CHAPTERS IN 
 WORKSHOP RE¬ 
 CONSTRUCTION 
 AND CITIZEN¬ 
 SHIP. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Getty Research Institute 
 
 https://archive.org/details/fewchaptersinworOOashb 
 
A FEW CHAPTERS IN WORK¬ 
 SHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION AND 
 CITIZENSHIP , PY C R: ASHBEE , 
 M.A., ARCHITECT\ RING'S COL¬ 
 LEGECAMBRIDGE. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE GUILD AND SCHOOL OF HANDICRAFT, 
 ESSEX HOUSE, MILE END ROAD, LONDON. 
 
 1894. 
 
To the memory of C. W . Atkinson , 
 Guildsman , F/rs/ Apprentice in 
 
 the Guild of Handicraft; in whom 
 many hopes for the New Citizenship 
 were centred , whose loving comrade¬ 
 ship inspired much of the confidence 
 of these chapters , but who died 
 suddenly as their last words were 
 being prepared for press , June 4, 
 1894, age 20. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Chapter I. Some definitions towards an Ideal ... g 
 
 Chapter II. On the need for the cultivation of the 
 sense of Beauty and the questionable 
 wisdom of looking for this from the 
 British Middle Class . 15 
 
 Chapter III. How can we “ run ” Art at our 
 
 Polytechnics ? 27 
 
 Chapter IV. Decorative Art from a Workshop 
 
 point of view . 39 
 
 Chapter V. An Industrial Dialogue between 
 Mr. Archibald Pushington, M.P., 
 and Mr. Thomas Trudge . 49 
 
 Chapter VI. The honest endeavour of Timothy 
 
 Thumbs, teacher and humanist ... 61 
 
 Chapter VII. On the higher aspects of Technical 
 Education and the Elementary 
 Teacher . 73 
 
C O N T E N TS— continued. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 On the teaching of Design and its 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 bearing on Workshop re-construction 
 
 81 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 University Extension and the Work¬ 
 
 
 
 shop—a problem and a policy 
 
 93 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The policy developed towards Work¬ 
 
 
 
 shop reconstruction.. 
 
 107 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 The relation of the Architect towards 
 
 
 Workshop reconstruction . 117 
 
 Chapter XII. On the possibility of a Metropolitan 
 
 School of Architecture . 127 
 
 Chapter XIII. Where is the Builder of Ideas? ... 139 
 
 Chapter XIV. The Art and Technical Instructor of 
 to-day and the little Citizen of the 
 future. 147 
 
 Chapter XV. On Jack’s initiation into the Citizen- 
 
 ship . 155 
 
Many of the fol¬ 
 lowing Chapters 
 have been written 
 as they have been 
 called for , at differ¬ 
 ent times during the 
 last six years ; and 
 they have served , in 
 most cases , to illustrate some workshop 
 endeavour or some educational principle. 
 
 The fact that they spring from 
 the various moments of experience in a 
 busy life , must be the excuse for thus 
 offering them in almost fragmentary 
 form. 
 
CHAPTER i—A FEW DE¬ 
 FINITIONS TOWARDS AN 
 IDEAL. 
 
 We have reached a stage in our social development when 
 it behoves us to ask what is to be our Ideal of Citizenship ? 
 How far are we to look for the formation of the citizen in 
 our modern system of industry—the workshop—how far in 
 education provided by the State ? What is to be the inter¬ 
 action of these two generative forces ? and what are to be 
 the limitations of individuality, whether permitted or 
 encouraged, in either case ? 
 
 When we ask the average Englishman, no matter from 
 what class he be drawn, what he means by “ a gentleman,” 
 we find him offering a variety of different enterpretations, 
 each differently qualified. It is the “ fine old English 
 Gentleman,” or “Gentleman of the Guards ” over a glass of 
 port wine, or “ Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen ” at a 
 Trafalgar Square meeting; the word has lost its standard 
 quality. We are apt to forget how recent has been this 
 change. The old Renaissance Ideal, based upon the 
 
 •Cortegiano of Italy, and which was stamped upon the 
 
 English character by the personality of Sir Philip Sidney, 
 lasted well into this century. That Ideal implied character 
 
 and behaviour qualified by blood. But it was found in¬ 
 
 sufficient in a commercial century, and after Napoleon had 
 preached “ la carriere ouverte aux talents,” to meet what 
 was wanted, and so we have the “ self-made man,” who, 
 under certain conditions, is also permitted to rank as a 
 “ gentleman.” In him something else takes the place of 
 “ blood,” and we have character and behaviour qualified by 
 “energy” or “ organising capacity,” or some other domi¬ 
 nating force applicable to the time with which he is striving. 
 But the second Ideal bids fair to have shorter sway than the 
 first, we are already searching about for another. Who is 
 to be the gentleman of the newer time, and what is to be 
 his measure ? We need not trouble ourselves about the 
 word “gentleman,” but we need the objedd, we need the 
 standard. Character and behaviour must be there, but 
 qualified by what ? In this lies our problem of the Ideal of 
 Citizenship. 
 
 I shall try in the following chapters to offer a few 
 practical suggestions, if I may be allowed to call them so, 
 
 B 
 
 9 
 
A FEW DEFINITIONS TOWARDS AN IDEAL. 
 
 The re¬ 
 construc¬ 
 tion of the 
 workshop 
 and the 
 traning of 
 the citizen 
 
 Art, craft, 
 and indus¬ 
 try. 
 
 drawn from personal experience in certain branches of work 
 on the shaping of this ideal ? They deal broadly with two 
 large questions—the Re-construction of the Workshop and the 
 Training of the Citizen for the Workshop , and if my own 
 point of view is necessarily a limited one and the criticism 
 be offered that England’s greater industrialism, or larger 
 problems of education cannot be judged or guided from it, 
 I can only answer that though I admit the validity of the 
 criticism, I do not consider that it goes far. No one should 
 speak on educational matters unless he has himself had 
 experience in education; no one should speak, much less 
 generalize, in the problems of Industry unless he has, in 
 some measure, lived through the details of a workshop. 
 Though the application of some of the suggestions in the 
 following chapters-—suggestions on industrial partnership, 
 artistic and technical training, the scope of the decorative 
 arts, systems of industrial teaching through apprenticeship, 
 or through University Extension, the limitations of per¬ 
 sonality in Industry, and the freeing of personality in 
 education would each need qualifying in their special bearing 
 on every case, I venture to think that generalization, from 
 my own limited point of view, may none the less be 
 permissible, and that it may even serve as a guide for 
 construction in other lines of Industry to which it has no 
 direCt reference. The industrial organization of the mine, 
 the mill, and the dockyard, must always remain quite a 
 different thing from that of the builder’s yard, the cabinet 
 maker’s, jeweller’s, or blacksmith's shop, or any form of 
 production in which the hand and its individuality may 
 prevail over the machine, but I believe that objeCt lessons 
 from the re-construCtion of the latter, may also be drawn for 
 the use of the former. They do not, however, come within 
 the scope of these essays. 
 
 It will be needful, however, at starting, since the words 
 Art, Craft, and Industry, play a prominent part through the 
 book, to offer some definition of them, at least in so far as 
 they are used in contradistinction to each other. I imply 
 by the three terms, then, broadly the following: by Art the 
 highest imaginative production for human delight or service, 
 and I am content to accept the definition of Ruskin that 
 the objeCt of Art is either to tell a true thing or to adorn a 
 serviceable one, whether in a noCturne of Whistler, a jewel 
 of Cellini, or a cretonne of Morris. By craft, technical 
 production, in which the hand works alone or under the 
 immediate guidance of the brain, the same three illustrations 
 
 io 
 
A FEW DEFINITIONS TOWARDS AN IDEAL. 
 
 serving here if we divest them of their creative origin. 
 By Industry, production in which the machine or the hand 
 works, but not under the direCt guidance of the brain, the 
 cretonne again, when it is being stamped, or the various 
 portions of the Cellini jewel when it is being reproduced 
 by the mechanical processes of modern Birmingham. It 
 will be seen at once that these definitions are very super¬ 
 ficial, and that they overlap each other. The difference 
 between the three words is, however, rather one of degree, 
 and one could trace the chain of production, link by link, 
 downwards from a picture of Burne-Jones, through a chair 
 of Chippendale to the phosphor tip of the lucifer produced 
 by the Bow match-girl and her attendant machines. 
 
 We are all very weary of talking about Art, and since there 
 is much talk about Art in the following chapters, let me say 
 at once that it is not my wish to preach Beauty, or in any 
 way to make it an object at which to aim. Beauty is only 
 harmony of structure, and therefore a result. I am quite 
 content to let it find its own way to the light, all I assert is 
 that if in any way it is to be made an element in our 
 productions, or in the life of our citizens, we must first 
 re-construct the workshop, that is to say, our system of 
 production in its social and industrial bearings, and re-model 
 our standard of education, that is to say, the pattern or 
 mould of our future citizens. To say we are not an artistic 
 nation is to beg the question. No nation is artistic when 
 its interests are absorbed in other things that, for the time, 
 appear to be more important—for instance, war, religious 
 disputation, commerce. Art does not run in nations so 
 much as in individuals, and it expresses itself in character 
 in direct relation to the community’s desire for it, to the 
 leisure and opportunity given it. In the terms of the 
 economist, it is a matter of supply and demand. One of 
 the objects of these essays is to show, not that the demand 
 should be created and the supply increased, but that the 
 demand is already there, only misdirected, and the supply 
 produced on false and artificial systems, in part because of 
 this misdirected demand. That in fine, what we have to do 
 is to guide demand by education and to influence supply by 
 workshop re-construction. 
 
 And what is our artistic standard to be ? The public hall, 
 the west-end drawing-room, the suburban parlour, the shop 
 front, the commercial article, we believe that they are not 
 somehow as good as they might be ; how are we to judge 
 them, how know when a thing is to be approved ? Shall we 
 
 The pro¬ 
 vince; of 
 beauty in 
 social de¬ 
 velopment 
 
 The pro¬ 
 ducer in 
 himself 
 the stan¬ 
 dard 
 
 II 
 
A FEW DEFINITIONS TOWARDS AN IDEAL. 
 
 The move 
 ment for 
 re-con¬ 
 struction 
 and the 
 movement 
 for hu¬ 
 manism 
 
 take the advertisement on the outside of the pill-box ? or 
 believe the honied words of the bagman ? or be dazzled by 
 the fashionable acclamations at an academy soiree ? or the 
 concensus of public opinion thundered forth by a democratic 
 press ? I answer, the artistic standard is the artist, the 
 productive standard the producer. Whether he work in his 
 studio in Holland Park, or in his sweating den in White¬ 
 chapel, it is to the artist, the producer, that we must look, 
 he is the ultimate unit in whom and in whose life lies the 
 determination of the standard, he has the standard within 
 him. 
 
 It is well that in our constructive citizenship we should 
 bear this constantly in mind. Let us remember it when we 
 hold in our hands anything made to-day for our service. 
 “ The commercial article,” for instance, made not to use but 
 to sell. Let us ask ourselves where was the producer, and 
 what manner of man was he ? It is well that we should 
 bear this in mind when we walk these streets of London. 
 Every now and then through this wilderness of brick and 
 stone we come upon a reminiscence of other happier 
 conditions, but only in name, for looking to the corners of 
 the nearest brickwork, or asking some inhabitant, we mock¬ 
 ingly learn that it is Bethnal Green, or Plackney Downs, 
 Bow Common, Cambridge Heath, Mile End Waste or 
 Stepney Green: a whiff of the fresh fields of a hundred years 
 ago comes back to us. Let us remember, then, that sweeter 
 conditions of life are an essential to better production. 
 
 None of the themes in the following chapters lay claim 
 to novelty in themselves. To the founder of Christianity, 
 to the Athenian Citizen, to the mediaeval state builders, and 
 to the modern exponents of socialistic economics, they 
 might all be traced, but my effort has been to point to a few 
 newer applications and to make clearer, positions often 
 misunderstood by thoughtful men, whose experience and 
 sympathies lie elsewhere. I believe that there are two 
 movements going on in our midst which are tending to the 
 expression of the new citizenship, and they are the Re-con- 
 strudion of the Workshop and the humanising of the citizen. I 
 would ask for a closer study of the former and a more 
 generous encouragement of the latter. In the former we 
 have, on the part of the workman, the producer, an 
 unconscious reversion to the mediaeval state, the central 
 idea of which was the maintenance of a moral code and an 
 economic standard of life conformably with it. In the 
 latter, we have through the educationalist, and the citizen 
 
 12 
 
A FEW DEFINITIONS TOWARDS AN IDEAL. 
 
 himself, a readiness to enter again into that culture as it 
 was understood by the great thinkers, poets and painters of 
 the 15th and 16th centuries—we have, potentially, the 
 spirit of the Renaissance. 
 
 The wave of revolutionary socialism that broke over us in Revolu- 
 the years 1880-00, has spent its force, done its work, and 
 the result has been a variety of efforts in social re-con- stitutional 
 strudtion throughout the country, and a strengthening and socialism 
 amplifying, owing to the new impulse, of older institutions 
 already in existence. The points of view of the constructive 
 and the revolutionary socialist, are, as I understand them, 
 much the same, only the former makes for his end the re¬ 
 construction of society by little pieces of work here and 
 there; while the latter says, it is no use tinkering, we 
 must clear the old society away first before we can recon¬ 
 struct the new. English love of order and constitutionalism 
 will inevitably, indeed has already, given judgment in 
 favour of the former, and we find the collectivist ideal, if 
 not accepted, certainly compromised with, and often acted 
 upon in every department of the State, whether under the 
 guidance of the so-caljed Conservative or the so-called 
 Liberal. The socialistic propaganda has, in other words, 
 bitten into modern English political philosophy until we 
 conceive it within the bounds of possibility that a 
 Conservative Government shall, some day, give us land 
 nationalization, even as it has given us factory acts and 
 free education. 
 
 But apart from its political or semi-political aspects, the The new 
 new thought has an due influence and is daily exerting ™j^ al r e of 
 a greater influence upon life, upon our relations towards 
 one another, upon our way of regarding labour, upon the 
 morale that underlies our conduct either in individual or 
 collective citizenship. 
 
 In the little world of Art, or as I would prefer to put it, of 1 
 the higher production, this might be illustrated by the 
 number of men and women who have suddenly awakened to 
 the faCt that there are other things in Art besides the laying 
 on of oil paints upon canvas, their standard of life is not 
 deteriorating because of this, indeed they find that life is 
 becoming more real, more genuine. At the same time 
 the greater underlying workmen’s movement of the raising 
 of the standard of life is going on quite apart from this and 
 working out its own destinies. The former is but a trifle 
 compared in magnitude to the latter, but if, as is most 
 probable, the two are destined soon to consolidate, the 
 
 13 
 
former may help to leaven the latter. It is by the filtering 
 down of the cultured middle and upper class, who are taking 
 up forms of production as a duty, a necessity or a pastime, 
 that what is foolishly called “ bringing Art to the masses ” 
 will be effected ; not by picture exhibitions in the East End, 
 not by fashionable performances at charities. The artifical 
 social barrier that divides the “ gentleman ” who has taken 
 up painting, bookbinding, metal work, or pottery, from the 
 journey-man bookbinder, potter, coppersmith, or carpenter, 
 cannot last long, in the end both must be judged by the 
 goodness or beauty of the work of their hands. 
 
 Indeed, one might almost say that the social code with 
 regard to labour had changed much in the last two decades, 
 and not only is the man of no occupation, whatever his 
 dependence on society, beginning to be looked upon as a 
 doubtful model, but more dignity is daily being accorded 
 to those that labour either with brain or hand. If a young 
 man dawdles along Kensington with an empty barrow 
 and a spade chanting a melancholy dirge, or goes from 
 house to house in exquisite kid gloves making afternoon 
 calls, the feeling of contemptuous pity with which he is 
 regarded is much the same in each case, and the right 
 minded Englishman says of him, “ Oh, the poor devil’s got 
 no work to do ! ” 
 
 What in our social development, then, we appear, whether 
 consciously or not, to be tending towards, is a state governed 
 and guided by its producers. It is no small question, 
 therefore, for those of us who are dealing with education 
 or with the higher forms of production, to consider what 
 manner of men these producers are to be, and what manner 
 of things they are to produce. “ By the work of their hands 
 ye shall know them.” But what is to be the standard of 
 this work of their hands, how far is it to be a part of their 
 life, and affedt the formation of their character as men ; and, 
 above all, how are we, the State and those who are doing its 
 educational work, to lay a firm and wise foundation for the 
 training of the young producer, the future citizen ? How 
 are we to shape our Ideal of Citizenship ? 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER 2. — ON THE 
 NEED FOR THE CULTI¬ 
 VATION OF THE SENSE 
 OF BEAUTY, AND THE 
 QUESTIONABLE WISDOM 
 OF HOPING FOR THIS 
 FROM THE BRITISH MID¬ 
 DLE CLASS. 
 
 In the last chapter I said that my intention was not to 
 preach Beauty. To offer a chapter, therefore, on the need 
 for the cultivation of the sense of Beauty might appear 
 paradoxical. Let me repeat then my qualifying data. If 
 Beauty is to be made an element in our productions or in 
 the life of our citizens we must first re-construct the work¬ 
 shop and re-model the standard of their education, that is 
 to say, cultivate the sense within them. 
 
 By this sense I mean the power of wisely using and enjoying 
 natural surroundings and the human body, and a second similar 
 power in the work of human creation—a noble building, a great 
 picture, a refined piece of handicraft, national poetry and music. 
 
 By the cultivation of this sense I mean the relating it to 
 our daily life as individuals and as a community, and giving 
 it thereby that truer proportion towards the other things 
 that we enjoy, such as reading newspapers, betting at horse 
 races, going to church in smart clothes, or gossiping at 
 afternoon teas ; and the training of our children to this end 
 by a fundamental understanding of colour, line, form, mass, 
 music, natural surroundings and the enjoyments of the 
 human body. By the British middle class, I mean that 
 vulgar lump to which we all belong, from the superior 
 artisan, who is just beginning to think better of working 
 with his hands, upwards indefinitely, and inclusive of the 
 average tradesman, parson, professional man, Royal Acade¬ 
 mician, or nonchalant aristocrat. They whose habitations 
 are somewhat grimly prim, who delight in having what all 
 the other commonplace people have, and in doing what all 
 
 15 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 the other commonplace people do. To hope for the cultiva¬ 
 tion of the sense of Beauty from these people is a matter of 
 questionable wisdom. 
 
 A few. I would like in this chapter to offer a few aphorisms 
 aphorisms ma y us thinking over our problems of work. 
 
 shop re-construction, and these are they. I would lay it 
 down : 
 
 That the crown and fulfilment of national life is a wise 
 understanding and enjoyment of Beauty. 
 
 That the only hope for the development of the sense of 
 Beauty is among the artificially cultured class of artists and 
 the artisan ; the one conscious, the other unconscious. 
 
 That under modern conditions of Art, picture painting is 
 forced into an artificial prominence and the constructional 
 and decorative arts, the real backbone, have, as yet, no right 
 recognition among us. 
 
 That the problems of machine production will have by 
 degrees to be solved from within the workshop. That a sharp 
 distinction will have to be drawn between what is produced 
 by machinery and the direct work of man’s hands, and that 
 the standard of artistic excellence must depend ultimately 
 upon the pleasure given, not to the consumer, but to the 
 producer. 
 
 That at the present day the social problem has prior 
 claim to the artistic. 
 
 Beauty I begin by postulating that the crown and fulfilment of 
 meat 161 " nat i° na l hfe * s a w ^ se understanding and enjoyment of 
 Beauty. The perfected citizen should have the power of 
 which I spoke above, and upon the modern man we have yet to 
 graft the purity of Hellas and the spirit of the Renaissance. 
 Though I do not put reverence for Beauty as necessarily 
 the first thing for each man’s individual observance, I put it 
 very high, and I certainly place it first, and as above, and 
 containing all other things for the observance of the 
 community. A national reverence for Beauty is the 
 greatest of the great things a nation can possess. Rome may 
 have been great for Caesar and Justinian, but Greece was 
 greater for Sophocles and Pheidias. England may be great for 
 Clive, Wellington, Stevenson and Peel, but future times 
 will hold her greater for Shakespeare, Antonio More, John 
 Thorpe, and William of Wykeham. Florence means to us 
 the great life of the fifteenth century, Granada the refined 
 civilization of the Moors. If we look, we find that all great 
 historical association implies some fundamental reverence 
 for the sense of Beauty as the quality by which a 
 community’s greatness endures. 
 
 16 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Then as to the average Englishman of to-day, does he The aver - 
 possess this quality in himself, and do we, as a Community, 
 delight in it ? I think not. We look around and see it and the 
 absent. The artisan lives a dull and indifferent life, his sense of 
 absorbing thought is the social question ; the professional Beauty 
 man, well, he ministers to the lives of the other uninteresting 
 people, for as a community having an appreciation for 
 Beauty, we nineteenth century English are an uninteresting 
 people at home. We may be very strong and look very big 
 abroad, but at home we are not interesting, our commer¬ 
 cialism has made us lose sight of the right proportions of 
 life. See those splendid men, our lawyers, they are good 
 types of Englishmen, look at them in the National Portrait 
 Gallery, whole rows of them, square foreheads, bridged 
 noses, heavy underhanging chins, coarse old fellows all of 
 them, we cannot expedf much understanding of Beauty from 
 them, yet their interpretation and way of looking at it as 
 expressed some while since in the Whistler trial, for 
 instance, is shared by the average British Philistine. 
 
 “ How long did it take you to knock off that Nocturne ? ” 
 asks the lawyer of the painter. 
 
 “ Two hours.” 
 
 “ Isn’t £ 200 rather a stiffish price for two hours’ work ? ” 
 
 To which the answer naturally is that the price was for 
 the study of a life-time. 
 
 We are steeped in the commercial spirit all of us, and we 
 have but one meting rod for all things—“Will it pay?” 
 
 Yet by no conceivable means can Beauty be made to pay 
 in the Englishman’s sense of the word, and a time may come 
 when some Morgiana will wipe the grease off the rod to 
 which the golden coin sticks. 
 
 My friend, the Rev. Simeon Flux, preaches a veritable The Rev. 
 gospel of Beauty. But, somehow, it does not touch the inner 
 life of Great Fadwell East. To do him justice, good man, he t he sense 
 does his best. He admits that his church is but a specimen of Beauty 
 of contractor’s Gothic, executed thirty years ago under the 
 superintendence of an eminent Ecclesiastical architect, but, 
 somehow, the style, if so it may be called—some Rickman has 
 yet to find its true name, middle Victorian, florid specification, 
 office Flamboyant, what you will—has got lamentably behind 
 the times already. Yet the Rev. Simeon does his best to 
 keep St. Saviour’s up to date. His flock’s salvation, how¬ 
 ever, seems always slipping through his fingers. His cure of 
 twenty thousand souls ever appears to be finding its own 
 salvation in spite of him. He does his best. He makes St. 
 Saviour’s look, as he says, cheerful, like a drawing-room, but 
 
 17 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 yet it does not entice. He goes to Italy and brings back 
 photographs of Michael Angelos and Francias to hang on 
 the columns of the nave, but to little purpose. He keeps 
 his name and that of his flock before the public by writing 
 letters to the Times for books, blankets, subscriptions, 
 according to the season—they take the blankets, but not the 
 Beauty. He orders a big green dossal from a firm of 
 ecclesiastical entrepreneurs, and a stained glass window to 
 Lord Brewster of Chingford; he summons debates and 
 holds discussions in the schools, and has got the London 
 University Extension Society to give lectures on Greek Art 
 and Flemish painters to try if that will help; and he preaches 
 a fiery sermon to the press representatives and the great 
 ladies of Bayswater, who drive in flocks to his Lenten 
 sermons in the East. The footmen wait outside while the 
 great preacher is pleading for the poor and the sense of 
 Beauty within ; but somehow the heart of Great Fadwell 
 is not turned, neither the photographs, nor the dossal, nor the 
 memory of the big drink peer, nor the fashionable sermon, 
 will woo them ; they seem to be working out their own 
 destinies in their own way, unknown and misunderstood 
 by the Rev. Simeon Flux. I fear the end will be a sorry one, 
 and in sheer despair he will accept the inevitable bishopric. 
 Mr.Push- My friend Mr. Pushington, the member for South-west 
 and°the K ens i n gt° n > and the head partner of Messrs. Sky Sign and 
 sense of Co., the great House that weighs like an indigestion upon 
 Beauty the world, also goes in for Beauty, and he encourages it by 
 buying many paintings and supporting many picturesque 
 charities, but somehow his efforts also avail but little, and 
 they appear so personal, so individual, so marginal to life. 
 He also does not touch Great Fadwell East. There is not 
 among us, as yet, any conception of a corporate understanding 
 or enjoyment of Beauty, and as to its entering into our 
 national education that is long to seek. To train a child as 
 Pantagruel was trained, or in the manner in which Vittorino 
 da Feltre sought to bring up the young Gonzage in well 
 balanced grasp of ethics, music, art, languages, history, and 
 athletics seems to us English, sentimental, unpractical; and 
 what is the result ? The sense of Beauty is left out of 
 count, it is not thought of consequence, that the child 
 should have its eye trained to form and colour, mass and 
 The line, that it should learn to gauge a beautiful picture, or 
 London delight in a noble building. At the present moment 
 Board and (J anuar y> 1894) the School Board for London, usually 
 the sense considered one of the leading educational bodies of the 
 of Beauty Kingdom, is, in mere ignorant wastefulness, pulling down the 
 
 18 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 old palace of Bromley-by-Bow, one of the last remaining 
 Elizabethan houses in London, to clear the site for a new 
 Board School. This building, magnificently constructed, 
 has within it some twenty-five panelled rooms of various 
 dates, beautiful carving in stone and wood, two oak stair¬ 
 cases, and some of the finest ceilings of modelled plaster 
 work in England, the arms of James I. with the 
 royal insignia in the state room, and portraits of the 
 heroes of antiquity in panelled plaster, Hector of Troy, 
 Alexander of Greece, and Joshua (Dux !). Surely of some 
 educational value all this work so reverently and thought¬ 
 fully put together by the old craftsmen of a more beautiful 
 England! Yet so indifferent are our educational authorities 
 to what might be done with it, that they did not even take 
 the trouble to find out what they had on the site, but jobbed 
 the old palace away to a contractor for £250, who sold the 
 internal fittings to a dealer for £i 6 j, who proceeded to make 
 a commercial article out of them by offering one mantel¬ 
 piece alone to the nation for ^100.* When those to whom 
 we entrust the training of our children in the sense of Beauty 
 can do this, what may we expect ? It is a case of the green 
 tree and the dry. 
 
 Meanwhile the two thousand souls of Great Fadwell East, 
 make shift without it. In the second of my aphorisms I ven¬ 
 tured cn the assertion that the only hope for the development 
 of the sense of Beauty in modern England lies in the artificially 
 cultured class of artists and in the artisan—the one con¬ 
 scious and the other unconscious. The artisan, if any one 
 at all, is laying the foundation for a new order of things, 
 while the artist, unfortunately for himself, works mainfy 
 upon the traditions of bygone times, seeing that there is 
 little or no tradition of his own day wherein to work. Thus 
 the one is making for the future, and the other preserving 
 the past, and, as William Morris has well put it, is handing 
 down the golden chain of Beauty that was dropped in the 
 sixteenth century. I do not say that the artisan has any 
 appreciation of the sense of Beauty, far from it, but I affirm 
 that if we could look for its development anywhere, it is 
 with that portion of the community who are seeking to 
 break its commercial traditions and to construct a newer 
 social order, in which, let us hope, the sense of Beauty may 
 find more room for growth. To the artist of to-day and the 
 society of his environment may we alone reasonably look for 
 its understanding, seeing that to him it is a special study, 
 though this special study is often affected by—what shall I 
 
 * And subsequently, I understand, sold it back again to the School Board for £150 (June, 1894). 
 
 19 
 
 Cultured 
 artist and 
 uncul¬ 
 tured 
 artisan 
 
The Royal 
 Academy 
 of Art and 
 its leader¬ 
 ship. 
 
 NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 call it ?—the conditions of the picture market to the painter, 
 the vulgar comforts of his client to the architect ? 
 
 It might be supposed that where one has Art, or, let me 
 say rather, the specialization of one or other small portion 
 of it treated by a part of the community as a profession, 
 there would be some lead, some guide for the average man 
 who is seeking to cultivate the sense of Beauty. But this is 
 not so. The Royal Academy of Art, professedly at the head 
 of the artistic world, is but a body of interesting gentlemen, 
 of good social position to begin with, and most of them 
 able brushmen, united as a trade union of painters. They, 
 many of them, sympathise individually with the unity of 
 Art, but, as a body, they neither care nor trouble themselves 
 about it, nor do they understand. The professional painter 
 is an unhealthy production of modern times engendered by 
 an unholy union between the Royal Academy and the 
 British Public. Instead of a charger at the head of the 
 ranks we have, in the Academy, a gilded coach lumbering on 
 behind. Even, in its own narrow sphere of painting , the 
 Royal Academy of Arts does not fulfil its purpose. It is 
 the mistake of the average Philistine to imagine that it 
 represents the living schools of painting. The Royal 
 Academy rarely recognises a school until it has, so to say, 
 worked itself out. When a school has passed from its stage 
 of speculation and experiment, through that of construction, 
 and is becoming mannered, and when a younger generation 
 is already restlessly turning to a fresher inspiration the 
 Royal Academy gives a grudging recognition to one or two 
 individuals whose social position warrants her acceptance. 
 The Royal Academy is eminently feminine and elderly, she 
 is a charming old lady of exquisite manners, delighting in a 
 powder and patch conservatism, very mean and little in her 
 ways of looking at things, terribly mercenary and addicted 
 to the twin English vices of prurience and godliness, not to 
 be moved except when her mentor, the British Public, 
 shouts admonition down her brazen speaking-trumpet. Then 
 she wakes up with a start, rubs her eyes, and says, “ dear me, 
 yes, yes, to be sure,” and makes Mr. Burne-Jones and Mr. 
 Sargent associates, though her own predilection was for Mr. 
 Frith and Mr. Herbert, and then, too, she has qualms, and 
 makes up for the mischief she does in her spring shows by 
 holding exhibitions in the winter of the works of the men 
 whom she neglected when they were alive. 
 
 If we could from within, rather than from without, revise the 
 charter of the Royal Academy, so as to generously include 
 the constructional and decorative Arts or, better still, if we 
 
 20 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 were to strike out the architects and the sculptors and give 
 up the dishonest pretence that it is an Academy of Arts, 
 when it is really only a limited trade union of painters in 
 oil colours, we should be arriving at a fitter sense of the 
 relative proportion of things, and, at the same time, place 
 an old and dignified institution more abreast with the 
 times. But that is always an irksome and ungracious task. 
 I hold that we have to give full and ungrudging recognition 
 to the decorative and constructional Arts—they are usually 
 called “minor,” but I don’t know why—and get to under¬ 
 stand, as a nation, the unity of Art about which artists talk so 
 much. In the words of Michael Angelo, we must know of only 
 one Art. I believe that nine-tenths of our painters would be 
 better at house decoration, carving, book-binding, metal work 
 and handicraft of various kinds, than at picture painting, and, 
 I think, one of the healthiest movements of the day towards 
 a better understanding of the sense of Beauty is that of the 
 Arts and Crafts. One thing, indeed, seems to me impera¬ 
 tive. We must get our Art more in touch with the com¬ 
 munity, more in line with life. The distinction between 
 being alive and dead was brought home to me once very 
 pointedly. A few years ago the Dockers’ Union did me 
 the honour of asking me to design and paint them a banner 
 after the great strike; at the same time the Royal Academy 
 hung a work of mine on the line. I appreciated between 
 the two favours, and though my friend, Mr. Pushington, 
 the member for S.W. Kensington, considerately refrained 
 from congratulating me on the former, I felt that it was a 
 finer thing to blaze in a silken glory of blue and crimson 
 over a Hyde Park demonstration than to be asphyxiated in 
 the architectural room at Burlington House. 
 
 If the Docker delights in a blue banner, that is, indeed, a 
 great thing, and more than the middle class man can be got 
 to do; I don’t know exactly what to call him, perhaps his 
 sj^mbol is the top hat, that phallus of respectability which 
 he worships, what does he do or care for the decorative Arts ? 
 What do we care for them, we in our villas out at Tooting, 
 and St. John’s Wood and Hampstead? we in our three or 
 seven years' leased houses in Gower Street and Marylebone ? 
 we’who have no public place where we can meet together as 
 citizens, and who loiter outside the plate glass shop fronts in 
 Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road? We have 
 neither care nor thought for them, we waste hours of our 
 day in reading villainously printed newspapers illustrated by 
 reproductions of wonderful ingenuity, whose only claim to 
 Beauty is their shallow realism; we neither know nor care 
 
 21 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The paint¬ 
 er and the 
 decor¬ 
 ative arts 
 
 The re¬ 
 lation of 
 the decor¬ 
 ative arts 
 to the 
 industrial 
 system 
 
 how the table at which we sit, nor the plate off which we 
 eat, is made, nor do we mind whether it pleases us, much 
 less, whether it pleased the man that made it. 
 
 It is, as I have said, to the artificially cultured class of artists 
 and to the unconscious mass, the English workman, who has 
 the problem of re-construCtion in hand, that we must look for 
 the appreciation of the sense of Beauty. But to the artist 
 with a reservation. I do not mean the painters, but all those 
 whose effort is Creation and who have set some standard of 
 Beauty before them. Many of my best friends are painters, 
 but I have little sympathy with their position of isolated 
 self satisfaction. They can put their very life and soul into 
 their canvases and lock themselves up in their frames. If 
 they do not sell, it is, after all, of only secondary importance ; 
 for their greatest work is not dependent upon their 
 remuneration, and they have the inestimable advantage of 
 being able to work out their own technique. It is not so 
 with us decorative artists, we, who seek to be artists, but not 
 of the paint box alone, and who hold Art to be a larger thing 
 than picture painting. We are angry with, and jealous of, the 
 painters. How can we experiment, why should it be for us to 
 show how much has to be done first in social re-construCtion, 
 How can we work out our problems of technique without a 
 hundred years of workshop tradition behind us ? why should 
 we be made to dig the trenches of the City for which we 
 would carve the temples and gild the vanes ? That is where 
 enters the tragedy of this century’s Art, not to the painters, 
 but to the constructional and decorative artists who see the 
 fundamental need for the re-construCtion of the workshop 
 before the flower of the Art can be fulfilled. Don’t you 
 think it is a tragedy for us to know that the work we are 
 doing should have been done a hundred years ago, and to 
 feel the cunning of our hands wasting in idleness,—the 
 enforced idleness of having to organize ? 
 
 Here, then, we come to one of the rock difficulties in our 
 problem of workshop re-construction, the question of the 
 relation of the decorative Arts to the industrial system. 
 So big is this problem, and so many-sided, that I can 
 only hope to throw a side light here and there upon it. 
 But I would refer again to the fourth of the aphorisms 
 with which I started above as a guide in our policy of 
 re-construCtion. 
 
 The problems of machine production will have, by degrees, 
 to be solved from within the workshop. A sharp distinction 
 will have to be drawn between what is produced by machinery 
 and the direct work of man’s hands, and the standard of 
 
 22 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 artistic excellence will depend ultimately upon the pleasure 
 it gives, not to the consumer, but to the producer. 
 
 The whole ethics of industry are involved in this, but the 
 ethics of industry will be determined in the workshop only. 
 The Kingdom of God is within us, and the fundamental 
 principles laid down by the great Teacher which have gone 
 to make so many nations great, will be applied as the 
 ultimate test for their solution. The dignity of labour, the 
 standard of life, the necessity of leisure, the need for curtail¬ 
 ment of unnecessary and unproductive labour, and of 
 national waste, the province of the machine, its position as 
 the basis of social re-construction, these are all primarily 
 workshop problems, and will, in due course, be settled from 
 within, not without, in fadt, are being now settled. They 
 are, many of them, questions that we cannot shirk, but they 
 are, many of them, questions whose consideration we can 
 postpone. Upon them, however, Art depends. 
 
 What, for instance, is the relation of machinery to Art ? 
 And granted the admission of machinery as the basis of the 
 new society, as doing the dirty work of the community, as 
 taking the place of the Greek slave who made the Art of 
 Athens possible, what should it be ? I do not think this is a 
 question we need directly trouble ourselves with. If only 
 we can so organize our industry as to make it unwasteful, 
 and draw a distinction between what of production makes 
 for human life and character, and what not, we can leave 
 its relation to Art to settle itself. When I say we, I 
 mean the general public, Mr. Pushington, Mr. Trudge who 
 works in his factory, the Rev. Simeon Flux, the lawyer, 
 the doctor, the tradesman, their province is life before 
 Art, but not so the artist, whose study is Art. I hold 
 it a moral duty in him, a duty he owes to his Art, to take 
 the machine problem into direct consideration. “ This 
 frame of mine, this bit of carving, this iron rail, does it 
 bear upon it evidence of having been made with pleasure 
 by the man that made it ? has it any individuality ? if it 
 has none, then I’ll none of it.” That is the mental attitude 
 in which the artist should study everything that bears upon 
 his Art. 
 
 I know it is difficult, especially for the architect, who 
 strives to be a conscientious artist, and deals with many 
 minutiae of handicraft; often it is impossible for him to 
 get his information first hand, still more often is it im¬ 
 possible for him to pay the price demanded for individuality 
 and pleasurable work, but there are means offered to 
 every man who goes to work with singleness of purpose. 
 
 23 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Ethics of 
 Produc¬ 
 tion and 
 consump¬ 
 tion 
 
 and these means it is the duty of the artist who, before all 
 other things, aims at the expression of individuality, to seek. 
 
 I do not say that everything produced without pleasure 
 will, in the end, be useless, but that its ultimate utility to 
 the community will be regulated by the pleasure of its 
 production to the individual, and if it professes to be a work 
 of art, i.e., “ to tell a true thing or adorn a serviceable one,” 
 it must bear on it the stamp of human individuality that 
 betokens pleasure of production. 
 
 We may, therefore, in our reconstructive efforts, set aside 
 the commercial traveller’s plea that it is the market, the 
 consumer, that must determine what shall be produced. 
 In the future it will be the producer that will determine. 
 Producer and consumer—that blessed word “ mesopotamia! ” 
 and will the economist forgive me ?—they are an odd couple, 
 these two, and I like to give them concrete entities. They 
 are kin to the two Welsh dragons in the Mabinogion, who 
 are always trying to eat each other up. Latterly the con¬ 
 sumer has had the best of it, but we have got to make him 
 disgorge. We have humoured him, cuddled, spoiled and 
 pampered him, till he has become a wasteful, thriftless, 
 selfish sybarite, whether in Bayswater or in Whitechapel, 
 We have pampered him up so that his own comfort is no 
 longer coincident with national thrift; he lights his fire 
 with matches, he buys a new tin kettle every year instead 
 of a solid copper one that holds a life time, he pays a rack 
 rent for a jerry-built house that will last his slender tenure, 
 he clothes his wife in a dress of fashionable shoddy, and he 
 brings up his little brood of consumers under conditions of 
 such uniform ugliness that they shall neither desire nor seek 
 for Beauty when they enter into their generation. Meantime 
 the producer says, “ Where is this going to end ? Am I the 
 better for your extravagance, you thriftless loon ? Whether 
 you drink champagne, or sodden beer, is it improving me ? ” 
 Let us take a walk from Mile End to Bond Street. What 
 in the world have I been doing ? What is the good of all this 
 truck ? Come, let us have a sorting out. In future it is I 
 who shall determine what it pleases me to make, and you 
 may conform your tastes to my production. That is to say, 
 stripped of metaphor, those who are re-constructing the 
 workshop will not consider their task accomplished till 
 every article is produced under pleasurable conditions, and 
 inasmuch as the underlying optimism in us prompts us, 
 other things being equal, to make a good article, rather than 
 a bad one, the consumer’s standard of choice will be raised 
 by the rise of the producer’s standard of comfort. 
 
 24 
 
NEED FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY. 
 
 The circle of my propositions on the need for the cultiva¬ 
 tion of the sense of Beauty, is therefore rounded off by the last, 
 namely, that the social problems of the present day have 
 prior claim to the artistic; “ the best decoration for an 
 empty house ” being, as has been wisely said, “ a flitch of 
 bacon.” In truth, both the senior partner of Messrs. Sky 
 Sign & Co., and Mr. Thomas Trudge the workman, though 
 they have but little in common, are at one in this matter 
 absolutely, and it was interesting to note how they each 
 took the quotation from Ruskin. Mr. Pushington said 
 solemnly, “ Yes, indeed, that’s true; very true ! ” Mr. Trudge 
 nodded assent and laughed, happy-go-lucky. I don’t know 
 if the former thought, as he spoke, of the Leighton he had 
 just purchased for his drawing-room, but I know the latter 
 regarded his oleographs as potential bacon, for he jerked 
 his pipe at them while speaking. Only Mr. Trudge and Mr. 
 Pushington differ fundamentally as to how the social pro¬ 
 blems are to be worked out, and of the two, I think Mr. 
 Trudge’s policy, and I will tell you more of both in due 
 place, appears more constructional—it is certainly more 
 definite. He, at least, is sure, Mr. Pushington is not sure 
 at all, except that things are wrong, that things are giving 
 way, that what he would like to keep as a social order, 
 he can only keep by virtue cf his own personal prestige 
 and strength of character; and that is why he heads the 
 Liberals in S.W. Kensington. 
 
 Indeed, to the majority of us, there is no room for the 
 cultivation of the sense of Beauty. We need more leisure 
 to do it—we want more holidays. My friend, Mr. Thomas 
 Trudge, once furnished me with an interesting little personal 
 experience of his, which illustrates my meaning. I asked 
 him how he spent his holidays when he got them. I do not 
 mean his occasional Bank Holidays, but the long holidays— 
 his week in the Summer. Well, he spent it with the wife 
 and kids at Margate; but he had to read the Chronicle all 
 the morning and the Star all the evening, because he was 
 so bored, and if it hadn’t been for the little ones, he’d as 
 lief have stayed at home, because not only did it cost him so 
 much out of pocket, but he forfeited the two pounds 
 ten which he would have drawn on his week’s job. Reading 
 the labour movement at Margate when you are living in it 
 all the year round, is much like the holiday the ’busman 
 takes when, after his monthly fifteen hours a day, he has a 
 day off, and spends it driving round with a pal on another 
 ’bus. One would seem almost to be speaking in irony in 
 saying that it is to this man that we have to entrust the 
 future of the sense of Beauty. 
 
 Social 
 problems 
 have prior 
 claims to 
 artistic 
 
 C 
 
 25 
 
The middle-class Englishman and his care for Beauty is 
 to me, well typified, and the better because unconsciously, 
 by Mark Twain’s “ Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.” 
 This brute of an American, with whom one is supposed to 
 sympathise, describes the wonders of the Camelot he is 
 about to destroy; the palace with its carvings, its metal 
 work, its woven hangings, and then says, “ But there was 
 one thing I missed—there was no Art. Now if there’s one 
 thing I like, it’s a little Art, but there wasn’t even an 
 oleograph.” That is the ordinary British conception of 
 Art, something outside life, something to be bought, if 
 you can afford it; after gratifying your other vulgar tastes, 
 something to hang upon a wall, and something, above all, 
 something that will pay. 
 
 The term “ to pay,” when closely examined, implies 
 immediate and superficial results; it implies what can be 
 got in the shape of comforts, pleasures’ desires, for a definite 
 expenditure of capital; and these comforts, pleasures, desires, 
 are stridtly commensurate with the character and mental 
 development of the individual. He, as a rule, is a vulgar or 
 half-taught person, and holds, what has been fancifully 
 termed, “low” or “unclean” ideals; that is to say, he 
 prefers an Adelphi melo-drama to Shakespeare, piousness to 
 Albert Chevalier, and a City gorge to a minuet. You will 
 observe, however, that he reserves a qualifying phrase 
 likewise redolent of metaphor, and borrowed with subtle 
 British instinct from the Turf, and he says, it does pay “ in 
 the long run; ” this qualification is his salvation. To culti¬ 
 vate the sense of Beauty does pay in the long run; it is 
 worth our while as a nation to do it. Beauty, I repeat, is 
 meant for the enjoyment of man, but its understanding 
 comes before its enjoyment. To understand, we must 
 re-construct the workshop and re-model the citizen con¬ 
 currently, and, in spite of the unwholesome precepts of St. 
 Paul, and their natural outcome in 17th century puritanism, 
 18th century torpor, and 19th century godliness and 
 commerce, I venture to think Christ knew what He was 
 about when he presided at the Marriage of Cana, and turned 
 the water into wine. 
 
 26 
 
CHAPTER 3.—HOW CAN 
 WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR 
 POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 A PAPER READ AT 
 THE BIRMINGHAM 
 ART CONGRESS, 1891. 
 
 When I forwarded the title of this chapter to the austere 
 authorities of the Birmingham Art Congress, they revised the 
 word “ run ” into the word “ foster.” My explanation was that 
 I wrote “ run,” because I meant the verb transitive; theirs 
 that they wrote “ foster ” as a more classic reading of 
 “ run.” We both had our intentions, doubtless, and I hope 
 to show what were mine in firmly adhering to the more 
 expressive vernacular. 
 
 Suppose I were to begin by stating frankly that we cannot 
 “ run ” art at our polytechnics, and that the one thing we 
 ought not to do is to “foster” it; and I will say at once 
 that that is my candid opinion, but I will qualify it with 
 another, not by any means a quibble, and that is that we 
 might, under certain conditions, let it “ run ”—verb intran¬ 
 sitive. It is in the nature of the Englishman to “ run ” 
 things ; as the man of a type, he would be the strong man 
 organising ; but when he comes athwart something that will 
 not be organised, he gets into trouble—and such a thing is 
 Art. 
 
 Here is the sketch of what would, to me, seem the most 
 rational form for polytechnic development. The industry 
 of the district is our first consideration, and this is 
 determined by the manufactory or great business which 
 supplies it. From this springs the need for affiliating the 
 school to the factory, and this school should be polytechnic 
 or technical school, in other words the teaching function and 
 the workshop function should be combined. Given the need 
 for a teaching in artistic principles in any industry, it is 
 the head designer of the factory who should be the leading 
 teacher in the school, and his pupils should have the 
 
 27 
 

 wmm -n— ** - -'-•-- - - -— 
 
 '• 
 
 I 
 

 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 r' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
♦* PROGRAMME. 
 
 ENGAGEMENTS. *9* 
 
 1 
 
 Valse 
 
 ... “ Marriage Market," 
 
 Jacobi 
 
 2 
 
 Valse 
 
 . ... “ Risette.” 
 
 Fall 
 
 3 
 
 Two-step 
 
 ... “ Puppchen,” . 
 
 Gilbert 
 
 4 
 
 Valse 
 
 . “ Plaisirs Inconnus,” 
 
 ... Virgo 
 
 5 
 
 Valse — 
 
 “ Where my caravan has rested,” 
 
 ... Lohr 
 
 6 
 
 Valse 
 
 . ... “ Destiny,” . 
 
 Baynes 
 
 7 
 
 Lancers 
 
 ... “ Luxembourg,” 
 
 Lehar 
 
 8 
 
 Valse ... 
 
 “ Dorfkinder,” . 
 
 ,. Kalman 
 
 9 
 
 Valse 
 
 “ Verveine,” 
 
 Cox 
 
 10 
 
 One-step 
 
 ... “ Get out and get under,” ... 
 
 Abrahams 
 
 It 
 
 Valse — 
 
 ... “ Fideler Bauer,” 
 
 Fall 
 
 12 
 
 Valse — 
 
 “ Little grey house in the west,” 
 
 ... Lohr 
 
 13 
 
 Valse — 
 
 ... “ Hoheit Tanzt,” 
 
 ... Mader 
 
 14 
 
 One-step 
 
 ... “ In my Harem,”.. 
 
 Beilin 
 
 15 
 
 Valse 
 
 “ Puppenmadel,” 
 
 Fall 
 
 16 
 
 Valse 
 
 ... “ Jeune,” . 
 
 ... Virgo 
 
 17 
 
 Lancers 
 
 ... “ Veronique,” . 
 
 Message r 
 
 18 
 
 Valse ••• 
 
 “ Je sais que vous etes jolie,” ... 
 
 Christine 
 
 19 
 
 Valse 
 
 ,. “ Zigeunerliebe,” 
 
 Lehar 
 
 20 
 
 Valse — 
 
 “ Leben und Lieben,” 
 
 .„ Fall 
 
 21 
 
 Two-step 
 
 ... “ Missouri,” . 
 
 Christine 
 
 22 
 
 Valse 
 
 “ Jewels of the Madonna 
 
 .. Ferrari 
 
 23 
 
 Valse 
 
 .. “Vagues Dorees,” 
 
 ... Virgo 
 
 24 
 
 Valse Galop . 
 
 .. Colin 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 6 ... 
 
 7 . 
 
 8 . 
 
 9 
 
 io 
 
 u . 
 
 12 . 
 
 13 . 
 
 14 . 
 
 15 . 
 
 16 ... 
 
 17 . 
 
 18 . 
 
 19 . 
 
 20 . 
 
 21 . 
 
 22 . 
 
 23 . 
 
 24 .. 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 entrance into the factory where the corporate and educational 
 work of the school should develop into a similar work for 
 life and bread. As for the system of the school, it should 
 not be conducted by means of a series of random classes 
 but by what one might call application lessons: design 
 applied directly to material. Many social and economic 
 forces have to to be taken into account before such a system 
 is attainable. It would not be impossible, however, to work 
 at one or another of these points in any polytechnic accord¬ 
 ing as the industry admitted of it, leaving the rest to be done 
 by Tendency,—the igth century’s unknown god. We have, 
 however, two difficulties before us, the one legislative, the 
 other industrial, both affedting immediately not only the 
 development of the polytechnics, but that of the artistic 
 growth within them ; the one is what one might term the 
 pachydermatous flatulence of the South Kensington system, 
 the other a much greater difficulty, the industrial relations 
 of English manufacture. 
 
 The Our policy at present, when we find a man who has in him 
 
 Mummy ^he making of a polytechnic, or the power of a teacher of 
 applied art, is to tie his right arm to his left leg with tape, 
 and bid him see what he can make of it. He does his best, 
 and under the circumstances it is often wonderful what he 
 does make of it. He is burdened with the incubus of 
 “ Will it pay ? ” and he has to get his dispensation for 
 Art creativeness from the old mummy of the central 
 department. ’Tis a wonderful creature, this mummy: it 
 sits there with no head, or what head of it there is, 
 centralised in the clouds ; it sits with legs crossed, hands 
 crossed and forefingers pointed passively; elbows resting on 
 its chair, and around it the withes of red tape, its top hat on 
 the ground beside. You cry to it, but how can it hear you ? 
 You ask of it utterance, and oracularly it answers, “ I am 
 that I am.” Even so, wonderful ! But still the polytechnics 
 are springing up around it. 
 
 industrial As regards the other, the industrial difficulty, we say, marry 
 
 des CUl the polytechnics to the industries; and we are bidden to 
 take counsel from our German neighbours in matters of 
 industrial education, see their schools and the affiliation 
 between these and their factories. True, but our difficulty in 
 England is different from theirs. Having a more developed 
 commercialism, we have likewise a more developed system of 
 industrial organisation and divided labour. There is our 
 impasse . The problem of industrial education is to be firmly 
 
 28 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 gripped, but by whom, by the masters or by the men ? The 
 obvious answer is—by both. But will they combine ? Give 
 the designer and the workman each his fair place and 
 prominence, is asked on the one hand, and on the other it 
 is answered, the system will not admit of it, nor can I afford 
 to do it. Both question and answer are sound. 
 
 I will put those questions and replies in a more direct 
 and human form. Here are the personalities as I have 
 myself had the honour of knowing them. I have heard 
 from their own lips their several positions, and, I may add, 
 unbeknown to each other. 
 
 There is, first of all, my friend Mr. Archibald Pushington, 
 the head partner of the well-known firm, Messrs. Sky Sign 
 and Co. I have had the frequent honour of dining at his 
 house in Kensington, where I have met with much artistic 
 and intellectual society. His sons and daughters are artistic 
 and intellectual, and we have invariably at his dinner table 
 discussed Tendency. He is the kindest of men, subscribes 
 largely to an experiment in technical education in which I 
 am interested, and always takes my advice on artistic 
 matters ; we are great friends. There is then Mr. John 
 Pennyworth. I met him by chance at South Kensington 
 one Saturday afternoon as we were sketching from the same 
 Sicilian diaper in the Silk Room. We struck up an 
 acquaintance, and he invited me finally to his villa at 
 Tottenham, where we had high tea under the discreet 
 auspices of Mrs. Pennyworth, who divided her attention 
 between the partially trained domestic and the conversation 
 at table ; a little too high for her, for it was a conversation on 
 Tendency. There is then Mr. Thomas Trudge, the work¬ 
 man. He is a strong Trade-unionist, and takes the chair 
 at benefit societies. It was lecfturing at a workman’s club 
 once on Ruskin that I happened to make his acquaintance. 
 He asked me questions, and we got into communication. I 
 promised to lend him “ Time and Tide,” and, being one day 
 in the neighbourhood of Burdett Road, Mile End, thought I 
 would take him the book myself. It happened to be washing 
 day when I called, and the family were disconcerted at my 
 inopportune visit. Matters had to be made good somehow, 
 and so I was invited to supper and a pipe on the Sunday. 
 While Mrs. Trudge was putting the small children to bed we 
 talked Tendency. 
 
 Now the points of view of these three friends of mine, 
 setting aside the opinions on Tendency which each held, 
 
 The 
 
 points of 
 view of 
 manufac¬ 
 turer, 
 designer, 
 and work¬ 
 man 
 
 29 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 Mr. Push- 
 ington’s 
 point of 
 view 
 
 were somewhat as follows :—Mr, Pushington was kindly 
 pleased with the interest that I showed in the big house; 
 especially in its relation to the foreign market. My ideas, 
 he thought, were a bit unpra6tical, but none the less 
 suggestive, and he intended to try and work some of them 
 out. As regards the problem of design applied to manufac¬ 
 ture, and the position of the designer, of course, what I said 
 was perfectly true, the designer ought to be brought forward 
 and his name be known ; but then the fa< 5 t of competiton 
 had to be faced—it was not so serious, perhaps,—but if 
 Messrs. Driver and Shootforth, of Manchester, for instance, 
 his principal competitors in the Belgian market, saw an 
 open list of his best men, they would overbid at once, and 
 how could he prevent their going ? For his part, he would 
 be only too glad to raise their salaries, though it was the 
 case that they were earning from £50 to £500 a year—he 
 was proud to say, as handsome an average wage as was 
 given by any firm for draughtsmanship—but the matter 
 must be fairly worked out with the understanding of other 
 large firms. Then, too, there were the traditions of Sky 
 Sign and Co. Surely they had to be considered ? It was 
 no mean work that his uncle and his grandfather had 
 accomplished before him; and, finally, there was the big 
 question of the responsibility of capital, which, of course, 
 nobody can fully understand unless he is really in the within. 
 Did he know a Mr. Pennyworth ? Oh, yes, a most able 
 draughtsman in the H department—a very clever fellow, 
 whom the firm were much indebted to, and could not afford 
 to lose. Curious that I should be acquainted with him— 
 very glad to hear me speak so well of his little place at 
 Tottenham—thought it was Tooting—often wanted to send 
 Pennyworth to Italy for three months—only too glad to pay 
 his expenses—fellow wouldn’t accept—home ties or some¬ 
 thing—too conservative—curious. Did he know any of the 
 men in the factories personally? No, how could he ? You 
 see there are so many of them, and then there was always 
 the Trade-union difficulty to be faced. He was glad to say 
 that in his place there was a perfect understanding between 
 himself and the men, and if he had only his own people to 
 deal with, the thing would be easy enough, but then there 
 were those agitators, who led the men astray, and put 
 foolish notions in their heads, and, after all, what could be 
 more destructive both to the interests of labour and capital 
 than a strike ?—it was the poor fellows themselves who 
 
 30 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 suffered most. How did the Art question affect the 
 workman ? Not at all, he should say. The subdivision of 
 labour, the use of machinery, and the growth of civilisation 
 necessitated a firmly organised arrangement of industry. 
 
 The workman nowadays was only what you might call a 
 “productive ” particle. The designer, on the other hand, 
 was a man who had to master the theory of his subject, and 
 he was the “ conceptive ” particle; and then, finally, there 
 came the strong, exploiting, organising, developing force of 
 capital. He himself was, of course, only a small link in the 
 whole revolving chain—a particle too, if you like, the 
 “ impelling ” particle which gave life and activity to the 
 other two. That was Mr. Pushington’s position. 
 
 Now the position of Mr. Pennyworth, the designer, was Mr. 
 different and yet analogous. It grudgingly accepted the 
 “ particle theory,” and strove to assert a handicapped point of 
 individualism. Had he anything to complain of ? Nothing view 
 in the world; Mr. Pushington was the kindest of men, and 
 the junior partners, all of them, were zealous in the observa¬ 
 tion of duty, honour, and fairness to all their employes. 
 
 That made it all the more difficult to grumble, all the more 
 immoral to grumble, all the more unmannerly to grumble. 
 
 He had a good salary, a comfortable home, nice books. 
 
 Yes,—he had read Ruskin, and believed in him; but, then, 
 what was he, a single Pennyworth, to do in the world, with 
 a number of small Pennyworths dependent upon him ? He 
 admitted the unreasonableness of his position ; he knew it 
 was wrong that his designs, the boiling down of his brains, 
 should be vaunted at exhibitions as Messrs. Sky Sign and 
 Co.’s latest achievements ; but what could he do ? He was 
 their servant nursed by them into comfort. Without them 
 what had he to fall back upon ? A South Kensington 
 certificate, framed, in Tommy’s bedroom 1 They had always 
 adted handsomely to him, and then there was such a thing 
 as loyalty in the world, and it was a great thing, a really 
 great thing, to see the “ Boss” give an order, and see how 
 all obeyed it. Did he know any of the workmen ? Well, 
 yes and no. You see the wife had to be considered, not that 
 he minded—his people had been working people themselves, 
 and he had bettered himself, as was only right that every 
 man should who could. But he sympathised with their 
 position; he was a Radical himself, a bit of a Socialist, too. 
 
 But then, what did the workman know about Art ? Come 
 now ! He could tell from the experience of many years 
 
 3i 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 Mr. i 
 
 Trudge’s 
 point} of 
 view& 
 
 how impossible it was to leave anything to the men to carry 
 out. He had to issue his instructions from the H depart¬ 
 ment with infinite accuracy in every detail, figured and 
 drawn on paper. True, the old Gothic and Italian people 
 did not work like that; but then we were in the nineteenth 
 century and not in the Middle Ages. That was a faCt, and 
 the thing was just this—Art, it could only be in the actual 
 design nowadays, for the subdivision of labour was such 
 that where there were twenty different hands employed in 
 the making of a particular piece of work there was only one 
 designer. Could it all be altered ? He hoped so; yes, 
 verily it was wrong as it was ! And so over the warm grog 
 which we drank together, the soul of Pennyworth expanded 
 and rebelled. 
 
 The position of Mr. Thomas Trudge, 193, Burdett 
 Road, Mile End, E., was much more extreme. It was less 
 cultured, it was certainly more limited. First of all, he did 
 not care much for matters as I stated them to him. That 
 was as much as to say, I must either converse in his con¬ 
 versation, or not converse at all. He was dogmatic, he was 
 intolerant, he was ignorant—I mean ignorant of conver¬ 
 sational delicacy. The problem of industry—I began with 
 industry, not with Art. How was it to be solved? Sure he 
 could not say. Some few things might be abolished, 
 perhaps, with advantage. The great question was the 
 labour question—wages—how to raise the standard—how 
 to get the men to combine. You see the ordinary workman 
 was very near the margin of subsistence. What he thought of 
 first was how to get his week’s money—that was just a fadt— 
 straight! As for Mr. Pushington—he had only seen him once, 
 once in his life—rather a good sort of man—a fine, square 
 head. But, bless you, what had Mr. Pushington to do with 
 things ? The business was the business, and as good as any 
 other house he should say; but it was the machine that he 
 was fighting with, and when the union struck for a rise, they 
 struck on principle and not on Pushington. That large 
 profits were made he had heard, because his cousin’s sister 
 was lady’s-maid at some duke’s, who had once bought a 
 thing that had been made by his bench-mate, and we knew 
 what he got for that job ! But no doubt that was all right. 
 Working expenses had to be paid, &c., &c. ; it was not that 
 he was fighting for. Could the workmen work out things 
 for themselves ? Yes, if you could get them to forego the 
 temptations of small mastership. Co-operative Societies ?— 
 
 32 
 
HOW CAN WE “RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 perhaps ; questionable! They usually failed for want of a 
 common policeman ? Art ? What did I mean ? He liked 
 pictures when he saw them. He had seen some pictures by 
 Holman Hunt once that he thought grand,—so did the 
 missus. He did not know that I meant Art when I referred to 
 the designs of the H. department. That was a new light to him. 
 As for himself, you could hardly expect much in the drawing 
 line from a man who worked eight or nine hours a day at 
 his bench, and had been doing so since the age of fourteen. 
 Yes, he was glad to see his boy Jack was fond of drawing, 
 but he did not know what it was going to lead to. These 
 polytechnics ? H’m ! well, all that, sir, had to be taken with 
 ..a grain of salt ! That was what Mr. Thomas Trudge 
 thought of it; and so I compared notes of the positions of 
 my three friends. 
 
 Now, how does all this affect our polytechnics and the Art 
 leaching in its relation to industry, which we want to 
 “ stimulate,” not “ foster,” within them ? Simply thus, that 
 it is by these three men that the polytechnics have to be 
 made. Mr. Pushington is invited to initiate and give the 
 funds, Mr. Pennyworth is invited to teach, and Mr. Trudge 
 is invited to come and be taught. 
 
 But are we not met by a difficulty ? Mr. Pushington is 
 hampered by the perfedtness of his own organisation; the 
 men who are to be taught decline the offer, and the social 
 and economic conditions make genuine teaching—not 
 teaching for a narrow groove—a questionable possibility. 
 Mr. Pennyworth is ignorant of the tool, and Trudge is 
 ignorant of the design, and not desirous of knowing anything 
 about it. Labour is divided between the theory and the 
 reality, the conception is divorced from the fulfilment. 
 
 Now I do not propose in this chapter to go deeply into the 
 question of workshop re-construdtion. I would not even 
 suggest the immediate conversion of Mr. Pushington into an 
 industrial partnership, and so make his men part of him, even 
 supposing productive co-operation a possibility; so for the 
 present we may leave his great organisation to work out its own 
 destinies through the stages of limited liability, and the balance 
 of strikes and compromises. We believe in the unknown god— 
 Tendency. But we can do something for Mr. Pennyworth 
 and the H department, and we might insinuate something 
 for the service of Mr. Trudge and his union, always remem¬ 
 bering that Mr. Trudge is the conservative force, and Mr. 
 Pushington the liberal and advanced thinker. We will see 
 
 33 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 what might be done, then, in this more limited sphere, but 
 we will see, first, what actually is done. 
 
 How poly- This is what is done. The polytechnic fever sweeps over 
 technics Kensington. Mr. Pushington offers £ 20,000 ; the secretaries 
 formed of the associations for the promotion of technical and com¬ 
 mercial and other education are secured ; the Worshipful 
 Company of Corkscrew Drivers assist with a handsome 
 endowment, and the Times draws on its solemn cothurnus, 
 and strides down before a delighted public with a dithy- 
 rambic leader. Then more money comes in, and then 
 come in the Charity Commissioners, and close with a 
 complementary £ 40,000 ; the buildings are built by an 
 eminent architect, and the place is opened by the Priucess— 
 I forget which. Everything booms along magnificently. 
 But what is actually done inside ? Why, classes are started— 
 classes, of course—classes! They are educational things 
 these classes, and so there they go, classes in carpentry, 
 classes in metal work, classes in leather, classes in cabinet¬ 
 making, classes in modelling, classes in boot-blacking, 
 classes in bicycles, classes in letter-sorting, classes in 
 anything reasonable or unreasonable, with a view to the 
 application of Art to Industry. 
 
 This, I venture to think, is a mistake. It is not classes 
 that we want; it is Art as a whole that we have to consider— 
 the “ classee ” as an individual, with the possibility of an 
 idea in him. This pitter-patter of hammers, this decking of 
 boys in the fringes and tassels of trades (done by a pupil 
 under fourteen, as the card says on the exhibit); this 
 pinching of iron with the fingers; this carving of wood, 
 characteristically called “ chip ; ” this copying of lithographic 
 reproductions, cousins many times removed of the Greek 
 Acanthus, translated from its classic purity by Mr. Poynter; 
 and the many other wickednesses of all this greatness; the 
 want of discipline and the want of unity, and the want 
 of esprit de corps, every man doing his own little bit of 
 dilettantism for his own little self, coming there for his own 
 culture and his own pleasure, no feeling of the greatness of 
 combination that there might be in so great a whole. It is 
 because we would do so much that we do so little. Why 
 so fine and large? ’Tis not necessary for them all to be 
 80,000 pounders ; they would be much easier to work small, 
 they would be healthier, more human, more genuine. Let 
 us have smaller, less pretentious polytechnics, and we should 
 be able to do much more work within them. 
 
 34 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 Now I have a suggestion to make to Mr. Pushington. ^ he sk 7 
 Suppose he were to keep his £ 20,000. Suppose he were to g c hool 
 spend the interest of it upon the educational development, 
 is artistic matters of the employees of Sky Sign and Co. 
 
 Suppose he were to build a small hall, with benches, 
 books, and appliances, useful and illustrative of the trade 
 of Sky Sign and Co. Suppose he were then to say 
 to Mr. Pennyworth, now complete your knowledge by 
 a more careful application to the tools and concrete 
 facts of design ; and to Mr. Trudge, now come and 
 improve not your technical skill, but master some of the 
 theory of your trade, and learn how the whole hangs 
 together. In addition, suppose he taught in his school the 
 small Pennyworths and the small Trudges the use of the 
 tool and the use of the pencil alike, and got them in their 
 boyhood to feel this relation of Art to industry, got them to 
 see the charm of a well-lit, well-hung hall of Art and 
 Industry, got them to feel their own little relation to Sky 
 Sign and Co.; perhaps even insuring them a footing through 
 their pupilage in the school into the historic house itself. 
 
 That, it seems to me, would be a veritable polytechnic, and 
 a genuine application of Art to Industry. 
 
 And there would be no need to ask aid of the effete The in¬ 
 mummy in a case like this. The historic house could do all fhegoldeii 
 itself. In part, co-operatively, by endowment from the firm, shuttle 
 and by fees from the pupils. Then carry the principle 
 further. Suppose several historic houses combined and 
 started a school in the district, and in the midst of some 
 local industry ; that, I venture to think, would be a still 
 nobler development. 
 
 I once heard of a case of this nature. A school of—well, 
 what shall I say ?—I must not attach verbiage to faCts—let 
 me call it a school for the teaching apprentices how to 
 make—I choose something remote—how to make golden 
 shuttles, an article of luxury much required by the surround¬ 
 ing community; a demand had arisen for the application of 
 Art to the Industry of the golden shuttle, and so the school 
 was founded. Everything was complete. There was a 
 large room, with lathes and benches and tools of all 
 descriptions and assortments, all made in Birmingham by 
 the best makers. There were designs of golden shuttles 
 from the old masters, every historical period illustrated, 
 plaster casts and reproductions and advice to students, and 
 everything that mortal could desire who wanted to design, 
 
 35 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 How 
 
 Polytech¬ 
 nics might 
 be formed 
 
 create, and finally perfect for purpose of love or sale the 
 required commodity—the golden shuttle. But there was 
 one flaw in the whole system, and it was this : by 
 some curious law the master designer, himself in his youth 
 a distinguished golden shuttle maker, was not allowed to 
 work in the school with his own hands—not allowed to 
 produce. That was a noble English anomaly. Conceive 
 the premier magon in the Gothic cathedral with his workmen 
 around him and not allowed to touch the chisel; 
 conceive the master painter in his studio with his pupils 
 about him and not allowed touch the brush! Design 
 is twofold, spirit and flesh, the idea and the manipulation, 
 the sense of the form, the human, the colour, or whatever 
 it is that impels; and the sense of the tangible, the plastic, 
 the material, or whatever it is that receives. You can as 
 little sever the one from the other as paint a picture with 
 good intentions or carve a capital with sound advice. 
 
 But I return to the polytechnic. We have still to consider 
 what might be done. Suppose the mischief achieved, suppose 
 the boom a success, and the big building run up, all yellow 
 brick backing, iron girder and renaissance fagade—vast and 
 improper. What are we to do inside it ? Consult 1 the 
 mummy ! is the first thing everybody says. But can’t we 
 do without the mummy for once if the endowment be big 
 enough ? If the drudgery for grants has to be gone through 
 to a certain degree, well then we must needs draw chins, 
 and stipple the plaster cast of Michael Angelo’s Moses’ nose 
 up to the requisite pitch, only do not let us be persuaded 
 that it is applying Art to Industry or even industry to Art. 
 What then, what ought we to do ? For my part, I think 
 that the first thing we have to do is to accept the principle 
 of mastership. The mastership, not of a department, but of 
 an individual. First, we must have our good master, and 
 we must pay him well. Then we might have him controlled, 
 or guided possibly on occasion, by a committee of experts; 
 men who understand the study of decorative Art in the 
 more general sense, each in their own line, architects, or 
 designers, or painters ; with these experts we should put 
 some business men, who have a practical knowledge of the 
 market, and of the openings in the Industry in qustion. 
 But it is your master, who is the important man, he who 
 will give his life to it, the man on whom your school’s future 
 depends, and the most important things about him are his 
 own creative capacity, and his relation to his pupils. A man is 
 
 36 
 
HOW CAN WE “ RUN ” ART AT OUR POLYTECHNICS ? 
 
 no good as a master for having passed standards only, that 
 is a paper qualification; he is no good as a master for 
 having technical power only, that is a metallic or a wooden 
 qualification; or, at least, one limited to the stuff which he 
 works,—but the greatness of a good master is that he 
 himself produces, and that he also works in men as much as 
 in metals, wood, and paper,—he must have something 
 magnetic about him. Hence the pupils must have their say 
 in the choice of the master. It is the pupil who is the 
 master’s best judge. Therefore, the students at our poly¬ 
 technics should, as far as possible, eledt their own master. 
 It is this that was done in the Middle Ages at the universities, 
 when the boy scholars came to hear a good teacher; it is 
 this which gives vitality to the outside ateliers of modern 
 Paris, and the same end should be attained, though it can 
 only be so done by slow degrees, at our polytechnics. 
 
 How to make for it ? I answer by letting the students, 
 pupils, workmen, be as independent and self-governing as 
 possible; by inviting representations from the Unions and 
 trade bodies and clubs of the district in which your 
 polytechnic is to be. This seems to me the only way to 
 work the matter out, for if we start with too lordly a 
 benevolence from above, the men we seek will remain 
 for us unfound. If the prestige of the master is the first 
 principle to be observed within the polytechnic, the second 
 must be the fellowship of the students, and so the school 
 will grow to a corporate whole, in which the students feel a 
 life, and for which they feel a reverence. “ In the reverence 
 of my master Andrea, and of his master Taddeo, and of his 
 master Giotto; ” that is how the old Italian began his 
 treatise on painting; it is that spirit which we want to see 
 reborn arrioug us. And it is Art, and especially handicraft, 
 loyally and traditionally developed, that can bring it 
 to birth. 
 
 Polytechnics, in so far as they deal with Art, should 
 be genuine schools of handicraft—we shall be better for 
 keeping to the honest Saxon word—and the Art that we 
 want to develop in those schools should be of a three-fold 
 nature. It should be personal, it should in time be 
 traditional, and it should, above all, be corporate. The 
 student, the workman, the youth, is attracted to the school 
 individually ; but he is held corporately, he should carry the 
 traditions of his school with him to the end of his life, and 
 bequeath them as a sacred memory to his children. 
 
 37 
 
Indeed, much could be made of these polytechnics if 
 they were absorbed into the local Industry, and, where Art 
 is needed, all could be centred round the Art impetus wisely 
 developed within them. But nothing can be done except it 
 be done through the rank and file. Once bring the question 
 of Art home to the life of the man you want to win, and it 
 will be a question no longer; and this, if we are really in 
 earnest about the application of Art to Industry, is what we 
 must do. Personally I believe there is Art in the English¬ 
 man’s nature ; but it cannot be “ run ” for him, it cannot be 
 advertised out of him, the Times cannot do it, nor the 
 Charity Commissioner, nor the millionaire. It can only be 
 won from him little by little, coaxed from him. Give him 
 his chances, and he will find it himself. 
 
 One final, inevitable reflection is forced upon us therefore, 
 and, that is, we cannot as yet hope for any genuine Art teaching 
 at the polytechnics. Art, the higher pruduction be it 
 remembered, is the final outcome of the reconstructed 
 workshop. As at present constituted the polytechnics are 
 and remain outside the workshop, and until they are merged 
 into, and become part of the workshop, this will continue. 
 It is not difficult to conceive of the possibility of the Industry 
 of the future, perhaps of the near future, being conducted 
 on a more co-operative, a less individualistic basis, and by 
 combination among the different producers. In this case 
 the further possibility suggests itself that the different 
 polytechnics which we are now establishing will find their 
 right place, and be utilised by the newer system for the 
 higher workshop training. Of these possible industrial 
 developments, as they bear upon Art and Craft I shall 
 have more to say in a future chapter; for the present, 
 however, the conclusion that is forced upon us is that 
 the polytechnics are excellent institutions, that they 
 may fulfil many useful functions, and may do much 
 towards the forming of the future citizens, but that they are 
 outside the direct educational and creative issues of life and 
 of the workshop, and that Art, that is to say, the 
 higher production, has no place within them. 
 
 38 
 
CHAPTER 4.—DECORA¬ 
 TIVE ART FROM A WORK¬ 
 SHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 A PAPER READ TO THE 
 
 EDINBURGH ART CON¬ 
 GRESS, 1889 . 
 
 The key to the study of most things nowadays is the social 
 question; hence, if we want to study the Art question in any 
 other than its immediate bearing on ourselves, we must 
 approach it from the same point of view. Every artist or 
 craftsman works out, consciously or not, some portion of 
 what might be termed the social aspeCt of the Art problem, 
 in painting, in architecture, in handicraft alike. Is his line 
 portraiture, the spirit forces in the portraits of Watts will 
 appeal to him. Does he affeCt Burne-Jones, he will see the 
 nineteenth-century hero in the head of Perseus: is it church 
 architecture he is dealing with, there will come home to him 
 the sense of two conflicting forces, living vulgarity and dying 
 antiquarianism. If he be bitten with Paris, there are the 
 the confessions of George More for a stumbling-block. As 
 for Naturalism it will bring with it its honest acceptance of 
 modern ugliness. In Impressionism the great moments of 
 our civilisation may be flashed upon him. While the 
 lower forms of Art will reveal a still closer bearing 
 on social questions ; beauty-in-use will be brought before 
 him, cheap-and-nasty will be his bugbear; and trans¬ 
 cending all questions of style or school, the great 
 question of the life of leisure will come upon him with silent 
 insistence. How much leisure have I, how has it come to 
 me, what justifiability is there for it in my case ; to what 
 purpose of communal service am I placing it ? 
 
 The objeCt of this chapter, starting with the recognition of 
 the social bearings of Art, is to suggest the application to 
 the Art problem, and to the question of Art development, 
 the ideals and practicalities of an ordinary nineteenth-century 
 workshop, in the belief that a purer and healthier condition 
 both of industrial activity, and artistic sensitiveness can only 
 be attained by a combination of the two. 
 
 To start with the aphorism that Art must be carried on in 
 the workshop and not in the studio, in the face of the faCt 
 that all the great Art work of the present day has been 
 carried on in the studio and not the workshop, appears at 
 first sight a paradox : but it is easy of explanation. In the 
 first place, we are dealing with Art as a whole, and not with 
 piCture-painting; in the second place, we are dealing with 
 
 39 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 decorative Art, in which the painting of a picture is a 
 matter of minor importance : this accepted, the aphorism 
 will not be difficult of establishment. 
 
 I do not wish it to be taken as in any sense for or against 
 either, but I should draw the distinction between the workshop 
 and the studio somewhat in the following manner, 
 sho^and The ^dio a happily situated nest, somewhere in the 
 studio region of villas and top hats; it is built of red bricks, even 
 if cheaply. It is fitted with all the apparatus necessary for 
 the lighting, lifting, and wheeling to and from exhibitions of the 
 large masterpiece; and it is ornamented with all the con¬ 
 ventional gusto of the prevalent Queen in Anne-ity. Within 
 there are scraps of damask silk, bartered from Roman curiosity 
 shops, divers f< subjects ” under way, various Madonnas of 
 the future, suggestions of decorative work sprayed upon the 
 odd moments of panels. There is a cast from Pheidias, a 
 photogravure of Millet, a skeleton and a lay figure. In the 
 corner a pair of embroided slippers, and on the mantel-piece 
 pipes and tobacco. The inmate for whom these things have 
 their being, works hard, appreciates the silence and solitude of 
 his surroundings, and is comfortably conscious of his 
 Bohemianism. In the afternoon there are lady visitors, and 
 the servant brings in five o’clock tea. 
 
 The workshop is almost as light as the studio, though less 
 pleasantly situated, and near the racket of some big 
 thoroughfare. But what matters noise ? if there be noise 
 without, there is noise within; hammering and sawing, and 
 what not. Nor are the internal surroundings as pleasant to 
 look on. Blue whitewash takes the place of damask 
 fragments, and moveable gas jets of patent reflectors. The 
 place is in a condition in which no house-wife would enter it 
 and the glue pot is simmering on the stove pipe. As to the 
 fittings, there are benches, and racks for tools, also possibly 
 a small furnace, and a good deal of grime. To hang up 
 prints there would be inadvisable, though a photolithographic 
 advertisement assists in telling the days of the week, and offers 
 an appropriate quotation for the better committing them to 
 memory. As to the rest the furniture consists of rows of 
 pegs, on which hang hats, coats, and aprons ; here and there 
 a teapot with a broken spout, and an occasional coloured 
 kerchief containing two plates, bound face-wise. The 
 inmates of the workshop pursue their avocation with the 
 * regularity of clock-work ;—a light in their faces, perhaps, 
 
 of an armed resistance to something—and the dinner hour 
 at twelve o’clock is enlivened with the perusal and discussion 
 of racy paragraphs from a halfpenny radical print. 
 
 40 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 These, to my mind, are the two pictures; but I hold that 
 in the higher sense the proper place of decorative Art is 
 the latter; and I repeat the aphorism that Art must be 
 carried on in the workshop, not in the studio. 
 
 In the first place, the right understanding of forms of orna- 
 ment,—elements of design, is only possible in their direct material 
 bearing on forms of material,—elements of construction, in either 
 You need your basis of matter wherein to engender the 
 spirit. You must understand the stone, the wood, the pig¬ 
 ments, the clay, what each can do, what its limitations are ; 
 and this means an understanding, if, merely for the sake of 
 conceiving our own incapacity to use them, of the tools that 
 are the guardians of these limitations. “ Rivington’s,” that 
 famous tome on building construction, whose pyramidal 
 ascent of facts has to be scaled before youthful architects 
 pass Royal Institute examinations, would lose half its 
 value if it were not for the isolation of the architect’s 
 studio, euphemistically termed his office ; but a half-hour 
 in the workshop would save days of fruitless drudgery over 
 its pages. I received the other day, from the head-master of 
 a provincial board-school, a letter saying that his board 
 desired him to teach the use of tools; could I assist him, 
 what text-books was he to read up, and could a list of the 
 tools be provided ? I recommended, not “ Rivingtons ” but 
 a carpenter to take the head-master’s place. 
 
 The ways are innumerable in which the workshop alone 
 .can instruct in the limitations of material, and the functions 
 of the tool; every hour in the workshop reveals something, 
 whether it be so small a matter as the pressure of the sable 
 which produced the favourite form of the Gothic painted 
 leaf, or so great a matter as the thrust of the arch which 
 produced that identical ogeeval curve in architectural 
 construction. The study of these limitations is complex 
 ■enough for us, without our losing the accumulated benefit 
 ■ of workshop experience and practicalities. We may go 
 home to our studios and copy realistically if we will; but 
 given the knack, it always remains easier to copy realistically 
 than to master the limitations of material. 
 
 A historical study of Art forms is, perhaps, one of the 
 most fascinating things possible, and would be calculated to 
 throw much light on decorative art from the workshop point 
 of view. If we were to tell an every-day artist that his 
 shoddy stucco frame is, in the eyes of the Creator, more of a 
 work of art than his own landscape painting which it 
 contains, the remark would savour of blasphemy : or if we 
 were to point out to him that the same painting was actually 
 
 D 
 
 4 r 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 a development of the frame itself, and that the genesis of 
 the picture in the frame could be traced to the days when 
 Margaritone illuminated the frameworks and crucifixes of 
 Umbrian Altars with toilsome conventionalisations of the 
 Christ, it would appear to him a mere antiquarian vagary, 
 but, none the less, both statements might safely be asserted. 
 
 Thus much for the artistic principles contained in the 
 ideas of studio and workshop respectively; and if the 
 recording angel has even not yet thrown the chased goblet 
 into the heavier scale of the latter, we have still all the 
 human and vital elements, in the being of each, to take into 
 account. 
 
 We might call the studio, in its nature, subjective ; it fosters 
 that refined sensuality of nineteenth century art, self- 
 introspeCtion, whereas the workshop has in it the elements 
 of the human and objective. In the coming together of 
 men, in the magnetic affinities that spring up between them, 
 are the forces that engender Art creativeness, just as in 
 academical life they give rise best to speculation and literary 
 creativeness. Ideas may be conceived in solitude, but they 
 are brought to birth by co-operation. Men take creative 
 force from each other. Those psychical moments of which 
 we now hear so frequently, imply men, in the union of 
 number, in their combined readiness to accept the new idea. 
 The ancients would have stated the case between the work¬ 
 shop and the studio in the terms of Pantheism. Narcissus 
 had a studio by the brookside, and he perished in the 
 contemplation of his own loveliness ; Vulcan had a workshop 
 under Etna, and all men and gods marvelled at it, for it 
 was grand and awful by virtue of the united and rhythmical 
 ringing of its hammers. 
 
 When we set to work, however, to produce decorative 
 Art in the workshop, there is forced upon us the problem 
 of the subdivision of labour: how unsatisfactory and 
 uneconomical any present system is, and how necessary a 
 re-arrangement. But the question is, on what basis ? The 
 exigencies of the market determine the supply of the 
 decorative commodity; certain goods are wanted, and have 
 to be provided rapidly and largely; alter these exigencies, 
 and you alter the conditions. As soon as people begin to 
 feel the true connection between construction and design, 
 the designer will at once be brought nearer the workshop. 
 Architects will no longer build houses with half timber 
 masks, nor designers paint landscapes on coal-scuttles. A 
 newer division of labour will set in, by which the designer 
 will work less on paper, and the workman less without it. 
 
 42 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 Bearing in mind that the great problem of the modern 1 ^J^ 0 I J rob ' 
 workshop is organisation, there seems a curious fitness in WO rkshop 
 the application of its ways and methods to the question of organi- 
 decorative Art, for decorative Art, from the very fact of its satlon 
 being so impersonal, admits of organisation. That ceaseless 
 fund of willing labour, with which mankind is endowed, finds 
 scope in it. The labour by which historical schools grow 
 up, labour unoriginal, imitative, conscientious, diligent and 
 humble; the labour which produced the intricacies of the 
 monastic manuscript and the thousand crockets on the 
 Gothic cathedral. For decorative Art on any large scale 
 implies repetition, implies method, and the constant dwelling 
 on and development of some one idea. It is as the variation 
 on a theme in a symphony; for one man to do it is an impossi¬ 
 bility ; you need a hundred, with different instruments, before 
 you can give your decorative theme its full value in variety. 
 
 And further, your organisation, just like your decoration, 
 must have a soul in it. The thousand men who carve the 
 crockets must have the sense of concerted action, even as 
 the thousand crockets must artistically express unity; and 
 so our next question is how this can be got, what is to be 
 our substitute for the monastic ideal, or the creative 
 enthusiasm of the guilds ? There, again, the modern work¬ 
 shop can come to our aid. Apply the militant spirit of 
 trade unionism which more or less pervades the workshop 
 —apply the growing instinct for co-operative action, whether 
 for the purposes of attack, of distribution, or of pro¬ 
 duction—and we may have a like spirit to that by which 
 Athens of Pericles was perfected, or the England of William 
 of Wykeham made beautiful. 
 
 The basis of the new subdivision of labour must, therefore, Re ' c0 . n “ 
 be a sound one socially. In the Greek and Mediaeval times, towards*a 
 labour was divided in a manner which we neither can nor need new basis 
 seek to copy ; we have merely to study results, and emulate 
 with means and methods of our own. This end before us, 
 and with the workshop as our basis of adtion, we have, as I 
 conceive it, to reorganise the sub-division of labour from an 
 anti-class point of view. We have first to recognize the 
 dignity of all labour—dignity in service; we have secondly 
 to recognise the equality of all labour—equality in service, 
 but differing according to merit and capacity. We have, 
 even as a wise collector does, to give equal rights to the 
 Sevres vase, and the chap book of hawkers’ cries. True, they 
 appealed to different publics in their day, but in the 
 cupboard—each a work of decorative Art—they stand as 
 man to man. 
 
 43 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 Style in 
 Art a 
 social 
 question 
 
 At present the class disunions are acute in proportion to 
 their nearness; the workman despises the clerk, the clerk 
 the workman; the wage of each is to all intents and 
 purposes fixed and the same; the labour of one is as 
 valuable to the community as the labour of the other; it is 
 the artificial class barrier that does the mischief. A regards 
 B as a snob or a renegade, B looks on A as an inferior being. 
 None the less, however, the workshop is ready for re¬ 
 organisation, only another force has to be introduced, and 
 that iscommuity of atfiion. Community of adtion is already 
 partially accomplished in our great armies of Industry and 
 distributive agencies ; the co-operative principle has only to 
 be more fully applied. In decorative Art, where men are 
 working for a creative purpose, and where their labour is in 
 itself educational, this community of action can be more 
 keenly felt, for it is a union, not only of pockets, but of 
 hands and hearts. And its highest outcome will be style— 
 style in workmanship, style in design, in decoration, in 
 architecture, and ultimately, national style. Put your 
 decorative Art into the workshop ; united aCtion is the steel 
 workshop needs, and ingenuities are the flint, and from 
 their contact the living spark will spring. We should regard 
 decorative Art as a new heraldry; let our pupils, our work¬ 
 shops, and our communities, have badges, devices, trade 
 marks of their own. For there are great principles involved 
 in the emblematic treatment of decorative Art. It implies 
 an understanding of ornament in its repetition and develop¬ 
 ment. It implies a soul within, which may have prompted 
 its creation, and it implies community of action, because it 
 can exist only where men are banded together for some 
 common purpose. The signature of Turner on a picture is 
 a personal matter, but the hand on the apprentice’s column, 
 the collar of S.S., the badges of the old guilds, the mark of 
 P.R.B., imply an art principle within a co-operative force. 
 
 Solve the question of style in Art, and we at once 
 find the solution of a still harder problem—that of our 
 standard of criticism, the bane of every most enlightened 
 and judicious hanging committee. We may, since the days 
 of Sir Joshua, have produced schools of painting, but we 
 have produced no schools of craft. Given the style, the 
 schools’ outcome, and at once we have the standard. At 
 present the workman’s only canon is technical excellence, 
 and that of the average Englishman, so far as he can be said 
 to have any at all, is a shallow realism. A landscape of Hunt’s 
 he judges good if it be like what he, in some beefy moment, 
 has seen ; a figure of Burne Jones, in purposeful convention, 
 
 44 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 is to him an affectation and an enigma. “ I’m a plain man, 
 and I know what I want ” :—admirable aphorism ! but fitly 
 paraphrased as follows: “ I’m an ignorant man, I know 
 what suits my ignorance, and I’m very proud of it.” And 
 that was why Watts, in his solemn picture of Mammon, has 
 applied, to the modern god, the old Greek fable of Midas 
 with the ass’s ears. 
 
 To come now to a further point, the direCt application of Th ea.pph- 
 these ideas to Industry, we have to work by a decentralising the te ach- 
 process. It is only in their application to each special ing to the 
 Industry in its own district, it is only by a frank acceptance dlstn<a 
 of the ways and methods of the workshop as the men of the 
 workshop in those districts have in the course of generations 
 created them, and by a full recognition of the organising 
 solidarity of these ways and methods, that any healthy 
 growth or glory in decorative Art can be achieved. Is it 
 the Industry of silk or cotton which we want to benefit ? we 
 must teach our workmen and designers the evolution of 
 pattern from the East, the sweetness of the Sicilian damask, 
 the virtue of the Flemish diaper, and we must show them 
 how the social conditions of each Art epoch had reference 
 to the design in its manifold developments. Is it the 
 Industry of furniture and wood-work ? we must trace step by 
 step the historical sequence of church fittings, the Gothic 
 screen, the Jacobean pulpit, we must show how the Art of 
 architecture in England, or the Art of painting in Italy, 
 fashioned the Art of cabinet-making ; whether in the reredos 
 or the wedding chest, and we must trace the intricacies of 
 construction and design, from the solid carpentry of the 
 Norman into the veneer of Louis Seize. If our Industry be 
 iron, we have the relation of the wrought to the cast; the 
 work of those nameless artists whose craft adorns the 
 fireplaces of English country houses, or the cunning 
 workmanship of the Canterbury screens and the Hampton 
 Court gates. Is the local industry silver ?—that most 
 degraded of all modern English crafts—we can trace the 
 history of its decline under the Georges, through the Art of 
 Holland into the splendour of the Spanish renaissance, and 
 back to its crowning glory in the Middle Ages—the 
 sacramental cup. If we are dealing with the Industry of 
 colour-making, it is our business to apply the craft of the 
 Van Eycks, of Cennino Cennini, to modern manufacture, 
 and not only to bring to bear scientific skill to purity of 
 making, but artistic sensitiveness to the development of 
 lights and tones of colour in their decorative significance. 
 
 But in each and every instance if it is the workman we want 
 
 45 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 Attitude 
 of the 
 workman 
 
 to train, it is of the workman we must tell; each school, 
 each epoch, the Industry produced in each country, must be 
 treated in its relation to the social conditions of the men 
 whose impress is left upon it. This, I hold, is the only way 
 of ultimately applying English decorative ability to English 
 industry, and it is this that I should call the application to 
 decorative Art, as far as education goes, of the workshop of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 As to the ways and means, they are ready to hand. 
 Congresses and public meetings of artists and others are 
 our ventilating machine, exhibitions like those of the Arts 
 and Crafts are the agencies for bringing the public in touch 
 with the workshop; then there is the instinCt for co¬ 
 operation growing up within it, and there is the move¬ 
 ment for the establishment of polytechnics and other 
 technical institutions, which should add the element of 
 school and educational dignity; of these I shall have more 
 to say in a later chapter. Whether they are being developed 
 aright is another question, and one which I will not in this 
 chapter take into consideration ; but, as the experience which 
 has supplied its material and given birth to its confidence 
 has been drawn from the growth and development of 
 workshops, schools, the artistic creativeness and the general 
 labour movement in one of the workmen’s quarters of 
 London, it may not be out of place, from time to time, to 
 draw upon this experience by way of illustration. Indeed, 
 I should hold it needless on my part to speak as 
 a theorist on these points, or even to speak at all, were I 
 not myself engaged in constructive work. The days of 
 artistic speculation are gone by ; all that concerns us now 
 is the method of applying those truths which most artists 
 and thinkers concur in holding. The work which my 
 colleagues and I are doing, in East London, strives, in a 
 certain measure, to realise the healthier conditions of 
 decorative Art and workmanship in general, to which 
 this and other chapters seek to call attention. 
 
 To continue the question of the workman’s interest, and the 
 workman’s education toward those healthier conditions, I 
 hold you can do nothing unless you give him representation. 
 You accuse the workman of a want of ideas and a want of 
 interest, but he has one all-absorbing idea, and one over¬ 
 mastering interest : and that is the problem of industry and 
 its re-organisation. If you want him to grow interested in 
 art matters, you must put them to him in his own terms. 
 Offer him the art problem as a problem of workshop organi¬ 
 sation, and he will solve it for you. Here, again, the 
 
 46 
 
DECORATIVE ART FROM A WORKSHOP POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 workshop steps in. You cannot work out the problem of 
 technical education in the teeth of the opposition of the 
 Trade Unions: regard it merely as a means for benefiting 
 English Industry to the interest of the masters, and it will 
 be ephemeral; regard it as a national matter, and it will 
 live. And this holds good not only of our workshops, but 
 of our exhibitions and of polytechnics and technical schools. 
 
 It is a question of what we risk—is it to be a vulgar 
 democracy or an exotic art ? For my part, speaking as an 
 artist, I should say trust in the Democracy, for the Art can 
 only be worked out through its agency. 
 
 Exactly the same applies to polytechnics, whether in Polytech- 
 representation or in education. Polytechnics and technical mcs agam 
 schools can only develope by becoming, in the fullest sense, 
 
 People’s universities; by being brought to bear direCtly on 
 the industries of the locality in which they are situated, and 
 by having on their governing bodies the representation, 
 loyally and frankly given, of the working men who, through 
 their trade societies and clubs, are seeking to reconstruct 
 English Industry within the workshop. 
 
 To take the case of any of the newly created Polytechnics, 
 nothing, from a workman’s point of view, can be more out 
 of sympathy with the conditions of London labour and 
 workshops than their complete absence of representation ; 
 nothing, from an artist’s point of view, is more hopeless for 
 the ultimate improvement of the Industries of the district in 
 which they are situate, than their methods of Art education. 
 
 You cannot win your workmen’s sympathies unless you 
 work through them; offer them endowments from above, 
 and they will leave them to the middle class; give them 
 representative power, and they are with you. And, as for 
 education in Art, it must be of the best, or not at all. 
 
 Art, in any direct bearing on Industry, can only be taught 
 by men who can themselves create, whether in design 
 or workmanship. Better than make of our schools and 
 polytechnics South Kensington Cram Shops, let us give 
 up the idea of Art teaching altogether, for the destinies of 
 English handicraft and Industry will assuredly be worked 
 out without them. 
 
 To sum up. The points I have insisted on are these : The 
 Art problem must be worked out through the social problem. 
 
 The home of decorative Art must be the workshop, not the 
 studio. In working our decorative Art on a large scale we 
 must reorganise the subdivision of labour, and we must 
 reorganise it on an anti-class basis. We must apply to 
 decorative Art the principles of the workshop, especially those 
 
 47 
 
co-operative ideals growing up in our midst, and we shall find 
 in the development of the workshop the solution of the 
 problems of style and criticism in Art and Craft, Finally, 
 we must have, in our exhibitions, schools, and polytechnics, 
 complete representation from workmen in their societies. 
 Thus alone can the workshop be reconstructed, and a noble 
 national Art in the end be created. The great question of 
 the consumption of its commodities—the question from 
 the point of view of the public outside, which I touched 
 upon in my second chapter, and leave for later consider¬ 
 ation ; but the workshop from within may suggest ways and 
 means for this also. The destinies of British Art, Craft, and 
 Industry must eventually be decided by the British working 
 classes ; even as they are at present slowly and surely solving 
 our social and economic questions, and in the end it may 
 yet be told how, from the obscene bulb of the plutocracy, 
 sprang the tulip of the new civilisation. 
 
 48 
 
CHAPTER 5.— AN INDUS¬ 
 TRIAL DIALOGUE BE¬ 
 TWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD 
 PUSHINGTON, M.P., AND 
 MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, 
 TRADE UNIONIST 
 
 In the last two chapters I have dwelt upon the remoteness 
 of the problems of Art and its education from the 
 problems of the workshop and its re-construction ; let me 
 point a little to the reasons of this. 
 
 I once tried very hard to bring Mr. Pushington and Mr. 
 Thomas Trudge together. Not from Quixotic motives, 
 but from a mere love of fighting. There were a few questions 
 I wanted to hear them argue out, ior they had both heckled 
 me with problems, and made a sort of mental middle man of 
 me. But I could not do it. Mr. Pushington merely shrugged 
 his shoulders and said, “ que faire ! ” Mr. Trudge laughed, 
 and knocked the ashes out of his pipe with “ You bet! ” So 
 I was obliged to become an imaginary Dragoman to them, 
 and dish up the questions in occasional and alternate scraps. 
 
 “ Next time you see your friend—what’s his name—Trudge 
 —of whom you talk so much, just put him a few straight 
 questions from me,” said the Member for S.W. Kensington. 
 Ask him where all this Unionism is going to end. Ask him 
 how an industry is to be conducted without the employer of 
 labour who has been specially trained for it. Ask him whether 
 he, as a free Englishman, has no sense of right and wrong in 
 the matter of compelling men to work according to a definite 
 rule laid down by a Union whose adtion is constantly 
 hampering and endangering trade. Ask him whether he 
 would like his standard of comfort lowered by having to 
 accept the wage of the German, or what he would do if it 
 were a choice between that, and going out of work altogether ; 
 or, better still, ask him what he would do if I closed one of 
 
 49 
 
Respec¬ 
 tive points 
 of view 
 
 Unionism 
 
 The 
 
 standard 
 of life 
 
 DIALOGUE BETWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD PUSHINGTON, M.P., 
 
 the Sky Sign factories, like Lord Fitzwilliam closed that pit 
 of his, when the Union struck for a rise. 
 
 “ Where the Unionism is going to end ? ” said Mr. Trudge 
 when we met a fortnight later. “That depends on the 
 employers of Industry, may be. I should think it will last longer 
 than they, perhaps, when the score’s totted up. His lord- 
 ship seems to think that the Unionism is going to end in a 
 general break up, explosion, demolition of things. He’d 
 see it in a different light if he attended a few of our executive 
 meetings. We’ve got out of the times of Tantiatopee and 
 the canister of gunpowder. You’ve heard of the chap who 
 used to cut the wheelbands of the Sheffield razor-grinders 
 over night, and—well, he moonlighted the blacklegs, you see— 
 it wasn’t “ moral suasion ” in those days, not even stones 
 at the pit’s mouth. (That’s what you’d call being militant 
 I believe—eh ?) Well then the Unions were legalized, and we 
 weren’t locked up any more for combining, and we went in 
 for numbers, oh yes, I know you’ll say the sots and drunkards 
 are pressed in, and though theoretically excluded are 
 practically welcomed, and it’s a levelling down of the good 
 men. But the levelling up is going on too ? When we’ve 
 done what we want with our numbers, we shall raise the 
 standard I suppose. Don’t you think it isn’t just the loafers 
 that are our difficulty. It’s they that bring the standard 
 down, and it’s they that are the employers’ safeguard.” 
 
 What we’ve got to do, now, is to fix what the socialist 
 chaps call “ the standard of life,” and we shall do it, either 
 by “minimum wages” or “limiting of hours,” and this 
 “ standard of life ” we shall, if need be, die,—or to put it less 
 poetical and more striking—starve, for.” 
 
 “ It’s very blind, blind, all this talk,” retorted Mr. 
 Pushington when the Dragoman dined with him on the 
 following fortnight. “ Really, though I consider he was very 
 rash in saying it publicly, Lord Salisbury was quite right 
 in calling the Unions a cruel organisation. It’s a pity he 
 didn’t stick to his point. It is not in accordance with 
 English national individualism, to which we owe our great¬ 
 ness, that a man should be deprived of the right of selling 
 his labour where and how he pleases.” 
 
 “ I guess,” answered Mr. Trudge, over our next Sunday pipe, 
 “ that that little remark about the Unions has lost the worthy 
 Marquis a tidy few votes for his next innings. He’d have 
 
 50 
 
AND MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, TRADE UNIONIST. 
 
 •done better, as the Boss observed, to stick to his point than 
 to try and explain it away—for at least you expect pluck of 
 a Tory leader. I see no cruelty in restraining one man’s 
 action for the benefit of his fellows; if a man, by selling 
 his labour below a fair wage, is injuring others, he must be 
 restrained. Don’t those cute lawyers of ours keep their 
 standard up :—little dodges of having one lawyer to tax 
 another lawyer’s bill;—and your doctors, professional etiquette 
 and the minimum fee;—and how about the quack ? I see no 
 difference between their case and ours; and, as for the 
 blindness, well—now, I think our sight may be as long as the 
 Boss’s, least ways, I don’t mind taking an average among 
 masters and men.” 
 
 “But the future of Industry, the future of Industry,” The 
 insisted Mr. Pushington over the port wine. “ We must industry 
 hold the market; the future of Industry depends upon our and 
 holding the market. The question is a world-wide question— strikes, 
 outside the province of Great Fadwell East. How can we 
 net abroad if we have our hands tied at home ? And what’s 
 this living wage, I should like to know; how can such a 
 thing possibly be defined : is it mine, or my footman’s ? I 
 have no sympathy with such child’s talk. To strike for a 
 minimum wage, in the teeth of foreign competition, drives 
 the trade out of the country.” 
 
 “ Now, look ye here,” said Mr. Trudge. “ When they tell 
 you that the d—d strike’s done this, and the d—d strike’s done 
 that, don’t you believe them. Mark this!” and his strong fist 
 came ringing on to the table, and made the tumblers quiver. 
 
 “ There’s never been an industry that’s been killed by 
 strikes ! But you tell them in return that there’ve been 
 many industries made by strikes, only they aren’t always 
 managed by the same people.” 
 
 “ Then why do they talk of the Dock Strike, and the 
 •decaying Thames Industries ? ” I asked, “ and the others, the 
 industry of the-” 
 
 “ Faugh,” said Mr. Trudge, as I was about to repeat the 
 string of Industries that were adduced by Mr. Pushington 
 as instances of disasters wrought by strikes. “ That’s 
 bagman’s talk, black-coated gentlemen, counter jumpers. 
 
 The Thames Industries, I guess, were destroyed by iron, 
 not by strikes. Haven’t they got less and less ever since 
 we gave up making wooden ships, and brought timber from 
 
 5i 
 
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD PUSHINGTON, M.P., 
 
 The livi 
 wage 
 
 all over the world to the Thames ; why, of course, it’s easier 
 to make the iron ships where iron is, and, you’ll find where 
 an Industry goes to pot, it’s because the conditions aren’t 
 so good for its continuing there as in some other place. More¬ 
 over, the tonnage on the Thames has increased since the 
 strike. The Boss is quite right, though, the question is larger 
 than Great Fadwell East, but in more senses than one. 
 If Industry goes abroad, well, then, the labour movement 
 will follow it there. If trade is cosmopolitan, so is labour. 
 I wonder he didn’t tell you, as he and his political 
 economist friends are so fond of doing, that prices must 
 determine wages. As if I didn’t know the measure of those 
 acres of stock rooms at Sky Sign’s, where we can store up 
 our heap of truck on reduced wages because prices are low, 
 and then sell them, to Messrs. Sky Sign’s great profit, when 
 
 prices are high again. I’m d-d if I see it that way ; no, 
 
 no, we’ll work less hours, so as to save the over production, 
 keep up our standard, and, by so doing, prevent that beastly 
 •g market of theirs from being glutted, as they call it. And he 
 wants you to tell him what the living wage is and how to' 
 define it, does he ? Now look, man. I act for my wife and 
 the little ones, and that will define the living wage for me. 
 It’s what I reckon will keep me just a bit better and tidier 
 than we’ve been before, provided I’m not injuring others 
 thereby. Mr. Pushington, and Mr. Pushington’s footman, 
 and the docker, may define their own living wage in their 
 own way, every man must do that for himself. John Burns 
 hit the right nail on the head when he spoke square to the 
 engineers and said, ‘ If I thought you were going to spend 
 your living wage on betting, I’d go against the Eight hours/ 
 John Burns is a man, and I admire him for it. No, no, 
 every man must define his own, within such limits, above or 
 below, as shall prevent his either cutting other folk’s throats 
 or picking other folk’s purses, we get back in these matters 
 to the unit. Some men will spend their living wage in 
 beer—more fools they. Some are wiser; it’s the wiser we 
 may go with, they’re the leaven, and they’ll leaven the lump, 
 we get back in these things to the unit, see ? ” 
 
 Mr. Pushington’s individualism appeared to me as nothing 
 beside this, and the conversation acquired an interesting 
 piquancy when the abstract questions of constitutional 
 socialism were applied to the individualism of the English 
 
 52 
 
AND MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, TRADE UNIONIST. 
 
 artisan, with its bias towards a middle class and somewhat 
 respedtable ideal. We inevitably got back again later to the 
 big underlying economic questions of unearned increment, 
 interest and rent, but as the discussion was not a stridtly 
 economic one it turned to the more immediately practical 
 question of how things were to be worked out here straight 
 before us. I found Mr. Thomas Trudge almost as sceptical 
 about the future of co-operative production as a panacea as 
 Mr. Pushington. Almost, but not quite. There was a rock 
 in the way somewhere, but he couldn’t get its bearings. 
 
 He accepted the principle, but talked vaguely of its practical 
 working; and, in some strange and tortuous way, he got 
 back again to the unit, and the standard of life. Taking the 
 matches out of his pocket he lit himself a fresh pipe, then 
 looked curiously at the box with a twinkle. 
 
 “ There ” said he, throwing it to me. “ It’s a bit gorey, 
 they’re General Booth’s, but I like to think my matches 
 aren’t sweated. Wish I could buy them straight, and not 
 only them but all other things, straight from them that 
 make them ? ” 
 
 In short, it was the great question of human relationship Human 
 that lay at the bottom of his ill defined position, as, indeed, 
 it lies at the bottom of most social and industrial problems, industry 
 and, as far as I could define it, it seemed to plead for the 
 necessity of our growing out of a system by which the 
 producer is artificially cut off from the consumer. Still 
 there was a rock in the way, and Mr. Trudge was unable to 
 get its bearings. 
 
 Mr. Pushington, moving on a different plane, did not Co-oper- 
 recognise the rock as a rock. To him co-operative pro- 
 dudtion was a futility, a delusion, and, if Mr. Trudge’s view 
 was at once sceptical and optimistic, his went far beyond 
 either pessimism or scepticism, it was cynical fatalism. 
 
 “ It’s been tried before,” he said, “it’s been tried before, 
 and it has almost invariably failed. The masters have tried 
 it, and the Trade-unions have tried it. Look at the 
 miserable fiascos of Robert Owen, look at the failure of 
 the Workmen’s Co-operative Mining Company, and the 
 Ouseburne Engine Works, and ever so many others.” 
 
 “ And why do thy fail ? ” 
 
 ' “ Oh, mismanagement, inexperience, want of discipline, I 
 
 suppose! ” 
 
 53 
 
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD PUSHINGTON, M.P., 
 
 “ And do you think that workmen are likely always in 
 future to suffer from these defeats ? ” 
 
 Mr. Pushington shrugged his shoulders. “ Surely,” he 
 said, “ we must allow something for inherited capacity and 
 the reverse ? ” 
 
 “ Quite so ! ” 
 
 I then turned to Mr. Trudge and spoke by the book. 
 
 “ It’s been tried,” I said, “ it’s been tried before, this 
 co-operative production, and it has almost invariably failed, 
 the masters have tried it and the Trade-unions have tried 
 it. Didn’t all those experiments of Robert Owen come to 
 grief, and the Workmen’s Co-operative Mining Company, 
 and the Ouseburne Engine Works, and ever so many 
 others ? ” 
 
 “ I can name as many as you,” said Thomas Trudge. 
 
 “ More, I’ve no doubt, but why do they fail? ” 
 
 “ Oh,” said he, with entire simplicity and candour, 
 “ Mismanagement, inexperience, want of discipline, I 
 suppose.” 
 
 Inherited “ That’s exactly what the Boss says,” answered I, “ only 
 capacity ] ie added that we had to allow something for inherited 
 capacity and the reverse.” 
 
 “ Quite so ! ” 
 
 “ In that case you entirely agree, there’s no difference 
 between you whatever ! ” 
 
 “ None,” said Thomas Trudge, “ except this, the question 
 between us is by whom the inherited capacity is to be 
 controlled and paid, and—well, I don’t exactly know how to 
 put it, how far it is to be allowed to act for itself or not. 
 Is it to be controlled and paid by the producer, or is it as 
 heretofore to be looked upon as a means by which the 
 holders of capital are to use it only for their own, and not 
 for everybody’s advantage ? 
 
 “ Theoretically, I suppose, to everybody’s advantage 
 through their own. But what then ? How will it work out 
 practically ? ” 
 
 f * Oh I suppose by the producers making it so jolly 
 uncomfortable for inherited capacity, that it will throw in 
 its lot with the producers, rather than go skidding about 
 by itself! ” 
 
 He paused for a moment, as if to find words to adequately 
 express his half formed conception of a collectivist as opposed 
 
 54 
 
AND MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, TRADE UNIONIST. 
 
 to an individualistic system of industry, and then said with 
 emphasis, “ I don’t see why inherited capacity , which can 
 always command, and rightly so, a good wage, or inherited 
 capital, or inherited land, or inherited anything for the matter 
 of that, should also control what the socialist chaps call ‘ the 
 instruments of production ’—’tain’t fair and square ! ” 
 
 This question appeared to me so difficult to answer that 
 I, as it were, planked it down in front of Mr. Pushington 
 between the decanters. 
 
 “ You don’t state the question fairly” he said, “it’s an The 
 ethical one at basis, and what you have got to answer is, industry ^ f 
 will your capacity , hereditary or not hereditary, continue 
 or not continue to invent, and create, and organize for 
 the community, if you deprive it of its reward. By taking 
 away a man’s power of obtaining wealth, title, honour, his 
 power of transmitting these, and of building up a great 
 family and a great name, you take away his incentive 
 to industry, and destroy his utility for public service.” 
 
 But Mr. Trudge replied, “ Grant him honour, grant him 
 wealth, let him have his full reward, good measure, ample, 
 and overflowing, give him a title if he wishes it, authority if 
 he wishes it, let his children bear a noble name, but do not 
 give him, or them, the power of enslaving others by con¬ 
 trolling the instruments of production for ever.” 
 
 That, in slightly different words, was what Mr. Trudge 
 said, and then as clearly recognizing, as Mr. Pushington, 
 that the question was an ethical one at basis, he added,— 
 
 “ If he really knew it, that imaginary man of yours, is it 
 really honour you give him by according him the power to do 
 dishonour to others ? ” 
 
 Athens, he might have added, sent to Thebes a crown of 
 olive, not shares in a copper mine. But then Athens had 
 the sense of Beauty, and neither Mr. Trudge nor Mr. 
 Pushington quite grasp what that means ; and Athens was 
 cultured to this understanding by virtue of the slave class, 
 on which her little civilization rested, but neither Mr. Trudge, 
 nor Mr. Pushington would, at least, in theory, tolerate this 
 for the modern state. Mr. Trudge, with his Union, is 
 fighting against what his socialist friends call economic 
 slavery, and Mr. Pushington, is he not an individualist, 
 believing in personal liberty, and supporting every British 
 movement for suppressing slavery in the Soudan ? 
 
 55 
 
The basis 
 of the 
 future 
 state 
 
 The dis¬ 
 tributive 
 system 
 
 And the 
 middle¬ 
 man 
 
 DIALOGUE BETWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD PUSHINGTON, M.P., 
 
 The State that Mr. Pushington, and Mr. Trudge, and I, 
 are constructing, is to have a different basis— the machine 
 and its productive power rightly organised for communal 
 service. Mr. Pushington has founded, drilled and 
 organized, Mr. Trudge is to collect and gather together, 
 perhaps even wrench from Mr. Pushington’s hands, what 
 he holds, and apply it for the common good, may be, and I— 
 well, I was trying to find the synthesis between the two, 
 when the conversation from the decanters got on to 
 tendency—the unknown God. When we get to tendency 
 we get fluid. Anyway, we got no further here, and I 
 actually found myself quoting, with Mr. Pushington, the old 
 rhyme of an old time, of the old byegone English aristocracy 
 of the early Eighteenth Century. “ The simple rule, good 
 old plan, that they should keep who have the power, and 
 they should get who can.” 
 
 But we left the abstract question for a while, as I was still 
 anxious to find out what the rock was that unconsciously 
 troubled Mr. Thomas Trudge in his effort to get to the unit 
 in human relationship, and its bearing on co-operative pro¬ 
 duction. I came to the conclusion that the rock for the 
 time being was the distributive system. This had to be 
 weathered before the calm sea of collectivism could be 
 sailed. 
 
 The cry of the last two decades against the middle man 
 has been, though a very formless, still a very real one. We 
 cannot do without the middle man, the vendor, the hawker, 
 the bringer to and fro of wares, but we can put him into such 
 a position as shall enable his being controlled by the collective 
 body of producers, and prevent his utilizing their labour 
 primarily in his own interest. This, in faCt, means that we 
 can displace him from the false position into which he has 
 often got, of keeping producer and consumer apart to 
 further his own interests, instead of bringing them together 
 to further theirs; indeed, we have got to force him out of 
 this position in order to again make possible this human 
 relationship between producer and consumer, which is the 
 all in all of good production and wise consumption. 
 These bigger problems of distribution have not yet been 
 grappled by the working classes, either in groups or 
 through the State, and until they are, co-operative pro¬ 
 duction must remain impracticable, except in special cases. 
 
AND MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, TRADE UNIONIST. 
 
 Co-operative distribution has been a success, because the 
 workman has been both distributor and consumer. 
 
 We have, it would seem, to break the backs of these big 
 distributive businesses, just as they, together with the work¬ 
 men’s organisations are breaking the backs of the big 
 producers. 
 
 Mr. Pushington put it very shrewdly when he observed 
 “ It is quite a mistake to think that we producers are any 
 longer the kings of industry ; it is the big distributors now— 
 distribution pays much better than production.” 
 
 The recasting of the distributive system is therefore a 
 necessary preliminary to the full development, whether by 
 groups of workmen or the State, of co-operative production. 
 
 Men skilled in the methods of distribution, the hereditary 
 capacity has got to be drafted into the co-operative work¬ 
 shop, and the market has to be studied, secured and made 
 stable. What Thomas Trudge has vaguely called the 
 “ trade boycott,” and the “ middle class counter jumper,” 
 and the “ pauper clerk,” are all things that have to be 
 attended to first, and he believes that the application of 
 Trade unionism to the shop assistant, the paid servant 
 of the distributor may bring us nearer to this end, but he 
 doubts how far the middle class ideal of respectability, and 
 distribution is essentially of the middle class, may be 
 influenced by the trade unionist ideal of the raising and 
 regulating of the standard of life. Of one thing, however, he 
 is quite certain, and in this I entirely agree with him, it is a 
 nobler thing to produce than to distribute, for the act of 
 production implies imagination, whereas, distribution only 
 needs wits and elbows. 
 
 But Mr. Pushington was quite shrewd enough to see that State ap- 
 if there was any rock at all it could be blown up from 
 underneath with modern appliances, and that by the State interest 
 appropriation of interest and rent, the distributive difficulty rent 
 would be solved, and co-operative production be no longer a 
 problem, and that, moreover, the infernal machine was ready 
 to hand in the system of taxation, daily slipping more and 
 more into the hands of an enfranchised Democracy. But 
 this was rank socialism, here were the sacred rights of 
 private property openly scampering across a Kensington 
 dinner table and showing their parts, so the goose, that 
 laid the golden egg, of capital was evoked, and order 
 
 E 
 
 57 
 
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MR. ARCHIBALD PUSHINGTON, M.P., 
 
 restored. Mr. Trudge, too, was a little nervous at this 
 sudden reduction of his position by Mr. Pushington to its 
 logical conclusion, and he seemed anxious for some middle 
 class, some conservative formula to help him through, as 
 it were. 
 
 “ Well, you see,’' he said “ there be some that say there 
 ought to be lots of little holders of land, and lots of little 
 holders of capital, yet I don’t see how that’s going to better 
 things, but only keep the present system going, and there 
 be some that say there ought to be only one, the State, yet I 
 don’t see how that’s going to work. Let’s have one thing at a 
 time, one thing at a time, please. For my part, I hold that the 
 first thing we have to recognize is, the right of every man to 
 the profit of his own labour. The question as to how far he 
 has a right over other people’s, is another question we can 
 settle later.” 
 
 “ I’m not quite so sure about that ” I said, “ if we’re going 
 to be fair all round, besides, it may be cutting your own 
 throat. Your building society now, and this house of 
 yours, you have paid your instalments for it out of your 
 labour, well and good, but when you die and leave it to 
 Jack, and he sells it and knocks off work—he’ll be living on 
 other people’s labour to the extent of its possession, how 
 about that ? ” 
 
 “ You’re a bit out there ” said Mr. Trudge, for it’ll go to 
 the ground landlord at the end of the lease, provided it 
 stands so long, and as for Jack, he may shift for himself as 
 I have shifted for myself. 
 
 “ And the wife ? ” 
 
 “ Well wives are different, and so are orphans—some¬ 
 thing special will have to be done for them as such as I 
 should say. You remind me of Henry George and his poor 
 widow. They alays bothered Henry George with that poor 
 widow, shoved her under his nose, and threw her at his 
 head, and dropped her through his land nationalisation 
 scheme, till at last he could stand it no longer, but pensioned 
 her off, from the Queen down to Mrs. Gummidge, on £iooa 
 year—premium on widows, eh ? but I see your point, I see 
 your principle, we’ll settle it when the time comes—one 
 thing at a time, please! ” 
 
 While I was musing over this, and thinking how easy it 
 would be for a Conservative leader to play upon Mr. 
 
 58 
 
AND MR. THOMAS TRUDGE, TRADE UNIONIST. 
 
 Trudge’s sense of caution, he turned half mischievously and 
 enquired— 
 
 “ What was it the Boss said to you when you were to ask uitro. 
 him if he recognised any right and wrong in closing the mor ality 
 Sky Sign fadlory and turning five hundred people out of into in¬ 
 employ, even if he had no need to do it ? ” dustrial 
 
 “ Abstract questions of right and wrong must not be intro¬ 
 duced into these matters,” that was what Mr. Pushington 
 said, “ and as for the Sky Sign factory, just like Lord 
 Fitzwilliam’s pit, it is my property, and I am quite at 
 liberty to do as I like with it : if I choose to close it, I shall 
 close it.” 
 
 “ I don’t want to go against the Boss’s notions of private 
 property,” said Mr. Trudge, “ and, as far as he’s concerned, 
 he may do what he likes with what he calls his own, as long 
 as he don’t injure other people, just as much as a man may 
 do with his labour; but when by abusing it he robs other 
 people of the fruits of their labour, and inflidls compulsory 
 idleness upon them, his property, which, let us say, for 
 argument, was his own as long as he used it rightly, becomes 
 a wasted trust when he abuses it, and my mates and I will 
 have a Royal Commission on it—only, may be, we’ll drop 
 the 4 Royal.’ Ask the Boss, next time you see him, whether 
 there isn’t something in the Bible about a good steward— 
 may be he’s forgotten it, I’m afraid I have—but between 
 you and me, Mr. Pushington won't close those works as 
 long as it'll pay him to keep them open, and when it don’t 
 pay him any longer, well, then we’ll have our little commission 
 and see if it’ll pay us, and what it’s best to do—no hurry about 
 that! Look here, just you ask him if he’ll show his 
 books.” 
 
 I did not ask Mr. Pushington to show me his books, 
 because I should not have understood them if he had, but I 
 asked him how far he considered that questions of morality 
 and sentiment, and the abstract teachings of the founder of 
 Christianity, for these, it appeared to me, lay at the root of 
 Mr. Trudge’s argument, should enter into the relations 
 between employer and employed, or the condudl of the 
 whole industrial system, and he answered— 
 
 “ In personal relations they should be everything; with 
 business relations they should have nothing to do! ” 
 
 To this Mr. Trudge a fortnight later said very little. 
 
 59 
 
Indeed, I could not get him to pursue the subject, he 
 merely remarked— 
 
 “ The Boss adts up to his beliefs, and I’ve told you, when 
 we strike for a rise, we strike on principle and not on 
 Pushington, for all that he's a good sort, but if we meet in 
 the House some day we shall be on opposite sides. What’ll 
 you take ? ” 
 
 60 
 
CHAPTER 6.— 
 
 THE HONEST ENDEAV¬ 
 OUR OF TIMOTHY 
 THUMBS, TEACHER 
 AND HUMANIST. 
 
 These economic speculations, and the war for the 
 standard of life, have taken us far afield in our consideration 
 of how the beauty of life is to be brought home to our 
 producers, and of how their ideal of citizenship is to be 
 shaped. But there is a little bridge over which we may 
 pass, another path as it were to the same end. While the 
 workshop is being slowly and surely reconstructed by the 
 workman of the present, the type of the workman of the 
 future is being curiously wrought by the elementary teacher. 
 While Thomas Trudge is consolidating his Trade Union, his 
 son, Jack, is being trained by Timothy Thumbs. Let us 
 see how. 
 
 Timothy Thumbs is my very dear friend, and I owe him 
 much. He is the head master, or, as the Board prefer to 
 call it, the “ responsible teacher ” of the Grinders Street 
 Board School, Great Fadwell East, that vast, grim, 
 colourless building about a mile on after you get to 
 St. Saviour’s Church, and near Blooder and Stencks’ Match 
 Factory. 
 
 I want, in this chapter, to tell you a little of what 
 Timothy Thumbs does in the way of technical education in 
 his school, and the training of the young artisan in the 
 fundamentals of the aesthetic sense, I want you to get to 
 feel with me, too, that had we a little more regard for this 
 aesthetic sense, we should get on much quicker in the 
 solution of the problems of workshop re-construction with 
 which these essays deal. 
 
 61 
 
THE HONEST ENDEAVOUR OF TIMOTHY THUMBS, 
 
 Timothy 
 Thumbs 
 and the 
 sense of 
 Beauty 
 
 The dual 
 life of 
 Timothy 
 Thumbs 
 
 The sense of Beauty, or the aesthetic sense, which it is 
 desired to train, I have ventured to define as follows :— 
 
 The power for wise use and enjoyment of natural surroundings 
 and the human body in the first place, and, in the second , a 
 similar power in the work of human creation—a noble building, 
 a great picture, a refined piece of handicraft, national poetry 
 and music. 
 
 As Jean Paul says, we educate everything that will 
 perfectly well educate itself, but for the sense of Beauty, 
 which, above all other things, needs educating, we do 
 nothing. I am certain that Timothy Thumbs has never 
 read Levana, but his every iota of life proves him to be 
 witting of this. The things that they will never get, either 
 at home, or by the clemency of the Board of Great Fadwell 
 East, such things, he says, my boys shall have from me ; 
 and so he takes them out to the forest on holidays, when it 
 might be supposed that a much-worked master would want 
 to get away from the society of his tormentors for awhile, 
 and covers the blank walls of the school with Walter 
 Crane’s heroic legendary and Randolph Caldecott’s picture 
 books. It is true that he also writes round to the great 
 firms for their coloured advertisements—chocolate, boot¬ 
 blacking, soap and mustard ; but that is because his power 
 of aesthetic discrimination is not sufficiently developed. 
 The good endeavour is there. 
 
 Indeed, his is a curiously dual life. The one narrow, 
 cramped, and forced upon him—at its acutest on the annual 
 show day, when his children are crammed for the inspedtion 
 of “ my lords,” who then enter upon their visible incarnation. 
 The other, his real life underneath, the life of the born 
 teacher: for this he gets no credit; for this, neither the 
 Board, nor the Rev. Simeon Flux, give him any esteem ; 
 into this they never penetrate. Indeed, the Rev. Pettifer 
 Jugge, the Chairman of the Great Fadwell East Board and 
 the strong organizer of the Conservative party thereon, 
 even regards it with mistrust. But there are some who 
 value it, the Great Fadwell East Branch of the National 
 Union of Teachers, to whom Timothy Thumbs is a tower of 
 strength—they know his worth and honour him. 
 
 My University friends, especially the King’s and Balliol 
 men, are bored to death in his company : they see him as 
 he is, a cockney, narrow, very narrow ; but then I always 
 think their point of view is rather too refined, and you never 
 
 62 
 
TEACHER AND HUMANIST. 
 
 expert much sympathy between one narrow man and 
 another. I had a roaring medical from Caius once to 
 supper, who told a lot of human and rather spicy hospital 
 stories, and it was wonderful to see how Timothy Thumbs 
 thawed, but the intellectual hauteur of King’s and Balliol a 
 little troubles him, and he objects to the on principle 
 visits which the King’s and Balliol men pay to Great 
 Fadwell East. 
 
 He has done many notable things, Timothy Thumbs, but 
 all in a cramped and purblind way, and all the notable 
 things have been done by his real self in spite of his 
 educated self. Indeed, they have not been asked or 
 expedted of him by the Board. The old boys’ club, and the 
 cases full of curios in the class rooms, and the regular 
 contribution to the Art for Schools Association, whose 
 prints make the walls pleasant to look on; the excursions 
 out to Epping in the Spring, and the swimming competitions, 
 with their rows of copper and silver cups, none of these the 
 Board is much concerned with, they are not regarded as 
 educational, but they are the “ parerga ” of life, into which he 
 puts his whole heart. Pestalozzi, had he known him, would 
 have wondered at and yet loved him; indeed, Timothy 
 Thumbs, in spite of being a professional educationalist, is a 
 born teacher, and full of the milk of human kindness. 
 
 Now, I want to state clearly, and hope you will note it, 
 whether you be the King’s and Balliol men, or 4 my Lords ’ 
 of the education department, or the ex-governor-general of 
 Bujoo, her Majesty’s Inspedlor of Schools; that we are not 
 giving this man a fair chance, we are handicapping him, 
 spoiling him as a servant, wasting him as a man! Doubtless 
 you will say, is it right that much responsibility should be 
 put into the hands of a man who can be got at so small a 
 salary, so low a price ? Isn’t it much wiser to establish a 
 great machinery, a system, and let the individuals conform ? 
 I venture to think not. I venture to take into the account 
 a little human enthusiasm ; and though you must feed your 
 man first before you can expect it, I deny that this little 
 enthusiasm is a purchasable article. This, too, I insist 
 upon, and it is a question that burns into the vitals of our 
 educational system, we must put a little more of the sense 
 of Beauty into life. We must make our schools more 
 beautiful, the lives and times of the masters more pleasant, 
 the teaching of the little ones more genuine, the ideal more 
 
 63 
 
Grinders 
 
 Street 
 
 Board 
 
 School 
 
 THE HONEST ENDEAVOUR OF TIMOTHY THUMBS, 
 
 human, more Greek, a little less commercial, less English. 
 If we did this, we should not be so troubled with the 
 valuation of our teachers in the monetary scales. It is not 
 true that every man has his price—and there are other 
 things to be reckoned with, questions of charadter, of 
 sentiment, of the teacher’s power of attraction. 
 
 Grinders Street Board School, in which you have cooped up 
 Timothy Thumbs, is a huge, yellow-brick case, with windows 
 in it, built in the choicest office specification style, and 
 looking like a large, overgrown and ill-ornamented urinal; 
 there is not a tree anywhere near it, and I do not think a 
 blade of grass would grow there even as a weed, it has a 
 sheet of brown gravel for a playground, and there are, not 
 slummy, but dreary, melancholy, characterless streets all 
 around it on every side. Nor is there a work of Art 
 anywhere near it, or anything pleasing for the eye to rest 
 on, for I do not call pleasing the statue of the great radical 
 politician at the end of Horwark Highway. You know this 
 hideous dummy. It stretches out a big, black, oratorical 
 pump-handle to the Democracy of Great Fadwell East, but 
 somehow the Democracy are not moved by it, nor do they 
 count its erection as among the good actions of the late Mr. 
 Jonathan Blooder. I don’t think the children ever heed it. 
 They are wise, and it certainly does not inspire with respeCt 
 the aesthetic sensibilities of the match girls, for I have known 
 them solemnly trail out before that statue and spit upon it, 
 radicalism or no radicalism, because the late Mr. Jonathan 
 Blooder docked a penny a week from their wages in order 
 to erect it. It is strange this sort of thing, is it not ? And 
 yet we know that Blooder and Stencks’ is the best appointed 
 factory in the world—always employs British labour ! How¬ 
 ever, Grinders Street School is near here, as you turn to the 
 left by the factory. 
 
 You will notice, if you please, especially those who are 
 seeking to inspire a soul into the corporate life of London, 
 that I am quite correct and definite in my description of 
 this place, and its name, yet I doubt if you could recognise 
 it from any other; it is just the Grinders Street Board 
 School, and its next neighbour, as you may know, is the 
 Mudford Road Board School, and the next one after that 
 the Cramwell Alley Board School, and so on. They are all 
 alike, as like as one wasted pea to another, no chance, no 
 hope for one to assert any individuality of its own. There 
 
 64 
 
TEACHER AND HUMANIST. 
 
 seems to me to be no reason why this should be so. 
 
 Indeed, there seems to me to be every reason in the world 
 why it should not be. If the corporate life among us is to 
 come to any noble fulfilment, to blossom into any outward 
 expression of the enjoyment, the Beauty of life, it can only 
 be by a right recognition of the individuality of the different 
 educational centres: the fulfilled corporate life must begin 
 in the school. 
 
 Why should the upper class boy be trained, not at “ the The 
 public school,” but at Clifton, Eton, Marlborough, Win- school^ 
 Chester, and this mean something definite and lasting to and the 
 him ; but the artisan boy be trained at no place in particular, “ Board” 
 but just at “ the Board School.” You shall never tell me Scho ° 
 that individuality is a purchasable commodity. I want to 
 see Grinders Street mean something quite distinct from 
 Mudford Road, and be something definite and lasting in the 
 life of Jack Trudge’s younger brothers. There is no reason 
 that this should not be. Let the school become a little 
 more the centre of communal life, bate a little of the system, 
 allow a little more for the individuality of the masters. We 
 English of to-day are always so forgetful that it is the men 
 that do the work and not the machinery. 
 
 Now I have asked for a little more recognition of his 
 individuality, and in exchange I am going, in my next 
 chapter, to ask Timothy Thumbs something in return, but 
 I wish here to plead also for two other things in our elemen¬ 
 tary education—a little more continuity , and a little more 
 recognition of the sense of beauty in the life of our schools, our 
 teachers, our teaching. Let me explain what I mean more 
 fully. 
 
 By a little more continuity , I mean the connection of the The^need 
 life of the elementary school with the life of the district in C onthm?ty 
 which it is situate, the life of its inhabitants, and this 
 .i continuity , further, through the connection of the little 
 citizens after they leave, with the school in which they have 
 been taught. We must establish school traditions, but the 
 establishment of school traditions should not be left to the 
 teachers single handed. It should be furthered, helped, 
 and subsidized by the Boards. Let each school have its 
 clubs and its trophies, its old boys’ meetings, and their 
 names, and their prowess, and their affections, and their 
 little heroisms and successes recorded on the walls and in 
 the books of the school. The school-house should be a 
 
 65 
 
The need 
 for more 
 encour¬ 
 agement 
 in the 
 sense of 
 Beauty 
 
 THE HONEST ENDEAVOUR OF TIMOTHY THUMBS, 
 
 store-house of the lives and characters, the individualities of 
 the little citizens. You need not tell me they are too young 
 —that the teaching of the Board School ends too early, and 
 the impression will go. It is just that period in our life 
 which is most impressionable, when the mark on the wax 
 is most firmly implanted. Look back at your own life ; 
 have you not a more vivid recollection of the events of 
 your existence between eleven and fifteen than between 
 fourteen and eighteen ? I think most of us have. There 
 is also this to be remembered, the little artizan boy is much 
 more impressionable than the public school boy, because 
 his life is more real, he comes daily and immediately into 
 contact with the faCts of life. He is not waited on by 
 servants, he knows the fire is there to warm the hearth 
 and cook the breakfast, he early has a grip of what is meant 
 by labour, he is not diverted by too many toys, nor artifi¬ 
 cially shut off from the sorrows of the world; all this makes 
 the teacher’s impression more possible, more valuable to 
 him. 
 
 As to the recognition of the sense of Beauty: what 
 we are trying to stimulate is the power for wise use and 
 enjoyment of natural surroundings and the human body in 
 the first place , and in the second a similar power in the 
 work of human creation,—a noble building, a great picture, 
 a refined piece of handicraft, national poetry, and music. 
 It is unreasonable to suppose that we can accomplish all 
 this in the Elementary School, but we can there lay the 
 foundation for it, if we go the right way to work. We can 
 give our little citizens a fundamental understanding of the 
 principles of colour, mass, form, line; we can teach them to 
 enjoy a landscape, and respect their own bodies; we can 
 train the ear to music, the eye to loveliness, the heart to 
 citizenship. I shall be told that much of this is already 
 being done in the infant school by the Kindergarten system. 
 True, but it is not nearly enough done. It is done much 
 too much as a system, it is not carried through into the 
 teaching of the boy, it is done without sentiment. There is 
 no continuance of it into the teaching of the higher grades, 
 and it is not connected with or related to life. The little 
 citizen, in short, is not trained to feel the significance of it. 
 
 There is no reason, except that of cost, why, in every 
 Board School, there should not be a miniature workshop 
 for carpentry and modelling and painting, a forge, a lathe, 
 
 66 
 
TEACHER AND HUMANIST. 
 
 and a drawing room. There is no reason, not even of cost, 
 why there should not be an occasional tree in a school 
 playground. When they built Grinders Street School, on 
 Lord Brewster’s building estate in Great Fadwell East, the 
 Board’s architect specified for the clearing of the site ; 
 three elms, some fine planes, and two superb cedars were 
 consequently cleared. There is no reason, except that of 
 cram and Her Majesty’s Inspector, why a large proportion 
 of the teaching should not be out in Epping Forest and in 
 the swimming baths. All this stupid, stunting, stultifying, 
 lore, of books and figures,—what do we want with it, what 
 does it serve us ? “ The poor little street bred people that 
 
 vapour and fume and brag,” that is what it produces for us. 
 Let us have something more real, more substantial, more 
 nourishing to life. 
 
 Can you expedt much of Timothy Thumbs, my friends ? 
 Isn’t it wonderful how, for dear love, and in sheer spite of 
 circumstances, he does so much ? Yet whatever of this 
 living, concrete, human teaching towards the sense of 
 Beauty, he gives, it is out of himself, and not out of the 
 clemency of the Board of Great Fadwell East. 
 
 I suppose it was some tradition of the little Hampshire 
 village in which he and his before him were trained—ages 
 ere the School Board days, and when the Rev. Pettifer 
 Jugge was still in Heaven—that made him once in my 
 hearing give his lads a most exquisite lesson, yet quite 
 unconsciously, in the sense of Beauty and the fundamentals 
 of citizenship. It was by an old oak in Wanstead Park: he 
 was telling his boys how foolish people were to cut down 
 trees—jerry builders, and architects, and irresponsible 
 ground landlords, and such like. 
 
 “I’ll give you a rule,” said he, “for you to remember when 
 you get big. Never cut down a tree if you can possibly help 
 it! ” 
 
 And then followed some other talk about the many oaks 
 that good Queen Bess, wise and thoughtful woman that she 
 was, had planted. “ And here, Jack, as we’re about it, look 
 at that flower—d’ye know what it is?” Not Jack, how 
 should he. “ Well, it’s a periwinkle, it came out of a 
 garden once and is wild now; and see—I’ll give you another 
 rule. Never pluck a flower unless there's a very special reason 
 for it .” 
 
 At this he bent down, and, though to me, for a moment, 
 
 67 
 
 A lesson 
 from 
 Timothy 
 Thumbs 
 
Grimness 
 
 THE HONEST ENDEAVOUR OF TIMOTHY THUMBS, 
 
 he seemed to be himself transgressing the rule he had made, 
 he picked the periwinkle and gave it to Jack. But Jack 
 saw the special reason, and the look with which the flower 
 was given explained the paradox. 
 
 It is the unconsciousness and the sympathy with which 
 these things are done that makes them so valuable, and I 
 believe that what little talent for drawing, designing, con¬ 
 struction, there may be in Jack, he has had drawn out of 
 him in this way. Timothy Thumbs has no knowledge 
 whatever of design, you may take my word for that, yet by 
 sheer mother wit has he distilled the elements of designing 
 ability into a few of his boys. Among other happy ventures 
 he has told them to decorate the margins of their books 
 with “ scrolywigs,” as they called them. He had a copy of 
 a page of the Book of Kells, he once begged of me, 
 hung up in his school, and, by way of employing listless 
 fingers, told the little citizens to ornament their books. Of 
 course these scrolywigs were very ugly and blottesque, but 
 theirs was teaching on the right lines. Technical Education 
 in the Board School if you like. 
 
 When you travel by rail into the “great wen” from South, 
 North, East, and look out of the window, you see miles of 
 chimney pots and tiles, and every now and again, as who 
 should say peppered in among them, and towering over 
 them, are these brick boxes of Board Schools. They have 
 so very evidently been dropped into their arid plots of 
 asphalte by a central Board, that is quite out of sympathy 
 with the grey blinded life of the community about them, 
 that it is not surprising they, in their turn, look bewildered, 
 are out of sympathy, muddleheaded. The impression they 
 give is one of grimness. “ We are all admirably organised ” 
 they seem to say, “ but what exactly is it we are trying to 
 do ? ” There is a purposelessness about the aim—we need 
 not call it the ideal—of their education. It is grim. 
 
 As far as I can see, neither the Progressive, nor the 
 Conservative, leaders of education, seek, in any way, to 
 mitigate this grimness, both seem afflicted with the 
 cumbrousness of the organization. Even the Rev. Pettifer 
 Jugge, pachydermatous as he is, is oppressed by this. Both 
 aim at politics in education, rather than at education in 
 politics. The Progressives are in too great a hurry to 
 educate citizens for the purpose of the franchise—as if how 
 to vote was the end of education ! the Conservatives are 
 
 68 
 
TEACHER AND HUMANIST. 
 
 too anxious about the old order, forgetful that they are 
 letting the spirit of it slip. The Rev. Pettifer even holds 
 that Great Fadwell’s salvation lies in the Athanasian Creed, 
 but he finds some difficulty in explaining it to the other 
 members of the Board. 
 
 I call the educational aim of either party grim. This 
 grimness is inevitably reflected by Grinders Street, and 
 Timothy Thumbs, though he callously conforms, and often 
 with bittterness of heart, to the Board’s Progressive or 
 Conservative wheelwork, unconsciously keeps his aesthetic 
 sense for his boys outside the work in life for which he is 
 paid. 
 
 I am very fond, when I have a spare hour on my hands, 
 in East London, of going down that endless, dreary road, 
 to the Grinders Street Board School, and into the grim, 
 gaunt building to visit Timothy Thumbs, and take him 
 unawares at his work. He little knows, and would be the 
 last to believe it, that I never come away from one of these 
 visits without a new idea. Everything is ugly, the street, 
 the building, the walls, the method, the organization, the 
 discipline ; but Grinders Street Board School has just one 
 element of redemption in it, it has the little citizens of the 
 future, and the personality of the man who, notwithstanding 
 all the trammels about him, is shaping their destinies to a 
 more human end. When I see this, I pull myself up, and 
 say, “ There’s hope in the Democracy yet, in spite of all 
 the ugliness.” 
 
 I took Timothy Thumbs unawares once in this way, and 
 brought back a new idea that had a deep underlying 
 significance for me as to the relation of the sense of Beauty to 
 life ; indeed, summed up, in most perfect manner, the highest 
 technical and artistic education possible for the school. It 
 was a warm summer’s day, and the air was redolent of that 
 stuffy, pungent, leathery smell that you get among the 
 boots and brick-dust of Grinders Street. A little citizen, 
 who had asked permission to leave the room, and was cracking 
 nuts like a squirrel in the playground, led me up the steep 
 stone staircase to the room where teacher was, and was 
 just going to introduce me when, peeping through the door 
 ajar, I saw my friend with a box of brown and coloured 
 chalks in either hand. Wondering what he was about, I 
 signalled the little citizen to be silent, and we both stood 
 out of view. 
 
 Another 
 
 lesson 
 
 from 
 
 Timothy 
 
 Thumbs 
 
 69 
 
THE HONEST ENDEAVOUR OF TIMOTHY THUMBS. 
 
 Timothy Thumbs was talking to his class about keeping 
 their hands clean. 
 
 “ Now,” said he, “ see here. I’ve got something nice for 
 you. But iirst I’ll see whether you’re fit to have it.” (Forty 
 little citizens looked up with blank faces in expectant 
 astonishment,—what on earth was teacher going to do ?) 
 “ I want you all to lay your hands out, so, on the desks.” 
 (Seventy-nine little paws—for one was in a sling—were 
 spread out, all grimy and curly, on the desks.) “ Ah! I 
 see; very black, those of yours, Tom Smith, shan’t have 
 anything nice for you; and yours—well that’s better, now 
 look ! I’ve got two boxes full of chalks, see, chalks to draw 
 with, like so ! In this box, they’re all dirty chalks—same 
 colour as your fingers, Teddy Brown, but in the other 
 box they’re all full of nice colours, blues and greens, and 
 yellows and violets—look at that!—all the colours of the 
 rainbow, there ! ” (and a big but undulating arc slowly 
 dawned upon the black board). “ Now you may all draw 
 if you like, but all the boys with dirty hands will draw with 
 the dirty chalks, and all the boys with clean hands may 
 draw with the bright chalks.” (Instantaneous and uneasy 
 rubbing of seventy-nine curly hands upon corduroys). “ No, 
 that won’t be much use! There, you may have some 
 colours; and you, and you, and—oh! no, dreadful! dirty chalks 
 for you.” (Furtive studies of comparative cleanliness from 
 desk to desk among the forty little citizens). 
 
 And so on till ten of the forty only were voted clean, and 
 the aesthetic sense of the remaining thirty was quickened 
 into life by a longing for bright colours and a craving for 
 clean hands. 
 
 My little citizen growing impatient, we entered together, 
 and though the others were too much absorbed in their new 
 accomplishment to notice my entry, Timothy Thumbs 
 was a bit confused, and wore a look of half pathetic, half 
 humorous apology. “ I must get the little devils clean! ” 
 it said. And he got them clean, too, in a week. 
 
 Now I did not so much care about the cleanliness, but 
 the recognition of the aesthetic sense—that was a master¬ 
 stroke, a touch of genius. Yet Timothy Thumbs is no 
 genius. Where does he get all his ideas from, do you 
 think ? He is not a man of much imagination. Why just 
 here, he has that one crowning mercy in his work which all 
 we designers and architects are starving for, which Mr. 
 
 70 
 
TEACHER AND HUMANIST. 
 
 Pennyworth would give his right hand to secure; he comes 
 into diredt contadt with his material. We are all steel 
 without flint; but for him there are the little citizens of 
 Great Fadwell East, they flash out the ideas for him. 
 
 Could we not leave him a little more freedom in the details 
 of his Art and Craft of Education, look upon him a little 
 more as a man, a little less as the cog in a machine ? 
 
 It is curious to watch how our English constitutional 
 ideal and the control of the purse by Plebs works in Educa- Educa¬ 
 tion. It is the political see-saw without the inspiration of tion 
 a great measure in the policy, or a great personality in the 
 administration. There is the Buff Board and the Blue 
 Board, each with its capacity for party pugilism. Buff 
 Board has won a triumphant eledtion on the cry of “ Ware 
 Rates ! ” and straightway the policy of retrenchment begins. 
 
 The rate drops visibly. We reduce the salaries, we knock 
 off the teachers, we keep appointments in suspension, we 
 overcrowd the classes to the limit, we cheapen the bricks. 
 
 The rate is down as low as Buff ingenuity can get it, and 
 Blue wrath is rising on the cry of re-construdtion. In 
 fadt the impossibility of doing education properly on a 
 falling rate, an increasing population and an enlarging 
 franchise inevitably asserts itself after the second year, and 
 slowly and surely up goes the rate again. Then comes the 
 next triennial eledtion, and Blue Board comes in with a 
 triumphant majority and the cry of “ Ware Rates .” 
 
 What a miserable people we are. Here we have done a 
 magnificent thing in starting a system of national education, 
 and we let it go to waste like this, for want of—what ? 
 
 Why this: a little more regard for the beauty of its details. 
 
 The whole thing has got to be made more interesting, more 
 human, more free. We appeal to the pocket only, we do 
 not recognise the other finer, human qualities in our 
 eledtorate, our teachers, our children. Will the little 
 citizens do the same do you think, will they vote on the cry 
 of “ Ware Rates / ” ? I venture to think that a little more 
 training in the fundamentals of the sense of Beauty, while it 
 will help us greatly in the reconstruction of the workshop, 
 will help us also to the wiser shaping of our Ideal of 
 Citizenship. 
 
 Meantime we have got to knock the shackles off Timothy 
 Thumbs. As we tighten the ties of government, and, 
 whether for good or evil, get nearer to socialism, so it behoves 
 
 
us all the more to guard the individuality of our men, for 
 on this all great government in the end must rest. Perhaps 
 I am prejudiced in his being so near a friend of mine, but I 
 plead for a little more freedom for him, a little more of the 
 light and colour of life, a little more recognition of his 
 individuality. You politicians and staticians, whose view of 
 life is so wholesale, and who are apt to forget its little 
 humanities, I ask you to untie his hands a bit. You have a 
 fine servant in him; tell him frankly that you entrust to him 
 the training of the young Democracy, and leave him a little 
 freer to do it. I plead for Timothy Thumbs ! 
 
 72 
 
CHAPTER 7.— THE HIGHER 
 ASPECTS OF TECHNICAL 
 EDUCATION AND THE 
 ELEMENTARY TEACHER. 
 
 BEING AN ADDRESS 
 TO THE SOUTH 
 ESSEX TEACHERS’ 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 In this chapter I want to ask something of the Elementary 
 Teacher. It is a very practical, rational, sensible thing, I 
 think, and there is just a little bit of an ideal thrown in with 
 it too, which those who think ideals will not pay, or in the 
 language of the Elementary Teacher won’t earn grants or 
 get certificates, need not take. 
 
 I am seeking, throughout these essays, to show what 
 appears to me to be the relation of Trade Unionism to the 
 re-constru6tion of the workshop, and what should be the 
 attitude towards Trade Unionism of those of us who are 
 seeking to pioneer education in the workshop, for the 
 purpose of re-construdtion. I want to ask the teacher also 
 to look the problem of social re-construction in the face : 
 he has his share of it to effedt, and his share of it is a 
 great one. 
 
 He is wavering at present, and thinking that it will be 
 better for him and for education, in which, if I measure 
 him rightly by Timothy Thumbs, he is genuinely interested to 
 dignify the profession of the teacher by placing it more 
 abreast with the other professions — church, bar and 
 medicine; but in this I think he is mistaken, and I hold 
 the point of view an old fashioned one. For my part, I 
 think he should turn rather to Unionism, should enter more 
 into the spirit of the labour movement, should let himself 
 be represented on its councils, and try to help guide its 
 educational destinies, and should recognise his own National 
 Union of Teachers as among one of the leading Trade 
 Unions in the country. What I ask of him is, that he 
 shall, in these matters, take up a fresher, newer, larger, 
 point of view. 
 
 F 
 
 73 
 
THE HIGHER ASPECTS OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 
 
 Aspects of 
 
 Trade 
 
 Unionism 
 
 The 
 
 Teachers’ 
 
 Trade 
 
 Unionism 
 
 versus 
 
 Profes¬ 
 
 sionalism 
 
 The principles of Trade Unionism,as at present understood, 
 are broadly these. Combined action among the members 
 of any trade, for a larger share in the benefits accruing from 
 that trade, whether in the shape of increased wage, or 
 greater margin of leisure, or, in other words, more control 
 over the implements of production. These benefits being 
 presumably limited in quantity, it follows that it may also 
 become the Trade Union’s business to regulate them so as 
 not to waste or destroy them. This, some of our younger 
 workmen’s Unions do not as yet fully recognise. There are 
 further two aspects of Trade Unionism, the militant and the 
 constructive. When the Cabinet Makers Alliance, or the 
 National Union of Teachers, or the Amalgamated Society 
 of Engineers, or the Royal Institute of British Architects, 
 or the Boiler Makers Union, fashion laws among themselves 
 for the regulation of the wage or fee that their members 
 are to receive, their Trade Unionism is constructive ; but 
 when any of these bodies try to force a registration bill 
 through the House of Commons, or do a little picketing 
 for young boiler makers, or young architects, or pupil 
 teachers, or Jew cabinet makers, their action is militant. 
 I do not say that it is wrong, all I say is, that in order to 
 make the construction possible, the militant work has 
 probably got to be done. I admit, too, that each Union 
 has to be judged on its own merits, and on the question 
 whether or not it is doing the work it professes to do. 
 What I ask for, however, is that we shall, in the first place, 
 regard Trade Unionism as a whole, and recognise the need 
 for a large, comprehensive understanding of it, and a 
 similarly dignified policy with respeCt to it. 
 
 Of the teachers, in especial, I ask, and of Timothy 
 Thumbs, too, that they make it their policy to throw in 
 their lot with Trade Unionism rather than with Pro¬ 
 fessionalism, and I would like to offer it as a suggestion to 
 them, that there are certain things they are striving for, 
 which they will only obtain through doing this. 
 
 I would put it to them thus : You want to raise the 
 social status of the teacher. You can do this in two ways, 
 and of these the one is much more important than the 
 other. The one way is by enlarging the salary, the other 
 way is by enlarging the man. Combine to enlarge your 
 men, combine to force Boards and Departments to enlarge 
 your men, to give them more responsibility, more indepen¬ 
 dence. It is a thing worth striking for. Remember Blake’s 
 
 74 
 
AND THE ELEMENTARY TEACHER. 
 
 proverb of hell, and strive with systems to deliver individuals 
 from those systems. 
 
 I have a grim recollection of being invited by Timothy 
 Thumbs to the Annual Inspection at Grinders Street. Her 
 Majesty’s Inspector for Great Fadwell East is the ex- 
 Governor of the crown colony of Bujoo, in the South Pacific. Another 
 He is a fine, manly, somewhat caked and crusted British lesson 
 soldier, whose brilliant service in India and ten years G°^ ders 
 government of Bujoo was considered by “ my Lords ” as street 
 qualifying him for guiding the educational destinies of the 
 little citizens of Great Fadwell East. The examination I 
 was privileged to watch was in grammar, and the veteran 
 of Bujoo wrote upon the board : 
 
 “ 7 / any man says he knows more than he does know, 
 he who says this does not know what he says.” 
 
 That was to be parsed, picked to pieces, noun, adjective, 
 verb, and so forth. Timothy Thumbs looked at me, and I 
 back again to him, and a nervous shudder went down my 
 back, for fear I might be called upon as a referee. I felt 
 that I did not know what I should say, and that I certainly 
 could not say what I knew, and that though I had mastered 
 the nouns, adjectives and verbs in my boyhood, I was 
 never able fully to discriminate between the prepositions 
 and the adverbs. After the trial, Timothy Thumbs said 
 laconically— 
 
 “ Isn’t it rot, all this grammar; the boys would be much The fur- 
 better doing bench work or singing, don’t you think ? ” of Educa 
 
 I did think. I thought that the mental training was £ on 
 needful, but that there were perhaps other ways of doing the check- 
 it than by parsing the ex-Governor’s knowledge. But what 
 struck me most about the whole Departmental visitation, tion amSa " 
 was that the Inspector’s objeCt appeared not the fatherance 
 of education, but the checking of organization. 
 
 I submit that we have got beyond this, and that in its 
 place we want more individuality, and more expression of 
 personal character, in school, in teacher, and in child. 
 
 Strike for this individuality, I say. It is that that will give 
 you your better social status. I mean it quite literally. 
 Combine, and go on strike for it. We all respect a man 
 more for his extra independence than for his extra £30 a 
 year. Far be it from me to begrudge Timothy Thumbs his 
 extra £30 a year; I think he well deserves it; but a little 
 extra freedom would give him much extra dignity. 
 
 I would like, however, to show yet further, more nearly 
 
 75 
 
THE HIGHER ASPECTS OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 
 
 the bearing of this Technical Education problem, this 
 problem of Workshop Re-construction, upon your teachers’ 
 problem of the raising of the status, and the shaping of the 
 Ideal of Citizenship for the young artizan, whose future is 
 in your hands. Let me first put you a question. What do 
 you think it means underneath, this recognition of the need 
 The Ele- f or Technical Education ? Why, a return to that other 
 Teacher s ^ e teaching that, for the last three hundred years, and 
 must line since the decay of the mediaeval guild, has been more and 
 up with more neglected. Neglected, to begin with, by the scholar- 
 ducer" 0 " Renaissance—we all of us love Roger Ascham, 
 
 but some of us think his School-house is too grammatical ; 
 neglected, in the next place, by the pedantry of the eighteenth 
 century—we all of us love the “Spectator,” but some of us 
 think that his exquisite speech would have been the sweeter 
 for a little feeling in a great workshop life, to draw experience 
 from, but this, the eighteenth century could not give; and 
 negleCted, finally, by nineteenth century professionalism and 
 machinery. We all of us respeCt those who have given the 
 touch of greatness to the life of Church, Bar, Hospital and 
 Laboratory, or who have brought the century its inventions ; 
 but some of us think that we have not had enough individu¬ 
 ality allowed us, whether we be tied to an education code 
 or to a weaving machine. Far below, and in its greater 
 sense, the Technical, the more concrete training of our 
 children, reverts to an earlier age, when we English people 
 expressed our greatness, not in our books and our pro¬ 
 fessions, but in the productions of our hands, and in our 
 workmen’s organizations, when we built Canterbury, West¬ 
 minster, Wells, and Montacute, and when we aCted “ As 
 You Like it ” in the open-air theatre at Penshurst. 
 
 I want you teachers to feel the bearing of this movement 
 for more concrete teaching—in other words, the educational 
 side of my problem of workshop re-construCtion—upon your 
 problem of Professionalism and Unionism. It is the training 
 . , of the young producers, of the future citizenship, that you 
 asoects of have in your hands : you have to shape the Ideal in the wax : if 
 Technical you wish to be abreast of the times, throw in your lot with 
 Education producers, and you may yet see the image cast in gold. 
 
 Let me essay some little further definition of these higher 
 aspects of Technical Education. The Greek word t eyyr) 
 means an art , and so we shall do well to limit the word 
 Technical to anything that is produced in Industry, in 
 Craft, or in Art, in which the hand either works alone or in 
 
 76 
 
AND THE ELEMENTARY TEACHER. 
 
 conjunction with the brain, in contradistinction to any subject 
 in which the brain works alone. Or, stating this more 
 epigrammatically, and in its educational bearing, teaching in 
 the concrete, as opposed to teaching in the abstract. 
 
 Accepting this as a working definition, we might profitably 
 consider what the points of view with regard to it, respectively, 
 are of the master of Industry, the workman, and the 
 Elementary Teacher, and, moreover, what they severally 
 take Technical Education to be. I would put it thus: The 
 master of Industry, no doubt, quite rightly, from his point of 
 view, says—give me more able workmen, the foreigners are 
 beating me in my market. I want better tools to work 
 with. It is true we should not directly teach trades, but 
 give me something that will better enable my hands (he is 
 a manufacturer, and, therefore, makes things with hands!) to 
 perform the work I want of them ; that is what I mean by 
 Technical Education. The workman, also, doubtless quite 
 rightly from his point of view, says—I would rather not be 
 made a better tool of, and if Technical Education is to 
 mean that improved boy labour is to bring down the rate of 
 wages, I object altogether, not to mention “ squat,” or the 
 doing of supplementary dilletante work, thereby depriving 
 skilled men of their market. On the other hand, if my boy 
 Jack can be better fitted for some line in life (anything but 
 my own) than he is at present, there may be something in it— 
 if I can get it cheap. The teacher, as yet, cares for few of 
 these things, he does not much understand, or much 
 sympathize with, these positions, nor has he yet grasped the 
 bearing of Technical Education upon his own craft. 
 Technical Education to him, so far, means extra evening 
 jobs, and wonderful new vistas of certificates. 
 
 If you have gone with me so far, you will have discovered 
 that the view I am asking you to take, of Technical 
 Education, is a wider one than this ; that, indeed, it is 
 bigger than can be possibly covered by any certificate, or 
 expanse of certificates. Let us return to our definition, and 
 see if we can construct on it something that shall meet the 
 wants of employer, workman and teacher. I decline to go 
 with the masters, and regard Technical Education as a 
 means of improving the producer in the fashion of a tool; 
 I decline also to go with the workman, in his mistrust of 
 Technical Education on this ground; but I hold that 
 Technical Education must, in the end, be for the artisan, and 
 be conduced by him ; it primarily concerns the workshop. 
 
 77 
 
THE HIGHER ASPECTS OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 
 
 The 
 Parable 
 of the 
 Cabinet 
 
 As for the teacher, he has to study it in its elements, and in 
 its bearing upon the children—the young artisans of the 
 future. So I would press this point with you, that 
 Technical Education, inasmuch as it is Educational as well 
 as Technical, has not only a commercial, but a moral aspect 
 also, its object being to make a man, not a better tool, but 
 a completer man. It is an aspe< 5 l of the training towards 
 the new citizenship, it must be regarded, not as a thing 
 apart and by itself, but as part of the existing system of 
 education, with which the elementary teacher is connected; 
 it must, in fact, be conducted concurrently with primary 
 education, and grow out of it. 
 
 I would like to state the case to you in the form of a 
 parable. You know those beautiful cabinets in the South 
 Kensington Museum, made by the Italian and Flemish 
 craftsmen of the Eighteenth Century, they are among the 
 finest pieces of workmanship we posess. There is, first of 
 all, a stately structure with solid doors, delicately moulded 
 and carved. In the centre is a golden key; you turn it, and 
 open the doors, when, within, you see the panels still 
 more beautifully wrought, sometimes with colour and gesso, 
 and a miracle of workmanship in the many drawers and 
 recesses. The best work is within. You may fitly store 
 your treasure in this cabinet, for the lock is a good one, and 
 the shrine is worthy the most sacred relic you can yield iC 
 And, as to the interpretation of the parable, well, I think a 
 child is won by concrete teaching. Things visible, palpable, 
 tangible, appeal to it first, then it must feel, and finally it 
 can understand. If the cabinet is our symbol for the 
 concrete teaching, expressed through its many forms of 
 handicraft, the higher knowledge is within, stored in some 
 particular drawer ; but the teacher holds the golden key. 
 If it were not too much of a conceit, I would go further, and 
 suggest how each drawer, each technical form, is the 
 vehicle of some educational treasure: in this drawer, so 
 delicately mitred, is the creative sense—shall we not teach 
 the child how things grow and hold together—in this drawer, 
 with its carved arabesques, is the “sense of form,” more 
 valuable to the little one than a rule-of-three sum. Here, 
 again, is a drawer, inlaid with tinted -marqueterie, you 
 accept its glittering challenge, and find the sense of colour, 
 surely of some service to the little purblind infant of 
 Mudford Road ; and here, in a neglected corner, a panel on 
 which is graven some forgotten subject in ancient history, 
 
 78 
 
AND THE ELEMENTARY TEACHER. 
 
 you open and find the historical conscience of a nation and its 
 life expressed in handicraft. And there is still one inner¬ 
 most recess, the secret drawer to which the others seem to 
 lead, and there, within, is the perfected citizenship. 
 
 These are none other than the elements of that higher 
 knowledge with which, in Technical Education, we have to 
 deal—form, mass, light, colour, creative force, reverence and 
 historical tradition in work and national development, the 
 sense of beauty, and so forth, all you have to do is to unlock 
 the cabinet and, as I say, take your part in the problem of 
 workshop re-construdtion. 
 
 Technical Education has this other human, moral side to it, 
 as distinct from the commercial; and as soon as the sideo f 
 elementary teacher sees this human and moral side, and Technical 
 divests it of the stuff it is so often wrapped up in, sheets ^duca- 
 of statistics, and backs of blue books, and old class registers, 
 the publications of societies, and the records of trade 
 machinery and organization, it will come to be no longer 
 a dull and dreary subject to him which he ought to take up 
 because the times demand it, and to win certificates, but 
 a subject of fascinating and absorbing, because of real 
 educational, interest, and because it supplies just that 
 element which is wanted in the curriculum of elementary 
 teaching. Handwork, as well as hcadwork, teaching in the 
 concrete , as opposed to teaching in the abstract : not grammar, 
 not the knowledge nor the didactic modesty of Bujoo. 
 
 And what have you, for whom this is written, to do, to 
 attain the object? I say you must unite and form your¬ 
 selves into definite groups to understand, and then to make 
 for what you want; you must find out the technical needs of 
 the district in which you work, you must watch the way in 
 which the monies to be devoted in each district are to be 
 administered, and you must act in this with the Trade 
 Societies; it is your province to guide education. To sum 
 all up in a word, you must be militant. The teacher always 
 has been militant, from the days when he founded Bologna 
 and Paris, Oxford and Cambridge; or, again, when he led 
 the new learning of the Renaissance through Colet; or 
 again, when he passed the Education A( 5 t through Forster. 
 
 In this newer movement, the possibilities of being more 
 real, of teaching more humanly, are being opened out to us. 
 
 We are given a better chance of preparing better the men 
 of the new order, of shaping their Ideal of Citizenship. 
 
 It is men we want to produce, not tools, not machines. 
 
 79 
 
Technical Education, as I conceive it, implies the widening 
 and broadening of the limited man. It occurred to me, as I 
 was pondering these things for you, how the old Psalmist hit 
 off that moral and human element in the modern movement: 
 when he expressed, unconsciously, his own educational ideal : 
 “ That their sons may grow up as the young plants, and 
 that their daughters may be as the polished corners of the 
 Temple.” 
 
 80 
 
CHAPTER 8.—ON THE 
 TEACHING OF DESIGN, 
 AND ITS BEARING ON 
 WORKSHOP RE-CON¬ 
 STRUCTION. 
 
 We will leave the little citizen and his teacher for awhile, 
 to return to him later. In the present chapter I would like 
 to discuss the well-worn subject of the application of design 
 to Industry. Jack is being trained in a shop whose pro¬ 
 ductions are abominably bad, as far as design goes. Is it any 
 use teaching Jack this, and, if so, are we to try and improve 
 him, or are we to wait for our re-constructed workshop to 
 do it ? Can we teach him design ? 
 
 It almost sounds like a paradox to commence a chapter 
 •on the teaching of design with the proposition Design cannot 
 be taught. 
 
 I would, however, do this, and qualify it with three other 
 propositions, to the effect that there are certain conventional 
 .arrangements in various materials that can he taught; that 
 technique can be taught; and that to those who have the 
 ■designer's gift, a certain other something may be taught, and 
 that something is — style. 
 
 Of these four propositions the last is the most important, 
 and upon them we may construct a chapter on the Teaching 
 of Design. The practical Englishman will, however, ask 
 for yet another, and I would state it thus: the crux with us is 
 how to combine old traditions with modern conditions. 
 
 At the outset, however, it will be well to define what is 
 meant by design, and to clear away the vague meanings 
 usually attached to the word. Design is that element, in any 
 Art or Craft, by which the whole hangs together, first construc¬ 
 tively, and then cesthetically. 
 
 I am afraid that this definition will upset many a “ design 
 •class ” established on government grants. Yet it is none 
 the less absolute. You cannot teach design as a thing in 
 itself—as an abstract noun. It must have reference to 
 something : a building, a table, a dress, a jewel, a lamp, a 
 book-page. I knew an enlightened gentleman once who 
 had what was called a “ design class for boys,” and his 
 method of teaching design consisted in making the boys 
 draw conventional patterns, from natural forms, into circles, 
 
 81 
 
ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN AND ITS 
 
 The value 
 of design 
 classes 
 
 Design in 
 modern 
 produc¬ 
 tions 
 
 and copying Walter Crane’s picture books. After a few 
 years this began to pall, the boys dropped off, it seemed to 
 tell upon their nerves; many hundreds of circles had been 
 described, and the Walter Crane picture books were 
 thumbed to tatters. 
 
 Those boys were quite right; they have my entire 
 sympathy. They instinctively felt what their teacher could 
 not see, that, what of design was teachable, could only be 
 taught by creating, in material, that technique; the complete 
 power of the Craftsman over his material can only be achieved 
 by learning the values of material, and, much more still, 
 that style, the expression of a man's own character , and its 
 relation to the age in which he lives , was only teachable if the 
 designer’s instinct was there. 
 
 It follows from this, that so much of design as can be 
 taught, viz. : technique and style , cannot be taught, or only 
 very superficially, in classes. Certain branches of technique, 
 that may be dissociated from the primal underlying element 
 of design, may be ; but, at its best, a class is not a good place 
 for acquiring them. A class cannot be creative, it must 
 run in regular appointed grooves; if it is an evening class, it 
 is necessarily superficial, unless it is very small in numbers, 
 i.e., limited to three or four pupils; it must lack the personal 
 element essential in the teaching of design, it can rarely see 
 a piece of work through the various stages of material, and 
 it does not tend to bring out a man’s own character. Such 
 classes as are valuable are life classes, classes for drawing—up 
 to a certain point,—classes for the use of the hands, and so 
 forth, for children; but design classes are not good, they 
 cannot really lead to anything, and that is what many, who 
 harbour the belief that a revival of English design in 
 Industry is possible, through classes, will, in due course, 
 discover. For the present, the class epidemic continues. 
 
 Let us for a moment look at all the work in which the 
 element of design enters, that is turned out in London. It 
 is divisible into three groups. I venture upon a statistical 
 shot thus: 
 
 1 per cent. The work of eminent designers. 
 
 2 per cent. The work of businesses of the first order, 
 
 that have, or have had, artists at their 
 head. 
 
 97 per cent. The commercial article. 
 
 Keeping on the windy side of the libel laws, I would 
 instance my per-centages thus. In the first group I would 
 place the work of men like Bodley, Norman Shaw, Alfred 
 Gilbert, and a few of the painters who are not only painters 
 
 82 
 
BEARING ON WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 of exhibition pictures, or the sculptors who are not merely 
 makers of busts. In the second group I would place the 
 work of firms like Morris and Co., William de Morgan, 
 
 Benson, and one or two others, where considerations of 
 design are regarded as having prior claims to those of 
 commerce, and where, as my friend Mr. Pushington would 
 add, “ The business often goes to pieces.” In the third 
 group I put firms, good, bad, and indifferent, from Messrs. 
 
 Gillow’s, Doulton’s, Farmer and Brindley’s, down to Moses 
 Maple and Company, in Curtain Road. 
 
 These, be it noted, are, in each group, only types of many 
 others which courtesy, or delicacy in matters of advertise¬ 
 ment, would prevent my mentioning. The productions of 
 groups one and two we may leave to take care of themselves, 
 the productions of group three we want to improve, and 
 the youths trained under each of the three respective heads 
 we want to do something for, from the pupils of the architects 
 and sculptors, down to Thomas Trudge’s bench boy at five 
 shillings a week. 
 
 There are, as I say, certain things that they can all learn Need for 
 in classes, but there is a much more genuine way in which 
 we must help them, if we are really to make all-round work- teaching 
 men of them, and that is to combine the teaching function with and work- 
 the workshop function . Of this I shall have more to say below, ®?°P func " 
 suffice it that I need only re-state what, to the educationalist, 
 is a truism, that the Art of the teacher is always the same, 
 whether it be in the teaching of drawing, or of cabinet 
 making, or of Latin verses, or of football, it is two*fold, first 
 human, then technical; and this great educational rule 
 applies as much to that portion of design that can be taught 
 as to anything else. First you must win your pupil’s heart, 
 then you must train his fingers. Until we bring our teaching 
 into the workshop, we shall neither make it human, nor 
 shall we make it technical. 
 
 The creative artist, if he has studied the social and the 
 educational aspects of design, would endorse this, and soon 
 be able to point out the reason why of success or failure ; 
 but. then he is not asked ; and one of the great difficulties with 
 which we have to deal, is the effort persistently being made 
 by grant-giving committees, to run Art and Science together. Custom- 
 They are a sorry pair : they don’t understand each other, English 
 and, as a rule, the scientific horse is on the near side. I methods 
 have never known an instance in which a practical artist has of encour- 
 been told off to superintend the work of laboratories, and design 
 draw up syllabuses for heat, chemistry, or eledlricity. The 
 science men wouldn’t like it, and, perhaps rightly so, they 
 
 83 
 
ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN AND ITS 
 
 New sug¬ 
 gestions 
 
 would write long and conclusive letters to the papers; but 
 it is a common thing to expect the supervision of the 
 artistic teaching in our schools from the science man, and I 
 find he seldom feels any compunction in undertaking the 
 duties. This, on the face of it, is absurd. The lasts are 
 twain, and each cobbler must stick to his. It is quite 
 certain that, unless a practical artist is placed at the head of 
 the system of teaching, any scheme must inevitably fail. 
 When I say fail, I mean in the larger bearing on Industry, 
 in its creative outcome such as design in furniture for the 
 East London Cabinet Makers, or design in glass for the 
 blowers of Whitefriars, in stone and clay for the masons 
 and potters of Lambeth, or in architecture and building for 
 the hundreds of young apprentices and “ assistants ” who 
 “ draw ” the designs for our streets, while the Chief attends 
 to the light and air, organisation, correspondence, com¬ 
 mercial travelling, and generally the more lucrative work of 
 of the “ and surveyor ” part of the profession. It is easy 
 enough to start little classes in practical work, and make a 
 condition that lectures in design are to be given with them ; 
 on paper it looks perfect, but I do not see what it is to lead 
 to in practice ; I do not see how it is really going to touch 
 the workshop. 
 
 In the excellent report issued some time ago for the 
 London County Council on the Technical Teaching of 
 London, a valuable suggestion was thrown out as to the 
 need for the appointment of a Normal Art Master , to superin¬ 
 tend and direCf the whole of the artistic teaching of the 
 Metropolitan Schools. The suggestion was admirable, but 
 the title! and the insinuation implied in it! I cannot 
 think what devil of Philistinism could have syllabled so 
 terrible a title. The functionary in question has not, to my 
 knowledge, been yet appointed—let us hope he never may, 
 if he is to be thus labelled. We do not want a Normal Art 
 Master, a creature dressed in paper, with the Board’s brand 
 on his collar, and a chain round his ankle, but we do need a 
 man, a creative artist, a higher producer , who shall gather 
 together all the educational threads that hang unconnected 
 from the different schools, polytechnics and educational 
 bodies in London, and shall have some knowledge of and 
 sympathy with the workshop. His functions should, I 
 think, be two-fold. He must start as an artist from a 
 purely a priori point of view, and, if I may so state it, this 
 point of view must be his own capacity as a designer and 
 craftsman. This capacity must be recognised in him, and must 
 not only be left free to continue, but he must be encouraged 
 
 84 
 
BEARING ON WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 in his creative work and tied to no apron strings of Boards. 
 
 In the second place, he must endeavour to correlate the 
 artistic teaching of the Metropolis, and, in so doing, get all 
 the best designers and craftsmen in London, who do any¬ 
 thing in the direction of public teaching, to co-operate 
 with him. 
 
 Whether this be possible remains to be seen ; at present 
 it appears problematical. Funds are there, but they are 
 too grudgingly doled out to make possible any genuine 
 grappling with the educational problems indicated above. 
 
 The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak. It is questionable, 
 too, whether such an appointment should be made by a 
 municipality, and, whether it does not rather come within 
 the province of a functionary not yet himself in existence, 
 to wit a minister of Arts, whose duties shall also be two-fold, 
 first, to look after the leading educational appointments that 
 deal with the teaching of Art and Craft, and then to care 
 for the country’s public monuments.* We have a minister 
 of Education now, it would be interesting to know whether 
 he would welcome a colleague who would undertake this 
 higher portion of his duties, and certain others not yet 
 performed by anyone. 
 
 Our next great educational stumbling block is the sub- The bear- 
 division of labour. How are we to teach design, that is to |£gofsub- 
 say, what is teachable of it, namely, technique and style, in i a bour 
 its diredt application to material, when the pupil has no on the 
 chance of coming into contact with the whole of his material; ^eachmg 
 when one portion of it is made in Birmingham, another in ° esign 
 London, another in New York ? It is the workman we 
 want to teach, yet this stumbling block implies that the 
 workman is, and can only be, cognizant of a twentieth part 
 of his work. How to teach him the remainder is the 
 question, and our educationalists, bound by the Adt, say, 
 
 “ Oh, he shall learn the remainder by State Aided Technical 
 Education,” that is to say, in an evening school. 
 
 This may be all right in the teaching of science—I am 
 not an expert and cannot say—but every practical artist 
 knows that it is futile in Art. That same design, that 
 element by which the whole hangs together, and which can 
 only be got at by intimately relating it to the parts, that 
 same design demands a man’s best, necessitates his com¬ 
 prehensive, attention. 
 
 Here, then, we have the economist’s bugbear of the 
 sub-division of labour brought directly home to the artist, 
 
 * The destruftion of the Old Palace of Bromley-by-Bow, of which 1 spoke above (p. 18) is an 
 instance of what would not so easily have happened had there been a minister of Arts. It 
 would have been his duty to look after this historic building. 
 
 85 
 
ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN AND ITS 
 
 Rate of 
 payment 
 to the 
 “ trade ” 
 designer 
 
 the higher producer. We cannot shirk it, we have to face 
 it straight. But does it not force two reflections upon us 
 that may help us in our subsequent action ? That, on the 
 one hand, the position of the professional designer must 
 inevitably be brought into much greater prominence, and 
 that, on the other, if design is to enter more fully into 
 Industry, it must be cheapened. At first sight this is a 
 paradox, the two things incompatible, but when we think 
 it out more carefully, we shall not find it so. 
 
 I have said, not only in this chapter, but in a previous 
 one*, that the head designer’s study must be comprehensive. 
 He has to do with that element in any art or craft by which the 
 whole hangs together, first constructively , then aesthetically ; he 
 may specialise on sculpture, on architecture, on jewellery, on 
 stained glass, on tapestry, though perhaps I may be forgiven 
 if I say that the more architectonic the art in which he 
 specialises, the more capable will he be for comprehensive 
 designing. That is by the way. But he must, before all things, 
 have a grip of design, in its application to Industry, all round. 
 In the apt expression of Edward Thring, as applied to 
 teaching generally, he must be a “ Jack of all trades, and 
 master of one. , ‘ > And this very sub-division of labour, which 
 reduces the workmen, who are engaged on the production of 
 a piece of work, to a hundred disconnected and unin¬ 
 terested units, forces the comprehensive designer into 
 prominence. He has to pick, and seleCt, and arrange, and 
 supervise, but, before all, and on the strength of his 
 experience of men and craftsmanship, he has imaginatively 
 to create. 
 
 The comprehensive designer, as long as we have an 
 industrial system, based upon individualistic production 
 instead of the craft guild, and conducted with minute sub¬ 
 division of labour, is, and must be, at a premium. He is 
 the only person who, in the province of industrial art, can, 
 in an3^ big wa}/, create and originate. 
 
 On the other hand, I affirm that design must be cheapened 
 if it is to enter fully into modern Industry. I can imagine 
 the employer of labour, my respected friend, the member 
 for South West Kensington for instance, as he reads this, 
 bowing to himself, and saying deferentially: 
 
 “ That’s exactly what I’ve always said. We cannot place 
 artistic work on the market if we have to pay so much for 
 design. The public won’t take it.” 
 
 But Mr. Pushington and I always have little differences 
 on these matters, and his view of cheapening varies from 
 
 86 
 
 *See page 27. 
 
BEARING ON WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 mine. His view of cheapening is illustrated by the following 
 case in my own experience. Mr. Pushington is not in the 
 silversmiths’ line, so he will not mind my telling it. I was 
 asked, some years ago, to purchase for a friend a silver salver, 
 and as I had not, at that time, started the making of silver 
 things at my own workshops, I was advised to go to the 
 leading silversmiths’ in the City. I went, and stated that I 
 had £20 to spend, and might I see some salvers. Dish after 
 dish was brought out, each worse than the first, utter 
 degradation ; all that one could say of them was that they 
 were shiny. In despair I said : 
 
 “ Well, I’m afraid the design of these is all so bad ; would 
 it be possible to have one,—just a plain square, with no design 
 on at all! just a simple sheet of silver, with the ends turned 
 up ? ” 
 
 “ Oh yes, sir, certainly ! ” (a salesman never fails you.) 
 
 “ And I suppose it will make some difference in the 
 cost! ” (You should never ask leading questions of a 
 salesman.) 
 
 “ Oh yes, sir, undoubtedly. 
 
 “ How much ? ” 
 
 Enquiries were made at head-quarters as to what the 
 difference in the cost of a £20 salver would be if all design 
 were omitted, and the answer came back: 
 
 “ About four shillings ! ” 
 
 Now the designer’s remuneration may be arrived at by a 
 simple rule-of-three sum. As £20 is to four shillings, or 
 less if ws omit the retail per centage, so is the amount spent 
 for general commercial and “ other ” purposes, to the wage 
 paid to their designer for his work, and its execution, by the 
 
 notable firm of Messrs.-, but even Mr. Pushington, 
 
 liberal as he is, would admit that there is something wrong 
 here! 
 
 Still we say design is to be cheapened. I do not, 
 however, mean by cheapening the further cutting down of 
 the wage of the already underpaid hack draughtsmen who 
 do the sketches for the big firms. I mean by it, the training 
 of the workmen to do it themselves, and giving them the 
 opportunity of doing it themselves. This is a matter of 
 time, the division of labour stumbling-block is in our way, 
 and the logical carrying out of this means nothing more nor 
 less than the break up of the big workshop. I believe, 
 however, that the disintegration of the big workshop is 
 inevitable in all branches of work where the element of 
 design enters, and the inevitable substitute for it is a 
 federation of small workshops, in other words the “ guild,” 
 
 87 
 
ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN AND ITS 
 
 or co-operative productive society. But of this I shall 
 speak later. 
 
 The atti- Our next educational stumbling block is the attitude of 
 workman 6 wor kman himself.* His point of view, though not 
 and the sufficiently clearly formulated, is quite straightforward, 
 teaching He is suspicious of education that is taken up by, and 
 of design presumably, therefore, in the interest of, the masters of 
 Industry, and he is opposed to anything in the nature of 
 half teaching, which means that the masters may be able to 
 employ partially trained youths, who have had a super¬ 
 ficial grounding in evening classes, at a lower rate of wages 
 than would be paid to thoroughly trained workmen, and he 
 hates “ squat ” with a bitter hatred. He, further, is very 
 sensitive; doctors and lawyers could not be more so, of 
 trenching upon the work of other Unions not his own. 
 With this point of view I fully sympathise, only I do not 
 regard it as a permanent one. It is primarily defensive, 
 and, I believe, in course of time, the growing responsibilities 
 of the Trade Unions to the Industrial development must 
 reverse it, and lead to a more far-sighted educational policy, 
 emanating from those with whom it ought to begin, namely, 
 those who are creating with their hands, rather than those 
 whose first consideration is the yearly dividend or profit. 
 
 The primary difference between, let us for a moment call 
 them the Trade Unions of the middle ages, and our own, is 
 that the former were, among other things, direCtly responsible 
 to the community for the goodness of the work produced ; 
 consequently the education was in their hands, and it was 
 done through the workshop. This, as I said above, we 
 have to aim at, to revert to. To me it seems that every 
 possible endeavour should be made by municipal bodies to 
 induce, or where possible, to oblige, the Unions to take over 
 educational responsibilities. This, again, is a matter of 
 time, and the Unions have to win their wage-battles first, 
 and become directly concerned in the management of the 
 Industry before they will trouble themselves with its better¬ 
 ment from the productive point of view. As to their present 
 regard for design, as here discussed, it does not concern 
 them. The practical problems of Industry, and the practical 
 problems of Art, are at present too disconnected. But they 
 will not long so be, and then their bearing on each other 
 will be direCt and all absorbing. Re-construCt the work¬ 
 shop’s social conditions, and the improvement of its design 
 will inevitably follow. What our municipal bodies and 
 councils have immediately to do, is to seek for any group of 
 
 88 
 
 See Mr. Thomas Trudge’s point of view, page 33. 
 
BEARING ON WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 workmen, and by workmen I mean, men working with their 
 hands, who are in any way interested in the educational 
 problem, and give them every possible support. 
 
 But to return to the question of the teaching and the 
 workshop functions. I have always insisted that in their and ^re¬ 
 combination lies the only right method of imparting any shop func- 
 subject, which implies the application of Art to Industry. tlon a S ain 
 The South Kensington system has reversed, and must 
 continue to reverse, this method, and the clause in the 
 Technical Instruction Acts against the teaching of trades, 
 will make to the same end, and be an obstacle to the 
 County Councils. However necessary this clause may be, 
 
 I believe that practical experience, or rather necessity, will 
 upset it. It has certainly, in many instances, already been 
 got round. The whole question of the application of design 
 to material is involved in it, and points to the need of its 
 abolition ; that question is a technical question, of which 
 the framers of the Act, with all due deference to them, 
 knew nothing. This clause is the difficulty felt by every¬ 
 body who is anxious to make industrial teaching effective. 
 
 It is an obviously reasonable clause, but it postulates a 
 competitive system. It is reasonable that the State should 
 not aid one producer at the cost or to the exclusion of 
 another. If, however, we conceive of a developed co¬ 
 operative system, the clause stultifies itself, and the difficulty 
 vanishes. Meanwhile we have to face it. 
 
 It is being got over by various people in various ways. 
 
 Some draw a line between the theory and the practice of a 
 subject, some at the sale of the commodities produced, where 
 teaching involves production, some deliberately ignore it, 
 and just teach, regardless of any qualification. Perhaps 
 this is the wisest plan. In some cases, notably in industrial 
 Art, you cannot teach at all, except by just teaching what 
 may directly be termed a trade. The question as to what 
 is a trade, is often only a difference of degree. A trade, with¬ 
 out venturing on a definition, I take to be something at which 
 somebody can earn a living by the skilled work of his hands, 
 but in Industrial Art nothing is worth teaching unless a 
 living can be got by it, and you cannot teach it unless you 
 go direct at your material. Theory, drawing on paper, 
 elementary training,—all very good doubtless, but then they 
 are all off the point, as far as genuine training is concerned, 
 and the point is, the instant technique of the artist 
 workman. 
 
 I take a case. In Birmingham they pride themselves on 
 their enamels. Their enamels are really very bad indeed, 
 
 89 
 
 G 
 
ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN AND ITS 
 
 Old tradi¬ 
 tions and 
 modern 
 conditions 
 
 as everybody who has made a study of enamels, and most 
 of the best Birmingham men, too, know quite well. We 
 want, with all respect to the Birmingham enamellers, to 
 improve these enamels by means of technical education. 
 How shall we set about it ? By giving lectures on design 
 with the black-board ? By comparing a good enamel with 
 a bad one, and talking about colours to people sitting on 
 forms in gas-lit class rooms ? No, I say ; and I can imagine 
 a shout of derision from Benvenuto four hundred years 
 away, as he looks out of his workshop, furnace-bar in hand, 
 and jeers at the young Birmingham artisans at the evening 
 certificated classes. No ! by standing over the workman as 
 be bosses his metal plate, and paints on his flux; by showing 
 him where to leave and what to give; by telling him not to 
 be so beastly clean when he peppers on his colours ; by just 
 flinging in a pinch of rosso here so as to give an accent, 
 and pushing him out of the way in the nick of time at the 
 furnace’s mouth. I know of no other way. But is that, or 
 is that not, teaching a trade, according to the ACt ? And 
 will the Council give us a grant for that ? It’s the only way 
 we can beat the Germans, you know! And if we really 
 want to learn how to do better enamels, we had better give 
 up the pretence of trying to do it in any other way for the 
 sake of the Council’s aid. It is quite certain to me, that we 
 shall never have a genuine system of industrial Education 
 until we do teach trades. The real question, I think, is to 
 whom are we to entrust this teaching, to the masters of 
 Industry, or to the men ? This question leads us to my 
 last proposition, which was, that the crux with us is how to 
 combine old traditions with modern conditions. 
 
 It is generally admitted now, I think, that the work of the 
 past—the work produced in this country, for instance, up to 
 the end of the Eighteenth Century, and the advent of the 
 industrial revolution, may be taken as a standard for the 
 joint excellence of design and workmanship in English Art 
 and Craft, and it follows from this, that the conditions, 
 under which it was produced, were favourable to its pro¬ 
 duction. Published records, such as the Government 
 Commission of 1888, on the London Livery Companies, 
 are at hand to prove this, though, to the artist or expert, a 
 study of old work itself is sufficient proof. Now, the 
 traditions of the past, under which the good work throve, 
 were, broadly, two, the tradition of the Guild and the tradition 
 of the Workshop. The tradition of the Guild implied a 
 co-operative and exclusive system, and a corporate responsi¬ 
 bility among the producers to the community for the 
 
 90 
 
BEARING ON WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 goodness of the work produced. The tradition of the 
 Workshop implied a storing and handing down, from 
 generation to generation, of old methods of workmanship, 
 in small workshops, every craftsman’s direct interest in the 
 work of his own hands and his personal responsibility to 
 the Guild for it. It followed necessarily from this, that 
 technical and artistic education, in our sense of the word, 
 was implied in the workshop teaching; there was no 
 educational difficulty outside the workshop, and divorced 
 from it. 
 
 In place of this, we have, at the present day, a compe¬ 
 titive and individualistic, instead of a co-operative system ; 
 large workshops with machinery and sub-division of labour, 
 instead of small workshops; and in place of the mediaeval 
 Unions of highly-skilled workmen, the militant Trade 
 Unions, loosely leading armies of partially trained workmen 
 with daily less opportunity for their thorough teaching. It 
 seems almost grotesque to require that old traditions shall be 
 applied to these conditions. 
 
 I do not only, however, affirm that this must be done, if 
 the past standard of excellence is to be arrived at, and, 
 what is much more important, maintained all round; for 
 the prestige of a strong man working for a small public, 
 may keep going, for a while, work that is quite worthy of 
 the Guild tradition of old; work such as Mr. Pushington 
 delights in personally, but would call “not strictly an article 
 of commerce ” ; but I affirm that it is actually being done, 
 that old traditions are actually being re-applied. Slowly 
 and deliberately we are, not returning to the workshop of 
 the middle ages, for return is impossible, but making 
 for a re-construCtion of the modern workshop from within. 
 Any new regulation of industry, any reduction of the 
 hours of labour, any joint aCtion, whether of Govern¬ 
 ments or of Trade Unions, that bears on the interaction 
 of trade between various countries, any development of 
 Unionism to regulate Industry, from the craftsman’s point of 
 view, any development of the Co-operative Society, or 
 embryo Guild, bring sus nearer, not to the mediaeval work¬ 
 shop, to that we can never return, nor should we seek to do 
 so, but to the conditions that made possible the production of its 
 commodities . 
 
 In the militant Trade Union, and the productive Co¬ 
 operative Society, we see the elements of a revival of the 
 two traditions of the past, the tradition of the Guild, and the 
 tradition of the workshop. Look further for a moment— 
 imagine the Trade Union, at the end of its fighting tether, 
 
the maximum wage won, and the master of Industry 
 reduced to a position in which it is no longer to his interest 
 to conduct the Industry as a personal venture. The 
 responsibility for its development inevitably devolves upon 
 the Trade Union, and, the only practicable machinery for 
 its continuance, the Co-operative Society. Then imagine 
 further a development of the co-operative principle and 
 groups of workshops formed with traditions of their own, 
 stored up for the future of the workshop, instead of for the 
 head of the firm and his family, and we have a close 
 approximation, only on a larger scale, to the two mediaeval 
 traditions. It is at this point that our genuine system of 
 industrial education will be effective. In short, as I have 
 before suggested, we must convert Mr. Pushington’s great 
 house, Sky Sign and Co., into a sort of Industrial Partner¬ 
 ship, whose future is vested in its producers, not its 
 entrepreneurs, and we must utilize the sum which our 
 public opinion extorts from his munificence, not for the 
 , purpose of swelling big polytechnics, but of teaching in the 
 workshop. Next time I see Mr. Pushington, I will ask 
 him, in all seriousness, whether he has sufficient confidence 
 in the men, of whom he speaks so highly, and appears so 
 proud, to entrust his capital to their management: or 
 is it to be Argentines, or Ottomans, or American rails. The 
 question is rather a delicate one. We shall see ! 
 
 Mr. Pushington, who very courteously consented to look through 
 the proof sheets of the above, says I am quite right, the crux is as 
 I put it, but that we cannot combine old traditions with modern 
 conditions. My answer is that if we are to bring back design 
 into the workshop, we must. We shall see. Time, and, may be, 
 the Trade Unions, will determine many things for us, of which at 
 present we reck little. 
 
 92 
 
CHAPTER 9.—UNIVERSITY 
 EXTENSION AND THE 
 WORKSHOP. A PROBLEM 
 AND A POLICY. 
 
 We have now, however superficially, regarded a few of 
 the problems of workshop reconstruction from within; 
 how they appear to Mr. Thomas Trudge, and to Mr. 
 Pushington; we have considered the bearing upon them 
 of the Technical School, and of the newer ideas of Technical 
 Education, and we have taken an all too hasty glimpse into 
 the little creation, that is going on, down below, of the 
 citizens who are to form the knowledge of the future. 
 There appears to me, however, another way, by which the 
 reconstruction may be guided, and the Ideal of Citizenship 
 shaped. This other way is through University Extension— 
 the grafting of the humanistic studies upon Industry. 
 
 I was invited once, by the Oxford Delegacy, to give a 
 course of Extension Lectures at a new centre in Berkshire 
 —to break ground for them. The centre was an artisan 
 centre, and as it happened to be near Mr. Pushington’s 
 place, and he was to take the chair at the opening lecture, 
 he invited me to stay. The Rev. Simeon Flux was among 
 the guests, and being one of the leading lights of the London 
 Extension Society, he was, of course, asked to speak, which 
 he very kindly consented to do. 
 
 It was decided, therefore, that the rector of Great Fadwell 
 East, as an eminent Extensionist, should introduce me and 
 “ the movement ” to the audience, and that Mr. Pushington 
 should take the chair and sum up. 
 
 The Rector opened the ball. It was evident at once that 
 the meeting was going to be a success. The audience felt 
 that they were in the presence of a great speaker: the 
 speech was short, and it held their attention throughout. 
 He explained the Extension movement,—what it had done, 
 what it was doing, what it was going to do ; the Extension 
 movement grew and multiplied as he was speaking about 
 it ; it began to creep and spawn, and swarm, and overflow; 
 it became a mighty, national, nay American, world-wide, 
 oceanic, movement; it depressed you with the sense of its 
 vastness, its strength, its genuineness, its modesty. In that 
 moment you felt, had University Extension been on the 
 political ticket, and the ballot box at the door, every man in 
 
 93 
 
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORSHOP. 
 
 The Rev, 
 Simeon 
 Flux in 
 oratio 
 obliqua 
 
 the hall would have plumped for the Extension candidate. 
 Then the Rev. Simeon struck another note—Religion. 
 The Extension movement, he said, was fundamentally a 
 religious movement; it brought the Religion of the new 
 age, the Religion of culture, of light, of sweetness, of free 
 thought; we had come to the end of the time when dogma 
 was the first essential, even doctrine might be treated more 
 or less symbolically, and was not so important as every 
 man’s individual thought; the Extension movement was the 
 rubric of every man’s individual thought. “ I,” said the 
 rector, “ admit it frankly, I believe in Being —it is a nobler 
 thing to Be than to Do. In that moment you felt that the 
 Church was on the right lines, that the great churchman 
 was with us, that this was the man for the pulpit, this was 
 the man to put new life into the Church; that if the Rector 
 of Great Fadwell East said this, what more could one wish, 
 and the Extension movement assumed the form of a sweetly 
 reasonable crusade—it was winning, suggestive, convincing. 
 Then once more the Rector changed the note. The Exten¬ 
 sion movement, he said, was the movement of Democracy, 
 it was one of the forces of the new civilization, it was for 
 the people, for the artizan. The Universities at last were 
 coming to the light of day ; they were stretching out the 
 hand, they were stepping from their seclusion, and bringing 
 education to the poor. “ I am a University man, myself,” 
 he cried, “and can speak. We were an aristocracy at 
 college, we kept the light, and the privilege, and the learning 
 to ourselves, but that is all gone by. We recognise that we 
 have duties as well as rights, and we are trying, in our 
 humble way, to fulfil those duties. In speaking to you to 
 night, I feel as if I am doing a duty to my college. I owe 
 everything to my college, and I love my college as I love 
 my wife.” In short, you felt, as you listened, that the 
 Universities and the people had somehow got divorced from 
 one another, though how was not clearly explained, and 
 that the Extension Movement was bringing them together 
 again, that the mountain need not try to come to Mahomet 
 any more, and that Mahomet had at length come to the 
 mountain, and so forth, and that in the University Extension 
 Movement, as the Rector said, to close with, there was only 
 one class—neither upper, middle, or lower, “ but the class 
 of earnest thinkers in Democracy. We can learn citizenship 
 in the Extension movement. Let us all be earnest thinkers 
 in Democracy.” 
 
 94 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 You might have heard a pin drop while all this was going 
 on, and when I rose to. give my lecture, I felt like a beetle 
 suddenly uncovered in the light, and anxious only to hide 
 myself. What my ledture on this occasion was about, I 
 forget, nor does it matter. It had to do with the local 
 Industry. My lectures, as a rule, appear on the posters and 
 in the Extension papers as lectures on Design, but they 
 really have very little to do with Design, that being a subject, 
 as I have before pointed out, which one cannot lecture 
 about; but they deal with what I would call the humanizing 
 of Industry. Their method seeks to be different from 
 the ordinary Extension ledture, often but a hackneyed 
 boiling down of the latest academic ideas for the con¬ 
 sumption of the middle-class, and their attempt has been 
 to get men, especially workmen, to feel the relationship 
 between their work in life and their mental development. 
 In short, they make for the higher aspedts of what in these 
 essays I call workshop re-construction. Suffice it, that, 
 whatever I said on this occasion, fell very flat after the 
 Rev. Simeon’s speech, and the title of my ledture, in which 
 I foreshadowed the course, may be nameless. 
 
 After me, Mr. Pushington summed up. He spoke very 
 quietly, and very sensibly. He thanked me for my ledfure, 
 and though he begged to differ from some of my statements, 
 as to the necessary conjunction of industrial life with a 
 movement for Education, he did not, he said, wish to bias 
 the minds of the audience with anything he himself thought, 
 They must judge on these matters for themselves at the end 
 of the course, which, whatever one might say against it, 
 certainly promised to be interesting. Then he thanked the 
 Rev. Simeon Flux for his admirable speech, and the ideal of 
 culture he had set before them ; and, though he was not 
 himself able to endorse all the Rector’s views, he hoped 
 none the less that they might be stimulating to all present 
 that evening. It was evident that Mr. Pushington did not 
 sympathise with the Rector’s ebullient and comfortable 
 optimism. Mr. Pushington’s speech, though less moving, 
 appeared to me more dignified. He avoided the Trade 
 Union problem as he would fire, and insisted that all 
 controversial matters should be kept out of educational 
 questions. As to the relationship of the University to 
 Industry, he said that, in his opinion, the first duty of a 
 University was the cultivation of learning within its own 
 precincts, and that the sending out of teachers into other 
 
 Mr. Push¬ 
 ington’s 
 armed 
 neutrality 
 
 95 
 
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORKSHOP. 
 
 The tri¬ 
 angular 
 duel on 
 the policy 
 
 parts, though doubtless admirable, was, after all, only an 
 incident in its development. “ To every one,” Mr. Pushington 
 said, “ Education must be a personal matter. I hope you 
 may all be personally gainers by what the lecturer has got to 
 say to you. I wish him every success, I wish the Centre 
 every success, and shall hope to help both to the best of 
 my ability.” 
 
 The evening was on the whole an admirable one, and the 
 local secretary was radiant; but when it was over, and we 
 were driving back in the brougham, Mr. Pushington, the 
 Rev. Simeon Flux, and I, somehow formed a triangle, of 
 three sharp angles equi - distant. We were all out of 
 humour with one another. Mr. Pushington lit his cigar, 
 leaned back in the cushions, and began the attack. Some¬ 
 what cynically, but very kindly, he made for me. What 
 was I driving at—what did I want to do—where was it 
 all going to end ? The Rev. Simeon Flux chimed in too— 
 he did not smoke, and so, perhaps, he was a little less 
 cynical, and a little less kindly—where, indeed, was it all 
 going to end ? Why did I not point more to a mission, a 
 modern mission—he, surely, had given me the lead. Why 
 throw away academic culture and method ? Workmen, before 
 all other men, surely needed this—the scheme of my course 
 was too vague, and, at the same time it was narrow. Why 
 speak so exclusively to artisans, and hint at controversial 
 topics—“ You did not exadtly talk Socialism,” he said, “ but 
 you played with fire.” 
 
 Then Mr. Pushington turned round and rent the Rev. 
 Simeon Flux—. 
 
 “ Oh, as for a little Socialism,” said he, “ that’s neither 
 here nor there, we all do that—but I can’t understand how 
 you, Flux, can possibly talk as you do about University 
 Extension. The thing has got no more bottom to it than 
 this cigar. The thing wouldn’t go on for another six months 
 here, or in Fadwell, if it weren’t for my credit. The teaching 
 is superficial and scrappy. It has not, and cannot have, any 
 real relation to working men, and as to taking up the line 
 you did about the duties of the Universities, I really think 
 it unwise and dangerous to speak so. It is University 
 Distension from the University’s point of view,” said Mr. 
 Pushington, and he tossed his cigar, which was a bit dry, 
 out of the window, and lit another. 
 
 The Rev. Simeon Flux was about to defend himself, when 
 Mr. Pushington continued. “No man is more liberal than 
 
 96 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 I, as you know perfectly well, and I try to show this by 
 practically supporting the movement, but as to calling it 
 religious and democratic , or looking at it in any way as a 
 great educational force, it’s all nonsense—it’s all nonsense ! ” 
 
 But here I sought my opportunity. “ What is the move¬ 
 ment, and what do you want to make of it ? What is your 
 policy, I mean, of University Extension, in its relation to 
 the artizan and to Industry? We are all agreed that the 
 University’s first duty is to encourage learning in its own 
 precincts, but what is the object of the Extension movement 
 among workmen. If it is to send out teachers at all, and 
 be a force at all, it must have a policy. What is your policy, 
 gentlemen ? ” 
 
 They both chimed in at this, but as each sought to lay 
 down what appeared to him the right attitude of the 
 University towards the great forces of Industry, the other 
 invariably differed, and in the end, our triangular duel 
 elicited no policy at all. They were both agreed, however, 
 in criticising my lecture. They thought it off the point— 
 in fact, a failure—and considered that, though I was strictly 
 impartial, and gave no opinions upon burning questions, 
 I introduced subjects that were irrelevant, and could not 
 be justifiably called Extension subjects. 
 
 Out of the seventy or eighty artisans and elementary 
 teachers that were present, some six had come up to the 
 table afterwards and asked to join the Students’ Union, and 
 to have my advice as to their reading. So I held the 
 lecture a success, and on my report of the Course to 
 Oxford subsequently, the central office endorsed my opinion, 
 despite either Mr. Pushington or the Rev. Simeon Flux. 
 I may mention that these six students have, for the last three 
 years since the leCture, been regularly reading and discussing 
 the problems there dealt with, and one of these men is now 
 the labour member on the District Council; but somehow 
 they never ask Mr. Pushington to take the chair at their 
 meetings, and the Rev. Simeon Flux is forgotten. 
 
 Now, I am prepared to grant many of Mr. Pushington’s 
 points, and also one or two of Mr. Flux’s, and I will 
 endeavour here to lay down the outlines of what would seem 
 to me to be a policy that might guide the work of those of 
 us who are seeking to make more real the action of 
 University Extension among working men. I am not here 
 going to consider the rightness or wisdom of the University’s 
 taking such a step. The step having once been taken, I 
 
 97 
 
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORKSHOP. 
 
 Outlines 
 of the 
 policy 
 
 Subject to 
 be taught 
 
 shall assume that the University, whether Oxford, Cam¬ 
 bridge, or London, has decided for the best. 
 
 The outlines of my policy I will place then under the 
 three respective headings of subject to be taught , method of 
 promoting teaching, and qualification of teacher. 
 
 In the first place, we have to regard subject in its two 
 broad divisions. There is the general culture, the more 
 harmonious Education of the artisan, and there is his special 
 education for the direct improvement of Industry. It 
 would seem, at first sight, that the former is the province of 
 the University entirely, and that the second must be 
 accomplished by the men themselves. In other words, 
 while it is for the Universities to take the lead in a 
 humanistic movement, it is for the producers of Industry to 
 control, and consequently to educationally guide, its better 
 production. Though good for purposes of generalization, 
 this needs qualifying. It will be admitted, I think, that by 
 far the larger portion of the work of University Extension, 
 whether among artisans or not, would come under the first 
 of these two headings, i.e., general culture, and hence, even, 
 if incomplete, of humanism, but it is not as yet admitted, 
 nor even fully recognized, that a large and continually 
 increasing portion of the special, the technical, the industrial, 
 contains in it the humanistic element, which it might, also, 
 therefore, be the University’s function to guide. For 
 instance, those subjects, which in the large sense of the word, 
 would be comprised under the term Art, as applied to 
 Industry—direct production for the ennobling and beautifying 
 of life. On the other hand, there are many subjects coming 
 under the second heading, the special, technical and indus¬ 
 trial, in which it is admitted that the University alone must 
 lead, e.g. such subjedfs as come under the heading of purely 
 scientific teaching—Science in its application to Industry, 
 and the study of the laws that regulate the production, dis¬ 
 tribution and consumption of wealth. 
 
 Now what may we consider that the future wants of 
 British workmen will be, in regard to these two divisions of 
 the subject ? To determine these will help us to forecast, in 
 great measure, the future of the Extension movement. Like 
 the middle classes, for whom it at present mainly exists, 
 workmen need humanism, though their more diredt contadt 
 with the fundamental facts of life often give this need a 
 different diredtion. 
 
 As the movement for the shortening of the hours of 
 
 98 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 labour, or in other words the lengthening of the margin of 
 leisure, gains ground, they will need it, and express the need 
 of it more. But unlike the middle-class, they will seek for 
 something more special, more technical, and more applicable 
 to the second side of the work of University Extension, the 
 special, technical and industrial. It would be out of place 
 here to consider the reason of this, but one point concerning 
 it should be held in view. The want of higher and more 
 special teaching in Industry is being universally felt, because 
 the apprenticeship system, which formerly supplied it, has 
 broken down; but we, when seeking to supply it, have to 
 keep fixedly in view that the apprenticeship system can 
 never be superseded by any system of higher teaching 
 through University or Technical school—that since the 
 apprenticeship system is essential to Industry, it must be 
 reconstructed in the workshop, but that the province of the 
 University, by leading the higher teaching, might be to assist 
 indirectly in its reconstruction. 
 
 As regards subject, therefore, we may, I think, assume that 
 the workman will need humanism, will need the special, 
 scientific, technical studies that bear directly on Industry, 
 will need the productive and creative that induce to human¬ 
 ism, and will need something that may guide him education¬ 
 ally in the reconstruction of the industrial system, in as far 
 as it trenches on Education. These we may term his needs, 
 and those needs, it is not unreasonable to suppose, he will 
 ask the Universities to help him in supplying. 
 
 Let us now proceed to our second heading, and consider, Methods 
 not how far it is the province of the University to supply 
 them, but assuming that University Extension is prepared to teaching 
 make an effort to supply, at all events, some of them, what 
 should be its methods of promoting teaching —its policy con¬ 
 sidered constructively. To begin with, it must be a cardinal 
 point with us to work through existing organisations. We 
 should seek to understand the labour movement, that is 
 revolutionising and reconstructing Industry, and in doing 
 so we should recognise that here, in nineteenth century 
 England, two distinct movements are going on simul¬ 
 taneously—the humanist and educational, the aftermath of 
 Renaissance England, and the social and constructive, 
 a retrospection to the mediaeval England that made the 
 Craft Guilds. If the changing and militant Universities 
 may be said to represent the first, constructive Co-operation, 
 and militant Trade Unionism may be said to represent the 
 
 99 
 
Univer¬ 
 sity Ex¬ 
 tension 
 and 
 labour 
 organisa¬ 
 tions 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORKSHOP. 
 
 second. The University Extension of the future should 
 aim at a fusion of the two, a dovetailing of the culture of 
 the Universities into the constructive solidarity of the new 
 industrial system. 
 
 Now there are two main channels through which we can 
 approach the workman, the one essential for the present, 
 the other for the future, of University Extension; the one 
 is workmen’s organisations, the other is the elementary 
 teacher; Thomas Trudge and his union, and Timothy 
 Thumbs and his school. 
 
 Much has been already done to bring University Extension 
 in touch with workmen’s organisations—witness the Co¬ 
 operative Societies—but much more has yet to be done. 
 There are the Trade Societies, the Unions, the Clubs, the 
 Benefit Societies, and the various machinery, co-operative or 
 otherwise, forming amongst workmen, for the regulation of 
 Industry, its production, and its distribution. These the 
 Extension movement has not as yet made any attempt to meet 
 on a large scale. It recognizes them, but only in isolation. 
 It has formulated no policy as yet for recognizing them 
 comprehensively, and, as it were, because of their existence. 
 
 Assuming the rightness of formulating such a policy, it 
 would not be inexpedient, I think, for the University to 
 recognise the representative principle more fully, by inviting 
 representation on some Federal Council of Trade Union 
 leaders to discuss the prospects or the methods of organising 
 Education among working-men. If these bodies once got 
 to feel that the Universities looked to them, rather than to 
 the masters of Industry, to further an educational movement 
 among workmen, the present inertia of the Unions towards 
 Education would assume a very different attitude. The 
 prestige and educational authority of the Universities is 
 strong enough to do this, without involving them in any 
 of the controversial difficulties of Industry. 
 
 Granting, then, that it is right for University Extension 
 to work through, and connedf itself with, labour organizations, 
 an opportunity is already at hand, in which a connection 
 of this kind will be invaluable for the furtherance of 
 its work. The County Councils have granted funds for 
 Education applied directly to Industry; the Universities 
 have, in many cases successfully administered these funds. 
 It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Trade Societies 
 will come forward, as they have already in several instances, 
 and insist upon the allocation of these funds, conformably 
 
 ioo 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 with their own ideas of Industrial Education. Univer¬ 
 sity Extention would do well, it seems to me, not only 
 to be prepared for, but to anticipate this. The Univer¬ 
 sities should say to the Trade Societies, “ We recognise 
 you as having responsibilities, together with the masters 
 of Industry, in its future development. Ours is the 
 leadership of Education, advise us and help us, as to how we 
 should best work out our views on the future of Education 
 conformably with your views on the future of Industry.” 
 Stating this in the terms of the practical organizer—and I 
 offer it for the consideration of the Rev. Simeon Flux— 
 this is the sort of thing to be done. When, as it shortly 
 will, University Extension shall have a few years record to 
 show of its administration of County Council grants in 
 different parts, for the direct application of Education to 
 Industry, a circular might be drawn up, and sent round to 
 all the Trade Societies, inviting their assistance for the 
 furtherance of Education among workmen, according to the 
 "different Industries in which they were engaged, and inviting 
 their co-operation on some such representative body as it 
 might be deemed well to construct, for the purpose of giving 
 the assistance reality. Here, then, we should have a sort of 
 Federal Council of Trade Union Leaders, interested in Educa¬ 
 tion as it bore upon their separate trades, looking to the 
 Universities as their allies and leaders in educational matters, 
 and pledged on their side to assist the Universities in furthering 
 the Extension movement among working men. The influence 
 that a council of this kind might exercise,in steadying or helping 
 local committees, would be invaluable, and its indirect 
 influence on the future educational policy of the County 
 Councils is well worth considering. What we want is a 
 machinery of some sort, that will make University Extension 
 among workmen more possible, and now that University 
 Extension is beginning to have a direct bearing on Industry, 
 the method suggested would seem to be a first means to 
 such an end. 
 
 At present, University Extension, among-working men, as 
 among other audiences, is greatly dependent on attractive¬ 
 ness. The local secretary, the district organiser, the incipient 
 lecturer, are haunted with the bugbear of attractiveness. 
 On all hands we hear, lecture smust be interesting or they ‘ will 
 not pay.’ Success depends on attractiveness. At the same 
 time the Extension movement is accused of dilettantism. 
 The one is the converse of the other. The nature of the 
 
 101 
 
The work¬ 
 man and 
 the ele¬ 
 mentary 
 teacher in 
 their joint 
 relation to 
 Univer¬ 
 sity Ex¬ 
 tension 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORKSHOP. 
 
 movement necessitates this. When you are wooing you 
 seek to please. Establishment will modify this. Nobody 
 demands attractiveness of an academic lecturer, simply 
 because he has a definite course, and the course once 
 established the subject becomes more important than the 
 man. We need not, I think, look upon the necessity for 
 attractiveness as a permanent difficulty, it will settle itself; 
 and inasmuch as we are dealing with a portion of the 
 community, to whom, if University Extension is to mean 
 anything at all, it will mean something definitely related to 
 life, real, and not dilettante, we may regard this difficulty as 
 not very serious in the future. But immediately it is a very 
 great difficulty. University Extension courses are to attract 
 the workman, and they often do not. This faCt we should 
 meet boldly; there is no blinking it: and we should meet 
 it by giving the workman, not necessarily what is, but what 
 appears to be, some immediate return for his money. We 
 have done it with the elementary teachers, why should we 
 not do it with the artizan ? The recent recognition of 
 the Extension certificate by the Education department 
 has, and will more and more, set a premium on our 
 educational system and methods of teaching; that is to say, 
 the certificate has now a distinct bread-and-butter value to 
 the elementary teacher. Without in the least wishing to 
 encourage what one might call the bread-and-butter view of 
 certificates in general,—Timothy Thumb’s point of view, 
 when he sent his sixty-seven certificates into the Board, and 
 they elected him because he had the greatest number; I 
 hold that we shall never fully win the workman to University 
 Extension until we give the teaching a similiar bread-and- 
 butter value to him. What we have done for the Elementary 
 teacher we should also seek to do for the artizan. The 
 problem is a much harder one, but it can be solved in one 
 way only. University Extension must get direCt at the 
 machinery that controls production, just as it is getting 
 direCt at the machinery that controls Elementary education. 
 
 It will be long before this can be done in any way 
 universally, but, accepting the policy, it would seem realizable 
 by degrees. There is no reason, for instance, why we 
 should not take different Industries separately, and one by 
 one, and as it were, form cycles of study on them, grounded 
 in the special and technical, and developing into the general 
 and humanistic. 
 
 This suggestion I shall develop in the next chapter. 
 
 102 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 There is no reason, if once we have acquired a firm hold on 
 a particular Industry, why the Extension Certificate might 
 not, in some cases, be a help to admission in that Industry, 
 or be used as a complement to the training of apprentices, 
 in the same way as, however inadequately, the South Kensing¬ 
 ton certificates have, in some cases been. Here is another 
 thing for Messrs. Sky Sign and Co.’s school to do, had they 
 but started it ! 
 
 I do not wish it to be thought that I attach any value 
 whatever to the certificate in itself. The Board elected 
 Timothy Thumbs, but, as he expressively put it, “ they did 
 it by paper weight.” The chairman of committee counted 
 the certificates, and said ; “ Gentlemen, I need not take up the 
 time of Committee by reading all this literature. This man 
 has got sixty-seven, the next only fifty-nine. I take it we 
 should do well in appointing ‘ sixty-seven.’ ” So “ sixty-seven” 
 was appointed, and by a fluke, worthy of “ Alice’s Adventures 
 in Wonderland,” the best possible man got the post. “ Fifty- 
 nine,” I never met. The inspired utterance of William 
 Blake, when he described the Sons of Time as “ striving with 
 systems to deliver individuals from these systems,” will hold 
 good of the Extension system as well as of any other. Its 
 present value lies in its spontaneity, and its power of 
 “ delivering individuals,” but I regard it here as one amongst 
 other means to an end, and that end is the humanizing of 
 the artizan. Timothy Thumbs, at present, is all system 
 and no deliverance; Thomas Trudge is neither deliverance 
 nor system. 
 
 But we have still to consider the wisdom of working 
 through the elementary teacher with a view to touching 
 the artizan. Timothy Thumbs is tied hand and foot in 
 meshes of the Code, and we University men, who are 
 perhaps too free ourselves, are unable to give him freedom. 
 But there is one thing we can do for him, and there is one 
 thing he, and he only, can do for us. He can hold the 
 artizan of the future ; we, in recognizing him as our colleague 
 in an educational movement amongst artizans, could guide 
 him in the doing of this. Let me give an instance here, 
 also, one among many of what might be done. 
 
 I have been often struck by the love and loyalty which 
 the lad who leaves school at the age of fifteen, to enter some 
 trade, shows for the teacher, who has wearily graded him 
 through his standards (I need not say what devotion 
 Timothy Thumbs’ Old Boys’ Club has for him). There, it 
 
 Timothy 
 Thumbs’ 
 Old Boys 
 Club and 
 Univer¬ 
 sity Ex¬ 
 tension 
 
 103 
 
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE WORKSHOP. 
 
 seems to me, lies one of the forces of our movement. At 
 present it is wasted for any definite constructive purpose. All 
 our Education is valueless, and all our construction futile, 
 unless we put it on a human basis. I should like to see 
 these boys—the leaders of future labour movements, held 
 already to their teacher by the most natural of all ties, held 
 yet further, and not only held, but prepared and passed on by 
 him to us. I should like to see what one might call 
 “ educational apprentices’ unions,” formed by elementary 
 teachers interested in, and definitely connected with, Univer¬ 
 sity Extension. There will be no difficulty in doing this, only 
 we must do it humanly, put a little of the human touch into 
 the doing of it, and Timothy Thumbs can help us there before 
 all others. In short, we must give to the teacher of the 
 young artizan a definite place in the militant work of 
 University Extension. If we did this, he would reveal to us 
 a hundred ways of furthering Extension work among 
 artizans. 
 
 These, then, are some of the main lines of the policy of 
 University Extension among artizans, as regards method. 
 There are many minor and indirect ways in which this 
 policy can be furthered. Many ways in which our present 
 methods could be extended to suit the special wants of 
 working-men. I will not multiply instances, but such 
 things as these suggest themselves—The development of the 
 Summer Meeting, so as to make it even more attractive, and 
 also more direCtly educational, than it is at present :—The 
 development of the scholarship system in special trades, 
 tenable for special purposes; and I would like to go further and 
 see—but perhaps this is far to seek—certain scholarships held 
 at certain colleges during the long vacation, thus giving the 
 artizan a bond of connection—however slight it might be— 
 with what is, after all, the body and soul of the English 
 Universities, the collegiate system. Is it beyond the bounds 
 of possibility to think that, given fresh endowments for these 
 ends, the Colleges themselves might be induced to take the 
 question up from their side ? Possibly such speculations are 
 premature, but let us always remember this, that the 
 Universities, in extending their sphere of teaching into the 
 great formless mass of British Industry, learn just as much 
 as they teach—perhaps more ! 
 
 I have now, however, superficially discussed some of the 
 methods of the University Extension among working men. 
 A few words are necessary in conclusion, since it is a policy 
 
 104 
 
A PROBLEM AND A POLICY. 
 
 we are delineating, to guide those of us on whom fall the J he quali- 
 responsibility of carrying out those methods in pra(5tice. an^sym- 
 What are our marching orders? We lecturers, in so far pathies 
 as we have dealings with working men, and are prepared of the 
 to accept the policy sketched out above, have, as it were, to le urer 
 express it personally. For this purpose, our first qualification, 
 other than the academic one, should be to have sympathy 
 in social questions : sympathy, distinctly non-political, and 
 such as will involve us in no industrial dispute, but sympathy 
 that is prepared to enter into equal relations, if need be, 
 with any party; sympathy with Mr. Pushington, and the 
 responsibilities of Sky Sign & Co., when he takes the chair 
 at our inaugural leCture ; sympathy with Mr. Thomas Trudge, 
 when he heckles us after it is over, and asks us what is the 
 good of all this talk, unless we sweep clean the system. 
 
 The ideal to aim at seems to be a dual relationship, of a 
 human kind, between a liberally-minded central office on 
 the one hand, and the local centre on the other. Freedom 
 and Personality , in other words, are the two things of 
 importance, and in dealing with working-men centres, they 
 are of special importance. To promote these more effectu¬ 
 ally, every lecturer should, I think, devise means of continuing 
 his connection with any successful centre, after the delivery 
 of his course. There are many ways, especially through 
 Students’ Unions, in which this could be done. It is 
 permanence that should be aimed at in these associations, 
 and ways and means might be devised, whereby the Students’ 
 
 Union should be made to convene, as it were, councils of 
 its past lecturers, to guide its educational work. It would 
 probably mean little more than the cost of travelling expenses; 
 for most lecturers would be willing to give occasional advice 
 to a centre that had done them credit. 
 
 As to the lecturer’s further qualifications, little need be 
 pleaded for beyond the quality of sympathy, but in dealing 
 with working men, it cannot be too fully insisted that his 
 method of teaching should be elastic; indeed, I would go 
 further, and say that it should be so elastic as to allow of his 
 substituting other methods of teaching, beside the lecture, if 
 he saw the need for so doing, and the Central Office should 
 help him in this. We should err, rather, on the side 
 of being opportunist than of being doctrinaire; and the not 
 ill-founded charge has already been made against some of 
 the Universities of demanding a too definite syllabus from 
 the lecturer, and of inflicting a too rigid course on the 
 
 105 
 
 H 
 
centre. With working men particularly, it is much more 
 the earnestness and personality of the man that teaches, 
 than the previously defined curriculum which he is asked to 
 lead them through, and it would seem wiser for the 
 University to say “ What is it you want, and we will 
 see if we can give it you,” than to say, “This is 
 what you ought to want—so, Hobson’s Choice, this or 
 none! ” But the point I would dwell on here is the respon¬ 
 sibility that a lecturer himself should feel for the free hand 
 granted him. His tact and his discretion, and the careful 
 and loyal use, for the University for which he is working, 
 of the freedom that is allowed him from a liberal-minded 
 central office, are qualities which must in great measure 
 depend upon the man himself, and cannot be forced upon 
 him by any organization ; but he will have to recognize that 
 it is the expression of his personality that is wanted of him 
 before all other things, and that, for every result he achieves, 
 and for whatever influence he exercises, through his person¬ 
 ality, more and more responsibility will devolve upon him. 
 This has been done, and this is his very doing ! The lecfturer 
 who is dealing with working men should, it seems to me, get to 
 realize that he is responsible to his centre for what little 
 fragment of learning he has to give, and to his University for 
 how it shall be given. Both Mr. Pushington and the Rev. 
 Simeon Flux are outside the real needs of his work. The 
 lecturer is the lens on which the rays of light are gathered, 
 and through him shall they be thrown upon the dark places 
 of Industry. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER io.-THE 
 POLICY DEVELOPED TO¬ 
 WARDS WORKSHOP RE¬ 
 CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 But I want to lay down yet more fully what I challenged 
 Mr. Pushington and the Rev. Simeon Flux to do—a policy 
 in industrial Education, and I use the term as implying 
 such portions of secondary and technical education as tend 
 directly to the Improvement of Industry. 
 
 In our social problem of workshop re-construction, we 
 have to consider the subject from many points of view, and 
 also regard the possible bearing upon it of existing 
 educational agencies, and of what national ideal we have in 
 Education. If we take these various existing educational 
 agencies, and ask how far they severally tend towards the 
 direct improvement of Industry, we find that very few do so 
 at all. The elementary schools, the basis of our national 
 education, train the children of the “ masses,” and give the 
 rudiments of general teaching. The Universities train the 
 youth of the “ classes,” and, as the crown of this education, 
 take their stand on a magnificent series of humanistic 
 studies. Dependent on the Universities are the public 
 •schools ; and, partly dependent, mainly independent, are a 
 variety of minor agencies, whose sphere of adlion is 
 principally middle class, and whose curricula are partly 
 humanistic, partly technical and commercial, often having 
 special relation to sections of the community, but as yet 
 doing little or nothing for purely industrial Education. If 
 we ask for a policy from these different bodies, to guide us 
 in considering the question of the future of Industry, they 
 have none to offer. 
 
 They fall out, even as Mr. Pushington and the Rev. 
 Simeon Flux fell out. 
 
 Now, there are three points of view from which the ques¬ 
 tion of industrial education must be regarded, and these are, 
 respectively, that of the producing body—the workshop 
 or Industry, which implies the life of the workman, his 
 mental and social development; that of the endowing body 
 —the County Council, or fund-collecting agency, whether 
 central or local, and at present mainly controlled by the 
 
 107 
 
THE POLICY DEVELOPED TOWARDS 
 
 The work¬ 
 shop, the 
 County 
 Council 
 and the 
 Univer¬ 
 sity 
 
 Three 
 
 assump¬ 
 
 tions 
 
 masters of Industry; and that of the highest educating 
 body—the Universities, whose militant attitude and rapid 
 transformation is bringing them face to face with the ques¬ 
 tion of industrial Education. 
 
 In regarding the question from these three points of view, 
 we are brought into contact, respectively, with three difficul¬ 
 ties :—first, the social problems of the workshop and the 
 force of Trade Unionism ; secondly, the question of middle- 
 class education, and the continuous diversion, towards this 
 end, of money and energy, intended at the outset for the 
 direct improvement of Industry; thirdly, the question as to 
 how far any policy for industrial Education on the part of 
 the Universities might tend to impair that noble series of 
 humanistic studies which they have developed in unbroken 
 tradition from the Middle Ages, and in which all the great 
 statesmen and thinkers of England have been trained. 
 
 Any attempt at an answer, to these three problems, would 
 be outside the scope of this chapter, but each has to be 
 kept clearly in view when the question of a policy in indus¬ 
 trial Education is being considered. I will endeavour here 
 to give, in greater detail, the outline of such a policy. For 
 want of anything better, it may guide us towards a clearer 
 understanding of the question of industrial Education, from 
 the three aspedts just mentioned. 
 
 In doing so, however, it will be necessary to assume three 
 things. First, that the workman, through his Union, will, 
 in the near future, as he is already now beginning to do, 
 take a definite line in his own interest, and insist on a 
 precise allocation of any moneys devoted to purposes of 
 education, and that, consequently, the Trade Unions may be 
 regarded as the governing forces of the future, in this respedt. 
 Secondly, that the moneys recently placed in the hands of 
 the County Councils,—and these moneys are, at present, the 
 only definitely available for purposes of industrial Education 
 that we need here consider—will continue, and thus afford 
 a permanent means for developing our policy of industrial 
 Education., And thirdly, that the Universities will, in the 
 near future, either definitely leave alone, or definitely take 
 up, the question of industrial Education; that they will 
 either say, “ Our objedl is humanistic only ; we now draw 
 a circle around us, thus far do we go, and no further; ” 
 or, “ We maintain that our primary objedt is the humanistic, 
 studies, but we are prepared, provided our action does not 
 militate against these, to come forward and assist in guiding 
 
 xo8 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 this new National want, and, in meeting it, as we have met 
 the want for Science, the want for the higher education of 
 women, and the other great educational wants of the last 
 three decades.” With this, I will also assume that, by 
 their recent action in administering for the County Councils 
 much of the moneys to be devoted for Industrial Education, 
 they are at present tending towards the second of these two 
 alternatives. On these three assumptions, how shall we 
 construct our policy ? 
 
 If we take any representative industrial centre, not Existing 
 necessarily a large town, what do we find ? A collection of *?^. con ‘ 
 small, and often inefficient, local organisations without any condifions 
 relation to each other. There is the Science and Art in indus- 
 Department, with its grant earning machinery ; there is g^cation 
 the University Extension Committee, dependent for the 
 most part on the popularity of its lectures and the energy 
 of its honorary secretary; there may be varieties and 
 selections of technical or home arts’ classes, dependent on 
 the personal influence of a paid or unpaid teacher, and there 
 is the new and tentative machinery for dispensing the 
 County Council grant—either through a well-intentioned, but 
 ill-informed, technical education sub-committee, or preferably 
 through a specially appointed organising secretary. These 
 are the only bodies through whom any attempt is made to 
 do anything for industrial Education. 
 
 Now, the action of all these bodies is at present divided, 
 broken up, often overlapping, and consequently wasteful; 
 but not only this, it takes little count of where the force of 
 the future is to lie, and the consequent direction into which 
 its energy for the present should flow. The University 
 Extension movement, though constantly trying, is, owing 
 mainly to want of funds, hardly ever succeeding in its effort 
 to touch immediately the producers of Industry ; the Trade 
 Unions, and societies of workmen—the force of the future— 
 stand outside the educational question, and those, in whose 
 hands lies the dispensation of the funds for industrial 
 Education are, for the most part, half-hearted, and, by the 
 nature of their composition as masters of Industry, out of Univer- 
 sympathy with workmen’s organizations. sity.Trade 
 
 Notwithstanding these obstacles, the only prospect of a county^ 
 possible working policy, under existing conditions, is to Council 
 make a union between these three factors—viz., the Universi- must work 
 ties, the Workmen’s Societies, and the County Councils; to 
 find some way by which they can work together to a common purpose 
 
 log 
 
THE POLICY DEVELOPED TOWARDS 
 
 purpose. The Universities are the only bodies in the 
 country that have both educational prestige and vitality ; 
 the body or bodies in whose hands lies the future of 
 Industry, are the Trade Unions and workmen’s organizations; 
 the bodies with whom at present rest the funds, are the 
 County and Town Councils. What should be aimed at is a 
 co-ordination of these three, or at least a union on definite 
 lines of the first and the third, with due regard to the 
 potential adtion of the second. In other words, the 
 Universities have the power of inception and direction ; 
 the Unions are the future, the County Councils the present, 
 agents, by which any definite system of industrial Education 
 would seem to be possible. 
 
 In the last chapter I urged the advisability of the 
 formation by the Universities of some sort of Federal 
 Council of representatives from the various Trade Societies 
 to advise upon and assist in the question of Industrial 
 Education in its immediate bearing on the artizan ; such 
 Council to stand at the side of the Universities in their 
 dealings, however remote, with any particular Industry, and 
 to watch the local action of the grant-giving committee in 
 the interests of the artizan through his trade representatives. 
 The suggestion was made rather in the belief that, if the 
 Universities did not take the initiative in a matter of this 
 kind, the Trade Societies would do it themselves, that this 
 would mean conflict, and that harmonious action would be 
 both more beneficial and more dignified for either party. 
 
 We can, however, leave out of consideration, for the 
 present, the question of the adtion of such a Federal Council. 
 Suffice it, that, in the future, it would be the strongest, 
 perhaps the only, force necessary to guide the right alloca¬ 
 tion of funds to be devoted to industrial Education. 
 Concurrently, with the formation of such a body, then, what 
 should the action of the Universities be, in relation to the 
 local grant-giving agencies, in order that we may further 
 develop the policy thus far sketched out ? 
 
 Let me say at the outset, that I do not think the Univer¬ 
 sities should in any way be pledged to give industrial 
 Education themselves, but that their action, where called 
 upon, should be to guide the giving , and that they should, 
 from the point of view of education, as a whole, determine, 
 to all education given, its definite place. 
 
 Some method of this kind should be adopted. Where 
 there is a definite Industry or group of Industries, and a 
 
 no 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 local agency empowered to grant moneys for its educational 
 development, the Universities, in conjunction with, and at 
 the advice of, the local authorities (it matters little for our 
 purpose which takes the initiative), should draw up a scheme 
 or cycle of studies, say of five or six years’ duration, directly 
 bearing on that Industry, not in any way teaching the 
 trade , according to the legal interpretation of the term, but 
 based on the technical, and passing through the scientific 
 or artistic, into the humanistic studies, with which that, 
 as every Industry, should be crowned. The examining and 
 directive force should then remain with the Universities, the 
 determining and variation of wants being left entirely to 
 local expression. The method would act somewhat in this 
 way. Supposing the Industry in question be any of the 
 five following: pottery, mining, furniture-making, metal 
 work (founding, brazing, casting, &c.), or ship-building; 
 suppose also that the group of studies in the cycle be ranged 
 under the six following heads :— 
 
 (1) Social. 
 
 (2) Historical. 
 
 (3) Literary. 
 
 z \ * , • , • f (a) Practical. 
 
 (4) Artistic | \ b > Theoretical . 
 
 -r u • 1 f W Practical. 
 
 (5) Technical | ^ Theoretical . 
 
 (6) Scientific. 
 
 Striking out whichever one or two of these six was, at 
 the outset, not needed by the Industry in question, the 
 Universities should say “we can send you teachers for (1), 
 (2), (3) and (6); for (4) and (5) we may, or may not, be able 
 to accomodate you for the theoretical side, but we are ready, 
 from the point of view of education as a whole, to draw up 
 a cycle for and with you, to determine for and with you 
 the relative value of the various studies, and to adjudge the 
 respective application of the practical to the humanistic : also 
 to send you someone of standing and position who may give 
 educational order and method to the whole sequence.” On 
 the next page I give a suggestion of some such sequence, or 
 cycle of studies, embracing the practical, and crowned by 
 the humanistic, and such as might be applicable to some 
 centre of metal—work Industry, or the production of metal— 
 work, from the raw material to the completed article. It 
 must be regarded as quite general, and not as having 
 definite application to any existing Industry. 
 
 The cycle 
 of Indus¬ 
 trial study 
 
 III 
 
A SUGGESTED CYCLE OF STUDIES FOR 
 
 A CENTRAL COURSE 
 
 I. SOCIAL. 
 
 I 
 
 Political and Social 
 Economy. 
 
 The study The study of the 
 of the development of 
 position of the Metal In- 
 the work- dustries in 
 
 man. England and 
 
 abroad, illus¬ 
 trated by the 
 particular In¬ 
 dustries here 
 practised. 
 
 e.g.: The de¬ 
 velopment of 
 French or Ger¬ 
 man metal work 
 in its relation 
 to the English 
 market. 
 
 II. HISTORICAL. 
 
 English 
 
 History. 
 
 Foreign 
 
 History. 
 
 Especially 
 as illustra¬ 
 ted by its 
 bearings on 
 the differ¬ 
 ent periods 
 of English 
 metal work 
 from the 
 twelfth - to 
 the nine¬ 
 teenth cen¬ 
 turies. 
 
 Either as (i) 
 bearing on the 
 English periods 
 or as (2) illus- 
 trating the 
 action of simi¬ 
 lar Industries 
 elsewhere. 
 
 e.g. :(i) The Re¬ 
 naissance period 
 and the influence 
 of Italian design 
 on the metal¬ 
 workers of Fran¬ 
 cois I. in France , 
 or the metal¬ 
 workers of Nur¬ 
 emberg. 
 
 (2) Greek jewel¬ 
 lery and coins. 
 
 III. LITERARY. 
 
 General Special 
 Litera- Litera¬ 
 ture. ture. 
 
 To be re¬ 
 garded as 
 purely hu¬ 
 manistic, 
 and taken 
 as being 
 led up to 
 by each 
 special 
 study. 
 
 This might 
 be divided 
 into — 
 
 (a) English 
 Classics. 
 
 (b) Light 
 reading. 
 
 Works deal¬ 
 ing with, or 
 bearing on, 
 the Indus¬ 
 tries (but 
 not of a 
 Technical 
 nature. 
 
 e.g. : 
 
 Such books 
 as the Auto- 
 biograpy of 
 Benuvento 
 Cellini. 
 
 N.B.—In connection 
 with the above the 
 following points have 
 to be held in view :— 
 
 1. The whole scheme must be taken as a cycle of studies 
 
 subsidiary courses, running through the whole period; 
 
 2. The scheme to be under the guidance of one mind, the 
 
 whole scheme. 
 
 3. The bench work, or purely pradtical, to be taken with, 
 
 4. The whole scheme to be so arranged as to meet the 
 
 Teacher. 
 
 112 
 
THE METAL-WORK INDUSTRIES. 
 
 OF LECTURES. 
 
 I 
 
 IV. ARTISTIC. 
 
 V. TECHNICAL. 
 
 I 
 
 Practical. 
 
 Work with the 
 hands only. 
 
 Draw¬ 
 
 ing. 
 
 (Class- 
 
 work 
 
 and 
 
 Work¬ 
 
 shop.) 
 
 Mod¬ 
 
 elling. 
 
 Forms of 
 Practical 
 Work in 
 (Class- various 
 work materi¬ 
 al als. 
 
 Work¬ 
 shop.) (Class- 
 
 work and 
 Work¬ 
 shop.) 
 
 Theore¬ 
 
 tical. 
 
 The study 
 of the 
 Laws of 
 Design in 
 their ap¬ 
 plication 
 to the 
 different 
 branches 
 of the 
 subject. 
 
 Practical. Part Theoret- 
 Practi- ical. 
 
 i.t. : Work 
 with the 
 hands and 
 by demon¬ 
 stration. 
 
 (Part Class 
 Work and 
 Workshop.) 
 
 Instruction 
 in the princi¬ 
 ples underly¬ 
 ing the use of 
 —e. g.: the 
 lathe, the forge, 
 the hammer , 
 the chisel f the 
 chaser, the file, 
 &>c. This pos¬ 
 sibly by means 
 of ' Bench Lec¬ 
 ture s' from 
 skilled artisans 
 and actual 
 work at the 
 bench. 
 
 This to be 
 taken as kin¬ 
 dred to, or as 
 differentiating 
 from the prac¬ 
 tical in Group 
 IV. 
 
 CAL 
 
 PART 
 
 Theore¬ 
 
 tical. 
 
 Mechan¬ 
 ics, Ma¬ 
 chinery 
 and Ma¬ 
 chine 
 construc¬ 
 tion. 
 
 (Part 
 Class- 
 work 
 and Work 
 shop.) 
 
 The study 
 of text¬ 
 books and 
 authori¬ 
 ties, 
 e g.: 
 
 Such books 
 as Cripps' 
 English 
 Plate .— 
 
 S p o n , 
 Riving- 
 ton’s, &c. 
 
 I 
 
 VI. SCIENTIFIC. 
 
 1 
 
 I I 
 
 Chem- The gen- 
 istry. eral ap¬ 
 plication 
 (Part of scien¬ 
 ces- t i f i c 
 work.) princi¬ 
 ples to 
 one or all 
 of the 
 different 
 process - 
 es used 
 in the In¬ 
 dustries. 
 
 (Part 
 Class- 
 work 
 and 
 Work¬ 
 shop.) 
 
 and arranged over a period of five or six years; a central course of ledtures, with 
 
 some higher certificate possibly being granted at the close of the cycle. 
 
 lecturers and practical teachers having their respective functions in reference to the 
 
 and as directly relating to, the whole scheme. 
 
 various requirements of (i) the Artizan; (2) the Apprentice; (3) the Elementary 
 
THE POLICY DEVELOPED TOWARDS 
 
 Mr. Push 
 ington’s 
 curious 
 aloofness 
 
 Academic 
 
 compro¬ 
 
 mising 
 
 The lecture, which in my last chapter I mentioned as 
 being condemned by Mr. Pushington and the Rev. Simeon 
 Flux, was the first of a series intended to lead up to a cycle 
 of this kind, and, as far as they went, I consider them to 
 have been successful. They have also led to others of a 
 similar nature in other parts of England : lectures among 
 metal-workers, chair makers, potters, furniture makers ; in 
 every case the attempt has been to show the connection 
 of Education with Industry, to graft the humanistic on to 
 the industrial. The work has, of course, been very scrappy 
 and slight, for the Extension system, as at present developed, 
 admits of little else, but it has, as far as I can see, supplied 
 a want, and, as an experiment, I think has justified its 
 inception. Mr. Pushington’s prognostics I do not hold to 
 have been borne out, nor the Rev. Simeon’s optimism 
 either. Such lectures are, perhaps, a first move towards a 
 new policy. Mr. Pushington has written very kindly, but 
 somewhat epigramatically, to me on the matter. 
 
 “ I am glad of your success, it is always gratifying 
 to think one may be of some use. I think the fellows, 
 of whom you write, are indebted to you for the time and 
 trouble you have spent upon them. Possibly you may 
 have a greater belief than I have in the cohesion of Oxford, 
 Cambridge, and London, to one definite educational policy 
 on the lines you lay down; but before counting my 
 Extension chickens, I should see them hatched at the 
 three Central Offices, if I were you ! 
 
 “ Believe me, 
 
 “ Yours faithfully, 
 
 “Archibald Pushington.” 
 
 I do not know whether I quite understand this letter; 
 others may possibly see its drift. Here, however, is the 
 policy I propose, of the grafting of University Extension on 
 to the Workshop—of the humanistic studies on to Industry. 
 If we are really to confine ourselves to the litterce humaniores, 
 and that were a perfectly sound and logical position for the 
 Universities to take up, let us adapt our present Extension 
 curricula to that end, let us strike out the bulk of the 
 Science Courses, and the Greek Art, and the Sculpture, and 
 the Architecture, instead of compromising with the former, 
 and playing, as we at present do, with the latter. Modern 
 scientific courses are mainly asked for by Extension Centres, 
 on the plea of a possible aid for the Industries of the district, 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 and chemistry as applied to leather tanning and mining 
 can find no place in litter cz humaniores. As for courses on 
 Greek sculpture, on architecture, on design, they have, 
 as often now delivered, no relation to any existing Art, 
 
 Craft, or Industry, and in so far, or unless taken on the 
 questionable ground of the training of taste, may be said to 
 be frivolous and irrelevant. They should be either accepted 
 as parts of literary and historical courses, or unreservedly 
 struck out. 
 
 Speaking as an architect, I hold very strongly, that 
 courses on these subjects should only be given by artists 
 and architects, though I should welcome a critical study 
 of Greek statues and Gothic churches in the historian or 
 the man of letters. However, all three Universities have 
 compromised so far, and will probably continue to do so 
 yet further.* 
 
 What is now not unreasonably asked in many quarters; 
 by the outside public ; by the centres in many parts, whether served c ’ 0 „ 
 under Oxford, Cambridge, or London jurisdiction; by a operation 
 large proportion of the lecturers, who alone are cognizant 
 of the details of the work outside the region of the three 
 central offices, is, that the Universities should at last fix a 
 common standard, abandon the uneconomic and wasteful 
 system of “preserves,” in centres, and “protection” in 
 lecturers, and that they should work together for Education 
 rather than separately for Extension , and in their relation to 
 industrial requirements—either boldly go forward or firmly 
 hold back. We have had wavering enough. 
 
 The policy I have sketched out above professes to be no 
 more than a sketch from my own limited point of view, but policy 
 if it is fully developed, and consistently applied by the 
 Universities, working together in harmony, it would, I 
 believe, carry with it the greatest possible benefits. Above 
 all, it would secure three lasting advantages to the three 
 agencies with whom it is mainly concerned. To the Univer¬ 
 sity Extension movement it would give further life, vigour, 
 and reality, and by grafting it definitely on to Industry, 
 would give it a much more genuinely educational character 
 
 * When one comes to examine the matter closely, it is clear that, granted a settlement on the 
 disputed point of the six or twelve lecture course, there is really very little to choose between 
 the positions they respectively profess to take up. They are agreed that it is the littera 
 humaniores that should be primarily aimed at. Oxford frankly admits that it is using means to 
 ends; Cambridge and London profess to hold out, but do not really, partly because their hands 
 are forced by the greater success of Oxford, partly because their curriculum is quite as illogical, 
 and quite as much one of compromise as that of Oxford ; and, with whatever casuistry it may 
 be explained, the three lecture course allowed, only under another name, by London, is a much 
 greater concession to popular taste than the six lecture course allowed by Oxford. 
 
than it can claim to have at present, owing to its somewhat 
 precarious establishment on the leisure of the middle-class. 
 To the local grant-giving agencies, the County Councils and 
 so forth—it would give the sense that there was a strong 
 and dignified educational authority to which they could 
 constantly look to save them from the policy of Little 
 Peddlington, by which so much money is continually being 
 frittered away ; to the trade societies it would give a new 
 and diredt interest in the greater and constructive sides of 
 the Industries in which they severally were interested, 
 especially those Trade Societies that have won their laurels 
 in the industrial wars of the century, and will soon no 
 longer be militant, but have to face the harder problems of 
 constructive organisation in Industry. 
 
 Here, then, is the policy, but its inception is only possible 
 from one quarter. The Trade Societies are not yet ready 
 to act, either cohesively or constructively, the County 
 Councils and local grant-giving agencies are, by the nature 
 of their being, precluded from other than local action; the 
 Universities alone are in the position to act and take the 
 lead. The question is, will they do it ? I cannot help 
 thinking that Mr. Pushington’s metaphor is much to the 
 point. 
 
CHAPTER ii. —THE RE¬ 
 LATION OF THE ARCHI¬ 
 TECT TOWARDS WORK¬ 
 SHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE 
 ARCHITECTURAL ASSO¬ 
 CIATION. 1892. 
 
 I purpose now to take up the subject of Workshop Re¬ 
 construction from another point of view, the more special 
 point of view of all those who are engaged in the building 
 trades. How is the subject to be set before them, what 
 is to be their line of action towards a sweeter and more 
 genuine condition of things in the newer citizenship, and 
 what is to be the relation, first of all, of the architect or 
 comprehensive designer, to the workman or producer. 
 
 On the threshold of my subject, I would say that this 
 relation of the architect to the workman, the right under¬ 
 standing of it, and its application to his work as an artist, 
 seems to me to be the most important part of that larger 
 subject often called The Relation of Architecture to Life. 
 
 I suppose, to most of us, the relation of architecture to life, 
 is a question fraught with meaning in more senses than the 
 narrow one of our own bread-and-butter; but I would 
 challenge every man to put his own interpretation on the 
 question, and to ask himself what it actually means to him in 
 the everyday humdrum of things. How he feels it; whether, 
 in the multitude of great architectural work, whether, in the 
 poverty of good building, whether, in the absence of style, 
 whether, in the eclectism of choice, whether, in his dealings 
 with clients, with builders, with workmen, or how ? How, 
 as an English architect, and, as a private individual ? 
 
 For my part, I think, the relation of Architecture to life in 
 modern times cannot but be regarded as of the slightest. 
 To our life, as architects, it means much, and always will; 
 to our life, as a nation, it means little—unfortunately for us. % 
 As a nation, we have small sympathy for, and scarce any 
 
THE RELATION OF THE ARCHITECT TOWARDS 
 
 The 
 
 relation of 
 Archi¬ 
 tecture to 
 modern 
 life 
 
 And to 
 
 mediaeval 
 
 life 
 
 understanding of, Architecture, and what sympathy and 
 understanding there is, is limited to a few in the profession 
 and their supporters. As a nation, we love show and 
 vulgarity, with its concomitant cheapness; we love poverty 
 of construction and its symbol, the iron girder; we love 
 hurry and its resultant, the ill-considered moulding. We 
 have not the great sympathy which could build the cathedral 
 and forget the name of the architect; or the great power of 
 reserve that could leave, in the consciousness of their 
 harmonious development, the hundred details of the building 
 to the craftsman. Architecture is no longer democratic, no 
 longer understanded of the people : it has lost its corporate 
 significance. As a nation, we do not love Architecture ; 
 we are content to let our mouldings be struck with com¬ 
 passes, and our subtlest details be evolved by the office-youth ; 
 and we firmly believe that, when the assessor of the Royal 
 Institute of British Architects has told us, or our representa¬ 
 tives, the local committee, that this set of plans is the best 
 we can possibly expect for the money, that it is good 
 architecture we have got, and we thereupon proceed to what 
 is called “ merge the premium in the percentage.” 
 
 I was comparing, lately, the conditions of some recent 
 modern competition clauses, and the ethical frame of the 
 English mind which these portrayed, with the document 
 issued by the Florentines for the rebuilding of their cathe¬ 
 dral in the year 1294. The British parallel, as it is familiar 
 to most of you, I shall not give; the Florentine being less 
 so, I will give you a portion of. Here is the key-note of it:—• 
 
 “ Since the highest mark of prudence in a people of noble 
 origin is to proceed in the management of their affairs so 
 that their magnanimity and wisdom may be evinced in their 
 outward acts, we order Arnolfo, Head Master of our 
 Commune, to make a design for the renovation of Santa 
 Reparata, in a style of magnificence which neither the 
 industry nor the power of man can surpass, that it may 
 harmonise with the opinion of many wise persons in this 
 city and state, who think that this Commune should not 
 engage in any enterprise, unless its intention be to make the 
 result correspond with that noblest sort of heart which is 
 composed of the united will of many citizens.” 
 
 It was this “ united will,” this “ noblest sort of heart,” 
 which those old burghers felt could only be expressed by 
 Architecture,—the mother Art. It seems somewhat of a 
 mockery to speak of Architecture as actually being the mother 
 
 118 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 Art nowadays. Look at the walls of the Royal Academy at 
 this moment—is it true ? Look at Gower Street—is it true ? 
 
 Look at Greater London, “ the desert of London town, grey 
 miles long, the desert of London town, mirk miles broad,” 
 
 —is it true ? Look at the public house, the restaurant, the 
 nonconformist chapel, the average shop, the surburban villa, 
 the Board school, the railway junction, the pit village, the 
 factory town, and ask again,—is it true ? When that phrase 
 was invented, Building and Architecture were synonymous 
 terms, we draw a subtle distinction, and say with truth, Yea, 
 those be buildings: what we wish to deal with is Archi¬ 
 tecture,—the art of the Chief Builder, ap%o redrew, the 
 essence of building. Possibly what we say is true in a 
 double sense, but the truth is a bitter one. 
 
 Now, I do not say these things as a tirade against existing 
 conditions. Tirades are futile and unnecessary for us as 
 practical men, but I say them in order to point at ways 
 that, by the energy mainly of the young architect, may be 
 bettered, and at facts existing in modern life which, ^ T ^® e ^ t r ' 
 rightly understood by him, will give him the opportunity of ^usTbe 
 bettering them. To me it seems that this divorce of archi- human- 
 tecture from the national life leaves its mark on him, and ized 
 injuriously. He is not, if I may say so, and using the 
 expression in the largest sense, sufficiently educated , not 
 sufficiently—to put it in the famous term of the Italian 
 Renaissance— humanist. His scope and sympathies, in the 
 first place, are not wide enough, and then his technical 
 training is not sufficiently all embracing; of this I shall 
 have more to say in my next chapter. He rinds that his 
 “ profession ” or “ art ”—I use either word—is only becom¬ 
 ing recognised as one of the polite arts or professions. It 
 does not stand by the law, or the work of the doctor, or the 
 school-master, or the many services of the State, or the 
 University, in the public eye. Its position is doubtful, and 
 it ministers in the main to the private comfort of wealthy 
 men, not to the common heart of a great people. 
 
 As regards his method of work, he feels himself but a link 
 in the productive chain. He sits in his office and makes 
 designs, he has a connection, through specifications, 
 with contractors, who carry them out, and he frequently 
 anathematises a man of straw, who is known to him under 
 the name of “The British Working-man,” when they are 
 not carried out properly. My contention is, therefore, that 
 the architect, as yet, is not sufficiently educated in his 
 
 119 
 
THE RELATION OF THE ARCHITECT TOWARDS 
 
 Style in 
 Archi¬ 
 tecture 
 funda- 
 mentalty 
 a social 
 question 
 
 relation to the “ body social.” It is, perhaps, unfair to say 
 that he is (in a non-political sense) too conservative, but he 
 has not that wide training in life which should make him 
 sympathise with the greater movements of his time. His 
 training is a narrow one, in the four walls of an office. He 
 does not touch life diredtly, as the dodtor or the clergyman ; 
 he does not get glimpses into men and manners like the 
 lawyer. 
 
 Here, then, we ask ourselves, If this be true, how can it 
 be best remedied ? And we are brought face to face with 
 the question of the relation of the architect and the work¬ 
 man. The architeft has to understand his position as a 
 workman, in relation to other workmen ; more than this, he 
 has to feel his responsibilities in organising and directing 
 their work; and more than that still, he should feel some 
 direct responsibilities likewise, in training and educating 
 them. Thus only will he deserve his title as architect or 
 chief builder. 
 
 I will return to the consideration of this diredtly, in detail, 
 staying for a moment to consider the question in its bearing 
 on a matter very dear to all of us ; style , “ the language of 
 architecture.” The architects of the late nineteenth century, 
 have settled the question of style ; they have almost ceased 
 to dogmatise; the Battle of the Styles has been fought out, 
 and a rough-and-ready compromise has been made between 
 eclecticism and originality. That is style in its external 
 sense; but I believe we have also gone deeper: the inner 
 question of the origin of style is what we are now solving. 
 The origin of style lies not in the theories, not in the forms, 
 of Art, but in the social relations of men to men, in their 
 state of society, in their habitude to one another, in the 
 leisure they may have for the thinking out of problems and the 
 creation of forms. In short, the origin of style, is a social, 
 not an artistic question. The question of style, therefore, 
 is solving itself for the young architect, and will do so more 
 and more as he grasps his relationship to the workman and 
 the body social. 
 
 I repeat, then, that the young architect has to feel that he 
 is a workman in a privileged position, in the position of 
 giving other workmen their line of work. He is to be the 
 “ head master of our Commune; ” to fulfil this high 
 function rightly, he must come into close and diredt relation¬ 
 ship with his fellows in every possible way. 
 
 Sir Charles Barry once suggested that it would be a good 
 
 120 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 thing for an architect with capital to invest it in building J^f hite(as 
 operations, and such work as might be in connection with Nation to 
 architecture. That suggestion was a very wise and far- trade 
 seeing one. Barry’s age was, perhaps, not fully ready for it, 
 but it has been, and is being, at the present day, acted upon by 
 Architects in various ways. Regarding capital as the force 
 that binds workmen together, regarding also the other great 
 cohesive forces which were undiscernible to Barry,—the 
 workmen’s movements, &c., which are tending to a re-con- 
 struction of Industry, at the present day ; regarding also the 
 advisability, nay, necessity, of commencing (especially for 
 the young architect) in the ministering arts , the crafts in other 
 words, rather than in the mother art direct; and regarding, 
 in the last instance, the necessity of the frank recognition 
 of the architect’s connexion with Industry, Barry’s sugges¬ 
 tion, which implies the closer union of the architect to the 
 body social, we might all set before us. 
 
 But I would give this suggestion more definiteness, and The 
 at the same time limit it. I would like to see applied to it andhiiT* 
 the system of the old Craft Guild; or such conditions as embryo 
 were possible of a society that produced the greatest Guild 
 Architecture of all time. In this society we find the right 
 relation,—a more human relation between the architect and 
 the workman. 
 
 Now, it seems to me, that there are three ways in which we 
 are approximating to what was good in the old system. 
 
 Three phases of modern development, which it behoves 
 especially us younger men to study, and which all of them 
 comprehend,—this better relation of architect and workman, 
 upon which I would dwell in this chapter. These three 
 things I might term “ Craft-Guild potentialities,” and they 
 may be distinguished as follows : There is— 
 
 1. The existing connexion of architects with trade for 
 artistic purposes. 
 
 2. The workmen’s movements that are re-constructing 
 Industry. 
 
 3. The educational movement—the humanism—that is 
 making progress with rapid strides. 
 
 I will take them in order. 
 
 First of all, the existing connexion of architects with 
 trade for artistic purposes,—the architect and the shop, let 
 us call it. In the relation of the architect to tradesmen we 
 see these Guild potentialities. We see it among the men 
 employed by some of the leading architects,—his builders, 
 
 I 
 
 121 
 
THE RELATION OF THE ARCHITECT TOWARDS 
 
 his furniture makers, his painters, and so forth. I will put 
 it plainer. In some cases the architect is in a position in 
 which he can place his building with a particular builder 
 with whom he has worked for years ; or if the contract is 
 to be competed for, he can limit it to some three or four 
 of those who have worked for him, and whom he can 
 trust. In this, the Guild element enters. In some 
 cases, an architect or group of architects, support a 
 business in which stuffs, or furniture, or materials are 
 produced specially from their designs, and to serve the 
 purpose of their buildings. I use the word support advisedly, 
 for, if their work is conscientiously done, more money 
 of theirs goes into these businesses than ever comes out 
 of them. Here, again, the Guild element enters. In some 
 cases, again, the leading architects attract round them various 
 small workmen—painters, carvers, sculptors, ironworkers— 
 men of some special ability, whom they have met with in 
 the course of their professional experience, and to whom 
 they continue to give small jobs in one or other of their 
 works. Here, above all, the Guild element enters, and 
 with it an educational environment, and a constant and 
 direct relationship between the employing architect and the 
 producing craftsman. 
 
 Now, it seems to me, that we younger men have to take 
 up this side of what one might call the professional tradition, 
 and develop it. Here is a portion of our heritage that is 
 worth having ; in this there lies a future. 
 
 We should get into closer touch with our masons, our 
 carvers, our decorators. We should welcome, instead of 
 glancing at them with the eye of false shame, the efforts of 
 architects to work through the ordinary distributive agencies 
 of the shop; and, above all, we should unite to us a body of 
 men—young men, if possible—who are capable of minister¬ 
 ing to the various crafts dependent upon Architecture. 
 
 The step from this to the completed Craft Guild is a 
 social one, and one that time must bring. The atoms at 
 present are distributed, but the personality of the architect 
 should unite them. Their interests, at present, are dis¬ 
 cordant—A loses what B gains ; the architect has it in his 
 power to make them harmonious, by uniting them with him. 
 Their training at present is incomplete, and each, if left to 
 himself, would ruin the ensemble; the architect, as having 
 the grasp of the whole, has it in his power to teach, and so 
 to give each his place, that left to himself he shall be trusted to 
 
 122 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 understand his own limitation. I am a painter, and must 
 feel the relation of these reds to the whole scheme of colour; 
 I am a joiner, and must understand that this panelling must 
 range with the architectural treatment of the frieze and 
 cornice ; and so forth. 
 
 I should be as opposed as any man to the idea that the 
 architect should be connected in any way with trade or with 
 dealing, or should receive any remuneration other than that 
 professionally established for professional services, or for 
 purely artistic work of his own hands in connection with it; 
 but inasmuch as the architect’s work is productive, so he 
 should be in immediate touch with production: but I hold 
 that an architect should have a workshop at his back, and 
 come into constant relation with a body of men in various 
 crafts educated with and by him. 
 
 Then we come to the next point,—the workmen’s 
 movements,—the great underlying questions of the develop¬ 
 ment of Industry, its re-organisation, the evolution of 
 Co-operation and co-operative societies,—and the workmen’s 
 insistence on the raising of the standard of life, a purely 
 mediaeval repetition in many respeCts. These things the 
 young architect should study, and should learn to make use 
 of, and not to shun. 
 
 The real interests of the day are, and probably will be for 
 the next decade or so, social: not political, not artistic, not 
 direCtly educational. I hold it the duty of the young 
 architect, if he wishes to get more into touch with life, to 
 learn to take an intelligent interest in these workmen’s 
 movements. The knowledge or interest of the architect in 
 them at present is often limited to the “strike clause” in 
 the contract. I know it is the opinion of many artists, 
 professional men of standing, that the Art may take care of 
 itself, that social questions and ethics have no place what¬ 
 ever in Art; and they accept the teaching of what might be 
 called the reaction,—an inevitable one,—to the doctrines of 
 John Ruskin. They hold that all the architect should care 
 about is the final work produced. Does it or does it not 
 conform to his designs, — no matter how it has been 
 produced ? This might be right enough for the landscape 
 painter or the artistic antiquarian, but I hold it to be 
 absolutely and fundamentally false for the architect. I 
 insist that the architect is in the position of the highest 
 producer, and so should he bear the responsibility of the 
 highest production. 
 
 The 
 
 Architect 
 and his 
 relation ta 
 work¬ 
 men’s 
 move¬ 
 ments 
 
 123 
 
THE RELATION OF THE ARCHITECT TOWARDS 
 
 The 
 Archi¬ 
 tect’s 
 duty to¬ 
 wards in¬ 
 dustrial 
 Educa¬ 
 tion 
 
 He should study it, get to see its bearing on his work and 
 those that work under him ; he should seek to unite them 
 co-operatively as producers, and without middlemen between 
 them and him. There is nothing so painfully instructive to 
 one as reading the habitual tone of scornful unsympathy 
 expressed by the leading building papers whenever a 
 question relating to workmen’s movements, strikes, and 
 industrial struggles comes forward. These papers, pre¬ 
 sumably, express professional opinion, but they are 
 unreservedly biassed in favour of the employer as against 
 the employed. It is for the young architect to study better 
 these relations of capital and labour. If he does, he will 
 see that there is no real antagonism between capital and 
 labour : that the apparent antagonism of the present day is, 
 in the first instance, one of degree in remuneration for services ; 
 in the second instance, of degree in control between master 
 and men; and that, in the first of these two, is implied the 
 regulation of the standard of life, and on this standard of 
 life good work depends. 
 
 Now, to my last factor in the modern movement, in 
 which lie Guild potentialities—educational development* 
 The old apprenticeship system is dying out. It still remains 
 in a somewhat unsatisfactory condition in architecture, and 
 in such crafts as book-binding, that have in them some of 
 the old- world element undestroyed by the machine, where 
 the hand still holds, and which have not yet quite sunk into 
 the slough of industrial despond; but, for the most part it is 
 finished. Side by side with it we see a new growth—the 
 technical school, which is even offering to take its place. 
 
 But the technical school never has taken and never can 
 take its place. The technical school can only be a con¬ 
 tinuation, it can never supersede the workshop, it can never, 
 as far as we can at present see, teach the acftual trade 
 itself as an apprentice should learn it; and certainly, 
 according to the Technical Education A< 5 t, it may not even 
 profess to teach it. 
 
 Edward Bellamy, in his Looking Backward , made the 
 trenchant statement that, in the new state, a new force must 
 take the place of the “ master's eye ” of the old trade 
 system. This new force was “ the perfectness of the 
 organisation.” I would accept this entirely, insisting only 
 that perfedtness of organization comprises “ humanism.” 
 
 Now, with the apprenticeship system dying, with the 
 technical schools admittedly not fulfilling the required- 
 
 124 
 
WORKSHOP RE-CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 conditions, and with the organisation of Industry imperfect, 
 what is the educational outlook, as far as the architect is 
 concerned ? We have, it seems to me, to recognise that 
 the apprenticeship system, regarded educationally, has been 
 destroyed by subdivision of labour, and it is this subdivision 
 of labour that we architects have to grapple with, it is here, 
 that, by virtue of our position, we can be of service. We must 
 help in the educational side of that reorganisation of Industry 
 that is taking its place, not only in our own immediate 
 art, but in all the handicrafts subordinate. 
 
 I would urge you all to consider how far it is not within 
 the scope of the profession, by entering more into the study 
 of the crafts, by approaching more the men in their move¬ 
 ments, by working more in workshops and less in offices, to 
 supply somewhat that which is wanted educationally, to 
 enter into this educational movement, in its humanist and 
 its technical side, which we see going on on all hands. 
 
 I have now indicated the three main lines in which it 
 would seem to me that in dealing with the question of the 
 relation of the architect to the workman, we younger men, 
 having in mind the greater and more comprehensive develop¬ 
 ment of the profession, have to look,—its development, in 
 fact, more in conformity with the ways and methods of the 
 mediaeval Guild. Let me now sum up the position of the 
 
 architedt as I conceive it should be, in his relation to the 
 
 workman,—an architect’s ideal, if I may be allowed the 
 term. 
 
 We should, in the first place, then, regard ourselves more 
 as workmen, on whom fall the duties of production and of 
 
 organization, and less as gentlemen of the office. As far 
 
 as our own training goes, we should draw as little as possible, 
 except from the human figure, but, with our hands, work as 
 much as possible ; or, rather, I should say, we should seek to 
 express our detail designs as much as possible in actual 
 material, and not on paper—that is to say, in the workshop. 
 Working thus in the workshop, we should grow into the 
 sympathies of the workshop, and then seek to develop our 
 position as organizers and employers of Industry. We should 
 train up a body of men with us ; it is only by educating work¬ 
 men in architectural principles, and ourselves in the relation 
 of the handicrafts to our work, that style—real living style— 
 not the shell of it in a modern Gothic church, or Queen Anne 
 mansion—can come. At present, we act as a disintegrating 
 force, and tend to keep the craftsmen asunder. We have 
 
 125 
 
sense enough to see that we can get better work from them, 
 when they act as units, than when they are under the control 
 of a contractor, or a big firm. It should be our effort to secure 
 the advantages of freedom and spontaneity in work which 
 a Guild system would give, without losing those advantages 
 of business method and order, which the present system 
 ensures. We ought, in fact, not to use a good craftsman 
 as an artistic convenience, as we are tempted to do at 
 present; but we should hold him, bind him to us,—as it 
 were, take him into partnership with us,—and so take more 
 responsibility for the man , and less responsibility for the 
 work. By so doing, we should avoid that waste which, at the 
 present day, always tends to convert the good craftsman 
 into the bad employer of labour. The architect, more than 
 any other person, has the blame of this; the architect, 
 more than any other, ought to strive to prevent it. In 
 the two following chapters I shall go into these hard 
 sayings more fully, meantime I would ask the younger 
 architect turn over in his mind some of Mr. Trudge’s ideas 
 on the collectivist re-organization of Industry. 
 
 126 
 
CHAPTER 12—ON THE 
 POSSIBILITY OF A METRO¬ 
 POLITAN SpHOOL OF 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 In the formulating of our municipal wants, somebody has 
 suggested that we shall have a Metropolitan School of 
 Architecture. 
 
 The artist, and the educationalist, alike, welcome such an 
 idea, but there are many more things implied in it than at 
 first sight appear. We are, all of us, agreed, I suppose, 
 that such a school should give us a better chance for the 
 training of our young men, should help us in the under¬ 
 standing of what beautiful Architecture of the past we yet 
 possess, and should make possible the creation of fresh work 
 in touch and sympathy with newer wants, and bearing the 
 impress of the younger ideas; we are not, all of us, agreed, as 
 to how far such a school shall help teach towards the solution 
 of the social problems to which Architecture is tied, how far 
 it shall help the reconstruction of the workshop, how far it 
 shall be conducted on antiquarian lines, how far it shall be 
 state-aided, and how far it shall be comprehensive in its 
 inclusion of the representatives of the building trades 
 generally. Few of us, I should say, have a sufficient grasp 
 of the conditions of the profession of Architecture, and the 
 building and affiliated trades, to take a wide enough survey of 
 the subject from which to generalize, and still fewer are able 
 to offer any definite constructive policy for the carrying out of 
 our plan—at present a dream. We would like to see in 
 London that spirit which inspired the Florentines when 
 they ordered Arnolfo to rebuild the Cathedral, but, for the 
 nonce, we have to take the cold comfort of the County 
 Council, and the biting criticisms of the building papers on 
 its good intentions. 
 
 Before we pass to the consideration of how we could 
 construct this school of ours, let us take stock of what we 
 have, in the way of existing Educational machinery, that 
 professes to do something for architectural teaching. 
 
 There are the Royal Academy Schools, there is the Royal 
 Institute of British Architects, with its examination system, 
 there is the Architectural Association, with its meetings and 
 
 127 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 its curriculum for training, there are the newly created 
 Polytechnics, with their fragmentary classes, and there are 
 the private offices of architects, with teaching based on the 
 apprenticeship system. That is all; now what does this 
 represent ? 
 
 The Royal I put the Academy first, out of compliment to the Academy, 
 Academy compliments are customary with the Academy, and it likes to 
 Corner have compliments paid it. But, I fear, as far as Architecture 
 ments goes, compliments are all that it can either give or receive. 
 
 Dead, dead, and apparently past all hope of resurrection, 
 are the Academy schools, in their relation to architecture ! 
 The bestowal of those glittering letters upon an occasion¬ 
 ally eminent architect, whose career and study have been 
 formed entirely outside it, the delivery of a few lectures, 
 often drearily antiquarian, in its splendid rooms, the offer 
 of a few prizes, and the annual yearly exhibition of archi¬ 
 tectural daughtsmanship, many of the drawings being by 
 the same hand, and that not the hand of the architect, is, 
 I believe, all that the Academy would itself claim to do for 
 English Architecture. To suggest to a pupil of any of the 
 leading architects, academicians, for instance, that he 
 should look to the Academy for his main source of teaching, 
 would be received with a laugh of derision. 
 
 TheRoyal Next comes the Royal Institute of British Architects, 
 itTletters more letters, but not more learning. The Institute has an 
 and its ex- Examination, and grants Certificates, but I back Timothy 
 amination Thumbs, the Elementary Teacher, who has specialized on 
 examinations and certificates, to earn the Institute’s letters 
 after a year’s reading, and come out with honours, before 
 any living architect. But Timothy Thumbs, though I love 
 him dearly in his own school, and over a glass of whiskey, 
 I know to be a man of no constructive ability, and little 
 imagination, and havingnothing togain by tacking A.R.I.B.A. 
 on to his other Degrees, he wisely leaves them alone. The 
 Local Board of Great Fad well East will not give him the 
 next evening continuation school job any the sooner. 
 
 It may almost be stated as a law in educational economics, 
 that an examination system, given a few generations and 
 an average ability to work on, will produce any standard 
 desired, up to a certain point. Its limitedness, its definite¬ 
 ness, and its rigidity make this possible. But then let us 
 not be deceived by it, we may gain in caligraphy, but we 
 
 128 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 lose in character, develope verbiage, but forget care; and 
 there are certain qualities to which no examination test can 
 possibly be applied, to wit, the sense of Beauty , constructional 
 ability , and human sympathy: these are the architect’s 
 three fundamental needs, not knowledge of strains and 
 styles. 
 
 It is a sufficient condemnation of the Institute’s test, to 
 point to the fact, that all the office boys, and assistants, and 
 country draughtsmen, who are not likely ever to leave their 
 mark on architecture, are eager to be tried by it, while 
 almost all the artists, to whom we look for the future of 
 English building, condemn it. How far behind the times, 
 too, the Institute is, may be noted from the fact, that while 
 the Universities and our leading Educationalists are begin¬ 
 ning to abandon, or, at least, modify, the examination test, 
 even in subjects where examination can be applied, the 
 Institute is seeking to impose it even in subjects where 
 the test is impossible. In addition to its examination, the 
 Institute also has a valuable library, and rules for the 
 guidance of professional practice, so, it is to be hoped, have 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry ; but their rules are of little help to 
 you and me, who are so unsympathetic and independent, 
 and Tom, Dick and Harry do not lend us their books—why 
 ■should they ? 
 
 Mr. Pushington once put me a very pertinent question— 
 “ How is it that you, who are such an advocate of Trade 
 Unions in Industry, should be up in arms against anything 
 approaching to a Trade Union in your own line; and how is 
 it that most members of the Institute, which is one of 
 the leading Trade Unions in the country, should be so 
 uniformly averse to Trade Unionism ? ” 
 
 It took me a very long time to think out the answer to 
 this question, and, finally, I found it best to state my answer 
 thus : “ I am willing,” I said, “to accept the Trade Union 
 principles, provided there, is a due recognition for artistic 
 individuality. I do not, however, consider it in accordance 
 with Trade Union principles, that the men of one trade 
 should make laws for another. The members of the Royal 
 Institute, estimable gentlemen, all of them, and composing 
 one of the most dignified and important Trade Unions in 
 the country, do not deal with architecture purely—architec¬ 
 ture as an Art—but take under their supervision many other 
 
 Mr. Push- 
 ington’s 
 custom¬ 
 ary perti¬ 
 nence 
 
 129 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The Arch- 
 itedlural 
 Associa¬ 
 tion and 
 its educa¬ 
 tional en¬ 
 deavours. 
 
 The Poly¬ 
 technics 
 and their 
 relation to 
 Archi¬ 
 tecture 
 
 things which appear to them as, if not more, important. I do 
 not, therefore, think that they should make laws for the artist, 
 and they should certainly not apply an examination which 
 cannot possibly test creative ability.” As for the second 
 part of the question, why is the Trade Union of the Institute 
 so out of sympathy with the other Trade Unions of the 
 country—the Workmen’s Unions? I framed my answer 
 thus: “ Because the existence of ‘ professionalism ’ in 
 
 Architecture is dependent on the life of the contracting 
 system, and the contractor ; it is against this system that the 
 Trade Unions are striving, but which is upheld by profes¬ 
 sionalism and Architecture as a profession.” 
 
 In the Architectural Association, we have young blood ; 
 we also have the invaluable element of combination, the 
 Trade Union element, without the professional intimidation 
 and picketting. In the Association’s Union, we are allowed 
 to be blacklegs, and an artist dearly loves being a blackleg. 
 The question is, what does it do for Architectural Educa¬ 
 tion ? For it is the only body that is making any conscientious 
 endeavour. I think, in its way, it does a good deal, but it 
 is timid, its councils appear divided, and it does not seem 
 quite strong enough, as yet, to stand alone. Given to the 
 keener spirits of the Architectural Association, some closer 
 study of the social problems that surround Architecture, in 
 its contact with Industry, and we have one of the strongest 
 factors for educational development and workshop re-con¬ 
 struction in the metropolis. At present the Association’s 
 line is not clear. 
 
 Next come the Polytechnics and technical schools. I 
 have sought above to give some expression to the big 
 Polytechnic point of view, and its bearing on the teaching 
 of Art.* 
 
 When Mr. Pushington, now some five years ago—in 1888 I 
 think it was—founded the famous Upper Galore Polytechnic, 
 I ventured to express my doubts to him as to the wisdom of 
 the proceeding from the point of view of the constructive 
 artist, and I have, since, had those doubts confirmed. The 
 Polytechnics are not doing, and never can do, the work they 
 are professing, or what has been hoped from them. No one 
 denies for a moment that much of what they do is admirable, 
 and much of it may be useful to the young architect, but it 
 
 130 
 
 * See page 27 to page 38. 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 is not what we imagine them to be doing, their adtion is 
 supplementary only, they are not touching the workshop, 
 and the workshop in the present instance is the architect's 
 office and the builder's yard. 
 
 But what is the architedVs office doing? Here, surely, 
 with an apprenticeship system still in force, with the 
 possibilities of personal contact between master and pupil, 
 and with the apparent close relationship between the 
 teaching function and the workshop function, as the youth is 
 taught on his master’s job, we may expect some training 
 in Architecture; and indeed what teaching is done, we find 
 in the office of the architect, but how limited, narrow, 
 inefficient and unhuman it is. In the average architect’s 
 office the bulk of the work is clerical and draughtsmanship. 
 The paid assistant , the paying pupil, and the improver, 
 who comes to be “ finished,” but neither pays nor is paid, 
 are set alike to the dreary and unprofitable work of inking 
 in plans and making tracings. It matters not much if they 
 understand, so long as the work is rapidly done, and the 
 necessary sub-division of labour allots to one man the making 
 of the “ client’s sketches,” to another the plans, to a third 
 the perspective views, while others again attend to the legal 
 and surveyor’s work, and the correspondence. They are all 
 in the profession. Meantime the real building is being 
 done outside the office, and by whom ? Not the architect 
 and his pupils, but the contractor and his men, and the 
 real constructive teaching is not being given to the young men 
 at all. No architect’s pupil thinks of working with his own 
 hands, doing a piece of carving, or bench work, and as to a 
 little figure drawing—the boss does not do it, why should 
 he ? And, moreover, where should he ? Imagine a nude 
 model in the office of a City architect! What an amusing 
 situation it suggests ! 
 
 I was told by an eminent living architect, a pupil of the 
 late Sir Gilbert Scott, that when, as an apprentice, he had 
 completed his twenty-fourth perspective view, he struck, 
 and timidly asked the master if he might learn something 
 else. Now, judging from the rate at which the average 
 articled pupil works,—and the articled pupil is not paid 
 piece work,—he could not have taken less than two weeks 
 over each perspective view, and thus a rough estimate may 
 be arrived at as to what architectural training he acquired 
 
 The Arch¬ 
 itect's 
 office and 
 the ap¬ 
 prentice¬ 
 ship sys¬ 
 tem 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The pro¬ 
 fessional 
 Archi¬ 
 tects 
 and the 
 Memorial¬ 
 ists 
 
 The pros¬ 
 pects of 
 architect¬ 
 ural Edu¬ 
 cation 
 
 during his three years’ apprenticeship. The corollary of 
 this is in a question that I once put to another of our 
 eminent living architects, also a pupil of the late Sir Gilbert 
 Scott, and the reply I got from him. 
 
 “ How is the young architect to learn the practical details 
 of building ? ” 
 
 “ Oh,” was the answer, “ he will get all that on his first 
 
 j° b -” 
 
 “ And,” I have since, in strict secrecy, added to myself, 
 “ at the expense of his first client.” 
 
 All this is wrong ; yet none of our architects, least of all, 
 the eminently practical ones, have any remedy to offer. 
 
 And their opponents, for instance the authors of that 
 excellent book,* that made such a flutter in the professional 
 dove-cots a few years ago, have no remedy for this either. 
 The cry of the Memorialists is “leave us alone, and let us work 
 at our Art as artists.” My sympathies are entirely with the 
 writers of this book, but I venture to think that they do not 
 go far enough. Their point of view is invaluable as a 
 critical one, but that is its limit; and it is the point of view, 
 not of the constructive artist looking to the future of his 
 Art, but of the individual craftsman. Though it may not be 
 within the province of any individual artist to consider the 
 educational question in Art, it certainly behoves us, in our 
 corporate action, to take into consideration the Architecture 
 of the future, and until the Memorialists look at the whole 
 question rather more comprehensively, and not only from 
 the point of view of their own offices and studios, the enemy, 
 that is to say, the professional architect , will remain in 
 possession. To those of us, who wish to re-construct the 
 workshop, their negative position differs only in degree from 
 that of their opponents. 
 
 How do we stand then ? With a Royal Academy that is 
 contributing nothing to the educational welfare of our young 
 men, with a Royal Institute, whose contribution is narrowed 
 down by commercial considerations, and tacked to a system 
 of examination which does more harm than good—with an 
 association of younger architects, who are hesitating as to 
 what lead to follow, and not apparently strong enough to 
 take up a position of their own, with a variety of new 
 technical schools, all unrelated, all fragmentary, and all 
 
 * “ Architecture a Profession or an Art ” (1892). 
 
 132 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 without guidance, or purpose, and with a system of office¬ 
 teaching, in which the good old methods of apprenticeship 
 are stultified by the sub-division of labour and the system 
 of builders’ contract, the need for mere draughtsmanship, 
 and the intrusion of the work of lawyers, surveyors, and 
 men of commerce into the workshop of the architect; 
 where do we stand in the eyes of the official receiver of 
 Ideas ? Assets meagre, liabilities unmentionable, net result 
 Educational Bankruptcy. The outlook for the education of 
 our younger men is not a bright one—I hold it to be very 
 serious indeed. 
 
 What then is to be done ? Those of us, who are capable 
 of taking a sufficiently large survey of the position we are 
 in, realize how difficult is the problem; see well the 
 educational embroglio, out of which we have to come 
 clean, before we can hope for a sound system of teaching 
 towards a School of Architecture in the largest sense 
 of the term. But what are we to do ? Work on existing 
 lines ? Found new institutions? It seems to me we must do 
 both ; but we must, first of all, look below the surface of 
 things and discover what the real forces are underneath ; 
 the vital forces, I mean, those that, from the point of view 
 of the Art and Craft of Architecture, hold the future in 
 them. 
 
 These forces are two, and both curiously regarded with a The forces 
 certain amount of contempt in the Architectural profession. ^ 
 
 The Artist Architect , as he has been scornfully called, and 
 the Trades, as represented by the Workmen’s Unions. Both 
 of these we have to tune to that note of reconstruction 
 which I have sought to strike throughout in these essays. 
 
 Our Metropolitan School must be formed on the basis of 
 the reconstruction of the Workshop, and the Workshop, in 
 this instance, includes the builder’s yard and the architect’s 
 office. 
 
 The artist architect is the first of the forces we have to The Artist 
 consider; and by the artist architect, I mean the architect ^nd^he^ 
 who regards his subject as an Art, rather than as a Profession, Trade 
 who does not undertake surveying, and light and air jobs, who Unions 
 distinguishes between the work of the lawyer and the artist, 
 following the latter; it is to him ultimately that the building 
 of the century will be most indebted Our other force is 
 the trades, or, more definitely, the different agencies for the 
 
 133 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 production of commodities for building, or the making of 
 works of handicraft; agencies whose real life we have to seek, 
 not among the entrepreneurs and the holders of capital, but 
 in the Unions and combinations of workmen who in each 
 case produce for them. 
 
 The artist architect and the workman are the only two 
 forces that we need be mindful of in the forming of our 
 school. The employer of labour, entrepreneur, dealer in 
 commodities, surveyor, lawyer, etc., we need not, for the 
 present, take into consideration; if they come into our 
 school, so much the better, we shall teach them some 
 Architecture, but their special subjects will not be taught, 
 except in subordination to the constructional and sethestic 
 considerations of Architecture. For the architect, therefore, 
 and for all those who are engaged in the constructive and 
 decorative arts, the school shall be intended, and I would 
 like to see Thomas Trudge there, and his son, and also my 
 old friend, Mr. Pennyworth, the designer, but I doubt 
 whether he would hold it worth his while, and for the 
 present, moreover, he is under lock and key in the great 
 safe of Messrs. Sky Sign and Co. 
 
 A sugges- Paper schemes are unprofitable, but I will venture a 
 tl0n <^°ai a sketch of how such a body as the Architectural Association, 
 School of in which there is young blood, might actually construct for 
 Archi- itself a Metropolitan School of Architecture. The idea will, 
 tedure doubtless, be considered unpractical, but then everything 
 is unpractical until one or two earnest men are convinced of 
 its practicability, and then it suddenly takes shape. A 
 Metropolitan school in which, while the real teaching is 
 being done, the re-construCtion of the workshop is taking 
 place also. 
 
 Let there be, say a hundred young architects, nay fifty, 
 even ten righteous could do it; let them unite together to 
 carry on, between them, a workshop, educational and 
 productive, in which they and their pupils should learn, and 
 in which their work should be carried out. When I asked a 
 sculptor friend of mine the other day to give me his ideas 
 as to how such a school should be formed, he said, “ You must 
 do two things first; you must do away with the snobbish¬ 
 ness of the architect, and you must train all your men, 
 architects, sculptors, painters, together.” Exactly. The 
 architect must take off his top hat, and discontinue poking 
 
 134 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 at the workmen’s clay model with his two foot rule when he 
 makes his didactic visits to the contractor’s shop. In this 
 school he must set to work in an apron with the other 
 workmen. My ten righteous should, in the first place, decide 
 to make the teaching, in this school workshop, comprehensive, 
 so as to include all who touched upon the building trades. 
 
 To do this they should place in it, among the teachers, 
 one or two practical workmen in touch with their Trade 
 Unions. 
 
 These men should be put on a footing of equality with the Estab- 
 architeCts, as far as the internal workshop government was workshop 1 
 concerned, and the workshop should be conducted on the and co¬ 
 lines of an industrial partnership, the workmen thus having a operative 
 direct personal and corporate interest in the production Q f basls * 
 the work. The workshop being thus conducted on a co¬ 
 operative basis, the capital and plant would, according to 
 arrangement, belong to architect and workmen together, 
 and, assuming a careful management, the economy effected 
 by the elimination of the contractor and his profit, the 
 saving of waste to the superfluous draughtsman—albeit the 
 miserable man’s wage is not a high one,—and the direCt 
 personal supervision of the architect, over the work produced, 
 would make it possible for all the work to be turned out at 
 a much lower rate than by the ordinary firm. Of the 
 advantages to the art and craft of Architecture, it is 
 needless to speak, for it stands to reason, that where the 
 workman is interested, and where architect and workman 
 alike, are in a position to leave the impress of their individuality 
 on a piece of work, it must be better done. But I ask more 
 still, my fifty righteous should not only pledge themselves 
 to support this workshop, but also to let their pupils spend so 
 many hours, or days, in each week to work in it, for, if we 
 cannot destroy the professional office right away, we can, at 
 least, impose limitations on ourselves towards humanizing it. 
 
 The advantages of such a workshop would be briefly 
 these—architect and workman would be creating together. 
 
 The younger men, and the older, too, if they cared, would 
 have some chance for practical training; the workman 
 himself, who was creating with and for the architect, would 
 be trained and interested ; the contractor and the contract¬ 
 ing system would be at a discount; for, as the workshop 
 grew and undertook co-operative contracts of its own, and 
 
 135 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 work of a larger kind, the old system would tend to dis¬ 
 appear, for the prestige of such a guild-workshop for the 
 profession could not fail to be considerable, and the work 
 would be better and cheaper done. In short, we should be 
 accomplishing two things, we should be doing what through¬ 
 out these essays I have insisted on, viz., connecting the 
 teaching function with the workshop function, and, in so 
 doing, we should be directly applying the Guild system of 
 the mediaeval builders, i.e., a co-operative and constructive 
 one, to the modern profession and trades : be it added, to the 
 great purification and service of both. 
 
 As to the details ot how all this should be done, I do not 
 intend here to speak ; details are not settled in essays, but 
 have to be considered in relation to the individual men who 
 are constructing, to their characters and personalities. But I 
 will anticipate the taunt that the thing cannot be done, by the 
 reply that the thing, on a small scale, already has been done, 
 and its methods can be illustrated and tested in the now 
 seven years’ fairly successful work of the Guild and School 
 of Handicraft. I venture to think that those of my archi¬ 
 tectural colleagues who regard it, in the long run, as an 
 impossibility, do so because they are out of sympathy and, 
 may I be pardoned for adding this, inexperienced in the 
 great underlying social forces that are making for the re¬ 
 construction of Industry. Everything, I repeat, is unpractical, 
 until one or two earnest men are convinced of its practica¬ 
 bility, then it suddenly takes shape. 
 
 The doing of this, therefore, rests with the young men. 
 They, who have much to gain and little to lose; they, who 
 are dissatisfied ^yith the existing system, under which they 
 work, and yet do not see where to turn for guidance, or 
 what to do. 
 
 To the To the young men, I say, come out of it! Leave the 
 
 eou^ nght ” beaten track, and try the fresh way through the woods, if 
 )T)u lose yourselves awhile, it matters little, your time will 
 not be misspent. Come away from Bloomsbury, and Hol- 
 born, and the City ; and start your offices in healthier places, 
 near the workshops of the workmen, or where you can lead 
 the freer life of the artist. You cannot do your work well 
 under the old-fashioned conditions of the professional 
 office. The inner room for the boss, and the outer room 
 for the office boy. Have a place where you can work out 
 
 136 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 your own designs with your own hands, where you can have 
 the living model to draw from; can set up a large cartoon 
 if you need it, and can fashion a piece of clay for yourself, 
 instead of poking at the workman’s sketch with your two- 
 foot rule, when you go on your didaCtic visits to the con¬ 
 tractor’s shop. 
 
 Our older architects are tied, hand and foot, to the con¬ 
 tracting system, they cannot guide us, their sympathies are 
 with the masters of Industry, they join in the hue and cry 
 against the “ British working man,” and when they find 
 their designs misunderstood, or their works stopped for a 
 strike, lay the blame on an imaginary “ agitator,” and a 
 Trade Union with which they are entirely unacquainted. 
 
 This is an old-fashioned point of view, and to the young 
 men, I say, drop it. Try and find out what the conditions 
 are, under which the workman is doing your work, remember 
 that he is at war with the contractor, with whom you are 
 signing your agreement, try and discover what is really the 
 reason of this war, and why it is so absorbing to him, and your 
 work not at all absorbing ; it is not a little or an unhelpful 
 lesson that you will learn from this, and when you have 
 answered, to your own satisfaction, one or two of these 
 questions, and got into some little sympathy with the 
 workman, see if you cannot then let him construct direct 
 for and with you, without any middle man to whom he shall 
 be responsible for his creative life. We architects are in a 
 unique position, so far as labour is concerned, and this none 
 of us appear to see. We are employers of labour, without 
 taking the profits of labour. That, alone, is enough to make 
 the workman trust us, and it is a duty we owe to our Art, 
 as artists, to see that he does his work under the same 
 pleasurable conditions as we do ours. In other words, I 
 repeat what I said before, we must take more responsibility 
 for the man, and less responsibility for the work; that is our 
 duty, as younger men, who are seeking to establish a 
 healthier order, and to be abreast with the times. 
 
 With such a spirit within us, we can set to creating our The fifty 
 Metropolitan School of Architecture. Given fifty earnest rl § hteous 
 men holding these ideas, having sympathy for the labour 
 movement, having tolerance for the narrowness or ignorance 
 of the workman, and ready to break with the old condition 
 of things in the profession ; fifty earnest men, subscribing 
 
 K 
 
 137 
 
to, and supporting, a workshop of their own, in which they 
 shall themselves study, in which their pupils shall study, 
 into which they shall pledge themselves to place their work, 
 and in which they shall all have a financial stake : given this, 
 and our Metropolitan School of Architecture is already 
 founded. We can snap our fingers at the County Council, 
 and we need no benefaction from Mr. Pushington to help 
 us. We can do it all ourselves, why should we not set 
 about and do it ? 
 
 138 
 
CHAPTER i 3 —WHERE IS 
 THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 It might almost seem that, in attaching so much import¬ 
 ance to the position of the architect, in my consideration of 
 the re-construdtion of the workshop, I am forgetting that of 
 the builder—who is, after all, the more important person 
 of the two—I consecrate this chapter to him. 
 
 First of all, what is the builder ? To anyone not in the 
 secret of things, it might appear that the builder is one who 
 builds, and that if the archite(ft has, somehow, got into a 
 false position, and become divorced from his material, the 
 builder, at least, is much the same as he was, bar the artistic 
 instinct, in the days, say of, John Thorpe, or William of 
 Wykeham. Our problem of re-construction would be simple, 
 indeed, if this were the case, for all we would have to do, 
 would be to let our young architects be trained by, and 
 work with, builders. The builder of to-day is nothing more 
 nor less than a business man, who deals in a particular 
 article, i.e., the buying, selling, arranging, and general 
 manipulation of materials for building— how , does not 
 matter, as long as building Adts are conformed to, the very 
 soul and life of his occupation ;—the how, the why, the 
 purpose, of building, has gone out of his craft. Like the 
 Cheapside tradesman, who does not make his goods him¬ 
 self, but has printed upon them “ made by me,” so the 
 builder has the house built by a variety of different agencies, or 
 men, whom he employs, and then paints upon the board above 
 the hoarding, “ Built by Thump and Co., builders and deco¬ 
 rators.” To put our work into his hands, from the point of 
 view of the general public, would not be satisfactory, because 
 it is not, primarily, in his interest to build, but to deal in 
 building, and as this dealing in building is a most complex 
 and difficult operation, and as complexity breeds complexity, 
 the general public has recourse to the architect to check the 
 builder, and see that his dealings are honest. All this is 
 wasteful and superfluous, and is based upon a fundamental 
 mistrust among the parties engaged — client, architect, 
 builder, and workmen; with some there is more mistrust 
 
 139 
 
WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 To the 
 Builder 
 of Ideas 
 
 The sav¬ 
 ing of the 
 architect’: 
 per-cen- 
 tage 
 
 than others, but everybody, by the nature of the system, 
 mistrusts the builder. The professional contracting system, 
 of which the builder is the centre and mainstay, amounts, 
 therefore, to this : an architect, with little knowledge of the 
 practical details of building, looking after a tradesman, whose 
 interest is a purely commercial one, and who, in his turn, 
 looks after a variety of partially trained workmen, who, 
 owing to the nature of the position in which they are placed, 
 have no interest in the work at all. As a system, it does 
 not seek to produce good work, but, by a variety of ingenious 
 checks and counter-checks, to prevent bad. I do not wish 
 it to be thought that I consider good work cannot be done 
 under this system, or that builders may not be honourable 
 and conscientious men, but I insist that, where good work is 
 produced, it is in spite of the system, and not because 
 of it. 
 
 Now, I am on the look out for a Builder of Ideas, who will 
 work with me to a newer end. I believe he exists, and that 
 I shall find him. To this imaginary man I speak, as follows, 
 and call to him out of the dark. 
 
 You, my friend, are interested in social matters, and 
 you have what, for want of a better word, I will call a con¬ 
 science, I believe, far down, you also have the elements of an 
 aesthetic sense, but that is not so important here, what is 
 important is that you are a business man, and not ashamed, 
 like most business men are, of admitting it. As you also 
 have some sympathy with those who are seeking to recon¬ 
 struct the Workshop, I want you to enter into a plan, 
 with me, or with some other architect if you prefer it. 
 Let us form a partnership together, subject to mutual 
 arrangement for the remuneration of either; my portion of 
 the work being the constructional and aesthetic treatment 
 of the art, based upon your practical knowledge of the costs 
 and minutiae of the materials. We will then build together 
 for the client, and we shall be able to build for him much 
 better and much cheaper, for, by virtue of our co-operation, 
 and the system that I would have us work on, the whole of 
 the architect’s percentage will be saved him, in the mere 
 saving of waste. 
 
 To state the case more forcibly, I will show this 
 percentage, as saved in two halves, in this wise. Mr. 
 Pushington, or the Board of Great Fadwell East, brings us a 
 
 140 
 
WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 job, let us say; how do we stand ? You reckon so much 
 per cent, on your capital, I the same on mine if I put any in. 
 
 You reckon so much for your labour, I so much for mine. 
 
 We then go into the costs together, I get out a drawing for 
 the committee, and the contract is drawn up upon your 
 quantities, in your and my name as one, or the name of our 
 workshop, if you like, and there is no architect’s percentage 
 over, above, and on the costs. You know quite well, gentle p co 
 Builder of Ideas, that the mere fact of our co-operation operation 
 will save not only that half of my percentage which is taken among 
 as covering my design, but that I shall be as well paid, you 
 will be well paid, and the return on our capital invested an( j work- 
 will remain the same. That is the first point in my men 
 proposal; that relates only to you and me. Now for my 
 second, and the saving of the second half of the percentage, 
 the half which is taken as covering my superintendence. 
 
 This will be harder for you, and relates to the other work¬ 
 men besides you and me. We will make of our workshop an 
 industrial partnership. We will take all our men on at the 
 Trade Union rates, drawing them, in fa( 5 t, from the different 
 Unions, and they shall not be our men, but the men of the 
 workshop of which you and I are the pioneers. We shall 
 then, after determining the rate or scale at which you and I 
 are to be paid, the one for the earnings of management, the 
 other for constructional design, sweep all the profits, over, 
 and above the percentage on capital, not into our own 
 pockets, as you, for instance, are doing now, but into a com¬ 
 mon workshop fund, for distribution amongst all the men, 
 calculated by scale on their wages and the length of their 
 service. Furthermore, we shall make rules for the future con¬ 
 solidation of our workshop. Every workman not only may, 
 but shall, be a holder of capital up to a certain sum, and no The sys- 
 workman shall be entitled to full workshop privileges, until tem of the 
 he has worked for us, on trial, for at least three months, or w«rk- 
 draw profits until he has standing to the credit of his name s h 0 p 
 on the books a reserve sum of at least £25. If you tell me 
 that this cannot be done, I answer it has already, in several 
 cases, been done, and works most wisely and well, it only 
 needs the man to do it, perhaps you are, after all, not the 
 Builder of Ideas !* 
 
 * The factory Woodhouse Mills of Mr. George Thomson, at Huddersfield, is an instance in 
 point. The system is also the one in iorce at the Guild.of Handicraft. 
 
WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 I know it is a hard thing, this, I ask of you, and also of 
 your architect ally; it is nothing more nor less than inviting 
 us both to professionally commit suicide. I, the architect, 
 am to surrender my percentage on the costs, and my proud 
 and superior special-pedestal position, you, the builder, are 
 to have your earnings of management regulated by a force 
 out of your own control, and have your master’s hand a 
 little tied. To begin with, we shall probably both of us 
 lose, we shall be misunderstood by the men, we shall also 
 be boycotted by the profession, the trade, and the building 
 papers ; but, in the end, we, and all those working with us, 
 will, without doubt, be great gainers, because the middle 
 man’s portion of both you and me will be got rid of, and, by 
 the spirit and interest of our workmen, we shall reap other 
 Its results resu ^ s unimagined. There is one thing, however, that we 
 on the shall gain for the Art and Craft of Building, that will be 
 traditions worth all that we may lose or gain for ourselves. Have you 
 craft 6 ever cons idered what a disregard and waste of tradition is 
 implied in the system, whereby one architect employs a 
 variety of different builders, and often builders with whom he 
 has never worked before, and may never work again ? By the 
 nature of the system, this further means the employment of 
 a number of different workmen, also continually changing. 
 The builder, the architect, and the men are all new to each 
 other, they have no cohesion, and what element of tradition 
 there is in the workshop practice of all and each is con¬ 
 stantly tending to disappear. I want, you and me, gentle 
 Builder of Ideas, to re-construct the workshop, on the basis 
 of a possible and continuing tradition. Let us, and our men, 
 get to know each other’s ways: let our plasterers get into 
 the knack of knowing how I want my cornices to break 
 round the window architraves, and my bricklayers, from 
 experience of working with me, how I like my arches to 
 rake, and my smiths to remember that I always swear when 
 they file fine the edges of my scrolls, and my joiners to 
 have sympathy with the particular ogee that I affeCt on the 
 top of a frieze rail. Think of the cupboardsfull of needless 
 drawings this would save me, the endless instructions it 
 would save you, and the little varieties of interested responsi¬ 
 bility it would leave to these same plasterers and bricklayers, 
 smiths and joiners. Some firms, you know, as it is, pride 
 themselves on getting into the ways of particular architects, 
 
 142 
 
WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 but you, and those who have any workshop experience, 
 know perfectly well that this can only be done by virtue of 
 the men that they employ. And, I go further yet; it is not 
 from vanity of my own style that I want my plasterers, and 
 bricklayers, smiths, and joiners, to be in sympathy with me, 
 but because, by this sympathy, and owing to the fact of our 
 continuous co-operation, I shall become the vessel through 
 which the tradition of our re-constructed workshop is to 
 flow. 
 
 Imagine a number of architects, each with their own 
 workshop, their group or guild of workmen around them, 
 working continuously together, what style should we not 
 develope ? Each group its own, owing to the individuality 
 of the men expressing itself in the details; for though the 
 workshop will always need its architect or constructive 
 designer, our newer system of responsible co-operation will 
 inevitably approximate to the mediaeval guild system, in 
 which the workman was enabled to put his own individuality 
 into his work. 
 
 When Mr. Pushington did me the honour of inviting me M* 1 - Push¬ 
 to build the new stables at his place in Berkshire, he asked, t0 
 knowing that I had ideas on these matters, whether I cared the point 
 to suggest any more satisfactory method than the customary 
 one, for my own professional remuneration, and for the 
 contract of the work. 
 
 “ I don’t like the way you architects are paid,” he said, 
 and I replied that the percentage on the cost was a pro¬ 
 fessional bete noir of mine. 
 
 So we agreed, after I had worked him out the plans of a 
 building, costing about £2,500, that my honorarium should 
 amount to £150, inclusive of travelling expenses, and that 
 there should be nothing on extras. He, further, very grace¬ 
 fully offered me half of anything I might save him over the 
 contract price, £2,500, within the sum of £3,000, which was 
 the outside limit—all told—to which he wanted to go. This, 
 however, I declined, as not being strictly professional; I 
 venture to think, too, that, as a work of Art, the building was, 
 in the end, the better for it. 
 
 Before we closed, however, Mr. Pushington made me a 
 further suggestion. 
 
 “ I do not wish,” he said, to put this work out to com¬ 
 petitive tender if I can help it, and I like to encourage 
 
 143 
 
Yet 
 
 curiously 
 
 timid 
 
 Local 
 
 building 
 
 WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 novelties ; you, my young friend, have cranks ; are there any 
 particular builders or workmen with whom you would like 
 the work placed ? ” 
 
 “ You, Mr. Pushington,” I replied, “ have men—I have 
 not yet found any builder of Ideas—would it not be possible 
 for Messrs. Sky Sign and Co. to supply us with men, material, 
 everything ? ” 
 
 “Yes, perhaps—but no, I’m afraid that’s a bit impracti¬ 
 cable,— no, perhaps we’d better do it in the usual way.” 
 
 So it resolved itself into our employing the customary 
 local builder, and I had all the bother of seeing that the 
 lime was properly slacked, and the hoop iron properly oiled 
 and sanded, and the mortar properly proportioned, etc., 
 etc., etc., in short, that all the jargon of the specification 
 was correctly carried out. How I longed for my builder of 
 Ideas ! and I vowed I would not rest till I found him. 
 
 Now, I think I know what you are going to say, and I 
 will anticipate your criticism. You are not unnaturally 
 going to argue that the cost of carriage, and transit of men, 
 plant, and materials, will make this impracticable, and 
 you will say, therefore, that local builders must be employed, 
 and that the architect, hence, inevitably remain, owing to 
 the fundamental pecuniary needs of the case, dissociated 
 from the builder’s yard, from the workshop. 
 
 My answer is—first, that it is right and proper that 
 building should be done locally, good and spirited building 
 can be done in no other way but locally, and by the men who 
 understand the wants and ways of the neighbourhood, not 
 the architect from London, who has, perhaps, even made 
 his competition drawings without having inspected the site. 
 Where contracts can be undertaken by firms at a distance, 
 as at present, under a wasteful system, the same work can 
 be done under an economical one. Furthermore, if the 
 system I suggest is to have any efficacy at all, it will aCt 
 in country districts, just as much as in the great Wen, 
 in faCt it will be easier, I think, to establish, in the 
 country, where old workshop traditions still linger, and 
 methods are less complex. It need not, however, act to the 
 destruction of the eminent architect from London, in the 
 event of his being really needed. You forget the enormous 
 facility of locomotion placed at our disposal. It is much 
 easier and cheaper now to move men, plant, material, to and 
 
 144 
 
WHERE IS THE BUILDER OF IDEAS ? 
 
 fro, than it was twenty years ago, and it will daily tend to 
 become easier still. What I insist on, however, is, that 
 if the London architect is to come, his own group of 
 men shall come with him, and that the Guild, of which 
 he is the centre, sjjall leave its mark upon the building to 
 be erected. 
 
 In this again, we should have an approximation to what 
 was done by the mediaeval builders, when the Guild travelled 
 from place to place. If there was a piece of work to be 
 done that overtaxed the capacities of the local workmen, 
 a neighbouring Guild was invited, and the masons, with the 
 master mason, from Bury St. Edmunds, from Norwich, 
 from Canterbury, would take up their sojourn at the Abbot’s 
 workshop. 
 
 The idea that the architect shall become his own con¬ 
 tractor is not a new one, no less a person than Sir Charles 
 Barry supported it many years ago, but the time was not 
 ripe for it then ; architectural professionalism had not fully 
 developed itself, nor had Trade Unionism, and the thing 
 was impossible then, in Barry’s day, even had he been the man 
 to do it. It is only now possible, by a frank recognition of the 
 Trade Unionist and co-operative principles, by the architect. 
 It was this that Barry and Pugin, who worked with him on 
 the Houses of Parliament, had, owing to the circumstances 
 of their time, no insight into, and the magnificent work 
 they did, in training up a body of workmen for, and on, that 
 great building, was practically thrown away in its large 
 bearing on the craft of building, for want of an understanding 
 of that workshop cohesiveness, that co-operative tradition, 
 which we, of a late day, must make for in our policy of 
 workshop re-construcftion. 
 
 I know an old gentleman in Mile End—an octogenarian 
 mason, with both legs in the grave, for he carves nothing 
 but tombstones,—who was trained by Pugin in the West¬ 
 minster work. He looks back to it as a sort of golden age 
 —it was the time he got real nice work to do,—but what 
 has come out of it ? There was no effort made to hold the 
 men together, beyond the immediate cash nexus of the 
 contract, and when the great job was done they all drifted 
 apart. Pugin’s preaching of medievalism, and Barry’s 
 ideas for the development of contract, were all futile and 
 to no purpose, for want of an understanding of the social 
 
 *45 
 
 Guild 
 
 building 
 
 A wasted 
 tradition 
 
and constructive side of the workshop. The whole tradition 
 was wasted, and my old friend threw his chisel on one side 
 and went into the tombstone line. He now walks about, a 
 small, a very small, master, in a long, a very long, black 
 coat, and a very tall top hat, looks like a mute, swears at the 
 indifference of the workmen he employs, but still he does 
 not forget the golden age. 
 
 But it is just the men of the golden age that we want to 
 create, only the golden age shall last—shall indeed outlive 
 the contract. I repeat what I stated before, in my chapter 
 on the architect and the workman, we must take more 
 responsibility for the men, less responsibility for the work. 
 The character in our bricks and mortar will rise, as the tone 
 of our workshop rises. This didtum, gentle builder of Ideas, 
 applies to you, just as much as to me, and my professional 
 colleagues. Suppose, now, you try to reconstruct your 
 Building business in the way I have suggested—suppose we 
 co-operate ? I hold out my hand to you ! 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER 14.— THE ART 
 AND TECHNICAL IN¬ 
 STRUCTOR OF TO-DAY, 
 
 AND THE LITTLE CITIZEN 
 OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 These more special considerations in the re-construdtion 
 of the Workshop, through my own craft, have taken me away 
 from the little citizen of the future. He it is to whom some 
 day we have to look for the re-birth of that spirit which 
 prompted Arnolfo’s document; it is he who is to “ proceed 
 in the management of our affairs,” so that our “ magna¬ 
 nimity and wisdom ” as a “ people of noble origin ” may be 
 “evinced in our outward acts.” I would, therefore, dedicate 
 this chapter to Jack, and also to the man in whose hands 
 for the moment his artistic and technical teaching is en¬ 
 trusted. This man is the “Technical and Art instructor,” a 
 special new breed of teacher, who is neither of the workshop 
 nor of the school, but invented by these supplementary tech¬ 
 nical institutions for the well-being of the new citizenship. 
 
 I will tell you the sort of man you are creating,—when I 
 say you, I mean the political gentlemen who act on County 
 Council Technical Sub - Committees, and, without much 
 practical knowledge, do conscientiously try to do something 
 for the improvement of Art in its application to Industry. 
 I will ask you to take this from an expert, whose study has 
 been the re-construction of the Workshop, and the training 
 of its men. I will tell you, gentlemen, the sort of man you 
 are producing, and then you may be inclined to piously 
 breathe with me that the South Kensington system, with 
 its certificated paper men, and its stately Mummy, had its 
 merits after all, and that the last state of the Art instructor 
 shall be worse than the first. 
 
 He is, to begin with, a man of strictly commercial instindts, 
 who takes up what he would call “a line,” he does the thing 
 first for shekels; this is no matter if he does it well, but he 
 does not do it well, for he is usually a man who has found 
 that some other line does not pay so well as “Art teaching.” 
 He is drawn from various social circles. Sometimes he is 
 an artizan who has fallen out with his Union, and drifted 
 away from the bench; sometimes he is an elementary 
 teacher, with endless qualifications ; sometimes he is a City 
 
 147 
 
The three 
 kinds of 
 Technical 
 and Art 
 Educa¬ 
 tion 
 
 THE ART AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR OF TO-DAY, 
 
 clerk, with whom money is no consideration, but who finds 
 “Art teaching” more lucrative than double entry; more 
 frequently he is a commercial traveller with a varied 
 experience,—boots, timber, artificial teeth, baby linen, what 
 you will. He has good address, wears a good coat, writes 
 a good letter, and impresses you favourably, especially 
 if you are a committee, with a sense of practical 
 competence and energy ; and he is always up to date. But, 
 with all these good qualities, he lacks just those one or two 
 best qualities that shall fit him for the work he ought to do. 
 
 It is inevitable that the artificial and supplementary 
 system of art and technical teaching, which we are estabish- 
 ing all over the country, should also lead to the creation of 
 an artificial and unnecessary Art teacher. When the system 
 of teaching is outside the Workshop, the teacher must be 
 outside the Workshop likewise, and become divorced from 
 what he is proposing to teach. 
 
 Now, there are two kinds of technical education, as com¬ 
 monly understood, and of these, in so far as they bear upon 
 Art, Craft and Industry, the one is as valueless as the other 
 is important. The one is the teaching, in evening art 
 classes, to all sorts and conditions of men, the other is the 
 training of the children and teachers in the elements of 
 handicraft. Of the first, we have enough and to spare: 
 indeed, an over-abundance of what is, except from a social 
 and recreative point of view, all but valueless ; of the other 
 we have as yet only a limited quantity, and that inefficiently 
 administered. But there is yet another sort of technical 
 education, which is more important than either, and of which, 
 at present, we have, in the largest sense, nothing at all. 
 
 Those who have followed me thus far, will see at once 
 that I refer to the teaching in the Workshop by the work¬ 
 men, to technical education, as it was understood by the 
 mediaeval guilds and in the Workshop of the Renaissance, 
 technical education, that recognises no teaching, where the 
 teaching function is divorced from the workshop function. 
 This genuine teaching is dependent on workshop re-con- 
 strudtion, and I look to Jack Trudge, not Thomas Trudge, 
 but Jack, his first-born, some day, to do it. As for the 
 second kind of technical teaching, that of the child, and his 
 teacher in the elements, that we may in part leave to 
 Timothy Thumbs, it is the work of the educationalist, rather 
 than the Workshop; though the Workshop also, here, should 
 have a voice in its practical direction, for the Workshop of 
 the future is implied in it; and as to the teaching of Art, to 
 all sorts and conditions of men, let us give it up as Art, it 
 
 148 
 
AND THE LITTLE CITIZEN OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 will not help us to reconstruct the Workshop; let us regard 
 it as recreative or social only, for it is of no other value. 
 
 The need for a little more genuineness, in this respect, 
 was brought home to me once, in the earlier days, before I 
 had expressed myself too definitely to the Rev. Simeon 
 Flux, as to the value of his efforts for the sesthetic sub- The Rev. 
 consciousness of Great Fadwell East, and when he and I Simeon 
 were yet allies. He asked me once, and the honour was a ^ rs a t nd 
 distinguished one to an unknown young man, to judge the kind of 
 awards in one of his local Art Exhibitions. Technical 
 
 What he needed, he said, was “ An expert to help him, Jr^ ca ' 
 an independent opinion, especially an architect’s, it would be 
 invaluable, and” be added, incidentally, “it may help you , 
 four thousand circulars will go out with your name on 
 them, the press will be invited, and Lady Sophia Bindles will 
 give the prizes on your award.” So the aesthetic sub-con¬ 
 sciousness of Great Fadwell East was displayed before me in 
 groups, one Easter time, in St. Saviour’s schools. There 
 were arrays of chip-carved stools, and walls full of fretwork 
 brackets, repousse copper ash trays no end, brass finger 
 plates for imaginary doors, and pinched iron work for no 
 imaginary purpose at all, and as to the embossed leather 
 work, the hides of so many beeves would have covered Carth¬ 
 age many times. I had not expected much, but this was 
 less than I had even dreamed of, and a spirited dialogue 
 took place, between the Redtor and me, in the vestry. 
 
 “ Really, Mr. Flux, I cannot award prizes to some of 
 these groups, they are too bad.” 
 
 Oh! but, my dear fellow, on their merits, you know, 
 on their merits ; you must not judge them by your own 
 standard! ” 
 
 “ But then they have no merits at all, absolutely none; 
 what in the world is the good of all this miserable fretwork ? ” 
 
 “ The good ? ” said the Rector, and he looked at me 
 reproachfully, “ Isn’t it good that these fellows should be 
 taught to use their hands, isn’t it good that they should be 
 given some interest in their colourless lives, isn’t it good 
 that they should be kept from loafing up and down the Hor- 
 wark Highway, and won from the public-houses, surely it isn’t 
 for you to judge of what good all this may be accomplishing, 
 that” he added, with a smile that turned off his justifiable 
 anger at my impertinence, “that is the business of the Rector, 
 not of the Artist.” 
 
 “ But then,” I insisted, “ that is just the point, I’m not 
 here to say what good the work does, but whether it is good 
 in itself.” 
 
 149 
 
THE ART AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR OF TO-DAY, 
 
 The Rector laid his hand on my arm very calmly, but 
 very firmly, and, as he led me to one of the groups, quoted a 
 most musical and ambiguous passage from Ruskin, which I 
 cannot now remember, because it was open to so many con¬ 
 structions, and contained all the ethics of Art; and before I 
 had time to reply, he had taken a slip of paper from his 
 pocket, scribbled something on it and handed it to me. 
 
 “ Yes,” he said, “ they’re all very bad, but I take your 
 meaning, I quite take your meaning—will this suit you ? ” 
 
 “ The judge, in awarding the first prize to no. 4 
 
 OF THIS GROUP, RECOMMENDS THE PUPILS TO TURN THEIR 
 ENERGIES TO OTHER FORMS OF HANDICRAFT BESIDES FRET¬ 
 WORK.” 
 
 Those who are acquainted with the Rev. Simeon Flux on 
 committees or in private life, his prompt, masterful, persua¬ 
 sive way of going to work, will know how impossible it is to 
 cope with him on his own ground. I made my stand, but 
 was completely routed, and so, in the end, Lady Sophia 
 Bindles gave the biggest prizes, on my award, to George 
 Grubbins, the local grocer, because he was the most regular 
 church-goer; the Rev. Simeon Flux and the aesthetic sub- 
 consciousness of Great Fadwell East, expressed themselves 
 highly satisfied with my discrimination; the Lady Sophia 
 Bindles bought ten guineas’ worth of Fretwork, which her 
 splendid footman carried off in a hamper, and the Pressmen 
 quoted from the end of the Rev. Simeon Flux’s peroration : 
 “ Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, that is all, etc., etc., 
 etc.” On the whole it was a most successful function. 
 
 Well, there we have it, the Rev. Simeon Flux has carried 
 this first kind of technical education to its highest finish. 
 He has reduced it to its primal element, a purely social 
 and recreative one. It has nothing to do with the Workshop 
 at all, and does nothing at all for Industry; it keeps the 
 boys from the public houses and Mr. George Grubbins at 
 Church, both things, doubtless, much to be wished for, but 
 neither of them of any direct value for our national develop¬ 
 ment in Art, Craft and Industry, and whether it be done in 
 the Rev. Simeon Flux’s evening classes, or at the Upper 
 Galore Polytechnic, the object, though an excellent one, is the 
 same, and we must not misunderstand it, or imagine, that by 
 state-aiding it, we are thereby helping to directly improve 
 our national production. We may be doing lots of excellent 
 things, but we are not doing what we think we are doing, 
 and want to do. 
 
 With our second kind of teaching, the case is different, 
 here we tap another vein of the national organism, and here, 
 
 150 
 
AND THE LITTLE CITIZEN OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 too, the promiscuous Art instructor is not wanted. The 3 P mot ? y 
 teaching of the child in the school is important. It is in and The’ 
 the school, before the age of 14, that the little citizen will second 
 have fashioned for him his fundamental capacities for the )L ind ° f 
 understanding of form, mass, line, colour, music, his Educa- Ca 
 appreciation for landscape, and his delight in the human tion 
 body; all these should be instilled into him first in the 
 school. The scope for the elements of technical and artistic 
 teaching in the school is infinite; but, be it always 
 remembered, the training here must be a very different 
 thing from the technical training which the Art instructor 
 and the like are called upon to give. It is the training in 
 the use of the coloured chalks that we want here, a training 
 very simple, very large, and, before all things, very human. 
 
 Timothy Thumbs once, but only once, had an idea of 
 giving up his appointment under the Great Fadwell East 
 Board, and becoming an Art teacher in the “ technical 
 education movement.” There seemed more scope, more 
 leisure, or, as he expressively put it— 
 
 “ You do your six-months work for a County Council, and 
 have the other six months to loaf; the pay is more for six 
 months than the Board gives me for twelve. Pm sick of 
 all this dreary grind and drive; and just think what I might 
 do for the old boys’ club! ” 
 
 But I vetoed the idea on the ground that the new 
 occupation was not sufficiently genuine. 
 
 “ I don’t think these jobs,” said I, “ should be undertaken 
 by men unless they have a sheet anchor. The only justifi¬ 
 cation for the Art instructor is that he is either constructing 
 in the workshop, i.e ., an artizan , or creating in the school, 
 i.e., a practising schoolmaster; if you resign your appoint¬ 
 ment, you cut your sheet anchor. Besides, don’t you believe 
 you’ll keep the old boys’ club thereby, it will just go to pot, 
 and then what will there be worth living for in life ? ” 
 
 I am glad to think that, in return for the many things I 
 owe to him, Timothy Thumbs should at least owe this to 
 me, that he still holds his appointment under the Board of 
 Great Fadwell East, grinding, mean and unsympathetic 
 though it is, and giving him no hope of an old age pension, 
 but just putting another man over his head when he’s past 
 work. Timothy Thumbs now, amongst his other many jobs, 
 takes an evening class of boys at bench work, and he finds, 
 as he says, that “ the little chaps like it, seem just cut out 
 for it, like ducks on the Lea,—they make their joints quite 
 as well as I do—it’s a wonderful thing, the human hand, 
 when you come to think of it! ” 
 
The little 
 citizen of 
 the future 
 and the 
 third 
 kind of 
 Technical 
 Educa¬ 
 tion 
 
 THE ART AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR OF TO-DAY, 
 
 And it is of those little chaps, who are budding out under 
 the cramped but human influence of Timothy Thumbs, that 
 we are to make our future citizens. They will find they owe 
 much to Timothy Thumbs when they get to see it, but they 
 might owe a good deal more if he were left a little freer 
 to give that concrete, graphic, simple, human teaching, the 
 real Technical Education for the school in which he has so 
 much natural skill, but for which “ My Lords,” in their 
 visible incarnation, never give him credit, and which cannot 
 be tested by examinations and certificates. 
 
 As for the third kind of Technical Education, the kind 
 for which at present we do nothing—the education of the 
 Workshop by the Workshop. I believe it is a thing that we 
 shall come to, little by little, if we keep the need of it always 
 before us; but the re-construdfion of the Workshop comes 
 first, before we can bring the teaching function and the 
 workshop function again together. In my chapter on the 
 Metropolitan School of Architecture, I threw out some 
 proposals as to how it could be done in one particular line, 
 and in my suggestion for the application of it to Messrs. 
 Sky Sign and Co.’s works, I pointed to its possible develop¬ 
 ment there. In every Industry there are means and ways 
 of doing it, if we were only bold enough to try them. I do 
 not say the State should do it, that I leave to the politicians 
 to decide : all that the educationalist need say is, that this 
 particular thing, somehow or other, has got to be done. 
 
 But to return to the Art Instructor. I have an idea—it 
 may be a somewhat fanciful one—that I should like to make 
 an Art Instructor, of a different sort, of young Jack Trudge, 
 the first-born of my friend. He is a bright-eyed lad of 
 sixteen-and-a-half years, skilful with his fingers, but desper¬ 
 ately casual, and, as often as not, when I want him particularly 
 to come to an evening class, or an “Arts and Crafts” 
 lecture, the young scapegrace prefers courting down the 
 Mile End Road with Grace Giggle and Sybil Sillysweet. I 
 don’t think any the worse of him for that, it is probably 
 much healthier, and certainly more human, than stewing in 
 a lecture-room; only I hope, and this I have plainly told 
 him, that he will not too early try any practical refutation 
 of the theory of Malthus. He has made his promise, and, 
 to me at least, in all the big things of life, Jack always keeps 
 his word. 
 
 Now I want to take him out of his workshop, where he 
 is not happy, and place him, with a few other mates, into a 
 shop where the conditions shall be more healthy and more 
 hopeful; perhaps some day a few of my architectural 
 
 152 
 
AND THE LITTLE CITIZEN OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 colleagues,—whose sphere of vision is not bounded only by 
 the prospect of professional success, will help me accomplish 
 this end. Meanwhile, I am having him trained in a funda¬ 
 mental understanding of the application of design to material 
 in every sense, and what I would like to do, after letting him 
 try his hand at as many different crafts as possible, tinkering 
 if you like, and a veritable Jack-of-all-trades, just as your 
 mediaeval workman was in some Norfolk village by the sea, 
 is to let him specialize at one thing only. Then I will try 
 and get him to become a secretary or something to the 
 branch of his Trade Union, to which he will in due course 
 belong; before all things I insist on his retaining his 
 membership in Timothy Thumbs’ old boys’ club, but in that 
 I shall find no great difficulty. I may add that Mr. Thomas 
 Trudge, though he laughs at my educational ideas, has given 
 me carte blanche to do what I like with Jack’s training, and 
 whenever he sees Jack dropping off, or not acting on any of 
 my most peculiar and incomprehensible fads, he just says to 
 him, “ You little fool, why don’t you do as you’re told ” ? 
 Thus am I safeguarded on all sides, and may do something 
 besides talking of the rights and duties of the citizen. But 
 I want, as I said, to make (save the mark!) an “ Art 
 instructor” of Jack as well; and I shall do this by making a 
 first-rate workman of him to begin with, and then, by 
 broadening his sympathies, and drawing out of him, bit by 
 bit, a few of those things for which I pleaded before, a little 
 of the sense of Beauty, and the power to awaken it in others. 
 
 He shall, for instance, spend his Bank Holidays in Epping 
 Forest or on the River, and not be told that it is immoral 
 to travel or to enjoy himself on Sundays ; he shall discuss, 
 freely and frankly, questions of religion and physiology, and 
 he shall be left to construct his own ethics for himself, on the 
 basis of perfect personal freedom and his love for his friends. 
 He shall be given some glimmerings of the Great History of 
 his country and the duties of her workmen in the future. 
 Then he and his mates shall be taught to play football and 
 to row, indeed, enjoy all the pride and splendour, and 
 without the crudeness, of the academic blazer. He shall 
 sing an Elizabethan catch, in preference to caterwauling 
 down Whitechapel; and, above all, get out as often as possi¬ 
 ble into the free sunshine, and enjoy the use of his naked 
 limbs in air and water. Of politics and papers, debates, 
 lectures and social questions, there will be enough and to 
 spare from other people ; I will let those come as they may, 
 but not to hinder the larger affairs of life. I, at least, will 
 do my best to educate out of him some of that sense which 
 
 L 
 
 153 
 
shall make these larger affairs beloved and understood. 
 Give me five years, and a little help now and again, when I 
 ask for it, and Jack Trudge will be as ready to do good work 
 in Education as any man living. 
 
 During the period of apprenticeship, however, and until 
 the new citizen is ready, we must do what we can with the old 
 one, and the Art and Technical instructor is still abundantly 
 to hand. He appears before us, armed cap-a-pie with certifi¬ 
 cates, testimonials, diplomas, Ds., and degrees, tested to 
 finest steel with examinations, and full of windy wisdom, but 
 of little real knowledge, of no technical skill, of no creative 
 power, of no enthusiasm for Beauty, and of little human 
 sympathy. He comes to the Upper Galore Polytechnic, 
 and takes his classes, where he teaches his lads, much as a 
 butcher would cut up beeves, or a fly-catcher stick on 
 flies, indeed, how should he do otherwise, poor man ? 
 You, by the system you have imposed upon him, have 
 made it impossible for him to have any other interest 
 than his monthly salary, you have rooted him out of 
 his workshop, and kicked over his ideal of Education, 
 if ever he had any; how can he help himself? You, 
 Mr. Pushington, in conjunction with the County Councils 
 and the School Boards, and the other inefficient educational 
 agencies, all of you working blindly, if conscientiously, 
 to what end, have created this man. Be proud of him ! 
 The constructive teaching in Art, Craft, and Industry 
 for the twelve thousand souls of Great Fad well East, you 
 have placed in his hands ; and the citizens of the future, who, 
 besides their rights and duties, are presumably to have also 
 creative capacities, and some sense of Beauty, are under his 
 guidance. 
 
 No ! Jack Trudge who, after working through his colour¬ 
 less day at the shop, and filling in his odd moments with 
 the perusal of Grits, Snap Shots, Pot-sherds, and other affiliated 
 papers of that genus, shall not be expanded and trained by 
 him. I’ll not have it. For, do you think the result will be 
 altogether profitable to Jack Trudge? Do you think that 
 this man, the Art instructor, is really going to help us in our 
 task of workshop re-construction ? I leave the answer to 
 your good judgment, gentlemen! 
 
 I 54 
 
CHAPTER 15.— ON JACK’S 
 INITIATION INTO THE 
 CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 The ideal of Jack’s Citizenship still remains undefined. 
 I think we had best leave it so. It will shape itself sure 
 enough later. But might we not turn to something more 
 hopeful than the flabby liberalism, which the middle and 
 upper-class Englishman holds ? You would not have Jack 
 educated in Mr. Pushington’s benevolent, but semi-cynical, 
 nihilism, would you ? For what is the position after all. 
 It is not that he does not understand, but he is of a different 
 time, another age. This being so, we may accord him his 
 prerogative of unbelief. 
 
 “Your Utopia of a re-construdted State, built up by the 
 producers, is a dream,” he says, “it will all be wrecked ere it 
 is half worked out; and why ? because we are not isolated, 
 because we are dependent on foreign conditions. What 
 will happen ? If we daily devote more of legislative and 
 national attention to what you say, and perhaps, rightly, is 
 more important, our social re-construction at home, and 
 less attention to our Empire holding, and the position we 
 assume abroad, we shall suddenly be called upon to choose 
 between the two, and we shall choose the former; then the 
 foreign conditions will tell, our prestige will be swept away. 
 Follows the inevitable re-action, follows war, and perhaps 
 defeat: the collapse of trade, on which, not only the 
 reconstruction, but the very construction itself of the Work¬ 
 shop depends, and we shall be thrown back a hundred 
 years, and may begin re-constructing again—next time, 
 perhaps, in earnest; but for the present—that will not be 
 in my day,” says Mr. Pushington, “ therefore leave me 
 alone.” 
 
 This is pessimistic fatalism, and to this has the shallow 
 and buoyant liberalism of the middle of this century been 
 transformed. But if the Zeitgeist has made Mr. Pushington 
 a pessimist, it has made Mr. Trudge the reverse. “ I also do 
 not care,” says the latter, “ but what I am doing, I have got 
 to do; it may be an immediate interest, but it must be 
 done; therefore, also leave me alone.” 
 
 It has been my endeavour in these chapters to give some 
 expression to the point of view of the producer in Industry, 
 that of the producer in Art is better known to the polite 
 public. But far down, underneath, the positions are the 
 
 155 
 
Artist and 
 
 Producer: 
 
 their 
 
 Idealism 
 
 and 
 
 Ethics 
 
 Envoi to 
 Mr. Push- 
 ington 
 
 ON JACK’S INITIATION INTO THE CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 same, for Art, as I have insisted, is but the higher production. 
 We pull ourselves up oftentimes, and ask, why do we go 
 on, what is it all for ? This mere trifle of mine, of what use 
 or beauty may it be, will it give any one delight ? May be 
 not, may be it is useless and unlovely, and will give no man 
 pleasure, what then? Why just this, we are brought face 
 to face with the ethics of production ; the artist producer 
 stands forth. This trifle of mine is a mere symbol, the 
 thing itself is empty, vain, its goodness consists in the spirit 
 put into it, and the doing it, its creation by us, reflects a 
 greater doing, symbolizes a creation elsewhere, in which we 
 are sublimely and unconsciously taking part. We talk of a 
 piece of machine-made work as soulless, what a deal we 
 mean when we say that 1 So let us continue to make our 
 trifles, remembering always that they are symbols only. 
 This, if you will, is the Idealists’ Gospel of Work, and the 
 strength of our continuance, is the measure of our Idealism. 
 Artist and producer, then, have the same ethics, and just 
 as it is the individual touches of the artist that make the 
 great work of Art, so it is the little human details impressed 
 upon production that give it interest or character. This, in 
 our vast mechanical system of Industry and individualism, 
 we have missed sight of. Individualism has lost us 
 Individuality. Individuality has gone out of Industry, but it 
 must be brought back again. The system has destroyed the 
 things created, and in destroying the productions we destroy 
 the producers. Lower the standard of the work and you 
 lower the standard of the man. But detail after detail we 
 have got to re-conquer. Is it more likely that Mr. Push- 
 ington, or Mr. Trudge, will win this battle for us ? Neither, 
 you say ? Then I pin my faith on Jack. In the wisdom of 
 Solomon we find aptly stated the position of modern 
 individualism, with its irresponsible wielding of the instru¬ 
 ments of production. “ Fodder, a wand, and burdens, are 
 for the ass; food, correction, and work, are for the servant”; 
 but one of the Prophets replies to the sneer of the cynic, 
 and answers for modern labour, with its pleading for the 
 recognition of the standard of life, and its half defined, 
 perhaps impossible, ideal of a collectivist state, “ Pay me 
 my price, if not, forbear, and God be with thee.” 
 
 It has been cast in my teeth that I do not really praise 
 Mr. Pushington, but poke fun at him. Far be it from me to 
 do anything so uncourteous, for this would surely be both 
 unfair and ill-mannered on my part. No, Mr. Pushington 
 and I are the best of friends, and though we differ on many 
 
 156 
 
ON jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 vital questions, no one so fully recognises his worth and 
 helpfulness to the community as I do. Indeed, I may 
 honestly say, that any public utterances I may have ventured 
 upon him have had his fullest sanction, with one exception 
 only—my praise of him. This his modesty has always held 
 in check. And if there be critics who have said “Yes, but 
 how do you make him appear before us ? You draw him as 
 a ‘ bourgeois,’ a man half-hearted in social questions, a plu¬ 
 tocrat, who is wasting his money for publicity, when he 
 might spend it with wiser thought for public purposes, a 
 man who has in him all the culture and unbelief of these 
 latter days, and of an apparent but no real appreciation for 
 what you call the ‘ Sense of Beauty.’ ” 
 
 I can only say, I am sorry if that is the impression I have 
 given of him. Emphatically no, Mr. Pushington is not the 
 vulgar plutocrat, not the self-made man, not the iron king 
 of a bygone generation, and if he is a little lacking in that 
 Idealism of the earlier part of this century, which gave the 
 heroic touch to the self-made business man of forty years 
 ago, the Idealism that Tennyson has left us in Locksley Hall 
 the first, and which we might call the Crystal Palace Idealism 
 of 1851, he is, on the other hand, much more allround in his 
 sympathies, and, as I said, believes in “ Tendency,” though 
 he is, with justice, suspicious of social panaceas. Before all 
 things, he is frank in his beliefs and unbeliefs. He has said 
 “ Yes, I am what you socialists call a ‘ Bourgeois.’ I believe 
 that the whole industrial system is suffering transformation, 
 perhaps going to pieces; I mistrust Trade Unions, I object 
 to 4 agitators,’ but I always vote solid with my party, and I 
 find time from my political labours to read the Fabian essays 
 and William Morris’s books, what more do you want ? ” 
 
 I will ask the critics to bear in mind that this man is the 
 head of one of the greatest business houses in the world, 
 that he has practically endowed one of the largest poly¬ 
 technics in England, that he finances one of the leading 
 liberal journals, that much private bill legislation is due to 
 his energy, and that his annual purchases at the Royal 
 Academy are a constant source of consideration to artists. 
 
 Surely no imaginary humour of mine would hurt him, nor 
 does he need any praise it might be in my power to bestow. 
 
 Similarly, I have been told that my introduction of so The raison 
 eminent a divine as the Rev. Simeon Flux into these essays, f^f-Rev 
 is in questionable taste, and I have been asked by a Simeon 
 mutual friend to change the name and introduce him in Flux 
 disguise, as it were. But I have not seen the need of this, 
 
 157 
 
Mr. 
 
 Trudge’s 
 
 common 
 
 sense 
 
 Timothy 
 
 Thumb’s 
 
 apology 
 
 ON JACK’S INITIATION INTO THE CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 and I do not think the Rev. Simeon will, in the least, mind 
 what I say of him. Public men are fair game, and one 
 might introduce Lord Salisbury or Lord Rosebery into an 
 industrial situation, did occasion need it. The Rev. 
 Simeon is a wise man, too, and knows that I take him as 
 a type; the type of many of those who are conscientiously 
 endeavouring to graft Culture on to Industry from above, 
 and, in his case, through the Church. There are many who 
 give up their lives to this end, and, doubtless, it will be 
 counted to them for righteousness. To talk of workshop 
 re-construdtion, however, or of the shaping of the Ideal of 
 the future citizenship, without taking this type into considera¬ 
 tion, would surely be one-sided. The Rev. Simeon Flux is, 
 what Blake would have called, “ an energy,” and the poet 
 might have met him in Heaven or Hell, alternately, as it 
 suited his purpose. 
 
 Mr. Trudge, as a person, is less known to the polite world, 
 and he merely shrugged his shoulders and laughed when I 
 asked him if he minded my putting him into a book. “ You 
 see,” I said, “ I want to be honest; it’s no good my saying 
 these things about people that don’t really exist, is it ? So 
 if a man comes to me, and says ‘ That's not true,' shall you 
 mind if I refer him your way ? ” 
 
 Mr. Trudge did not mind; why should he ? I do not 
 think he will bother to read the book, and in that he is 
 quite right. His world is one quite separate and apart, and 
 when he does appear in any way publicly, he appears as 
 what The Times would call “ an agitator,” and no letters from 
 him would be inserted in its columns under any pretext 
 whatever. 
 
 Friendship alone, and my sympathy with his militancy, 
 have accorded me all the pardon I need ask of Mr. Timothy 
 Thumbs. “ I feel we are working to the same end,” he 
 said to me, “so do just as you like about it; I only wish 
 more of our fellows could be got to look at things in the 
 same way.” A few days later he sent me the following 
 letter which, with his leave, I quote in full:— 
 
 “ The more I think over what you have written about the 
 elementary teacher, the more I like it. Every elementary 
 teacher I have met with in literature, up to now, has been 
 either an ass or a humbug, perhaps both. Now, I think 
 you have hit the key-note of our being. We really want 
 our children to rise up and bless us; to feel that their lives 
 are a bit fuller for having known us. None are better 
 
 158 
 
on jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 aware than we, how clumsily we got about this, and how 
 terribly hampered we are, not only by unsympathetic 
 authorities, but by absolutely hostile ones. Consider the 
 training most of us have had—from early youth, under the 
 blighting influence of the Church ! At the age when you 
 and your friends began to drink of the waters of life at 
 Cambridge or Oxford, we were being trained at a Church 
 College. Do you know what that means ? Have you ever 
 tried to realize ? If not, before you go to print, read dear 
 old Jimmy Runciman’s ‘Schools and Scholars.’ 
 
 “ In thinking over your chapters the other night, and your 
 description of our puny efforts to educate the Sense of 
 Beauty in our little ones, a school, not far from here, rose 
 up before me. If you will visit it in the summer months, 
 you will find the whole of the corridors one mass of bloom. 
 
 You will find, in the boys department alone, between two 
 and three hundred plants, all tenderly cared for, and 
 belonging to the children, each child tending its own, and 
 you will find the master one of the best of men. This is 
 his idea of encouraging his little ones to make their own 
 surroundings beautiful. Nor is this an isolated case, I could 
 take you to dozens of schools where this is done—you see 
 it doesn’t cost much! ” 
 
 I think that letter rings true. 
 
 As for Mr. Pennyworth, he merely remarked, “ If the Mr 
 chief has no objection, I really don’t see why I should ; in north’s in¬ 
 fact, I don’t think that it makes much difference one way difference 
 or the other—it won’t affedrt the friendly relations between 
 him and me.” 
 
 So I have made my peace with my little world of friends, 
 and as I never propose to stand for Great Fadwell East in 
 any public capacity, do not expect any unpleasant con¬ 
 sequences from being outspoken. You see the types are 
 only types, and the re-construction of the workshop is going 
 on silently and quite surely, whether they or I wish it, or say 
 anything for or against. 
 
 The ideal of Jack’s citizenship will then, as I have said, 
 shape itself, but I should like here to offer a few more 
 considerations towards its shaping. Throughout these 
 chapters I have dwelt but little on the great question of 
 human relationship—the bearing of individuals to one 
 another. I would prefer to leave that for later and 
 closer consideration elsewhere, in another volume perhaps, 
 but inasmuch as it is the corner stone of all workshop 
 
 159 
 
The new 
 basis of 
 the Work¬ 
 shop 
 
 The basis 
 of com- 
 radship 
 or the 
 human 
 bond 
 
 ON JACK’S INITIATION INTO THE CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 re-construction, and all building up of citzenship, it may 
 not be omitted. 
 
 We need something, not so much in place of the moral 
 basis upon which the mediaeval workshop was constructed, 
 but something that shall give it practical expression in a 
 modern manner. We need a vehicle, as it were, to carry 
 those simple Christian maxims upon which each democratic 
 movement is ever harking back. This, I believe, we shall 
 find, in a freer, more direct, more genuine relationship 
 between human beings, and the fresher atmosphere of the 
 re-constructed workshop will make this possible. 
 
 Just as, in distribution, we have to set aside the artificial 
 relations that have grown up between producer and con¬ 
 sumer, so in production, and in the education of citizenship, 
 we have to arrive at a more genuine and intimate relationship 
 between human beings. The re-constructed Workshop 
 must have this for its basis ; here will be the faith of the 
 little citizen of the future. So personal is this question, that 
 it seems out of place in any consideration of the action of 
 men together for any public purpose. But it is just because 
 it is so personal that it is so important. At present, where 
 men are bound together in production, their bond is one of 
 chance, or of common enmity to an employer, and they 
 become friends because they are shopmates. In the re-con¬ 
 structed Workshop this will have to be inverted, and they 
 will become shopmates rather because they are friends. 
 Here, once again, is the unit; we come back to that. It is 
 the unit, the individual, that we have got to touch. 
 
 Somewhat, in this way, might we state our belief. 
 
 That moment when the hand of my friend was pressed in 
 mine, has expanded over my life, and become it. The 
 reason why I choose you—what is it ? Let us call it a two¬ 
 fold reason. First, because of the you in you, second, 
 because of the you in me; the first in your own character 
 and choosing; the second, the magnetic force of which I am 
 the vessel; the first in your own making, the second entrusted 
 to me by God. It is not new in itself; this, the feeling 
 that drew Jesus to John, or Shakespeare to the youth of 
 the sonnets, or that inspired the friendships of Greece, has 
 been with us before, and in the new citizenship we shall 
 need it again. The Whitmanic love of comrades is its 
 modern expression, Democracy—as socially, not politically, 
 conceived—its basis. The thought as to how much of the 
 solidarity of labour and the modern Trade Union move¬ 
 ment may be due to an unconscious faith in this principle 
 
 160 
 
ON jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 of comradeship, is no idle one. The freer, more direct, and 
 more genuine, relationship between men, which is implied 
 by it, must be the ultimate basis of the re-constructed 
 Workshop. “ When I touch the human body,” said 
 Novalis, “ I touch Heaven ! ” 
 
 This relationship— human bond —as distinguished from the 
 cash or other nexus, we have to study, to analyse, to find, 
 if possible, the philosophic basis of, and we may learn in 
 teaching it. We have to train ourselves and those we teach, 
 to lay high stakes on new personalities, to strive for infalli¬ 
 bility of decision, and instant decision when a new personality 
 comes. I look into your eyes, stranger; God grant me the 
 power of instantly telling whether or not you are sent for 
 me. A few times wrong, and we grow sensitive to right 
 choosing, each right choice makes the next more certain. 
 This magnetism of the human bond, too, is generative, you 
 light me, and the fire grows within me, I spread it, and 
 it grows again, till at last the whole air in which we move 
 is charged with it. It runs into us, and through us, again 
 and again; as we receive more, we emit more, till our 
 whole surroundings grow brilliant with light—that incom- 
 prehensive blue light in the visions of Heinrich von 
 Ofterdingen. 
 
 Much of this will, doubtless, appear fanciful, especially 
 when read in the irony of existing conditions; polite society 
 with its artificial barriers, industrial life, conducted on the 
 assumption that the interests of masters and men, the 
 interests that make for production, are antagonistic. Those 
 of us who are teaching—or rather creating to a newer 
 purpose, will seek, however small, to make a wider field. The 
 human bond, we shall insist, must enter into Industrial life, 
 it must be the key of the artist-workman’s existence: his 
 faith. 
 
 A faith, however, is not a thing that can or need be 
 expressed. How unsatisfying, unscientific, inartistic, appear 
 all expositions of faith where given in allegory. There is a 
 poetical fustiness about them all. They stink of stale 
 perfumery. Comte, the philosopher, may have been wonder¬ 
 ful, but Babick, the fanatic, “ barbier et fusionist,” who 
 sought to inspire .the Paris Commune of 1871, with his new 
 universal religion of “ Fusionism,” was more wonderful 
 still. To the artist, the higher producer, is given the 
 privilege of allegory, he takes the place of the priest, and, 
 inasmuch as he refrains from foisting definition upon others, 
 he prays for freedom of individuality for himself. When 
 
 161 
 
The basis 
 of Rever¬ 
 ence, of 
 Tradition, 
 of Crea¬ 
 tion 
 
 ON JACK’S INITIATION INTO THE CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 the time comes, the allegory will find itself, and the artist- 
 producer, its exponent, will, doubtless, be at hand; for the 
 present we may leave it. Faith, like Art, can bide its time. 
 
 But now, given Jack his comradeship, I would still like 
 to regard him with the eye of the higher producer in the 
 re-constru6ted Workshop; would find yet another thing for 
 the ideal of his citizenship to shape itself upon. Say he is 
 constructing with his hands, engaged on anything in the 
 Whitmanic catalogue of trades, in which head and hand 
 work together, to do this rightly, we must fire three things 
 within him, the quality of Reverence, the regard for Tradition , 
 the sense of Creation. In our national life of to-day, we have 
 lost the first, we ignore the second, and we are groping after 
 the third. What shall we give him to reverence? where are 
 our traditions ? how shall he create ? 
 
 “ In the reverence of God,” thus begins old Cennino 
 Cennini’s treatise on painting, “ In the reverence of God, 
 and of the Virgin Mary, and of St. Eustachius, and of St. 
 Francis, and of St. John the Baptist, and of St. Anthony 
 of Padua, and generally of all the saints of God! ” That 
 was the Faith. Then,with the same breath, he continues, “ and 
 in the reverence of Giotto, of Taddeo, and of Agnolo, the 
 master of Cennino,” that was the Workshop. He is about to 
 create something, his gage is tradition, felt from master to 
 pupil, his motive power is reverence, the Faith and the 
 Workshop are inseparable. 
 
 In accordance with the power and dignity of our imagina¬ 
 tions, shall we reverence, and in like manner is tradition 
 illuminated by imagination, it is expanded and unfolded by 
 it. By imagination the humanities of the past come near 
 to us and touch us, their strength grows stronger and into 
 us, their light more vivid and around us. They aid us to 
 move from present, by help of past, into future; they help us 
 to be human, and to be human is to come very near creating. 
 Let but Jack imagine these three—reverence, tradition, 
 creation, and there will be food enough for their nourishment. 
 For modern England has had her great men, her poets, her 
 artists, her scientists, her mechanicians, her in-breathers; and, 
 in accordance with the labour enthusiasm plus the human 
 enthusiasm, in each is reverence due. For tradition, we 
 need but train him to look back; as for reverence, we teach 
 him to look around, and the whole fair field of history lies 
 open behind him : England, with her cycles of civilization, 
 each built upon the last, and each retrospedting to one still 
 
 162 
 
ON jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 earlier, shall be the landscape that we set before him. Stern 
 old Bess of Hardwicke shall come to him on a fair morning 
 in the Peak country, and he shall listen, with the monks, for 
 the chisel of William of Sens in the choir of Canterbury 
 Cathedral. Think of this, and then of a little English boy I 
 met the other day—fresh from the Board School, one among 
 many, perhaps, who had never heard of Nelson ! As for 
 creation, there is the future for Jack. Get him but to feel 
 that he is the centre of some growing organism, and straight¬ 
 way the world begins anew. Our creative instinCt is proof 
 of our divine origin; let him but realize of what he is the 
 symbol, as he models the clay, or hammers the metal, 
 and we set the seal of the divine enthusiam upon him for 
 ever. 
 
 This I would call the educational ideal from the point of 
 view of the higher production, the point of view of the 
 artist. 
 
 We need not, I think, concern ourselves with the question 
 as to whether the higher production, the Art movement of 
 to-day, is unreal or not, an affectation, the plaything of a 
 leisured class, as William Morris would have it, even for 
 his own tapestries and books. An Art movement is judged 
 by its men, and at the bottom of all lies character, individual 
 character—the unit again. Earnest men and honest work 
 make an art movement, and its relative greatness, to other 
 times, is in the number of earnest men it tells, and the 
 amount of honest work it does ; not the work of stars, they 
 may shine forth always and in the dark, but of the divine 
 average. It was that that made great the art of Greece, 
 and mediaeval Europe; I, for one, do not believe that an Art 
 movement can be judged by any other standard than the 
 character of the men in it, and the consequent stamp they 
 leave on its productions; and, in spite of all he says, William 
 Morris is one of my own thirty-nine artistic articles. 
 
 I would like, however, to say a few words at parting, on 
 the personal development of my little citizen, on the self¬ 
 centredness. I would see in him another quality yet, in 
 addition to his power of comradeship. 
 
 One of the greatest glories of the century is its in¬ 
 tellectual diversity; and we may receive proudly the 
 gibe of the Oriental on the cultured Englishman, that the 
 Sahibs have each their own God. I can imagine no more 
 splendid basis for a large constructive social policy than the 
 self-centredness of the individual, it is as the well pounded 
 
 163 
 
 The basis 
 oflndivid- 
 uality 
 
ON jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 particles of concrete laid by the builder in foundation for the 
 stately stone-work of his house. 
 
 Upon the recognition of this individuality, together with 
 the faith of comrades, we may commence the shaping of our 
 ideal of citizenship. For my own part I would like to see 
 the Catholic Church, one and undivided, assume again the 
 position it occupied in the time of the early renaissance, 
 when it accepted Hellas, and accepted Dante; the church as 
 Pico della Mimandola, or our own Sir Thomas More would 
 have conceived it; divested of the colossal worldliness and 
 vice of its Medicis and Borgias, and before the theological 
 specialization of Luther and Calvin, or the counter-re¬ 
 formation of Rome. But the universalism of this century 
 makes for a yet larger and more generous conception, and 
 postulates the recognition of each man’s individuality. 
 
 The consideration of this is a constant problem to 
 the artist; whether the full recognition of individuality 
 is compatible with large corporate adtion, and social legis¬ 
 lation, government, collectivism, the tyranny of majorities, 
 socialism, whatever for the moment we eledt to call 
 it. I admit the danger, and see its seriousness, but it 
 does not seem to affeCt the question; we must not let 
 thought of the danger confuse the issues. If I watch the 
 stream of tendency aright, it is making for two things 
 simultaneously : the need for corporate action in our re-con- 
 structed state, and the need for fullest individuality in our 
 future citizen, the one must be the complement of the other. 
 Whitman strikes the note in his “ Personalism” of Demo¬ 
 cracy, and his much jeered at strings of trades. Doubtless 
 they are wearisome, those long catalogues of the occupations 
 of uninteresting people, and Democracy is wearisome, it is 
 so insignificant in its largeness, so common-place, so incon¬ 
 spicuous. But Democracy, and the poet’s rendering of it, 
 are at one, and we must not miss the point. The poet 
 states them neither as rhythmical cadences, nor as truths 
 of life ; they are all there on the chance, the slender chance, 
 that your little creative bit, your tiny trifle of sub-divided 
 occupation, may be among them; he is careless of form, if 
 he can but take you by the hand, and, for your part, you 
 forgive him all the tedium, if you light on that one little 
 clause and comfort for your own individuality—his particular 
 thought of you. 
 
 As the poet’s hint, so is Democracy itself. It is not great 
 for its largeness, but for these very details of personalism, 
 
 164 
 
on jack’s initiation into the citizenship. 
 
 which it makes possible, and which are so dull to you and 
 me, if we do not feel them, yet so tremendous when they 
 become part of our lives. We cannot take Democracy, 
 with a big D, by the hand, or endow Humanity with a 
 consciousness, even if we call it Christ, for the purpose of 
 our soul’s satisfaction, but we can find what we seek in some 
 one particular human being. “ When I touch the human 
 body,” says Novalis, “ I touch Heaven.” 
 
 This then may be our inspiration, and starting from this 
 standpoint, the recognition of individuality on the basis of f^ure 6 
 comradeship, those of us who are striving to create for the 
 future of national character, must seek for the mean in 
 harmonious education, for we must train our little citizen 
 harmoniously if we would shape his ideal aright. What a 
 superb creature might not the modern Englishman or 
 greater Englander become ! To us, teachers and artists, is 
 entrusted the care of his forming. Think what he has 
 behind him, and what it has been given him to form his 
 character upon. The study of the classics and of Greek 
 athleticism, we might get from our public schools, 
 
 Then comes the Spirit of the Renaissance, at which our 
 modern, mental freedom may catch with delight, had it 
 but a little more understanding of the sense of Beauty. 
 
 Our contadt with India yields the large passive basis of 
 oriental mysticism, and, in the Workshop, slowly re-con- 
 strudting, continually reverting, yet never returning to 
 the mediaeval ideal of the state regulated standard of life, 
 the conception of Democracy as a social order. The 
 forming of such a man will set the type for our ideal of 
 citizenship, and to him will be given the comprehension of 
 Art as the crown and fulfilment of national life. It is only 
 in the re-construdted Workshop that we may hope to find 
 our citizen perfected in heart, and hand, and head, and 
 Beauty; and it is through the Workshop, its steady and 
 gradual re-construction, and by keeping ever belore us this 
 new purpose in our ideal of citizenship, that we can get 
 nearer to our end. As for Art, the higher production, it is 
 but the crown and fulfilment of noble citizenship. It can 
 bide. 
 
 I was watching, the other day, the lilies making their 
 way up through my garden. It is a London garden, so at its 
 best there is not much to be expedited from it, but on looking 
 closely I found, that by some accidental shifting of the soil, 
 all the bulbs had got covered up with much more mould 
 
 165 
 
than they could bear, and, unburying the surface, I saw leaf 
 after leaf, pale and colourless, thrown off underground, and 
 a most manful struggle going on for fulfilment. I have 
 removed the soil, but I fear too late, the strength of the 
 plants has gone out beneath, and this year there will be no 
 lilies.