As this method was followed, "A Descent Into The Maelstrom" by Edgar Poe kept coming to mind. Poe's sailor saved himself by studying the action of the whirlpool and by co-operating with it. The present book likewise makes few attempts to attack the very considerable currents and pressures set up around us today by the mechanical agencies of the press, radio, movies, and advertising. It does attempt to set the reader at the center of the revolving picture created by these affairs where he may observe the action that is in progress and in which everybody is involved. From the analysis of that action, it is hoped, many individual strategies may suggest themselves. But it is seldom the business of this book to take account of such strategies. Poe's sailor says that when locked in by the whirling walls and the numerous objects which floated in that environment :

[Quoting E.A. Poe] "I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below."

It was this amusement born of his rational detachment as a spectator of his own situation that gave [Poe’s mariner] the thread which led him out of the Labyrinth. And it is in the same spirit that this book [The Mechanical Bride] is offered as an amusement. Many who are accustomed to the note of moral indignation will mistake this amusement for mere indifference. But the time for anger and protest is in the early stages of a new process. The present stage is extremely advanced. Moreover, it is full, not only of destructiveness but also of promises of rich new developments to which moral indignation is a very poor guide.