The task of noting the manifold ways in which our economic system has affected architecture would require an essay by itself: it will be more pertinent here, perhaps, to pay attention to the processes through which our economic system has worked; and in particular to gauge the results of introducing mechanical methods of production, and mechanical forms into provinces which were once wholly occupied by handicraft. The chief influence in eliminating the architect from the great bulk of our building is the machine itself: in blotting out the elements of personality and individual choice it has blotted out the architect, who inherited these qualities from the carpenter-builder. Mr. H. G. Wells, in The New Macchiavelli, described Altiora and Oscar Bailey as having the temperament that would cut down trees and put sanitary glass lamp-shades in their stead; and this animus has gone pretty far in both building and city planning, for the reason that lamp-shades may be manufactured quickly for sale, and trees cannot. It is time, perhaps, that we isolated the machine and examined its workings. What is the basis of our machine-ritual, and what place has it in relation to the good life? II Before we discuss the influence of machinery upon building, let us consider the building itself as an architectural whole. Up to the nineteenth century, a house might be a shelter and a work of art. Once it was erected, it had few internal functions to perform: its physiological system, if we may use a crude and inaccurate metaphor, was of the lowest order. An open fire with a chimney, windows that opened and closed--these were its most lively pretensions. Palladio, in his little book on the Five Orders, actually has suggestions for cooling the hot Italian villa by a system of flues conducted into an underground chamber from which cold air would circulate; but this ingenious scheme was on the plane of Leonardo’s flying machine--an imaginative anticipation, I suppose, rather than a project.