Excerpt from The Social Economist, Vol. 2 In all quarters where reform and political purity are deemed to be objects of desire there has been a prolonged and persistent revolt against the machine. Smash the machine has been the motto of every sort of mugwump, and every variety of citizen's ticket, clergyman's ticket, reformer's ticket, honest ballot ticket, has had the political machine in its eye as the great antagonist of all that was excellent and beautiful in affairs. And so loud has been the outcry, so general the denunciation, that the machine has become a name of obloquy, and men have felt towards it very much as our ancestors did towards a woman said to be a witch. The dog has been given a bad name, and now no one is so bold as to stand up for him lest he also get the stones which are intended for the dog. All our idealists feel about the machine very much as workmen used to feel against cotton gins and steam shovels, that somehow or other they were a pestiferous invention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.