THE MACHINE AND THE MAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13325, 3 November 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MACHINE AND THE MAN.

BY TOHTNGA. • " That ghastly railway accident, of which the last English mails have told us, when the train went dashing at headlong speed past its stopping-place and crashing over a curve with engine-driver and fireman struggling madly in the swaying " cab," must remind us forcibly how- even in this age of machinery we depend absolutely upon the man. That engine-driver, whom no-, body noticed and nobody thought of when things went well, that grimy, oily, square-, faced, blue-eyed man— is it that almost all mechanical engineers have blue, or greyblue eyes?—who was thought Avell paid at fewer shillings per day than the average first-class passenger spent on scents or cigars, had every passenger's life in his hands, had his own life and all their lives depending upon the due movements of his brain and his hands. Something snapped, some little nerve; something choked, some little vein; something stuck, some minute fold of the ever-moving brain; and the control of the machine was lost and the great train went to destruction. Imagine the scene in the cab! The driver with his hand on the lever when it is time to slow down; the fireman., taking a rest and waiting; neither thinking ox .anything but the day's routine. Something happens in that driving brain which is in charge of that great mass of machinery, and it forgets, j'jst forgets, that this is a .stopping-place, that beyond is a curve. The lever does hot move. .On flies the train at its mil; a minute. The fireman sees the:unchecked speed, looks round wondering: "What's; up, Bill?" Bill stares as only the haughty artisan can stare at his heluer. But. th"-;- fireman knows that his own life as well as a huudred other lives are at stake, so perseveres: Ain't you going to slow down, Bill?". And Bill, master-driver, trusted handler of levers, replies in the simple English speech that we may cavil .at it jwe like but that touches the button ever}- time. The fireman has : his answer, knows it beyond all argument, all persuasion, knows that there is a bare few seconds in which to jam the lever over and throw on the brakes, jumps on Bill. And Bill, at his post,' to all his consciousness doing his dirty and rushed by a mutineer, by a madman, guards his levers with 'all his might. And the two, fireman and driver, each convinced he is doing his duty, that the other is mad, that his own life and scores of lives ire at immediate stake, strong men both, and daring and self-re-liant, bad men in a row, go fighting and struggling: to their death. Horrorstricken, the people on Lie platform get a glimpse of them as the train flashes by—and: the whole world knows what may happen to the machine .that*, loses its master—man.V For all over Britain and all over the civilised world the trains fly along by day and by .night, depending upon the grimy, unnoticed man in the "cab." -As long as his brain works smoothly, as it ' has been trained to work, as long as his hand obeys swiftly, as it lias been trained to obey, things go well. He eases at curves and down-grades, .presses at straights and upgrades, keeps ; his eyes ever on the track ahead, and stands with hand on lever ready ; to <ibey the fieqaent.signal. Without him \ civilisation' would •' be impossißle. ■; Let a - fibre of his brain go wrong and death may overwhelm, a' hundred living souls! Look at the - Glasgow driver who • also couldn't stop, but drove his train. headlong upon ihe dead-end at the terminus and out ' "the street i below!' "I know I ought to have shut off steam," he said afterwards;. "but I didn't. I saw, the signal against me. I had run into the platform hundreds of times. But, • somehow, I didn't.' I : don't know why I didn't. I meant to, but I didn't." And they gave him six months, those intelligent Scotchmen, to strengthen his nerves and to strengthen the nerves of other over-strained drivers, on the antique principle by which fools flog a frightened horse to cure its. timidity. It was another case of something snapping, something choking; another case of the dependence of the macuinc upon the man, and another proof of what may happen to the machine if the man's brain falters. ~7 V And if this is 50 on land how much more at sea, where several men's brains must keep at concert pitch to ensure safety. . Through storm and dark, in fine and shine, by open sea and rock-bound coast, from port to port, the modern steamer steers. Upon the bridge aloft the captain or his mates; down in the holds the engineer and his crew ; and let a mistake be made, one little trifling mistake, on an emergency; let there be any doubt or hesitation or compromising; and the vessel goes to death with all on board. Let her helm.be put to port When it should be put to starboard ; let her engines be driven "full speed ahead" when it should be " full speed astern" let any other mistake be made which might easily be made if the brain of one man went a little, so little, wrong; and there is at once a great catastrophe.'. Something snapped in an admiral's brain and a British warship with hundreds of men sank below the Mediterranean. And it is said that Napoleon made a kindred error the day he lost Waterloo., • , . ; For not only over the machine of steel and steam does the man at the lever bear rule, but machines of flesh and blood have also their drivers. In the "cab" of every Government Department sits an enginedriver, and in the "cab" of foreign affairs mistakes may be as fatal as on a train, for to that particular engine the nation is attached. He sits in his office-cab, the overworked Foreign. Minister, recovering from a banquet of the night before, feeling savage from the throbbing of his brain. He has to make a decision quickly in some foreign entanglement, as to whether he will pull, up at the usual stopping-place, which means peace, or run on at full speed past the point of diplomatic arrangement. He means to stop, but he doesn't. Dictating a despatch he means to be conciliatory, but his words belie conciliation. With an ambassador he intends to be friendly, but finds himself cold and repellent. Then the result comes—insults, ultimatums, war, when' there need have been no war at least in our time. • We know when something goes wrong with an engine-driver because he is timetabled and scheduled, but we do not know what goes wrong with our statesmen—we can only surmise. Look at the Venezuelan affair, when either President Cleveland or Lord Salisbury nearly flung America and England into war, and would have done it had not our language-bond proved too strong for the disputants! The firemen of public opinion snatched the levers of the national machines in time, for something had certainly snapped in the brain of one or both of the drivers. That we can see, for it was a notable lease, but who is to say how of ten the accident has happened undetected? And who shall say how often in the future the making of wars that should not be made, or the not making of wars that should be made, will be brought about by the snapping of some little nerve, the choking of some little vein, in the brain of the statesman who holds the lever of national policies? There was an idea once that machinery would enable men to be dispensed with, but as a matter of fact machinery only in- j creases the need for reliable men. It didn't matter much if anything snapped in the brain of a. Maori or not; he had no trains to smash, no steamers to wreck, no j empires to ruin. If be forgot to go on the warpath there was only a temporary scar- I city in, the meat market, and if his wives forgot to plant kumeras there were prob- ' ably some to be got by plundering a neigh- . bouring tribe. But in the pakeha civilisation everything is complicated, specialised, co-ordinated on a huge scale, from trains and steamers to shops and streets and farming machinery. One man can endanger a nation, lower the butter values of a whole [ district, '' fling away ■"' a -' : steamer, smash a , train—and the best man is apt to do it if , a little nerve satyßfi in, his, brain., J