drive the other metal out of circulation.
28. “Voice of the People: A Correspondent’s Sensible Letter on the Money Question,” Chicago Daily
Tribune, August 26, 1893, p. 14.
29. On top of the puzzle of the amazing success of this story, there is another puzzle. Baum’s book
appears to be a parable on the gold standard and the Free Silver movement, but this was not generally
recognized until 1964, when an article by Henry M. Littlefield pointed out the allegory. How odd that the
parable was not noted in print for the better part of a century afterward. Littlefield is convincing, though,
that Baum did intend to refer to the gold standard and the Free Silver movement, especially since Baum, as
Littlefield points out, was himself active in the Free Silver movement, went to some of its parades, and
lived in a free-silver-leaning rural area. Also despite defeat in the 1896 presidential election, Bryan was
gearing up to run for the second time, in 1900, again advocating free silver, against McKinley again, and so
the issues were still under public scrutiny in the book’s publication year.
30. Eichengreen and Temin, 2000, pp. 206–7.
31. Mark Sullivan, “Inflation’s Danger Begins When People Scramble to Get Rid of Their Dollars,”
Hartford Courant, November 26, 1933, p. D5.

Chapter 13. Labor-Saving Machines Replace Many Jobs
1. Our word automatic goes back to the seventh century BCE, Homer’s Iliad, bk. 18, line 376: “Him
[Hephaestus] she found sweating with toil as he moved to and fro about his bellows in eager haste; for he
was fashioning tripods, twenty in all, to stand around the wall of his well-builded hall, [375] and golden
wheels had he set beneath the base of each that of themselves (αὐτόματοι) they might enter the gathering of
the gods at his wish and again return to his house, a wonder to behold.” http://www.perseus.tufts.edu
/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0133%3Abook%3D18%3Acard%3D360.
2. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett, bk. 1, pt. 4.
3. Argersinger and Argersinger, 1984. However, Walter Smith, in his 1879 book on the causes of the
depression of the 1870s, makes no mention of labor-saving machines. The narrative did not reach everyone.
4. Visitors’ Guide to the Centennial Exhibition and Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1876), https://
archive.org/details/visitorsguidetoc00phil.
5. Visitors’ Guide to the Centennial Exhibition and Philadelphia.
6. Charles M. Depuy, “The Question of the Hour,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 3, 1876, p. 1.
7. “Labor-Saving Machinery,” Daily American, December 11, 1879, p. 2.
8. “Labor-Saving Machinery.”
9. George, 1886 [1879], pp. 227–28.
10. “The General Omnibus Company of Paris,” Times of India, June 4, 1879, p. 3.
11. “Labor-Saving Machinery and Overproduction,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1894, p. 4.
12. “Labor-Saving Machinery and Overproduction.”
13. “The Great Problem,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 1894, p. 6.
14. “Stores Are Merely Labor-Saving Machines,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 14, 1897, p. 26.
15. “Trade Unionists’ Remedy,” Boston Daily Globe, April 24, 1899, p. 5.
16. https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf.
17. “Robot Cop Dictator: Rules Five-Way Intersection,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1929, p. 1.
18. Phillip Snowden, M.P., “Snowden Fears Trade War,” New York Times, June 10, 1928, p. 133.
19. “Unemployment Called Serious,” Atlanta Constitution, March 27, 1928, p. 4.
20. “Mayor Scored for Failure to Help Jobless,” Baltimore Sun, April 16, 1928, p. 22.
21. Chase, 1929, p. 209
22. Chase, 1929, pp. 215–16.
23. Chase, 1929, p. 323. Chase used the phrase “technological unemployment” (p. 212), but only rarely.
24. “Steno in the Future May Be a Robot, Show Indicates,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1929,
p. 45.
25. “Cause of the Crash,” Washington Post, November 9, 1930, p. S1.
26. George, 1886 [1879], p. 259.
27. “Topics of the Markets: Another Gloomy Day on the Stock Market,” Globe and Mail, October 29,
1929, p. 8. “Ford Would Raise Wages, Cut Prices Down to Actual Values,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
November 21, 1929, p. 2a.
28. Cassel, 1935, p. 66.
29. “Text of Governor Roosevelt’s Address Opening His Campaign,” New York Herald Tribune, August
21, 1932, p. 17.
30. Chester C. Davis, “Underconsumption of Goods: A Challenge to the Nation,” New York Times,
December 9, 1934, p. XX5.
31. See Balderrama and Rodríguez, 2006.
32. “Senators Invoke Ancient Rights Declare War on Dial Phone,” Baltimore Sun, May 23, 1930, p. 2.
33. Fred Hogue, “Robots Menace World’s Wage-Earners,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1931, p. 23.
34. “Fear of Losing Job Makes Worker Curtail Spending,” Boston Globe, November 1, 1931, p. A60.

35. “Einstein Sees U.S. Troubles Internal,” Boston Globe, January 24, 1933, p. 17.
36. Fred Hogue, “Robots Menace World’s Wage-Earners,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1931, p. 23.
37. Wayne Parrish, “Ten-Year Survey Points to End of Price System,” New York Herald Tribune, August
21, 1932, p. 1. The “Technocracy” group fell apart in discord by January 1933.
38. “Technology Cult Is Now on the Wane,” New York Times, January 29, 1933, p. N1.
39. Aubrey Williams, “A Crisis for Our Youth,” New York Times, January 19, 1936, p. SM4.
40. “Nazis to Bar Replacing of Men with Machines,” Hartford Courant, August 6, 1933, p. B5.
41. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_1apYo6-Ow.
42. “Yale Scientist Proposes Building Robot Army,” Nashville Tennessean, January 25, 1941, p. 1.
43. “Robots Not War-Winners,” Globe and Mail, July 7, 1944, p. 6.