Missionary's Position--Industrial Revolution

I love these machines. There is something about them that draw me in, but I am not sure what it is. This monster is a Romley, a fuel powered tractor that was largely used to break sod on the prairie knifing multi- bottomed plows through virgin grassland. Surely, they were used for other tasks from thrashing to mining, to lumbering, for clearing and changing the land. .

It has two cylinders, two damn big cylinders, a massive fly wheel and a steering system reminiscent of the wagons we made as kids--just a couple of chains on the front axle. . It chugs along slowly but with a certain authority the belies anyone's efforts to stop it. There must be limits to its power, after all, it is over a hundred years old. Still I believe it is an image of the burgeoning revolution of the time, the industrial revolution.

To start it, one very big dude, or maybe a couple have to move the cylinder in the correct position, just at the beginning of compression, and then pull hard to turn it over. If the gas mixture is there, and I am sure it is not real exact but just lots of explosive fuel, it fires, and the beast is on its way. I should say it is on its way once the crude clutch engaging device is activated by a primitive lever. 

I suspect the machine is a metaphor of some sort, a symbolic creature that represents the changes taking place at that time. Included in the long list of changes are the breaking of native ground, and the ever-present need of mighty humans to use fire to manufacture the great iron beast. Yes, strong wealthy farmers were needed to start it. Most importantly, the one-time allotment of the very finite fossil fuels in the form of oil had to be developed and refined--- and so went the revolution.

The machine above was the precursor. It is steam driven and fueled with wood or coal but also represents that transition, maybe an earlier part of it. The gas powered machine is still bigger, still more foreboding, more a monster, an industrial monster unleashed on the world. The steam engine was burning wood, a renewable resource the Romley liquid fossil fuel.

I suppose I am struck by the power of man and his machines and sometimes wonder just how good they have been for the earth and its total environment, how good for all the other creatures some already gone for good. Are these machines in a way evil? They are almost frightening. They were made to consume just like much of all the things we humans have produced with our industrial revolution.

I still like them and marvel at what they are, a creation of man, every ounce a creation of man, all that steel, all the engineering, the physical effort to put it all together. It is a beast but one has to wonder what the beast has done. It, the beast and the metaphor, were in use when I was born and it has contributed to this wealth my generation has so happily sucked up. Still, is the machine good or bad?