Concerned about the direction that industrialization is taking us to, Sherwood Anderson (Ohio, 1871 – Panama, 1941) visits a large factory, a loom, and lets himself be carried away by his emotions. That is, he lets his ideas flow and thus he gathers in his head and on paper the denunciation of a curse. We are in 1930, but it is worth saying that there is hardly any need to update what he says, except for the fact that now there is the Internet and financial power has come to occupy more than ninety percent of economic power. What is of interest is not so much the productive as the speculative. But that is not fundamental either, because today, as in Anderson’s time, the worker needs a job and the paradigmatic representation of this continues to be the factory. Anderson composes a short, intense book, which contains a dose of poetry that surprises us: the taste for phrases and sounds is affected by the dedication to the industrial world, to machines and products. To a large extent, it is what it most resembles The song of the machines It is a protest song: “But we are not chasing happiness. We are chasing that pair of whores: money and success.”
“The word Anderson uses to mean the tip of the pyramid of social organization is can, but here we could easily replace it with greed, which is largely synonymous with power“
We are talking about a fulfilled dystopia, in which it is worth clarifying that the separation by gender is what gives us hope, because in Anderson’s opinion it is men who are given over to industrialization, the victims who lose humanity, while women have not yet been affected, they are not humiliated with the same intensity by modernity, which is dedicated to snatching everything away. Consequently, she invokes the strength of women – the title of the work in English is Perhaps Women—to their vigor, considering that they are the ones that can save American civilization from the consequences of surrendering to machines. It is important to note that the area of complaint is American society, that place where “the notion of private property has been sanctified through the law and our way of thinking.”to which Anderson adds: “What a stupid idea! Only life is sacred.” The picture should be completed with the layer of advertising, which ends up shaping the life that our author criticizes, conditioned by a conscience that has a lot to do with social agreement and that leads us to insensitivity, which is the same as saying cowardice. At one point he reproduces part of the content of a letter he receives from a factory worker, in which the latter assures that a European peasant “tanned, strong and independent, compared to us, seems someone very superior, because we are creatures who have nothing but the contempt of our employers.”
“Whatever is worth saving from the machine in which I traveled from Chicago to Miami through rivers, towns, cities, fields and forests; everything that can be reused will go back to the big factories.“
The word Anderson uses to mean the apex of the pyramid of social organization is “power,” but here we could easily substitute it with “greed,” which is largely synonymous with power. When he uses the noun “bosses,” he deliberately refers us to slavery, which now depends not only on someone who holds the reins, but also serves “the dark purpose of the modern and excessive passion for things well done.” The product that emerges from the loom is an impeccable product, better than if it had an artisanal origin..
“Modern man is today losing his masculinity to the empire of machines,” he warns us at the beginning of the book, where he openly confesses the intentions of his writing, and also the possibility we have of salvationin what is perhaps the most beautiful paragraph of this very interesting work: «What is worth saving from the machine in which I traveled from Chicago to Miami, crossing rivers, towns, cities, fields and forests; everything that can be reused will go back to the great factories. It will be melted down and turned into new machines. They will roar and fly and start up. On the contrary, what is worth saving from me will fertilize a corn field or the root of a tree.»
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Author: Sherwood Anderson. Title: The song of the machines and other articles. Translation: Alberto Haller. Editorial: Berlin. Sale: All your books.
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