The Second Industrial Revolution was built around the mass production of steel and steel products, starting with the implementation of the Henry Bessemer or William Kelly Process, as funded by the Bank of England and executed by Alexander Lyman Holley, and John F. Winslow and John Augustus Griswold,[1] and as fueled by the oil power of the Rockefellers. It was anticipated, however, by developments of the jack and line shaft system, and particularly the power loom, of the First Industrial Revolution.
Edmund Cartwright is said to have invented the first power loom, in England, and was followed by others, such as William Radcliffe, with improvements. Paul Moody, however, is said to have perfected the first power loom in America, which was run on the line shaft system. Before this, spinning jennies, water frames, and spinning mules were being used, but the power loom really marks the first step toward the Second Industrial Revolution from out of the First. As such, machine tools on the line shaft system anticipated the Second Industrial Revolution.
19th and early 20th century machine shops and saw and grist mills all ran on jack and line shafts and belts that were driven by horse engines, water wheels, or, increasingly, and especially in urban areas, steam engines, and which were engaged by way of clutches. The engine would run the shaft, or line drive, which was held up to the ceiling. Its job was to spin, with ropes or leather belts being run in loops to turn the engines of the machines, to which the ropes or belts ran from the line drive. The spinning of the shaft, in turn, gave motion to the machines. The machines could consist of various types for working metal or wood, such as hammers, saws, and lathes, or it could run more specialized equipment such as grist mill grinders and printers. Pulleys on jackshafts would be connected to the shafts themselves by way of clutches, allowing them to be engaged or disengaged. The Virginia Hotel, in Chicago, Illinois, for instance, was known to have a generator room where dynamos were driven by a jackshaft to generate DC electricity.
Anticipants of the Second Industrial Revolution, such as Paul Moody, appear connected more in their origins to the scientific modernism of the industrial and merchant bourgeoisie than to the robber barons who were later propped up by international finance during the Second Industrial Revolution. While still oppressive, in that they practiced capitalism in their mills— as with Francis Cabot Lowell’s Mill, whose use of Paul Moody’s line drives sparked the “Lowell Mill girls” to form one of the earliest of American labor unions—, the anticipants of the Second Industrial Revolution were not quite the aristocrats who would come to dominate them and their workers again later under postmodernity, but were producers even if not workers.
It must be remembered that the American merchant and gentry class had escaped Norman rule in coming to America, and the rise of the synarchists and their program of globalism, emanating from France and Switzerland, was largely connected to such rule.
Lowell, an international textile merchant informed of the industrialization taking place elsewhere, believed that, in order for America to remain independent, it would have to engage in textile production at home, in part due to Samuel Smith’s and Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo Act, which forbade trade with Britain, France, China, and all other foreign nations. Lowell was working with Nathan Appleton, Abbott Lawrence, Amos Lawrence, and Patrick Tracy Jackson, among others, as a partner in the Boston Associates, early investors in railway, particularly for purposes of transporting textiles like wool and cotton. Unlike later investors in rail, however, such as the Carnegies and Rockefellers, this was done for nationalistic reasons rather than for purposes of globalism.
It is fully plausible to continue using the line shaft system, or at least a derivative of it, and it would probably be beneficial to do so, both for economic and anti-political reasons. In fact, the switch to electricity, which was associated with the Second Industrial Revolution, was an effort that was connected with globalization and what was to become the organized synarchist movement. International finance, informed by the historical school of economics, and increasingly cooperating, would increasingly direct its financial powers to centralized infrastructural development, which would, reliant on the production of steel, come to take the form of telegraphs, railways, municipal-scale water, gas, sewage systems, and electrical power. This would usher in the Steel Age or Oil Age, which coincided with the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the decline of the Golden Age of Fraternalism and the Golden Age of Free Thought, and continues into the Neoliberal Era.
Centralized electricity, which is of great value to robber barons, is of little value to the common person today, particularly when all is accounted for in terms of thermoeconomics. The absolute best use of energy, thermoeconomically-speaking, is direct usage. The grid is the exact opposite, as around 65% of the energy released is wasted between harvesting and transportation. While there still may be some irreplaceable uses for electricity, particularly in regards to computing, there is no reason for a centralized grid to supply such a need. Well, no good reason anyway. The reason that does exist is that it allows for wealth to be centralized along with the power. But that is not a good reason. It is, nonetheless, the reason that distortions in pricing, which allow for great thermoeconomic negligence, occur. Externalized costs allow for the true costs of electrical production to burden workers, neighbors, and the ecosystem rather than the consumer directly, and so to appear as reduced costs of production and better prices resulting thereby. But this is not the case. The fact is that centralized power production is thermoeconomically wasteful and expensive in comparison to the alternatives, and that these alternatives are hardly known and some of them completely undeveloped because they are not conducive in the same way to centralizing control and so cannot find the same financial support from the people who have the means to assist in such a way, the ruling class.
In May, in my cottage in Texas, I used around 46KwH in a week. This is a little lower than my average, because we did not run the window air conditioning unit that week, and we admittedly live a minimalist lifestyle in comparison to most people of our means. But let’s use 46KwH/week just to see what that would (ideally) convert to if not using electricity. 46KwH is 46,000 joules or watts, which translate roughly to about 62 horsepower (HP) or 34,100 foot-pounds of force. That is, it took the equivalent of about 62 total HP or 34,100 foot-pounds to run my cottage for my wife and I for one week. That’s 4871 foot-pounds per day, or, between 20 feet, is 244 20-foot-pounds. In other words, running our home for a day during that week took an average energy use equal to dropping 244 pounds from 20 feet. Of course, this is admittedly less than if the air conditioner were running, and it is an ideal measurement that does not account for the Second Law of Thermodynamics, such as losses to friction and heat that would exist in a line shaft, but if we assume that this amount is doubled after this is considered, it is still only 488 pounds. Just for comparison, a 50-gallon drum (barrel) of sand weighs around 625 pounds.
This suggests that I should be able to run my house on a drum of sand lifted 20 feet into the air, and that this should provide enough energy to run some sort of neo-line shaft or gear system, or else pneumatic pressure, throughout my home, providing power takeoff (PTO) or valve ports for appliances such as fans, blenders, and food processors to be plugged into, if not also refrigerator and freezer units and a toaster oven.
Most of our common kitchen appliances can be run on gas or on air pressure (pneumatics). Cooling for refrigeration, freezing, as well as air conditioning need not be limited to specialized equipment. Cooling beyond the use of a simple fan could ultimately be gotten from the Gorrie method, of compressing and releasing geothermally-cooled air (having been put through “earth tubes”). Carl W. Johnson, for instance, suggested the use of a Savonius rotor to drive such a mechanism directly for air conditioning purposes. Combined with a cupola and ventilation shafts, this is a promising solution, even in hot climates suggests Johnson, and can also be used to cool the workshop.
However, if a decent pneumatic refrigerator cannot be made to compare, a compression refrigerator should be able to run its cycle, also, on pneumatic pressure that powers a small dynamo or generator to drive the compressor’s hermetically-sealed electric motor, if greater efficiency is demanded. It must be understood that many of our appliances run on electric motors, but that these motors are used to drive systems through the torque of rotary motion, which can easily be provided by a line shaft or gear system used directly instead in many cases (where hermetic seals are not necessary). Even using a very slow drop over 24 hours, gear conversion might allow for enough torque to be converted into speed, with some torque remaining, that “gearing up” could allow for a blender or food processor to be used. A blender, which requires about 1500 joules or watts per hour (almost half a joule per second), and which is a big energy user, would require about 0.3 foot-pounds per second, or 18.43 foot-pounds per minute, to run. Pneumatic pressure, possibly derived from other sources as well, could also be used to power items such as food processors, though treadle power is more frugal.
It is well-known that the Old Order Amish and Mennonites, for example, are users of pneumatic tools, and there is no reason kitchen equipment, as well as tools of the workshop, could not be designed to suit theirs and others’ needs for air-driven forms, nor is there anything stopping kitchens and workshops from swapping power outlets for compressed air outlets, except for financial and industrial elitism.
Air power can be supplied by a gravity battery that is used to compress air. The supply of power to lift the gravity battery’s mass could be assisted by a steel frame and a pulley, gear, or sprocket network, whether it be charged from a bicycle, a draft animal engine,[2] a water wheel, a wind mill, a solar-powered Stirling engine—the most promising for First World use[3]—, or some combination of these, to lift greater amounts of weight, which should be in multiples of tons. The gravity battery, housed in a “power tower” that takes up the floor space of a closet, could be used for compression of air for cooling and pneumatic pressure, as well as for driving a water pump to lift or draw water from a deep well or a somewhat distant reservoir, and to drive small generators throughout the house as needed, being the central power supply of the household, including of the domestic workshop. The steel for such a project could be derived from repurposed metals in our current, waste-laden economy, most importantly refineries, industrial-scale generators and reactors, and many automobiles. Also, newly developed materials, such as graphene, might offer a lot of potential in producing inexpensive but sturdy and long-lasting engines capable of withstanding the heat produced by the Stirling cycle.[4]
Personal transportation can be provided by way of compressed air, too. Compressed air automobiles, driven by pneumatic motors, have already been historically used in countries such as Germany, where compressed air was also used to power city trams and locomotives for mining during the Victorian Age, such as in the Gotthard Rail Tunnel, and in Paris, where there existed a central, city-wide compressed air distribution system. England also used compressed air cars, as developed by the Liquid Air Company, before being completely overshadowed by the power of the Rockefellers and their oil empire. Compressed air was also used to drive submarines and torpedoes. It can be gotten from wind or hydro-driven compression, and through displacement of air in chambers by liquids such as water. Biogas, including wood gas, provides yet another potential fuel for personal transportation, and has been used to run work trucks and even chainsaws. The problem with biogas is mostly the costs in electricity of compressing it, but a windmill, water wheel, or gravity battery charged through solar or muscle-power could afford this cost and make it very worthwhile by putting energy to direct use. Assisted bicycles, motorcycles, carts, automobiles, buses, trams, and locomotives can all be driven by compressed air or biogas. Of course, there is still nothing wrong with having a well-treated draft animal with a buggy for short distance travel, nor in having a traditional pedal-powered bicycle, tricycle, quadcycle, or even velomobiles.
Domestic warmth during cold months can come from the burning of coppiced and pollarded faggots in rocket mass heaters and from biogas compressed by gravity into tanks. Heat for cooking can also be gotten from gases, most importantly from biogases that can be collected from domestic and agricultural byproducts, and from animal and human manures, that are refined relatively on-location (either at home or on a village scale), perhaps as supplemented through purchase from commercial farm waste refineries, similar to the purchase of propane or natural gas for domestic use today, which is either picked up by the consumer, tanked in, or piped in. Yard waste and manure can provide a rural household all of its cooking power, particularly in temperate and tropical climates or during warm seasons when green biomass is available and in need of a trim, or if enough is stored during warm seasons for winter use. It functions much the same way that natural gas or propane does, and equipment for these gases can often be used for biogas with little or no modification. Alternatively, and as with warming the home, burning faggots from coppices and pollards in a rocket stove can also supply plenty of fuel for cooking for temperate and tropical climates. During warmer months, and in tropical climates, where warmth is to be avoided, cooking can occur in a cookhouse, as commonly occurs in “dogtrot”-style construction, or could feed heat to a smoke or drying house to be used in the production of dehydrated foods or, alternately, to dry linens and laundry. This heat from the kitchen could also be used to support a greenhouse or chicken coop, or even to help warm a small stable, or could be redirected toward bedrooms or the bunkhouse for extra comfort during the colder months.
Gas is also a means of lighting, and is still used today, along with wax candles (which are usually reserved for power outages). The Old Order people still use the alternative, however, of liquid oil lamps, the fuel of which, however, can be quite costly. But yet another option is electricity that is generated and stored, or used directly, on-site. A good, small example is the “gravity light” concept, such as the commercially-produced GravityLight, which typically requires the user to set a weight or pull a cord to receive an allotted amount of light. Permanently-installed versions of gravity lights could potentially be driven by a line drive in the wall compartment, connected to a domestic gravity battery adjacent and outside through a jack or line shaft, thereby running by way of weight being lifted and dropped. Wiring from a central chain drive throughout the house for lighting, and perhaps for computing needs, should not be too wasteful, though it may be more appropriate for electrical equipment to be paired with dynamos or microgenerators for turning torque from line-driven wall sockets into electricity, which may be needed wherever an electric motor is a necessity. By generating the power closer to its end use, transportation losses from entropy are reduced, and by avoiding combustion and going for mechanical torque, further loss is avoided.
These are solutions that can be fabricated on a village scale, using the labor and know-how of local carpenters, blacksmiths, machinists, engineers, and architects, for instance, even amateur ones if they are self-driven, magnanimous individuals. Some communities will even be able to supply their own iron ore for smelting and refining, though others will need to rely on imports from trade. A small village can support teams who are perfectly capable of fabricating anything that is really needed by the community, including such things as solar-powered Stirling engines. A county-wide effort could support a factory that would allow for the manufacture and export of machines so that confederated villages could avoid having to fabricate them for themselves and, instead, forego those costs and specialize in other things, such as manufacturing something else from out of more locally-available materials.
Today, we have more knowledge and more trained minds than ever before, though they are distracted and misplaced by the forces of postmodern economy into largely useless, wasteful, or even malevolent fields such as electrical engineering, robotics, xenobotics, and artificial intelligence instead. Take, for instance, the “screw bike” of James Bruton. A useless technology altogether, what sort of useful things could a brilliant mind like Bruton’s come up with instead? What if, instead of creating something as complicated as possible, Bruton instead embraced simplicity, and applied it to solving domestic power issues? Bruton serves as an example of someone who falls short of the virtue of magnanimity, which is a combination of proficiency and benevolence, and who more or less fails at life’s purpose. While he is certainly proficient, his lack of benevolence makes him a vicious man with a little soul, regardless.
There are, nonetheless, important inventions making their way into the market, such as the “string drive” system of the string-driven bicycle, developed by people such as Michael Lantos. While in-depth comments cannot be made in regard to the assessment of Lantos’s character, we know that, in comparison to Bruton’s wasted proficiency, the proficiency of Lantos can be said to be of some societal benefit, and can be considered benevolent to that extent, showing elements of magnanimity, even if incomplete (he does appear to be a capitalist). And thanks to this degree of benevolence in the world of bicycle power, it is imaginable to consider new modes of operation for the jack or line shaft system, or something better altogether, that utilizes string drives in domestic and commercial buildings, such as in homes, offices, workshops, and factories.
The major issue that keeps proper development from occurring sooner is that there are subsidies to poor technologies, lack of funding for and patent monopolies against proper technologies, and laws that directly or indirectly prevent the good ones from being put to proper use. However, there has not been a proper attempt to organize research and development and implementation of these technologies from the bottom, up, in direct actions of civil disobedience.
Rather than relying on the ruling class, the abiding class has the economic and mechanical capacity to produce these technologies for themselves, without help from the ruling class. This can occur through well-placed dues and investments made in a counter-economic fashion, proper organization, and paid, dedicated study and application. There are plenty of gearheads, stuck in menial jobs that do not allow them to express themselves or develop into something more, who would love to have the kind of financial support necessary to complete tasks that are otherwise outside of their range, but which would be economically enriching and personally fulfilling, if they could muster a little help from their community to get there. With proper research and development, every home and business could be fitted with the proper means of pneumatic, gas, and solar power stored in gravity batteries, and the drives and lines necessary to deliver that power without waste and control from the central grid.
It may seem that a shift in this direction, toward reduced need for electricity and toward more passive or mechanical sources of power, is moving backwards. And there is reason this is so, that must be comprehended from a lens of retroprogressivism and remodernism. In short, modernity was hijacked by Illuminati and synarchist interests, and, ever since, has been on the wrong track.
Our technologies, today, are not modern technologies inspired by the Enlightenment use of the Scientific Revolution, but postmodern technologies inspired by the Counter-Enlightenment use of the Scientific Revolution. This postmodernism is fueled by a desire to pervert the understanding with hypersubjectivism, pessimism, and mechanics devoid of organic vitality. In order to set things straight, then, we are going to have to go back to basics of modernity and build from what we know works, rather than off of some artificial distortion or a foundation. This means revisiting and revising older technologies, such as jack and line shafts and Gorrie cooling, in new ways, and putting those technologies that, for their time, were “too efficient,” such as Stirling engines, to work as afforded by our more recent understandings.
It’s crucial to understand that postmodernity is driven by a pessimistic worldview that prioritizes the Death Principle, entropy, above all else, and which readily employs combustion technologies without moral consideration. While the Death Principle is certainly a part of Nature, without the Life Principle it could not apply. The prioritization of the Death Principle follows the development of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, from out of the Carnot cycle, which modeled a perfectly efficient cycle that is not mechanically repeatable (but which is readily witnessed in biology). Coupled with pessimistic philosophy coming from out of the minds of Arthur Schopenhauer and his ilk, and bleeding into biology through Charles Darwin’s divergent evolution, entropy and pessimism in the form of submission to the Second Law would drive the worldview of the Decadents, Satanists, Symbolists, and others of the fin de siècle, through “philosophers” (sophists) such as Phillip Mainlander and Eduard von Hartman, for instance, and would give life to and become the stuff of postmodernity, guiding and inspiring our scientific and technological development along the way.[5]
Instead, the Life Principle can be put into effect, and in fact has been put into effect even mechanically through inventions such as the Stirling refreshener, which acts to decrease entropy. More importantly, it can be put into effect by assisting, rather than replacing, the goals and actions of living beings. For instance, the mutualism between humans and domesticated animals is synergistic and productive, and can be supported by the kinds of technologies suggested here. Eventually, it may be possible through biotechnologies to do such things as pattern the growth of plants or fungi, but until we can have biotechnologies provide our heating and cooling—which is a long way off—we are going to have to continue using mechanical technologies. While they can never be syntropic unto themselves, they can nonetheless be given an extrinsic purpose that mirrors, to some extent, the processes of life, such as with the Stirling refreshener, which is negentropic in comparison to systems operating without.
Ultimately, running an economy on the Death Principle is thermoeconomically foolish, as waste is accepted and accelerated as a given part of life, but the Life Principle can instead prioritize negentropic developments and syntropic systems (living things).
The biggest area of concern in cutting back on electricity will be as it regards specialized medical technology. Here, there are also areas where electrical needs can be reduced at an advantage. While electrical problems are common, mechanical issues are less frequent, and so many of the machines and much of the equipment presently run electrically within hospital settings could instead be run pneumatically. Of course, this is not true of everything, and there is no reason to do without medical care because we are being dogmatic about electricity. It is in regard to medical care that we can afford to be least eager for an immediate change. The focus on domestic and industrial change more generally can afford a slow transition in the field of medicine, such that electrical equipment can persist in its use until ready for safe and stable replacement. While a centralized grid may not be maintained for this purpose, an intervillage effort could support a semi-centralized grid for this purpose, if this is even desirable or necessary.
In terms of economics, technological-infrastructural development is considered an aspect of institutional economics, which deals with the decisions of institutions, which are associations or companies that outlive their founders. In other words, infrastructural and technological development are generally second-tier economic activities. As such, they are generally carried out by institutions such as states and corporations. However, it is not impossible, though it may not be authorized, for common people to form joint ventures and institutions for the undertaking of second-tier economic activities such as this, though it would require, first, the development of first-tier economics in the form of a mutualist counter-economy.
Such an economy could be established with the proper associations needed to get it going, most importantly free thinking and truth-seeking fellowships of natural religion and mutual improvement, as well as civil associations for mutual defense to protect the participants in the counter-economy, and financial associations for mutual credit and reciprocal lending to put counter-capital into the hands of the participants. Efforts of the first-tier economy would do best if it focused on silvopasture, alleycropping, food forestry, the provision of underground third places, domestic and business services, the fabrication of wholesome food, quality craftsmanship, and strong fabrication capacities, among other things. This will require a revaluation of these efforts, which have been forsaken for subsidized corporations and cheap Chinese imports.[6]
Working together, perhaps as a confederation or in joint ventures, first-tier economic associations can form an institution or workgroups capable of forwarding a common technological and infrastructural arrangement, such as by instructing mechanical engineers and establishing confederal contractual standards for the machining and installation of line shafts and gravity battery power towers, string and chain drives, PTO-driven microgenerators, as well as solar-powered Stirling and other engine fabrication, in the counter-economy.
Of course, there are other needs to be served by second-tier institutions as well, such as pharmaceutical and medical technology, for instance, but these call for separate initiatives. The point is for the first-tier counter-economy to support the second-tier counter-economy and vice versa in a mutualistic arrangement, so that a remodern, retroprogessive method of the industrial mode of subsistence or production can be employed. While industry may effectively describe the retro- element, however, it may be that a new mode of subsistence production arises from the –progressive element, perhaps best described as the Remodern Abundance Revolution.
[1] The latter two from Troy, New York
[2] In Belize, Old Order Mennonites are still using horse-power in their sawmills, which operate on a line shaft powered by a horse engine
[3] One solar-powered Stirling engine, in Font-Romeu, France, regularly produces at 10 kW
[4] The original Stirling engine was unable to be produced, due to the fact that there were no materials that could withstand the amount of temperature generated by the Stirling cycle. Thus, it can be said to have been “too efficient” for its time.
[5] This is all ultimately sourced in Carl Linnaeus’s monogenist taxonomy, which is founded in Abrahamic identity-conceptions of paternal lineage
[6] Much to be gained from a mutualist economy is qualitative rather than quantitative, though mutualism can certainly supply quantities as needed