An Interesting Quotation

“In travelling about the world I have perceived that economic and political systems are badly out of kilter and urgently require fundamental readjustment. Machines possess the potentiality of easily providing sufficient food, shelter, and clothing for every human being on earth. But I have visited country after country in which the foremost preoccupation of tens of millions is to obtain enough food each day to sustain life, in which they live in hovels unfit for domestic animals, with standards little above those of the Dark Ages.

“I have travelled through or flown over millions upon millions of acres of fallow land capable of feeding multitudes. I have seen millions jammed in cities living in poverty and degradation; elsewhere I have seen crops rotting in the fields and fruit dropping unpicked from trees because there was no market for the food.

“There must be some system, I should think, of bringing the capacities of production and the requirements of consumption together so that the whole world can enjoy the advantages made available by the machine. Science and machinery have solved many more intricate problems. And I am convinced that the Old World is being rushed toward destruction and annihilation by the very same forces that could make for its unparalleled material happiness and well-being. Instead of being used to provide adequate food, shelter, and clothing—the components of material happiness—and leisure—which could make for mental happiness—the power of the machine is being more and more concentrated upon manufacture of means of destruction and slaughter.”—Webb Miller (1891-1940), American International Correspondent. “I Found No Peace” (Penguin Edition, pp. 230-1).