Our skill in working according to exact formulæ with machines and instruments of precision is not to be belittled: socially directed it would put an end to a hundred vapid drudgeries, and it would perhaps give the pervasive finish of a style to structures whose parts are now oddly at sixes and sevens. Unfortunately for us and for the world in general the machine did not come simply as a technological contribution: it appeared when the guild had broken down and when the joint stock company had gotten its piratical start as a Company of Gentleman-Adventurers. As a result, our mechanical age was given an unsocial twist; and inventions which should have worked for the welfare of the community were used for the financial aggrandizement of investors and monopolizers. In architecture, all the skill of the technologist and all the taste of the artist have become subservient to the desire of the financier for a quick turnover of capital, and the ground landlord for the maximum exploitation of the land. The sole chances for good workmanship occur when, by a happy accident of personality or situation, the patron asks of the architect and engineer only the best that they can give. It is this side of exaggeration to say that today a building is one kind of manufactured product on a counter of manufactured products; but with a difference; for the internal processes of construction are still, in spite of all our advances, handicrafts. An interesting result, as Mr. F. L. Ackermann has pointed out, follows from this fact: namely, that the pace of building tends to lag behind the pace at which other goods are produced under the machine-system; and if this is the case, the quantitative production of buildings is bound to be too low, while their cost is bound, by the same process, to be disproportionately high. The remedy seized by the engineer, as I have pointed out, is to introduce the process of standardization and mechanization wherever possible. This heightens the pace of building, and by and large it quickens the rate of deterioration in the thing built: both processes increase the turnover of buildings, and so tend to make the art of building approach the rhythm established by our price-system for the other mechanical arts; since, under the price-system, the manufacturer must create a continued demand for his products or risk flooding the market. The two ways of creating a demand are to widen the area of sale or to increase the rate of consumption. Shoddy materials and shoddy workmanship are the most obvious means of accomplishing the second end; but fashion plays a serious part, and maladaptation to use, though less frequently noted, cannot be ignored.