We're the Rawest and Crudest of All

'You see, getting down to the bottom of things, this is a pretty raw, crude civilization of ours--pretty wasteful, pretty cruel, which often comes to the same thing, doesn't it? And in a lot of respects we Americans are the rawest and crudest of all. Our production, our factory laws, our charities, our relations between capital and labor, our distribution--all wrong, out of gear. We've stumbled along for awhile, trying to run a new civilization in old ways. But we've got to start to make this world over.'

--Thomas Edison, 1912