Peter S. Grosscup Quotes

The Machine is the new Messiah. Machinery is accomplishing in the world what man has failed to do by preaching, propaganda, or the written word.

The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of centuries, gave hundreds of millions more a life of ease and plenty, and, by allowing great cities to feed themselves from every corner of the world, multiplied the population of the earth fivefold.

The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad.

The industrial revolution that defined the first half of the 20 century marked the start of modern business, typified by high-volume, large-scale organizations. Mechanization created a culture of business derived from the capabilities and needs of the time.

Steam and the telegraph and other machinery have required capital greater than any individual can furnish.

The industrial revolution turned time into a commodity.

...industrialisation took centuries, rather than decades

The essence of the Industrial Revolution was the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth.

More steel has been produced since 1910 than in all the preceding history of the world.

The industrial revolution allowed us, for the first time, to start replacing human labour with machines.

Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.

Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can.

When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.

The two great agents of the physical world have become subject to the will of man and have been made subservient to his wants and enjoyments; I allude to steam and electricity, under whatever name the latter may be called.

In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine - a machine for making money.

The Industrial Revolution was another of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.

With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Economies of scale are a good thing. If we didn't have them, we'd still be living in tents and eating buffalo.

The economy of human time is the next advantage of machinery in manufactures.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

In the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.

We can go into no mechanic shop, into no manufactory of any description, upon no farm or plantation, or travel a mile on our railroads or in our steamboats, without seeing evidence of our originality and witnessing the fruits of our ingenuity and enterprise.

Industrial forces set in motion by steam and electricity have materially changed the structure of our civilization.