ON BEING KIND

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 1 October 1927, Page 12

ON BEING KIND

MACHINE WITH HOT BEARING. WORKING A HORSE WITH SORE SHOULDER ‘ ‘At a Futurist meeting recent, ly held in Milan a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Machines was launched on its career. It sounds exceedingly ‘Futurist.’ ” “From one point of view there is an even stronger call to man to be kind to the machine than to the animal ’** says the “Yorkshire Post.” “’The machine la entirely the product of man’s own brain and hand—it is his child, and. if properly treated. it is the most docile and helpful child that he has produced.

“One driver will get. more out of an engine than another because he has a kind of sympathy with the machine, and the same is true in relation to all classes of intricate machines. When the new Society begins to function, to run a machine with a hot bearing will possibly necessitate an appearance before the magistrate in the same way that working a horse with a sore shoulder would do to-day if the driver happened to encounter an inspect of the R.S.P.C.A.

“If machines were placed under the same protection as animals have been many a motorist would have to mend his ways The most abused mu chine to-day is the motor car and motor cycle. The majority of these machines running on the rod to-day are over-loaded and over-driven. “Their welfare is neglerfied m their grooming and in their feeding with oil and fuel. To hear some motorists change gear gives a real pain to the true mechanic. There is this solid utilitarian basis for the Italian proposal: kindness to machinery means economy in the long run. If every person in charge of machinery in this country could cultivate a real feeling of ‘kindness’ towards tha mechanical appliances under his charge a great deal of waste would be avoided. “To Englishmen, however, it is interesting to note that this Italian Futurist idea was anticipated by an Englishman flfy years ago. As the “Observer” points out, Samuel But ler, in his Eruwiion, which wao pub lished in 1872, speculates was puolislled in 1872 speculates on the development of machinery, and rays:— “Wo treat our domestic animals with much kindness. In like manner there is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron ,but they will not eat us; they will not only require our services in the reproduction and education of their young, but also in waiting upon them as servants; in gathering food for them and feeding them; in restoring them to health when they are sick; and in either Burying their dead or working up their deceased members into now forms of mechanical existence. “After all it is only fitting that Britain, which led tho world in tho development of machinery, should be first in the field as to the manner in which this offspring of its brain and sinew should be treated even so far ahead of the days to which the imaginative Futurists cast their fancies.”