Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and CivilizationMumford, Lewis
History
Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization
Mumford, Lewis
Architecture -- United States
Apart from this, in certain industries like wood-turning and
furniture-making the introduction of the gasoline engine and the
electric motor has restored the center of gravity to the small factory,
set in the countryside, and to the individual craftsman or group,
working in the small shop. Professor Patrick Geddes has characterized
the transition from steam to electricity as one from the paleotechnic
to the neotechnic order; and intuitive technological geniuses, like
Mr. Henry Ford, have been quick to see the possibilities of little
factories set in the midst of the countryside. Mechanically speaking,
the electric motor has in certain industries and operations placed
the individual worker on a par with the multiple-machine factory,
even as motor transportation is reducing the advantages of the big
city over the small town or village. It is therefore not unreasonable
to look forward to a continuation of this development, which will
enable groups of building workers to serve their immediate region
quite as economically as would a multitude of national factories,
producing goods blindly for a blind national market. With direct sale
and service, from local sawmills and local furniture-making shops,
the older handicrafts themselves might reënter once more through the
back door--as indeed they have already begun to do in response to the
demands of the wealthy.
I am not suggesting here that handicraft is likely to replace
machinery: what I am suggesting is the immediate and tangible
possibility that machinery itself may lend itself in its modern
forms to a more purposive system of production, like that fostered
by handicraft; and under this condition the antagonism and disparity
between the two forms of production need not be so great as they are at
present. In a little valley I happen to be acquainted with, there is
enough running water to supply five families with electric light from
a single power plant; unfortunately, five families cannot combine for
such a purpose in the state I am speaking of without a power-franchise;
and so the only source of electric light is a distant commercial
power plant using coal. Here is an obvious case where commercial
monopoly runs contrary to economy and where the benefits of modern
technology are forfeited in the working of our financial system. Once
we understand that modern industry does not necessarily bring with it
financial and physical concentration, the growth of smaller centers and
a more widespread distribution of the genuine benefits of technology
will, I think, take place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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