Bondy sucked at his cigar in great depression. “Well, what about it?” he said to himself. “Are we to throw the whole thing up? Orders worth twenty-three millions came in to-day. It can’t be stopped now. It means the end of the world, or something. In two years’ time everything will have come down crash. There are several thousand Karburators at work in the world already, every one of them pouring forth the Absolute day and night. And this Absolute is fiendishly clever, too. It has an insane desire to exert itself, no matter how. There you are, it hasn’t anything to do, for thousands of years it’s had nothing to do, and now we’ve let it off the chain. Just look at what it’s doing at the Industrial Bank, for instance. It keeps the bank’s books all on its own, does the accounts, carries on the correspondence. It gives orders to the Board of Directors in writing. It sends its clients fervent epistles about showing love by works. What’s the result? The Industrial Bank shares are mere waste paper: it would take a kilo of them to buy a bit of cheese. That’s what happens when God starts meddling with banking.

“The Oberlander firm, a textile factory in Upice, is bombarding us with despairing telegrams. A month ago they put in a Karburator in place of a boiler. Splendid, the machines are going strong: all’s well. But suddenly the spinning-jennies and looms begin to work all by themselves. When a thread breaks, it simply splices itself again, and on they go. The workmen just look on with their hands in their pockets. They’re supposed to knock off at six o’clock. The spinners and weavers go home. But the looms go running on by themselves. They go on running all night and all day, for three whole weeks, weaving, weaving, weaving without a pause. The firm wires us: ‘In the devil’s name, take the finished goods off us, send us raw material, stop the machines!’ And now it has got hold of the factory of Buxbaum Brothers, Morawetz and Co., by sheer long-range infection. There are no raw materials in the place. They lose their heads and fling rags, straw, earth, whatever comes handy, into the machines; well, even that stuff, if you please, gets woven into kilometres of towels, calico, cretonne, and everything imaginable. There’s a terrific upheaval; the prices of textiles are coming down with a crash; England is raising her protective tariff; and our neighbouring states are threatening us with a boycott. And the factories are wailing, ‘For the love of Heaven, take the finished goods away at least. Cart them away; send us men, lorries, motor trains; stop the machines!’ In the meantime, they’re suing us for damages. A damnable life! And we hear the same thing from all sides, from everywhere where a Karburator has been installed.