p. 16 | Modern Industry

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 14, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 33.

Modern Industry

Modern industry is a marvel, and by many considered a wonderful blessing in its multiplication of labor-saving machinery. It would be a blessing if rightly used, but in its abuse it is separating the people of the world into permanent classes, taking away largely all stimulus to advancement and independence, and sowing baleful seeds of contempt, hatred, and strife between capital and labor, between employer and employed, between trust magnate and union workingmen, between the classes and the masses. A Japanese, Baron Hisaya Iwasaki, one of the wealthiest of the Mikado’s subjects, recently sailed from New York. He was asked if they had any poor in his country. He replied: “We have, ‘and they are continually increasing in numbers. ‘The rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, ‘altho the change is gradual. It is due to the introduction of the new industrial system.” He liked the system, but deplored its results. So it always will be as men depart from the simple, natural methods. Happiness has no affinity with the artificial and false.