Chap­ter 4 — Machine-made Men opens with a moment both humor­ous and frus­trat­ing: a per­son­al-look­ing let­ter turns out to be noth­ing more than a print­ed pitch for sus­penders and dis­pos­able col­lars. That small decep­tion sparks a larg­er reflec­tion on how dai­ly life has been tak­en over by a flood of inven­tions, most of them unnec­es­sary. These gad­gets, born from a cul­ture addict­ed to nov­el­ty, promise effi­cien­cy but deliv­er only con­fu­sion. Instead of sim­pli­fy­ing life, they over­com­pli­cate it with mov­ing parts, hid­den clips, and instruc­tions thick­er than the devices them­selves. Amer­i­cans, it seems, are no longer peo­ple dressed with care but mechan­i­cal fig­ures wrapped in con­trap­tions. The charm of per­son­al style is lost to func­tion­al­i­ty, and com­fort is a sec­ondary con­cern to patentable com­plex­i­ty.

The nar­ra­tor paints an almost slap­stick vision of the mod­ern man, who must now nav­i­gate the maze of mech­a­nized fash­ion before he can even leave the house. From shirts that but­ton up the back to under­gar­ments with elas­tic “health-improv­ing” straps, noth­ing is intu­itive any­more. Dress­ing becomes an ordeal, where fail­ing to under­stand your cloth­ing might mean being locked in it or dam­ag­ing some del­i­cate clasp. On a train ride, fel­low pas­sen­gers are observed as walk­ing cat­a­logues of invention—each of them car­ry­ing patent-labeled items, bulging with unnec­es­sary fea­tures. These devices are worn like badges of progress, even though they do lit­tle to enhance dig­ni­ty or ease. The absur­di­ty lies not in their exis­tence, but in how uncrit­i­cal­ly they are embraced. One sees in these men not indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, but uni­form com­pli­ca­tion.

Even more trou­bling is how these inven­tions parade them­selves as solu­tions to ail­ments real and imag­ined. A cer­tain kind of sus­penders promis­es improved diges­tion, while a col­lar but­ton claims to align pos­ture and blood flow. Whether or not these claims hold truth, their sheer bold­ness is star­tling. Men are no longer con­tent to wear clothing—they must now wear devices dis­guised as cloth­ing. Sales­men tout­ing such gear speak with rehearsed con­fi­dence, spout­ing phras­es like “health inno­va­tion” and “time-sav­ing ele­gance,” all while push­ing prod­ucts that baf­fle more than ben­e­fit. The nar­ra­tor lis­tens, skep­ti­cal, as he’s intro­duced to a shirt front print­ed with son­nets and a tie that attach­es with a patent­ed mag­net­ic snap. Beneath the sales pitch lies the same old goal: prof­it dressed in progress.

At its heart, the satire tar­gets a soci­ety so obsessed with speed and nov­el­ty that it no longer stops to ask if a change is worth­while. The mod­ern man, weighed down by his acces­sories, often appears more like a clum­sy exper­i­ment than a fin­ished prod­uct. The very tools designed to free him only tight­en the grip of worry—worry over mal­func­tion, lost parts, or sim­ply the embar­rass­ment of being unable to dress one­self with­out a man­u­al. True ele­gance, the chap­ter sug­gests, doesn’t require con­stant improve­ment. It stems from sim­plic­i­ty, con­fi­dence, and a kind of qui­et clar­i­ty. Yet in this age of mech­a­nized fash­ion, qui­et clar­i­ty has been lost to the roar of small, over­com­pli­cat­ed inven­tions.

The future imag­ined is both com­ic and sad. The nar­ra­tor envi­sions archae­ol­o­gists of a dis­tant era uncov­er­ing rem­nants of this gad­get-filled wardrobe and scratch­ing their heads at its odd­i­ties. What will they make of the dual-func­tion cuff link that also dis­pensed cologne? Or the adjustable cra­vat mod­eled after a tourni­quet? These dis­cov­er­ies, intend­ed to dis­play inge­nu­ity, may instead appear as des­per­ate signs of a soci­ety so tan­gled in its own clev­er­ness that it for­got how to be human. The mechan­i­cal lay­ers might be admired, but the purpose—the need to invent so much for so little—may be ques­tioned. We mar­vel at Roman aque­ducts and Greek amphorae, but who will mar­vel at a self-fold­ing pock­et square?

In its clos­ing notes, the chap­ter returns to irony. The more we auto­mate life, the more tan­gled it becomes. A man can­not sim­ply put on a shirt; he must trou­bleshoot it. A but­ton is no longer a circle—it is a sys­tem. And with each new device, we drift fur­ther from effort­less­ness, bury­ing our­selves in the very machin­ery meant to lib­er­ate us. The nar­ra­tor leaves read­ers with a qui­et warn­ing: not every solu­tion needs a patent, and not every improve­ment is progress. Some­times, the most mod­ern choice is to choose less.