PROGRESS

Suppose around twenty-five years ago when automobiles were first invented, that, say, Thomas Edison, had gone to our government, and he had put this proposition up to them: “I can in twenty-five years time have every person in America riding quickly from here to there. You will save all this slow travel of horse and buggy.

“But,” says Mr. Edison, “I want you to understand it fully, in order to accomplish it and when it is in operation it will kill fifteen to twenty thousand per year of your women, children and men.”

“What! You want us to endorse some freakish invention that will be the means of taking human life! How dare you talk of manufacturing something that will kill more people than a war”? Why, we would rather walk from one place to another the rest of our lives than be the means of taking one single child’s life.”

But as it is, we go right on. Build ’em faster and get better roads. So we can go faster and knock over more of them. This is the age of progress.

Live fast and die quick.

(From The Wit and Wisdom of Will Rogers (1993), edited by Alex Ayres.