsible wealth by the
social organism is certain to affect the tone of thought of the entire
feminine sex profoundly--the exact nature of this influence we may now
consider.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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