ABSTRACT
Modern life is adapted to labour-saving devices. We move by mechanical traction instead of by the muscles of horses; we use elevators and escalators in place of our own legs; the cook uses powders out of a tin and gives notice if asked to make soup in the old way. In former times the labour of ploughing and reaping was very severe and was celebrated in verse by poets who were exempt from honest toil; nowadays, the ploughman sits at his ease on a machine. All that part of human labour which consists in altering the position of matter in space has become immeasurably less irksome than it used to be. In comparison with the past, modern life, from a muscular point of view, is one long holiday.
