It is, no doubt, a great advantage to talk to a man at the
Antipodes through a telephone; its advantage depends entirely on
the value of what the two men have to say to one another. If one
merely shrieks slander through a tube and the other whispers folly
into a wire, do not think that anybody is very much benefited by
the invention.
The train that whirls an ordinary Englishman through Italy at the
rate of forty miles an hour and finally sends him home without any
memory of that lovely country but that he was cheated by a courier
at Rome, or that he got a bad dinner at Verona, does not do him or
civilisation much good. But that swift legion of fiery-footed
engines that bore to the burning ruins of Chicago the loving help
and generous treasure of the world was as noble and as beautiful as
any golden troop of angels that ever fed the hungry and clothed the
naked in the antique times. As beautiful, yes; all machinery may
be beautiful when it is undecorated even. Do not seek to decorate
it. We cannot but think all good machinery is graceful, also, the
line of strength and the line of beauty being one.
Give then, as I said, to your workmen of to-day the bright and
noble surroundings that you can yourself create.
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