Swords and Plowshares/Great
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IT is great—great:
To combine enormous industries;
To direct efficiently hundreds of thousands of men;
To tear the bowels from the mountains, to fire giant forges, to supply the wants of millions;
To manage vast railway systems for the carriage of your manufactures, to handle fleets such as the world never saw before;
To economize magnificently, to pay your expenses with your waste products, to keep accounts as easily in nine figures as in three;
To annex one industry after another with a momentum that appals and astonishes you at your own achievement;
To make parliaments and armies your mere puppets with the forms of the life that you alone are living—
It is great indeed—great.
Generals and senators have had their day.
They are lingering, ridiculous, upon the stage after their time of exit.
They are now nothing but simulacra and figureheads, for their vitality and efficiency have passed into the captains of industry.
It is the turn of these now to serve the world.
Alas! that they should make service the excuse for tribute!
But, tribute or no tribute, it is great—great!
To combine enormous industries;
To direct efficiently hundreds of thousands of men;
To tear the bowels from the mountains, to fire giant forges, to supply the wants of millions;
To manage vast railway systems for the carriage of your manufactures, to handle fleets such as the world never saw before;
To economize magnificently, to pay your expenses with your waste products, to keep accounts as easily in nine figures as in three;
To annex one industry after another with a momentum that appals and astonishes you at your own achievement;
To make parliaments and armies your mere puppets with the forms of the life that you alone are living—
It is great indeed—great.
Generals and senators have had their day.
They are lingering, ridiculous, upon the stage after their time of exit.
They are now nothing but simulacra and figureheads, for their vitality and efficiency have passed into the captains of industry.
It is the turn of these now to serve the world.
Alas! that they should make service the excuse for tribute!
But, tribute or no tribute, it is great—great!