What is true of England is true of New England, which has discovered that it is often a far more expensive matter to modernize an industry than to scrap it and start somewhere else. Quite apart from the difficulties of having a relatively strict industrial law and an advanced labour policy, one of the chief reasons that New England is being deserted by the textile mills is that, frankly, they prefer not to be hampered by a century of traditions. Thus, even in the most material field, production and security are in the long run matters of continued invention and development.

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society