In a large feeding-box, a tangled mass of small steel pins, banded at one end, were rising and falling, settling and readjusting themselves. A thin grooved plate rose and fell into the mass, sucking into its groove, or catching in its upward progress, from one to six of the pins, which, perpendicularly arranged, slid down to a new crisis. Steel fingers caught each pin as released, threw it with a half turn into another groove, where it was again passed forward and fixed in shape for the crushing hammer blow that was to flatten the head. A safety-device based on exact tension stopped the machine instantly in case of accident.
"Suffering Moses, is it possible!" said Bojo, staring like a schoolboy. "Never saw anything like it."
"Gives you an idea what can be done, doesn't it?"
Then he began to see these strangely human machines and these mechanical human beings in a larger perspective, in a constant warfare, each ceaselessly struggling with the other, each unconsciously being fashioned in the likeness of his enemy.
"When we've got the human element down to the lowest terms, then we'll fight machines with machinery, I suppose," said Garnett.
"Makes you sort of wonder what'll be done fifty years from now," said Bojo.
"Doesn't it?" said Garnett. "I wouldn't dare tell you what the Governor talks about. You'd think he's plum crazy."
"By George, I feel like starting now."
"Same way I did," said Garnett, nodding. "I suppose what you'll want will be to follow the whole process from the beginning. It gives you a general idea. I say, that's a great machine your father's just installed."