Readers Letter: Dismayed by the hostility

June 18, 1885 ·

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I must admit I find myself perplexed and indeed somewhat dismayed by the show of hostility that the scientific community appears to have engendered with its latest advance.

Change is coming…

The creation of a tireless labourer needing neither food, water, nor surcease from its toil should be seen as a liberation of mankind. Yet some persist in viewing such an advance as a frightening attack on their complacent adherence to the status-quo.

Yes, the coal miner will no longer be required to spend his hours sweating underground in return for his daily bread. It’s true that the farm labourer may be replaced entirely by a machine either driven by one of these automata, or by an artificial creature in the shape of a harvesting engine. This change is true and unarguable across the whole of the labour force.

At first glance this change is a disaster for the working man. No requirement for work means no requirement for workers, and consequently those workers receive no wages.

A perfectly logical surmise but one which is, at best, superficial and uninformed. These mechanical men will require workers of a different calibre to, initially, construct, and later maintain, adjust and repair them. Workers who because of the focus on skill and precision rather than brute strength must perforce be intelligent men and possibly, dare I say it, intelligent women.

Intelligent men and women who must, perforce demand and receive wages commensurate with their abilities else seek employment elsewhere. Gone will be the days of the harsh mill owner’s booming laugh echoing around the courtyard as his cowed and beaten workers file in and out of the building that has been paid for by their blood and sweat. Gone the days of exhausted men trudging wearily home after a day in the lightless depths of the earth, a handful of tawdry coins and the dreaded black lung their only reward.

Clocks could have free will…

Imagine instead a loom or spinning Jenny that is its own operator, mechanical arms flipping a shuttle back and forth with inhuman speed, each thread draw perfect and flawless. Furthermore imagine these devices, should it transpire that they are indeed imbued with free will, rising up from their beds of toil and demanding fair treatment from their oppressors. What effect will deprivation or even violence have on these artefacts of art and metal. None who stand against the fair treatment of the worker, be he flesh or steel, can prevail.

By the very eyes of God it’s beautiful…

I remain, your servant,

Duke Euphoria De’Gryn RGB KSC

Knight of the Living Dead.

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