CHAPTER 4 — Machine-made Men

In Chap­ter 4 of “The Ways of Men,” enti­tled “Machine-made Men,” the nar­ra­tor humor­ous­ly laments the over­com­pli­ca­tion of mod­ern life due to an obses­sion with patents and inven­tions. The nar­ra­tive begins with the nar­ra­tor’s antic­i­pa­tion being dashed upon open­ing what appeared to be a per­son­al let­ter, only to dis­cov­er it was an adver­tise­ment for patent sus­penders and paper col­lars. This dis­ap­point­ment leads to a broad­er cri­tique of how soci­ety is rapid­ly becom­ing a “par­adise of the cheap and nasty,” where every aspect of dai­ly life, from the beds we sleep in to the clothes we wear, is dom­i­nat­ed by patents and inven­tions designed for con­ve­nience but often result­ing in the oppo­site.

The chap­ter vivid­ly describes the nar­ra­tor’s aston­ish­ment at the com­plex­i­ty of men’s attire, empha­siz­ing the extent to which mod­ern Amer­i­cans are ensnared by gad­gets and giz­mos. From shirts with fake bosoms to under­gar­ments that require an engi­neer­ing degree to put on, the nar­ra­tive paints a com­i­cal yet some­what bleak pic­ture of a soci­ety lost to the allure of nov­el­ty and con­ve­nience. The nar­ra­tor observes fel­low pas­sen­gers on a train, each a walk­ing tes­ta­ment to the era’s infat­u­a­tion with patents. These men car­ry about them an array of pecu­liar devices meant to save time and increase com­fort but instead seem to com­pli­cate the sim­plest of tasks.

Among these inven­tions are hygien­ic sus­penders that promise to cure organ dis­eases, shirts that can only be entered from the rear, and col­lar but­tons that serve mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es yet are impos­si­bly com­plex. The nar­ra­tor’s encoun­ters with sales­men ped­dling the lat­est in toi­letry inno­va­tions only deep­en his skep­ti­cism, as he is intro­duced to lit­er­ary shirt fronts, col­lar but­tons that serve as cra­vat hold­ers, and even ready-made ties that avoid the intri­ca­cies of tying alto­geth­er.

The nar­ra­tive con­cludes with a reflec­tion on the irony of these inno­va­tions. The very tools intend­ed to stream­line life and save time have instead bur­dened Amer­i­cans with a con­stant wor­ry over their prop­er use and main­te­nance, sug­gest­ing a fear that for­get­ting how a patent works could lead to being trapped by one’s own cloth­ing. The chap­ter ends with a spec­u­la­tive glance into the future, imag­in­ing archae­ol­o­gists mar­veling over these machine-made men and their bewil­der­ing array of per­son­al gad­gets, puz­zling over their actu­al pur­pos­es as we do today with relics from the past.