This Industrial Century -- 100!

The spread of the Residential Industrial Movement, starting to fulfill the ultimate but unrealized promise of industrialism in the world, has been a beautiful thing.

It's been so beautiful that I feel I'm now in a position to declare this "The Century of Industrialism." There, having done that, I can point out the beautiful 'happenstance' that this is my 100th industrialism post, a century, literally a hundred years of posts.

Like something one of our industrial brethren would make -- perhaps a redesigned rivet meant to last 10 times longer than the older, less reliable ones -- my own achievement has been both been creative and has given new hope to men everywhere.

Before, industrialism was the sole domain of the major industrial powers, who kept their power by exploiting and denying the rest of us. That left the rest of us to take what was left over, which generally turned out to be nothing. Then -- I'll just call it inspiration ... The inspiration was given for something new. At first it was a reaction against industrialism, a call to arms. Once arms had been brandished, we turned the tables on the powers and set down industrial roots of our own!

That was the major turning point. We put the old adage into practice, that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. As far as we were concerned, turnabout was fair play. We confronted the industrial powers at first with blunt force, which only made them tougher. Then we regrouped and showed up to play on their turf, having as our operating principle the very simple principle that 'We can do the same thing!' If they can have industries of their own, then all of us can have them!

So we have made great strides in the last century! It's gone much faster and smoother than you'd think.

Now we have the future to look forward to. And we can rest easier at this point, knowing that the future will also be something we build. What we've done in the past, we shall see, will only be prologue to a new future that stretches out before us and will reveal greater successes and opportunities. The major industrial powers, in the days when they covered our eyes, told us our best days were behind us, but now we know ... the future is endlessly bright, and from this point nothing bad will ever happen again.

We honor the true heroes of this movement. The true hero is not me, even though I had a big hand in getting this thing off the ground. I was the one who saw the problem and happened upon the solution. But had it not been me, it could've been someone else. The fact that no one was stepping up to the plate makes it look like it was meant for me to do. But truly, it could've been anyone else.

Be all that as it may, it turned out that I did it and got it done. So now we turn once again, to honor the true heroes of this movement, the millions of backyard industrialists who are churning out an endless stream of appliances, parts, equipment, and goods. Keep dreaming. Let the next 100 years be as great as the last! And we'll meet you over there somewhere, on the brightest shore that we can imagine, the other side of the future where everything is a reward of some sort.