Page:Indian Home Rule by Mohandas K. Gandhi.djvu/117

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Machinery
109

that, where means of artificial locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered. I remember that, when in a European town there was a scarcity of money, the receipts of the tramway company, of the lawyers and of the doctors, went down, and the people were less unhealthy. I cannot recall a single good point in connection with machinery. Books can be written to demonstrate its evils.

Reader: It is a good point or a bad one that all you are saying will be printed through machinery?

Editor. This is one of those instances which demonstrate that sometimes poison is used to kill poison. This, then, will not be a good point regarding machinery, As it expires, the machinery, as it were, says to us: “Beware and avoid me. You will derive no benefit from me, and the benefit that may accrue from printing will avail only those who are infected with the machinery-craze.” Do not, therefore, forget the main thing. It is necessary to realise that machinery is bad. We shall then be able gradually to do away with it. Nature has not provided any way whereby we may reach a desired goal all of a sudden. If, instead of welcoming machinery as a boon, we would look upon it as an evil, it would ultimately go.