The Craftsman - 1901 - 11 - November

7/27/2019 The Craftsman - 1901 - 11 - November

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THE CRAFTSMANNOVEMBER MDCCCCI

CONTENTSJohn Ruskin : A word regarding his life and public service,The Rise and Decadence of the Craftsman. Back to the Soil.Quotations from Ruskin.Times Changes in the Destinies of Art.Ruskins Work.The Land in Decay.The Seven Lamps,

The art i cl es w ri t t en by Ir ene Sargent .

PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCEMENTST[ UBSCRIPTIONS : Subscription price $2.00 the year, in

advance, postpaid to any address in the United States orCanada, and to begin with any desired number.

T[REMITTANCES : Remittances may be made by PostOffice money order, bank cheques, express order, or inpostage stamps,

TCHANGE OF ADDRESS : When a change of addressis desired, both the old and the new address should begiven, and notice of the change should reach this officenot later than the fifteenth of the month, to affect thesucceeding issue. The publishers cannot be responsiblefor copies lost through failure to notify them of suchchanges,

The United Crafts, Publishers, Eastwood,New York.

Copyright. 1901 br Gustave Stickler


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FOREWORDTHEntaatnd sympathy with whtch the ffrst number of The Craftsmanhas been received, greatly encourage the publishers of the new magazine 1giving them the assurance that they are justiffed in their undertaking. To havefound already a wide public favorable to the dims and objects of the Guild of theUnited Crafts is tn itself a proof that the publication has a decided reason forexistence, To have received a large number of personal fetters welcomtng theappearance of The Craftsman, and wfshtng it success in the peculfar work towhtchft stands pledged, has afforded the pub&hers a pleasure as real as unexpected.The present number offers a tribute to John Ruskin,whcee clafrns to the worlds gratitude, although they have been long and activelydtscussed, have not yet been wholly recognized. But as time passes, it is moreand more evtdent, that Ruskin the art-critic, with his enthusiasms, his upliftingpower, hfs strong and sometimes warped opfdons, must yield precedence toRuskin, the economtst, And although the reversion of the Master, when longpast mfddle fife, from art and literature to social studies has been deplored andharshly critfcixed, It is now certain that he had science on his side ; that his under-standing of the laws of lffe was deep and spiritual. From thts modified point ofview It has been thought best to consider him, rather than to follow the planearlier announced of treatfng him in his relatfons to the building-art of the MiddleAgea. So presented, he seems still to be among us; giving us of his pure andunselftsh spirft, and urging us to labor for the good, the true and the beautiful.

The minor articles of the present issue are inserted,because of thee relevancy to the major subject. The fdea of offer&g a review ofMr. Bradley Gihnans Back to the Soil was suggested by Ruskins de&e toImprove the tenements and environment of the city poor, as was mantfested, ageneration ago, in his investments with Mfss Octavia Hfll. Further, as a side-fight upon the conditton of the proletariat in a Latin country, a few words ofcomment upon M. Rene Ba~tns *The Land in Decay have been admitted.The December number of The Craftsman will bedevoted o a sertes of articles upon the Guilds of the Middle Ages and the civtcbenefits de&& therefrom. And it will be the effort of the publishers, wtth eachsuccessfve fss.u~, to Mntinue and fncrease the intereat and value of the publication.

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CHOSEN FROM THE WORDS OFJ OHN RUSKINIt is only by labor that thought can be made healthy,and only by thought that labor can be made happy,Every artist should be a workman.If you will make a man of the working creature, youcan not make him a tool.The profit due to the master by reason of his intelli-gence or moral labor is quite legitimate,There is no wealth but life,It is not by payinthem, that we become ta for them, but by understandinge real possessors of works of artand of the enjoyment they give,People can hardly draw anythin without being ofsome use to themselves or others, an f can hardly writeanything without wasting their own time and that of others.The function of art is to state a true thing, or to adorna serviceable one,There are three material things, not only useful butessential to life, No one knows how to live until he hasgot them. These are pure air, water and earth. Thereare three immaterial things not only useful but essentialto life. No one knows how to live until he has got themtoo, These are admiration, hope and love.



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He appeared Ytuhrmer there vms an art ist soul to be comforted, m a flame of en thus i asmtobe kept alive.



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JOHN RUSKIN

T 0 attempt to cast new light upon the sage ofCon&ton would be an effort from the very firstdoomed to failure, in view of the many and distinguishedwriters who have considered him from the artistic, theliterary, the economic, or yet the purely human pointof view. But to assemble and concentrate the judgmentsbrought to bear upon this old man eloquent by lateand authoritative critics, such as M, de la Sizeranne,Mr. Frederic Harrison and Professor Geddes of Edin-burgh,-this would appear to be a task promising some-what useful results. For it is they who have classifiedand codified the utterances and the decisions of Ruskin,which represent a production of fifty years, and whichtouch upon subjects and interests almost as varied ashuman thought itself. The readers of Ruskin may bedivided into those who admire him to the point of unreason-ing adoration ; those whose attitude toward him is one ofperplexity and doubt ; and those whom he at oncefascinates and exasperates. The first class, largelycomposed of women, is best epitomized by the groupwhom M. de la Sizeranne saw one morninluminous shadow of the great Dominican c urch ofin theFlorence : girlish forms, with grotesque profiles, wearingsailor hats and little white veils, and all carrying bunchesof mimosa in their hands, One of the young girls wasreading from a small red and gold book, while the others,according to her direction, and with the precision of aPrussian platoon, formed face to this or that figure of theold mural paintin S.spiritually culture dg These were of that division ofsouls whom the profound morality,the fervor of sympathy, the harmonious, peacefulphraseology of Ruskin overpower to the degree of silencingin them all critical faculty. The second class of thereaders of Ruskin comprises those whom the writer,



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2 JOHN RUSKIN

orator and patron of village industries has, at some point,touched and uickened in his threefold teaching ofEesthetics, mom and social reform. These are, almostwithout exception, men, who in the art-lover and critic,irritated, nay even frenzied by hyperaesthesia, recognizea prophet foretelling better social and economic conditionsfor the English-speaking race. The third class iscornRosed of materialists who, returnin ainto t e charge, seek in Ruskin vulnera f again and aIe points for t%eirblunt and unskiIfu1 attacks. For such as these he is theman of genius who spoke contemptuously of all thehi hest practical achievements of the nineteenth century;a o regarded modern commerce as a complex system ofthieving, and who saw in great industrial cities naughtsave the working-models of hell.Upon examination, it is seenthat the devout students of the Mornings in Florenceand the critics of Fors CIavi era and Unto thisLast are equa.IIy distant from t a e truth; that the rightpoint of view, as is usual, lies midway between theextremists. The all too emotional youth who mistakereligious rhapsody for art-criticism, fail as utterly toreco nize the value of the life and influence of Ruskin asdo tf ose of grosser type who stamp him as a madmanseeking to turn Time back upon itself. It is true that hewas, to an extent, ill-fitted to his age and position. Asto time, he presents a singular paradox; since he wasat once a survival of a past age, a man of the thirteenthcentury, and again one whose piercin gaze into thefuture was rewarded with glimpses of act which weredenied to all but the chosen few of his contemporaries.It would seem indeed that many of his most characteristicutterances prove that the fables of esterday are thetruths of today. What were regardebr as absurdities bythe public of his middle life have recently become intel-ligible ; assuming in spite of a note of over-statement,much of scientific value. Ruskin, the dreamer and



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J OHN RUSKIN 3

rhapsodist, has gained the new and irrevocable titles ofeconomist and sociologist. And in reviewing his lifeand work, we find his evolution to be paranel with thatof the great scientists, his contemporaries+ In commonwith the biologists and geologists whose names arebecome household words in the two hemispheres, hepassed, with his mind opened and disciplined by contactwith nature, be ond to the supreme study of his fellowbeings. He Iaczed the training of the men with whomhe may be compared, nor did he create for himselfopportunities equal to those which led to the successes ofthe others. Early environment gave direction andprescribed limits to his development, The quiet home,with his imaginative father and deeply religious mother,the ancient university at which he passed his mostformative years, kept him apart from those freer and lessexalted minds who advanced more rationally and patientlyto their conclusions. But yet, the spirit of his timeawakened within him, as a seed germinates in the warmthof spring. He apprehended facts which, equally fromvehemence of spirit and from lack of specific training, hewas unable to state with precision. For him, intuitionoften supplied the place of genuine knowledge, as we maylearn by even casual reference to his writings. As anexample of his intuitional power in economics, macited a passage of the Munera Pulveris, in whit i: beheassigns values with apparent waywardness. It reads :

Intrinsic value is the absolutepower of anything to support life. A sheaf of wheat ofgiven quality and weight has in it a measurable power ofsustaining the substance of the body; a cubic foot ofpure air, a fixed power of sustaining its warmth; and acluster of flowers of given beauty, a fixed power ofenlivening or animating the senses and heart.In the old school of economists,such statements could not do otherwise than to excitemirth and contempt; for air and beauty were barred out



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4 J OHN RUSKINfrom the things representing wealth. They wereremoved from the arena of Supply and Demand. There-fore, they were forces unrecognized in that unsentimentalcommunity formed and held together by enlightenedself-interest, which was Adam Smiths conception ofsociety. But now the scientists have revolutionizedeconomic studies ; brinknowledge of physica ing to bear upon the subject theirH laws and of living beings. Ahalf-century ago, Auguste Comte constituted sociologyupon the basis of the natural sciences; later, HerbertSpencer corroborated the work of the great Frenchman;so that now physics and chemistry, bioloY and medicine,psychology and education have ranged t emselves on theside of Ruskin, and must be taken into account by onewho would accurately define wealth and values,Ants and bees, beavers and men, living alike in commu-nities, are recognized as subject to similar physical laws.Pure air, beauty and other intangibles are known to havedefinite and intrinsic values, which can be reduced toexact mathematical statement. Life and energy areproclaimed as the great capital of the universe, and thethings which maintain and rotect them are regardedas of the greatest moment. !r he block of coal and theloaf of bread are so much fuel and food, with their heat-giving and life-sustaining power measurable in actualunits of work. So too, the cluster of flowers and thesun-beam act as sensory stimuli, the force of which canbe determined by instruments.Ruskin is thus justified; forpurblind as he was, when gazing upon the every-dayscenes about him, he was clear and true of vision, whenhis eye was fixed upon a distant and pure ideal. Theeconomists, now become sociologists and philanthropists,recognize the importance of food and fight. Thezoologist arrests the development of the tadpole bysubjecting it to darkness ; the ph siologist with hissphygmograph, shows how the pu se bounds at every



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J OHN RUSKIN 5beam of sunshine, while the medical profession is hasten-ing to apply these results to the development of humanlife in towns, Thus Science and Sentiment, which havebeen so lonfriends and f regarded as antagonists, are found to beovers, and Ruskin is the high-priest beforewhom the union has been acknowledged. Theywho now regard him solely as the man of art and letters,as one of the greatest masters of English prose, have yetto learn that he was among the first to seize the vitalprinciples of the science upon which depends the happi-ness, comfort, nay even the future existence of the humanrace, His advocacy of the principle that intrinsic valuelies in the power of anything to support life is hisgreat claim to consideration and remembrance. Hisgreatest thoughts are epitomized in sayings like these:

Production does not consistin things laboriously made, but in things serviceablyconsumable; and the question for the nation is not howmuch labor it employs, but how much life it produces.And again :There is no Wealth but Life,Life including all its powers of love and joy and admira-tion. Nor is it an Utopian dream toawait a day when the theory of intrinsic values shall begenerally understood, as Ruskin himself apprehended it ;when the coal wealth of the world shall be no longer theobject of subjective desire, and therefore of exchangevalue, but rather the fixture and embodiment of a definite

quantity of stored energy; when the wealth of nationsshall be recognized as dependent not upon the massing ofgreat individual fortunes, nor yet in the increase of minerswages, but rather in the relations of actual supply toexisting and future demands. Today the economicwritings of those who by training and temperament arefitted to plan and repare the future development of therace, teem with t e thought of Ruskin expressed in



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6 J OHN RUSKIN

calmer mood and more intelligible and accurate form, aswhen a Scotch professor writes : Man if he is to remain healthyand become civilized, must not only aim at the higheststandard of cerebral, as well as non-cerebral excellence,but must take especial heed of his environment; not onlyat his peril keeping the natural factors of air, water andlight at their purest, but caring only for the production ofwealth, in so far as it shapes the artificial factors, thematerial appliances and surroundings of domestic andcivil life into forms more completely serviceable for theascent of man. Thus the social and moral ideasof Ruskin, shooting like stars aeross the chaos of hisvoluminous writings, are proven to be of the eternal stuffof truth. His passion for beauty betrayed him often intoextravagance of speech ; his adoration for divine natureinduced him to intemperate and insensate ideas, as whenhe cried out in his wrath:

I should like to destroy mostof the railways in England and all the railways in Wales,I should like to destroJ and rebuild the Houses ofParliament, the Nation Gallery and the East End ofLondon, and to destroy, without rebuilding, the newtown of Edinburgh and the city of New York.But it is to his lasting honorthat works of art did not make him forget the workers.He was, in his love and sympathy for humanity, a manof the highest type of his time; penetrated with the socialsignificance of art and conscious of its vital relations tothe life of the masses, His French critic, M, de laSizeranne, so often before quoted, has perhaps best of allhis appreciators understood him in writing :

Each day which passes now,like a leaf which falls from a tree, reveals a little more ofthe heaven that he conceived, As our life becomes moreanalytic, more wandering and more restless, as we gain



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J OHN RUSKIN 7

rater knowledge and more store of imagination and of

umanscience, !Gs:ty, so we feel more sympathy for RuskinscosmopoIitanism and his social theory.-I To this ine appreciation maybe added the regret which must be felt at times by allRuskins admirers as they enter into his moods of depres-sion, despair and violent anger; as they are made to feelhow sorrowfdly and savagely he desired to aid the world,which he believed to have scorned and rejected him ; asthey sometimes find him mistaking the great plantation ofsociety for a field of thistles in which the uprooting mustbe ruthless. But against this impression may again beset an uplifting tribute to his spirit-this time offered onthe occasion of his eightieth birthday in the LondonDairy Chronicle, and written by Mr, Frederic Harrison,who says:most versatile of modernEngIish writers ?), therecoarse, or frivolous, not_

In this most voIuminous andwriters (may we not say of a11is not one Iine that is base, ora sentence that was formed inenvy, malice, wantonness, or cruelty ; not one piece thatwas written to win money, or popularity, or promotion;not a Iine composed for any selfish end, or in any trivialmood, Much of the seed he scatteredBwtithduch fervidhopes has fallen on stony ground, u l s t haspassed far wider than he ever knew or conceive cpCorroborating the final thoughtof this tribute, there is a phase of Ruskins public workwhich will receive far reater recognition and honor in thefuture than was possib e for it to attain in the past : thatis, his infIuence as a teacher. His Oxford lectures, at thetime of delivery, were described as disjointed, erratic, Iack-ing in point, abounding in fanciful ethics, stiI1more fancifultheology, and violent criticisms upon art, letters and life;whiIe their power of attracting and holding great audienceswas ascribed solely to an unrivaled beauty of diction andthe constant tide of emotion which surged throughout



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8 J OHN RUSKINtheir course, But to-day they are known to contain ideasupon popular education which are sound, practical, andcertain to be utilized in the time to come, He stood for aradical reform : holding that technical and industrial train-ing should, to a great degree, supersede literary studies;that observation of facts and reasoning therefrom shouldcount for more than verbal memory, and that practicaltests in life should outweigh competitive examinations.And these ideas, reduced to their lowest terms, are thosewhich are now forcinand peo le.

themselves alike upon pedagoguesschool oP The s&o1 of Cram is giving place to theCulture ; the world is coming to realize that thestudent, in order to become the citizen, must investigatenature, or wrestle with the facts of history and society;that the people, in order to become happy, must be madeto feel pleasure in their work b means of the wide diffu-sion of artistic taste and know edge ; such diffusion beingJalways productive alike of masters to create and ofamateurs to admire, encourage and support.Another measure, more purelyeconomic, which was strongly advocated by Ruskin, isadvancing rapidly in favor, as its great usefulness andnecessity becomes more and more apparent. It relates tothat much-agitated question: the division of labor, Fol-lowing his instincts, Ruskin insisted that every artistshould be a workman; and this in order that there shouldbe no loss or lapse of power between the conception andthe execution. Such, also, we may say in passing, wasone of the strongest convictions of William Morris, whorefused to aflow his own desianother, and who himself s to be worked out bysupp ed the practical details fornthe drawings of his artistic-double, Burne-Jones, to theend that their beauty should not perish in the hands ofmachine-like artisans. To apply the converse of Ruskinsmaxim is to follow his meaning faithfully. He taughtthat every workman should be an artist capable of con-ceiving the object at whose making he labors, capable also



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J OHN RUSKIN 9-of fashioning its every part. Under such conditions, theworkman would take pleasure in his work, since it wouldso become the product of his brain and skill, his very own,born of his enthusiasm and of his strureason dear and sacred to his heart, Hgles, and for thatn the England ofRuskin'siddle life, these doctrines were received withindifference, ridicule or opposition, as they were stronglyat variance with the prejudices and interests of the rulingclasses. For Birmingham, Manchester, and the othergreat industrial towns, stood as representatives of the subdivision of labor, which ensures great and rapid financialreturns, while it just as certainly and as quickly causesthe degeneration of the workman, by robbing him of hisambition, his hope and his critical faculties, and thuslowering him to the level of an automaton, With thepassage of time and the greater enlightenment of thepeople, Ruskins belief in this matter has gained adherentsfrom the ranks of those who are most capable of formingintelligent opinion. And here again is science called towitness and corroborate facts occurring in the social andeconomic world, It is recognized in biology that func-tion makes the organ; furthermore, that a highlyspecialized function dwarfs and lames the remainingpowers of the organism. What then is to be expectedfrom a man, the play of whose intelligence is confined tothe endless repetition of a single mental process, and whosephysical exercise is restricted to the working of certainunvarying sets of muscles ?The question is not difficult toanswer. The individual will develop morbidly, and hismind will offer a resting-place for destructive and chaoticideas, which, like the temptresses in Macbeth, ever float overthe wastes of blighted human ambitions. And, like Mac-beth, being not without personal claims to dignity andpower, he becomes an insurrectionist, perhaps even a per-vert and criminal, He is, indeed, alone responsible for hiscrimes once they are committed; but it is right and just



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10 J OHN RUSKIN

that society should protect him from a mental disease moreawful than any scour e, or plague, or Black Death thathas ever decimated t e worlds population. And onceagain, as science with its anti-toxins and systems of sani-tation annihilates the enemies of physical life, so Sociology,understood in its highest sense-that is, the study of ourcompanions and brothers-can finally render our strong-holds of civilization immune against the evilpollute, vitiate and destroy the vitality of the a erms whichuman mind,and which bear names awful to the ear by their sugges-tion of negation and chaos,Today, indeed, Science is prof-fering her aid to all students of economics : offering hereloquent parallels and correspondences, devising and puttinginto effect measures which demonstrate the agreement andunity of physical and metaphysical laws, But it is to theglory of art and of our English tongue that two mendevoted to the religion of beauty, long ago espoused thecause of the artisan, and wrought patiently and grandlyfor his happiness and elevation, If William Morris,through his fierviolence of speecx spirit, was betrayed, at times, intoagainst existing authority, he was fartoo sane and sound of mind long to linger among activemalcontents. All his efforts and work tended toward thereconstruction of society upon the basis of intelligent laborand the cooperation of the different classes. In Ruskinreverence and heroworship were developed to the samehigh degree as in his master, Carlyle. He writes, inthe spirit of the thirteenth century, and approaching closelythe quaint expression of Dante :

I desire that kings should keeptheir crowns on their heads, and bishops their croziers intheir hands, and should duly recognize the meaning of thecrown and the use of the crazier,He was submissive to theright, but everywhere and always, he lifted up his voice



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J OHN RUSKIN 11in condemnation of abuses. Outrages and insults againstbeauty angered him to the point of frenzy, but even thesehe forloved ot in the presence of human grief.Bs He sincerely kind, caring for the health and the culture of theworker; for the ennoblement of his function in the bodysocial ; for the purification of his environment. It wasRuskins misfortune to labor alone and somewhat desul-torily, but his ideas, coordinated and subjected to method,have borne fruit in college settlement and model tenement.To extend his propaganda of art, he spared himselfnothing in mind, body or estate, as his laborious writings,his protracted journeys and the spending of his large for-tune bear witness, His art-ideals lay in the MiddleAges, when the great monuments rose, not, as now,largely from personal luxury, but rather from the encour-agement and enthusiasm of combined aesthetic effort,when, as in all truly organic periods, the artistic supportcame not from the treasure of a Maecenas, but from thesmall purses of the common people, He laid bare thefunction and spirit of art when he wrote:

Great nations write their auto-biography in three manuscripts : the book of their words ;the book of their deeds; the book of their art. Not oneof these books can be understood unless we read the othertwo, but of the three the only one quite trustworthy is thelast. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its goodfortune, and its words mighty by the genius of a few ofits children, but its art can be supreme only by the generalgifts and common sympathies of the race,As an art critic, the services ofRuskin to England were great, since he turned the mostmatter-of-fact nation of the world toward aesthetic thought,multiplied amateurs, taught his countrymen to appreciatelandscape, and, by his treatises : The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture and The Stones of Venice, reformedthe building art of the kingdom. As he advanced in life,



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12 J OHN RUSKIN

his heart grew softer, his blood warmer and his brain, quicker. And as long as England shall exist, he will notwholly die.



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THE RISE AND DECADENCE OF THECRAFTSMAN t

AN HISTORICAL NOTE.

B FORE the apP ng words of John Stuart Mill :It is doubtf whether the use of machinery hasyet lightened the days toil of a single human being, onemay well stand af hast. They were pronounced with thedeep conviction o despair; they roceeded from a hi htype of mind, and from one who L d given his life to t1 estudy of social science. Their pessimism is so sincere asto go far toward making the statement authoritative, Onthe other hand, it must be remembered that Mill was afnan of emotion; that to his stern science he addedaffection, pity and passion, which were often fanned intowhite flame. His systematic intellect was dominated byhis great heart. But although his utterance would seemto contain a note of exag eration, it still commands, afterthe la se of forty aars, t e respectful attention of men ofthoug t, Th rre ore, with this somewhat depressingopinion as a clue, it may not be an idle act to advance afew steps within the labyrinth of that intricate and vexedproblem : the present condition of the artisan.Among the Americans, a nationof proverbial creative genius, machinery and so-calledlabor-saving inventions are produced with a fertility rival-ing that of the earth in the Golden Age. The effect ofsuch fertility is not to Ii hten the task and relieve themental fatigue of the wora man, as it might first appear,Rather, it is depressing and disastrous. Industrial im-provements, so-called, induce the division and subdivisionof labor. As a secondary result, the workman becomesa specialist. Throu h disuse of his art or trade as awhole, he loses his s ill. His judgment and reason, nolonger called upon to meet constantly varying demands,gradually fail him. The cooperation of his brain and



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14 AN HISTORICAL NOTE

hand ceases. His muscular power weakens. The in-telligent, alert and vigorous workman declines, UI@ heseems to form a part of the machine which he o rates ;his human intellect obeying a mechanical power, Les indi-vid&ity forfeited, and his physical liberty confined withinnarrow limits. Thus it would a pear to the student ofhistory as if Time had turned bat K upon itself, forcing theclass born to labor into its primitive condition of servitude,with the difference that the master and the slave are nolonger man and man. For under the modern industrialsystem, the dominant power is the machine, while theman, as the subservient force, is threatened with all theevilswhit Kculiar to the servile state : he possesses nothing inhe can feel the legitimate joy of ownership; histask is compulsory, involving neither the activity of crea-tion, highly pleasurable in itself, nor the resone who produces and sends out into the wor pnsibility ofd a reflectionof his own powers ; finally, in the natural revolt of onehampered, harassed, and despoiled, if his character be notupri htHr and firm, he practices the petty deceptions, thesma thefts of time, the dishonesties which creep into thework of one whose labor is not made light by hope. In-deed, with all considerations allowed for the changeswrought by religion, science andartisan of to-day is the evolutionizeti eneral progress, therepresentative of thecharacter around whom the action of the classic comediesrevolves, The playwrights of Athens and Rome, in theirstudies of manners and customs, lavished their highest artupon the delineation of the chattel slave who tricked his*master and lived bI: his wits, dividing his life between thetears wrung from m by the bitterness of his lot and thesinister gayety excited by his specialized, self-consciouspower to deceive and betray. And the similars of thisslave were those who chiefly carried on the industrial pro-duction of their time; thus, as a necessary consequence,forcing their work into disrepute, and removing the craftsfrom their natural place beside the higher intellectual arts.



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AN HISTORICAL NOTE 15-In the later classical period, industrialism fell into an opencontempt which lasted until the social system was itselfdissolved and chattel slavery abolished.With the new order of society,there arose, in the early Middle Athe field-serf, who having performed es, the new laborer:certain definite dutiestoward his lord, was free to earn his living within thelimits of his own manor. The feudal sthe worship of the city-that is, stem, replacingEentra ed power-bysetting up codes adapted to particular districts and magis-trates, created individualism : a spirit, which at first purelya political principle, gradually penetrated into the mostobscure relations and interests of life, casting all sorts andconditions of men into the struggle for existence, Thusthe serf, to a degree independent, was committed to im-prove his position as best he might, amid the conflictingrights of king, clergy, lord and burgher, And then, forthe first time, there appeared, in the interests of labor,signs of cooperation an.d combination amonducers and the distributors of articles of use an cF the proconsumtion, Hence, the formation of the Guilds, which, as tKeexpression of the new spirit, were naturally developed inEngland and Denmark, the countries least affected byclassic institutions. These bodies corporate, formed intimes of licence, marauding and blood-violence, were atfirst benefit, or insurance societies, or anized a ainst theexactions and cruelties of the feudaB lords-t a e crag-barons, as Ruskin picturesquely calls them. In thesecond stage of their development, which followed closelyupon the first, the Guilds stood for the protection and free-dom of commerce : establishing connections betweentrading-points remote from one another, improvingmethods of finance, and assuring the safety of merchandisein transit upon the highways.The Merchant Guilds becomingaggressive and powerful, commanded universal respect,and in raising themselves to a position of dignity, carried



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with them the interests under their protection. Theirprimary object was, as we have seen, to develop andfacilitate commerce, but this very object entailed the pro-duction of goods and wares which should maintain thecredit and integrity of the carrier merchants, The conse-quent importance of industrialism awakened a new lifewithin the commercial bodies, out of which now arose theCraft-Guilds, whose object was the regulation and practiceof the lesser arts in freedom from feudal exactions,Under the protection of theselast-named bodies, the artisan reached a developmentwhich is unique in history, His honored position in therich, laborious, teeming, artistic cities of the Low Coun-tries, or again in the Florentine Republic, is too wellknown to merit more than a passing reference. But yetit can not be too often repeated to the glory of industrialismthat the craftsman and the merchant who distributed thewares and goods of the craftsman, supplied the wealth,the intelli ence and the integrity of that most famous ofmediaev 2 Italian towns, whose citizens, while constitutinga nation of shopkeepers, conducted the political anddiplomatic affairs of Europe : negotiating national loans,receiving royal crowns in pawn, acting with great accept-ability as ambassadors to sovereigns temporal and spiritual,until they deserved the compliment paid them by P KeBoniface VIII., when he declared that they were t efifth wheel of creation. Throughout the thirteenth cen-tury, the artisan developed, together with the arliamentaryand university systems and that su erbK sty e of architec-ture which is misnamed Gothic : t ree movements con-taining the highest elements of civilization, as standing forthe dignity, the enlightenment and the beauty of humanlife, At the beginning of the fourteenth century, thesupremacy of the craft-guilds over the earlier and morepurely commercial bodies was complete; their powerbeing wisety exercised in efforts to foster ingenuity and



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AN HISTORICAL NOTE 17art, to maintain absolute industrial and commercial integ-rity, and to promote fraternity amon the workmen-inshort to realize a democratic ideal, l! 0 form a conceptionof the intense vitality of these institutions, we have but toturn to Wagners opera of The Mastersingers, whereinthe busy, joyous, useful life of old Nuremberg is reflectedasinamirror; or yet a ain to thebrandt falsely called eat picture of Rem-#he Night gatch, which is nowacknowledged to represent one of the great companies orguilds of Amsterdam marching under the banners of itspatron saint. So, from such historical documents as thesewe may gather materials with which to reconstruct thelife of the mediaeval craftsman. He was, we are sure, aself-respecting man, since he owned no su rior but hisart. He used his talents and skill not onpelivelihood, but even yet more freely to cr to gain hisro uce beautifulthings simply to rejoice in them, and tEls pure pleasureserved him as an extra wage. He was master of histime, his tools and his materials, and therefore had notemptation to squander them. As the sole maker anddesi ner of his wares, he was directly responsible for theirqua ity, and for this reason he was genuinely interestedin them. He produced directly for his friends and neigh-bors, who needed his chests and chairs, his fabrics orutensils, his weapons or instruments. He had conse-quently no inclination to enter, as a gambler, into thehaphazard of supply and demand. There was no divisionof labor, and universally, until early in the sixteenthcentury, the artisan was an artist, joining the useful toFHbeeautiful, and adapting the whole to the common uses, * The date assigned for the be-ginning of the decadence of the craftsman coincides withthat of the Reformation. At that time, in many of themost important districts of Germany and the Netherlands,art was divorced from the Church, and the creator of art :labor, was robbed of its greatest attractions and incentives.



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In En land, conditions were similar, but even worse,aince t e rapacidespoilment of t e cathedrals, those sacred monuments ofof Henry VIII, countenanced the brutalmediaeval art and craftsmanship, Beside, the entireisland, which, up to that time, had been a country oftillage cultivated for livelihood, then became a grazingcountry farmed for profit. The cult of utility, as hostileto beauthe con$ , was instituted, and rapid changes occurred intion of the workman, as well as in the exerciseof the handicrafts. Among the losses then sustained b

the skilled artisan may be counted one too great to be caKculated by any medium of exchange ; that is, the loss ofIeasure in work; of that beneficent element which had& en the means and the foundation of the long union be-tween the crafts and the great intellectual arts. Theworkman came from his bench or his loom set up in hishome, where he had lived a full life of labor and love andhealthful merriment, to be herded with others of his kindin a great pen-like workshop, there to suffer in the interestsof economy of space, fuel, lighting, and the other comfortsof existence.another and a Closely upon this change there followedJr eaterduring the one : the division of labor, which,Mi die Ages, had been theoretically unknown ;the master craftsman acquainted with every detail of hiscallinfore, t , then representing the unit of production,a There-e change which occurred in the sixteenth centurymay be briefly explained as the transfer of the unit of laborfrom the master craftsman, active, independent and crea-tive, to a group of workers, each member of whichdepended on every one of the others, and was individuallyhelpless. Under this system, when strictly enforced, wefind the workman condemned to a life equaling, by itsmonotony and restrictions, that of the famous prisoners ofromance: we find him, throughout the long years of hisservice, pledged to the making of a trifling part of someinsignificant article of commerce.The division of labor became



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AN HISTORICAL NOTE 19the parent of a long fine of unhap y consequences. Asthe craftsman had worked for his velihood, his pleasure7and his friends, so the new unit,-the group of arti-sans, -now worked for a profit, for that indefinite andfluctuating quantity called the public, and for the produc-tion of commercial, rather than artis tic articles : conditionswhich were clearly understood through both knowledgeand sympathy by William Morris, when he wrote :Art as well as mere obviousutility became a marketable article, doled out according tonecessities of the capitalist who emplo edworkman and designer, fettered by tL both machine-e needs of profit.The division of labor so worked that instead of all work-men being artists, as they once were, they became dividedinto workmen who were not artists, and artists who werenot workmen. The Workshop System, mosttypical in England during the latter half of the eighteenthcentury, was superseded in the nineteenth and in the samecountry by conditions of still greater rigor. Economicchanges, which in the short space of fifty years had ad-vanced the thickly-populated island to the first place amongmanufacturing countries, generated the Factory System :a regime responsible for the lowest stage in the de enera-tion of the craftsman, and under which the human L borer,who had already played the part of a machine, was forced,by the rapid multiplication of mechanical devices and thedemands of the world-market, to render slaves duty tothis Moloch-god of industrialism.

The very thought of such dutyis revolting to the free mind. The slave of the machinemust follow its movements at the peril of his health, sanityand life. He finds a crazin sameness in its a pearanceand its action. He has Iit8e or no responsibJ: ty in theworth or the worthlessness of the work which he is aidingto accomplish. He is in all things the opposite of themaster craftsman : matching inventiveness with sterility,



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20 AN HISTORICAL NOTEand the alertness of perception with that dullness ofdespair which breeds negation and revolt.To annihilate this distressinand dangerous type created by the nineteenth century wdbe one of the first and greatest duties of the period justnow beginning. The movement initiated b Ruskin andWilliam Morris will be vigorously Carriedr forward byother no less sincere disciples of the Religion of Beauty,until the time shall again come when every artist shallbe a workman, and every workman an artist in his ownfield of activithorou h anTr . The advancement of the cause demandspractical measures. In our own countryand co onies we must profit by the experience of England,ilest with us industrialism also secure its sacrifice of humanhappiness, energy and joy. The trades and crafts mustbe raised from the disrepute into which they fell throu hthe division of labor, The laboring classes must Lwisely guided by State and School until, self-respectingand thoroughly enlightened, they shall be heard to declare : We are men, and nothing that is human is foreign to us.In this work, art must be theprime factor, and a practical knowledge of drawing bemade the basis of all the handicrafts. Thus, through thewidened avenues of perception, Beauty will pass to relievefatigue, to create pleasure for the toiler, and to showthings in their true proportions and relations: in a wordto re-incarnate the citizen spirit of the Middle Ages in acommunity purified by Science from all superstitions.



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BACK TO THE SOIL

IS the significant title of a work of fiction recently pub

lished in Boston, which deals with one of the mostimportant social problems of the present day : the ques-tion of relief for the city poor.Those who, as their way hasled them through the crowded tenement districts of ourAmerican towns, have felt themselves possessed by greatsorrow and a complete sense of helplessness, will wel-come this book as affording a promise of better things.And it is indeed an expression of timely solicitude andthought, since late statistics show that it is neither Londonnor Peking, but New York itself which, in certain of itsquarters, contains the most densely inhabited area in theworld: a sin le tenement in Third Avenue harboringthree thousan CFpersons, theT/CZCFZtZ~t~G%$may object to the work of fiction as a means of diffusingaccurate ideas; but, on the opposite side, it may be urgedthat the emotional element has borne a large part in allreforms and progress. To draw an illustration from thesame field of work, one has but to recall that the romanceof Sir Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions ofMen, had as its direct result the building of the Peoples Palace in London and the improvement ofthe entire East End. By a singular coincidence, theRev. Edward Everett Hale introduced the English novelin America, sixteen years since, and he today writes aneloquent foreword for the newer book which deserves toaccomplish an equal amount of good in our own country.Dr. Hale asks the readers of Back to the Soil toreceive it, not as another Utopia, but as a real contribu-tion to the scientific sociological work of the new century.With the conciseness and point that are his characteristics,he sums up the difficulties of those who attempt to relievethe overcrowding of population; here quoting Mr.



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22 BACK TO THE SOIL

Frederick Law Olmstead, the sanitary engineer andarchitect, who once said to him that much as he himselfhad been praised for his work in the ruraksing of thecities, he considered the complementary work of theurban&sing of the country to be an enterprise far moreimportant in the Iife of America. Later, referring to thenecessity of cooperation in this great Iabor for humanity,Dr. Hale reaches a climax of enthusiasm in the folIowinginspiring sentence :

It must be observed that what-ever is done must be done in accord-by a considerablenumber of people, who are, from the beginning, to bearone anothers burdens, and whose success depends, asmost success depends, on the victory of-together.are so thorou Indeed, Dr. Hale and the bookwriter mi ht hIy unified, that the name of the venerablea fof its e accepted on the title paaut or, Mr. Bradley GiIman. 8 e, instead of thator Back to theSoil but continues and develops, by the aid of thegreat advance in science, suggestions contained in thework of Dr. Hales middle life, notably in his short stories-Iike The Rag Man and the Rag Woman -which,under a humorous form, deal with aspects of city poverty.Gilman himself ff Beside the introduction, Mr.o ers a word of preface in which hequotes CarIyIe as saying in his essay on Chartism : Our terrestrial planet-nine-tenths of it yet vacant, or tenanted by nomads-is stillcrying, Come and tiIl me, come and reap me I

But the author recognizes thatthis cry of Mother Earth faIIs on deaf ears in the slums,since the desire for companionship overpowers aII thematerial wants of the city poor. He therefore offers anideal of a rural community of working-people, in whichhe employs a unique method of grouping the homes asclosely asands malpo ssible, and of adding minor industries handicrafts to relieve the monotony of farm



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BACK TO THE SOIL 29dulu; and give a wholesome and agreeable variety of

. From his scheme of a farm-colony, Mr. Gilman rejects SociaIism, or Commun-ism, as destructive of the natural incentive to labor:that is, the hope and pride of ownership ; setting corres-pondingly high therefore the principle of a free cooperative Individualism, by which the people benefited becomeself-supporting, after a year or two of dependency andinstruction.

The economic questions treatedin Back to the Soil are the fundamental ones foundin every primary work upon labor and capital; but pre-sented as they are here with colloquial charm and evenpathos, they take on a human interest which the collegestudent would deny that they possessed,The explanation of the lawof competition as given by Mr. Gilman will serve asan example. He illustrates it by the concrete case of tworival printing-houses, one of which introduces labor-saving machinery, diminishes its force of workers, and socauses wide-spread misery. The statement is simple andprobable ; one indeed that might appear in a text-book,and which is comparable in dzyness with the mathemati-cal formulas introducing x an y. But it is ingeniouslywoven into a tete-a-tete of a husband and wife : a clergy-man whose emotions are tempered with New Englandcommon sense, and a woman whose charitable workamong the hopeless poor has doubled her natural powersof compassion. So, throughout the book, the charactersare simply the organs of principles : theorizing, offeringschemes, ar uing with one another until some measureincident to t! e foundation or the furtherance of the farm-colony is accepted or rejected, But this continued narra-tive, devoid of the element of action, does not pall uponthe reader. although it may now and then sug est theparts of the hero and the listening friend, as t ey are



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24 BACK TO THE SOIL

played in the old drama. Here monotony is preventedby the seriousness of the subject, and the reader followswith interest from the first page to the last, The diver-sity of temperament in the projectors of the scheme isportrayed with no ordinary skill. The individuality ofeach is sharp1 defined, so that the work of each is clearlyapparent in tKe combined result, just as in the Wagneropera, the orchestra makes known the pro ss of theaction by the use of musical phrases, which Yescribe eachcharacter and are invariably heard when he participatesin the plot. Thus, for example, practical philanthropy isincarnate in Dr. Barton; finance is represented by a finetype of self-made man ; the educational element by asweet &l graduate and the connecting links betweenthe benefactors and the beneficiaries by Patrick andBridget, who epitomize all the best qualities of the Celticrace : alertness of perception, unfailing good humor, andresources of strategy and wit that are denied to otherpeoples. The impression made by thisassemblage of elements-for so one must call and con-sider the characters of the book-is an impression ofpracticality. Each of the persons having a voice in thedirection of the farm-colony, has alread , pr;idzcapability in similar work pursued for L interest. As an expert, he is entitled to restKct andearnest attention. He has previously made e costlyeze riments sure to sadden the career of all intellectualt ers, by the expenditure of time, passion, or money.He is consequently careful of the rights, pleasures andproperty of his brother-man involved in his own action.It is, perhaps, this pervasive flavor of practicality whichlends a readable quality to the book; for in works offiction we are liable to scorn the didactic and the plainlypointed moral, demanding a degree of excitement for theimagination ; just as in the sister art of painting, we donot seek for lessons in history and literature, but rather



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BACK TO THE SOIL 25for sensuous pleasure derived from the harmony of lineand color. Another attractive feature of Back to the Soil lies in the names of its chapterswhich announce questions in economics and sociologysimply treated and adapted to the popular understanding.The interest of the bookbegins and centers inthis chapter A Lesson Drawn from a Pie;ving the story of a family supper, at whichthe cutting o a pie into wedge-shaped sections suggeststhe general plan of the farm-colony, afterward known as Circle City,senting the land This form,-each wedge repre-occupied by a coIonist,-is presented asobviating the worst conditions of rural life: that is, theisolation and loneliness which drive the slum-colonistback to his swarming tenement, and from which thestrong native-born youth flee in desperation, leavingagriculture to the indolent and the old.The farms of Circle Citybear toward their apex a dwelling-house, from whichthey all run widening back to a certain point. Beyondthis, the apportionments begin to vary; the grazingfarms occupying a large area, while the market-gardens,which require careful working and much fertilising, arekept within narrow limits.The circle is itself inscribedwithin a great square, allowing the farms to open likefan-sticks, which are not necessarilbut hold among themselves the ractional relations of

of the same width,halves, fourths, eighths and sixteenths.The centre of the land-a com-paratively small circle described within the larger one-is reserved for a park in which are situated a church, aclub room, schools and a department store: in a word,all the necessities of modern civilization. And thus, thefirst great requisite of lower-class Iifc being assured by



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26 BACK TO THE SOIL

means of the thickly settled community, the dependentinterests : water facilities, drainage, fuel supplies, lightingapparatus, means of communication and transit are as-sured with comparative ease, The funds are su pliedand controlled throu h a syndicate formed and heathe self-made t Bcapita ed byt, who to the instincts and desiresof a money-humanity. fi etter joins the warm heart of a friend ofinally, the colonists are chosen from amongboth foreigners and native Americans, without distinctionof race or creed ; Patrick and Bridget largely selecting, aswell as instructing the candidates, who at first are subjetted to a government best described as a wise paternalism.The perfected scheme in work-ing order is shown in a chapter named Ab urbecondita, the simple life of full activity and high purposetherein described putting to shame the frivolous existenceof the fashionable street and the society coknnn. At thissta e in the life of the colony, the problems of citizenshipan li complete ownership are confronted, and paternalismis exchanged for a state of society tending to develop thelatent capabilities, talents and tastes of the individualcolonists; the communistic principle being in all thingsavoided, as one destructive to the sense of resand the incentive to labor, And as in nsibilityalY attemptstoward the betterment of social conditions, the chief hopeis found to be in the children. For it is they who firstreceive and then give out and propagate the vitalizingeffects of new truths. In the pages of Back to theSoil, we find the children interesting their parents andelders in the wonderful life of nature which free space dis-closes and science explains. And so it is intimated thatwith these children of the proletariat-the class necessaryto the state for the production of offspring-lies the approaching and happy solution of the great problem of cityoverpopulation.



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QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKIN I know not if a day i s ever

t o come w hen t he nature of ri ght freedom w i l l be under-st ood, and w hen men w i l l see t hat to obq another man,t o abor for him, yi el d reverence t o bim or to hi s place, i snot slav efy . These words, characteristic ofthe despairing spirit of their author, are found in thesecond volume of Ruskins Stones of Venice, Andthey are not surprising, in view of the time in which theywere written ; for no mental vision, however clear andacute, could, in the middle nineteenth century, announcethe changes in thought and belief which the next fiftyyears were to produce. The scientific movement wasthen incipient and the principle of the survival of thefittest as yet unrecoE= ed. But now that deep probingsinto the mysteries of l e have shown that one law every-where prevails, and that force, when beneficent in itself, isthe rulin power of the universe, we catch the first faintflush of ge dawn which was denied to Ruskin.Under natural laws there canbe no slavery. It is only by perversion and usurpation oflaw that tyranny comes into being. And tyranny, likeall other evil, is self-destructive. Right Freedom therefore consists in obedience to such things as are per-manent: that is, just and true in themselves, and in thedenial of all that is subversive of order and disturbing toharmony, Obedience is a law as old as the universe,and one that will be in force until time shall cease. Thestrong must gather about them and absorb into themselvesthe weaker, and the process must ever go on for themaintenance of all that makes for good, pleasure, andeven for life itself. In the great producing time of nature,sterile blossoms appear on the same branch and side byside with those that are destined to bear fruit. But theyfall away, after offering their small gift of beauty to the



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28 QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKIN

universe. Later, the fruits on the way toward maturityare attacked by their natural enemies in the insect world,or by the elements turned hostile : they are stung and sothwarted in their growth, or they are beaten by hail, ortorn b the wind. They succumb, and their share ofnouris Kment in the organism to which they belong, oesto rfect and round the existence of the more rochlfe L st dren of the tree. This process of development anddecay is natural, and therefore one which must prevail,whether it be pleasing or painful to the individuals subjectto its laws. It can indeed be said that thesurvival of the fittest in nature corresponds to indi-vidualism in political and social science-and, further, itmay be urged that individualism reached its highest de-velopment in that or anic and strongly vitalized period :the Middle Ages. + he early Teutons, in their respectfor stren $h raised aloft on a great shield the most stal-wart an &we&l man of their tribe, and, by this cere-mony, created their warlord. They owed him theirpersonal allegiance, and obeyed his code, He administeredjustice within his gau, or district, and when powerfulenough to conquer the nobles about him, he became theking, or cunning-man: that is, the able man of a largerterritory, named after him a kingdom. This obedience topower, so notable in the earlier centuries, devel d andgrew complicated with time, until it resulted in t e com-!eplete feudal system, which was a series of individualcompacts, wherein the stronger and the weaker weregrouped in pairs; the stronger lending protection, and theweaker rendering service; both acts resulting in mutualbenefit. Antagonistic to centralization of every form, theTeutonic principles prepared thethirteenth century, which saw ric mat development of the% powerful, independenttowns founded in northern and central Europe ; the par-liamentary system attain a rapid maturity; the trade-guilds perfected ; and the great universities receive their



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QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKIN 29

charters. And all these results were, in specialized ways,the fruits of obedience, reverence for authority and regu-lated labor. The towns were, in man instanced, theoffspring of the great league for the furx erance of com-merce, and they were overned by citizen-bodies, headedby a master-mind, T a e parliaments, the universities andthe guilds were e ually manifestations of the s it% apIT ofliberty directed b w. One temper of intellect, thougha diversity of gYts, characterizes the men of that period,who rose to permanent fame, whether they were sovereignsor saints, poets or scientists.It was unity such as this thatRuskin had in mind when he wrote the sentence quoted,re ardinga labor and obedience. He desired with hisw ole heart, and yet despaired utterly, In his love formediaevalism, in his distrust of his own times, he did notforesee the possibility of the advent of a new a e whichmight renew the power of the old, purified froma e defectswherein lay the seeds of its decay, But such a consum-mation may be even now preparing. Its prime factor andcause must be the education of the masses-not theoretical,abstract and diffuse, but technical and concrete ; an educa-tion desiand mu tiform fife of the universe ; a balanced developed to awaken and foster love for the multiplement of all the mental tfz wers from the reason to theimagination, to the end t n ative and destructive ideasmay be recognized and rejecte7 ; a knowledge of history,to the end that the progressive relations of man to manmay be studied, and the ascending evolution of these rela-tions acknowled ed ; finally, a practical, if elementary,acquaintance wita certain forms of art, to the end that thepleasures of life may be increased, and the routine of dailyexistence so modified by the influence of joy in form andcolor that there shall be neither time nor room for dis-content. Under these conditions, individualism willflourish. The man, whatever his occupation, will respecthimself and his work. His influence will run abroad like



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90 QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKINan electric current, so that fife will become simpler becauseffled with more intense love and devotion. He willgrasp eagerly after constructive social ideas, leavingan&ism to the ignorant and prejudiced, who are of lowor arrested mental development. He will yield reverenceto person and place, simply because in so doing he willrecognize something akin to the power which he shallfeel in himself, and from a high and enlightened sense ofduty, obey in his every act,

Sire should be less pride feltin peculi ar& of employment and more in excell ence ofachievement. Stones of Venice, vol. II., page 169.Though written years since,and in England, no more timely words than these couldbe urged upon the American workers of today. It wouldseem that they were uttered with the prescience some-times characteristic of Ruskin when he turned towardsthings hidden far within the future. At all events, theapprehend and describe perfectly the false feeling, the lac r:of manliness and dignity with which many of our artisanspractice their crafts; envying the holders of professionsand ignoring the useful and pleasurable possibilities oftheir own condition, These discontented ones have r-haps failed in the grammar, or the high school-a fa ure

often due to a lack of sympathy between teacher andpupil; they lose courage and believe themselves inferiorto their companions ; they take up without enthusiasmsome industry or trade, simply as a means of livelihood ;despising it and themselves, ving out wretched work,and reducing themselves to t f e level of machines, Tosuch an extent does peculiarity of employment influ-ence the mind of the average American that he practically



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QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKIN 31ignores excellence of achievement. If he be a father,he desires for his son an academic degree, even though itshould be won by a fraction of class standing; he desi nshim for a profession, akhou h at the risk that the indif er-ent student become a brie%ss barrister or a physicianwithout patients. T Father and son unite !in their hatred ofthe phrase : Only a business man; ignorantly mis-judging the acumen, forethought and patience required,in these da s of fierce competitive strife, to gain evena modest p%ce in the commercial or industrial world.Thus in the eyes of the every-day man a misty idea ofthe dual of the Greek noun or the ability to distinguishbetween Themistocles and Aristides assumes a far greatervalue than practical skill in the production of usefularticles, or the power to command the subtle and ever-changing relations between supply and demand.To-day, then, the crafts arelargely dishonored among us, and the mercantile man, ifhis name be not written over a great department store, isignored. And these facts do but prove that false ideasprevail+ For the past is ever an earnest of the future,and economic truths are as stable as the world itself. Itwas industrial and commercial honor that raised theFlorentine Republic to civic heights never elsewhere at-tained during the Middle Ages, and never since equaled.The cloth-dressers of the CaIimaIa and the petty trades-men of the Mercato Vecchio, nameless though they aretoday, accomplished more for progress and civilizationthan the most famousperiod, who changed

pes and emperors of the sametlY geography of Europe at will,and layed with armies as at a game of chess. TheburgKers of Florence sat in their shops, trading and ac-quiring riches, but with the classics at hand, from whichto draw culture and delight in the intervals of business,They sharpened their wits upon one another on the ex-change, or the market place, and then went forth asambassadors and world arbiters. A little people of mer-



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92 QUOTATIONS FROM RUSKlNchants and craftsmen ruled the Peninsula and inspiredthe respect of the greater European sovereigns, Theof that people is a valuable one to all who desire$ZEZLng and real pleasure of the modern workingcIasses. Let manual skill be cultivated, let the dignity oflabor be once again appreciated, let the hard day of toil belightened by some hope or pastime, and a new economiccareer will be prepared for our country, untroubled bystrikes, and worthy to serve as a new historic precedent.



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TIMES CHANGES IN THE DESTINIESOF ART

T HAT art is one of the essentials of human life maybe proven by its adaptability to time, place and cir-cumstance. Under the form of personal ornament, it isrightly characterized by Carl le, in his Sartor Resartus,as the first spiritual need o the barbarous man ; for!food and shelter, however primitive having been provided,the savage turns to gratify his finer sensuous instincts bythe use of brilliant color and by the adornment of his fewhousehold goods, his weapons and his clothing. His so-called play-impulse leads him to imitate the thin s thatplease him in the nature by which he is surrounde , Hecomes to recognize the touch of the Divine Hand in skyand water, bird and plant. His delight in his rudimentarypainting and carving and building turns him aside fromcrime and violence. To him art is Gods gift,,the mostpowerful means of his ascent and civilization,In his sta e of fetich-worshiman uses art to glorify the objects t t he adores, to ddpclare the powers that protect him ; as we find by referenceto Egyptian symbolism, wherein the hawk, the crane andthe cat, natures scavengers and hunters, are representedas national deities. And such indeed they were ; for hadthey not done their work of extermination upon thescourges of animal and insect life that followed the inun-dations of the Nile, there had remained but one inhabitantof the land, and that inhabitant malaria.In the ancient world, certainhighly gifted races having become dominant, polytheismbeing greatly favored through the mixture of races,-eachof which stood for its own gods,-the development ofcommerce producing rest wealth at the centers of civili-zation, art became tBe handmaid of luxury. With thefaculties of the imagination and manual skill at theirfullest, aesthetic expression reached its maximum, But



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34 TIMES CHANGES

when Greece had been absorbed into Rome, and Romehad lost its political ideals, then beauty came to be meas-ured by costliness, and art fell to its lowest decline; sinceit can flourish in organic periods only, side by side withfaith, love of country and pure emotions, whatever betheir source and direction. Under the deep, restorative in-fluence of Christianity it rose again, appealing in a newform to a new world lighted b hope. Itinto the service of religion : in tg ssed whollye East slow y settling intothe inactivity and languor native to the region; in theWest, retiring into the monasteries, as into arks of safety,to escape the deluge of barbarians, When six centuriesrolled away, in which waiting had passed from theanxious to the apathetic state, fear of invasion and fear ofthe end of the world ceased; the new nations and overn-ments consolidated, and the great churches and cata edralssprang into being as votive offerin sDuring the thirteenth, fourteenth an$ for preservation.fifteenth centuries,the mysteries of the Christian faith, and the story of mansori

!i?, fall and redemption, as tau ht by the Bible, fur-nis ed abundant and rich material or artistic expression.The great Italians and Germans flourished, displayingtheir racial traits and their personal genius, but all unitingin glorifyinexalted 8 a common creed and a single church. Thean the positive, the ascetic and the carnal1 -minded, wrought together fraternally, preserving Ketraditions of their elders and believing their art to be all-satisfying, complete in its aims and final in its form.

With the Revival of Learningand the development of free thou htart was released from a service o H consequent upon it,centuries. It came tobe regarded as a means of realizing life, It reflected thespirit of the age in its exuberance, its frank paganism andits acceptance of material from the most opposite andvaried sources. But the spirit of the age was negative,and negation i s essentially destructive. Denial by force of



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TIMES CHANGES 35repetition loses its note of sincerity. So the art of theRenascence, at first ingenuous, then strong, impetuous,and splendidly tyrannous, degenerated into a vain displayof form, which, since it contained no message from manto man, failed long to hold the respect and the attention ofthe world. In our own time, we have seenart assume a phase, which has but one historical parallel.As n the days of the cathedral builders, it becomes theteacher of the handicrafts. All honor then be to the twosons of Oxford, who, a half-century ago, turned towardmediaevalism as to the true fount of a popular art, andwith voice, influence, wealth and personal sacrifice, gavetheir knowledge to the world, and the impetus to themovement which is now forceful in England, Americaand France. Th ese men went to their work in no spiritof imitation, but seizinf the significance of a eriod inwhich the lesser arts o life cooperated with 3: e higherintellectual ones, they felt that were this union againeffected, there would result from it benefits to society simi-lar to those which prevailed in the age of the namelessmasters of Nuremberg and Amiens, Strasbour andCo1 ne. They understood, with the clearness oHtheirint2 ect, that art as the teacher of the handicrafts is alsothe friend of thePlace, leading tK

eople, creating beauty out of the common-e adult away from the sordid cares oftie, and giving to the child room for the exercise of hisimitative and imaginative powers, which otherwise areharmfully restrained and dwarfed. Ruskin and Morrishaving gained the attention of the most matter-of-fact ofcivilized nations, in an age of industrialism, proceeded tolabor for the increase of pleasure in life: pleasure of thecraftsman in his work ; of the farmer in the country bywhich he is surrounded; of the entire people in a sim-plicity, order and symmetry to result from a wise andeconomical choice of the material objects which serve theneeds of daily existence, Art so understood and so



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36 TIMES CHANGES--received to the heart of the people, corresponds to thewords of Cicero, when, in his plea for the poet Arch&,he described the joys of literar attainment : TLse studies nourish youth,delight old age, adorn prosperity and offer a refuge andsolace against adversity.



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RUSKINS WORKA Few of the Things Accomplished or Attempted by

Rushin. in the Interests of Art, the Workingmen andHumanity.

At Brantwood, Coniston, in thelake region of England, he devised a costly engineerinscheme, involving the reclamation of large tracts of lan ,in order to attract laborers from the surrounding towns,

In the belief that the taste forart must be spread among the masses, he assisted hisfriend Rossetti in teaching drawing, at the evening classesof the Workingmans College, London, during the years185458.He became widely popular asa speaker upon economic and art subjects, and delivered

courses which were freely given and enthusiastically re-ceived, at the South Kensington Museum, Manchester,Bradford, and Tunbridge Wells.

He was Slade Professor atOxford from 1869 to 1879. At the fatter date he retired,owing to a long and dangerous illness ; but being re-appointed on his recovery in 1883, he found his audiencesso greatly increased that he was forced to lecture in thetheatre of the museum. Later, even this auditorium wascrowded to the doors by students, graduates and women,and it then became his custom to ve each lecture twice.Finally, having followed too free y the vagaries of hisfgenius, the master was persuaded by his friends to retire



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38 RUSKINS WORK

from his chair, In doing this, he sent a characteristicletter to the vice-chancellor, in which he attributed thereasons for his action to the facts that the Universityrefused to buy Turners picture : The Crook of Lune,and that, by a recent vote, it had sanctioned vivisection.

own fortune, a He endowed richly from hismastership for the Art School, at Oxford,and presented it with a series of valuable educationaldrawings. He made similar gifts to the FitzwilliamMuseum in Cambridge ; while to other causes and objectshis donations were generous and frequent. He inheritedEl 75,000, and died comparatively poor.

He founded an art museum atWalkley, which, in 1890, was transferred to Sheffield,the city of artisans and cutlery. To this museum he re-sented an authentic and fine example of Verrocc f: o ;which gift he considered peculiarly fitting, as the Italianmaster was himself a noted worker in iron.

Among his efforts for the diffu-sion of art knowledge, the most important and successfulwas, no doubt, the great enlargement of the collectionand the classification of the works of the Early ItalianPa3nters in the National Gallery, London,

He founded Saint GeorgesGuild, or Order, which was intended to be a return to aprimitive agricultural life; all modern machines andmanufactures to be banished therefrom. The object of



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RUSKINS WORK 39the association was to promote good and honest work.The vows of the initiates, based upon belief in the ood-ness of God and the dignity of human nature, incUHatedhonor, honesty, industry, frugality and obedience. Thescheme, benevolent in idea, was ill-suited to the times inwhich its execution was attempted, and Ruskin, blind tothe causes of its failure, became more and more bitter inhis detestation of the art, manners, trade, commerce, im-pulse and movements that he saw about him.



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THE LAND IN DECAY

A S the novel is beyond question the voice of the spiritof the times, it is interesting to note the similarityof the questions which are now treated through themedium of fiction in countries as widely different fromeach other as are France and America. Even a cursoryexamination would seem to prove that both peoples areless interested in the tragedies and comedies of sentimentthan in subjects social and psychological. In France, thepeasant, the laborer, the artisan, the student is fastusurping the place of the high-born guilty lover, whohas so long been one of the three characters indispen-sable to the plot and action of imaginative literature.The first fruits of this change are found in almost everyimportant work of fiction that has been produced duringthe last sixthe vexed an B ears. The Affaire Dreyfus, involvingintricate Jewish question, the ambitions ofthe clergy, the national and Jesuitical systems of education,-these are some of the subjects treated in the social novel,which is, as yet, a form of art somewhat new, crude andharsh, although it promises to fulfil all that AugusteComte long since predicted of its future power over thepeople. Of the examples of the newsocial novel many are interesting to Frenchmen alone ;since they treat of conditions impossible outside of France,and therefore difficult to be appreciated by forei n thinkers,Such as these illustrate but a single, more or ess durableiphase of national life, and, therefore, even in France, willsoon lose their value, except as historical documents.One only has passed beyond these restrictions, and, bythe force of genius and sympathy, is worth to be rankedamong enduring masterpieces. It is 5 he Land inDecay of M. Rene Bazin, which has excited the admi-ration and stirred the hearts of foreign critics and readersto a degree scarcely equaled since Victor Mugo laid down



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THE LAND IN DECAY 41the romancers pen. This book has been widely noticedin both England and America: in every case elicitingfrom the reviewer an acknowledgment of its greatness.The sense of its power does notproduce a sudden and irresistible attraction; since itsidyllic character is at first deceptive, and would lead thereader to suppose that a new eclogue, worthy of a placebeside the pastorals of Virgil and Madame Sand, had appeared in French literature. But while a cooler, calmerjudgment corroborates this opinion, it also reveals astrength and a pathos which must make appeal to allhearts which patriotism, love of family, and the associa-tions of chi!dhood have ever quickened. The peasantspainted by Millet and Breton, and represented in Mme,Sands Master Pipers, Nanon, or La Mare auDiable, here find worthy companion pieces. But thenew types are more complex and modern than any beforepresented. Th e men are more restless, reactionary andsubtle, while the women are no longer the passive, resignedbeings who accept, without murmuring, the hard lot in-separable from the soil to which they are attached bybirth. Both sexes have developed thought, which if notyet sound, is at least indicative of progress. The Land in Decay is atonce a warning and an appeal to the loyal children ofFrance. It pictures that most fertile country, asI;rhy.seriously compromised in its economic status,the peasantry as wholly changed from those sturdy,courageous, abstemious sons of the soil who, it is said,drew from their savings hoarded in stockin s the warindemnity of two billion francs demanded by ta e GermanEmpire only thirty years since. The scene of the bookis laid in Brittany, and exquisite art is displayed in fittingthe characters to the landscape. Each telling episode isprojected against a back-ground so realistic that one canalmost seize with the senses the glow of the atmosphere,the lowing of cattle, the odors of field and farm. The



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42 THE LAND IN DECAYcharacters are all peasants and members of a single family ;the romantic element being only just sufficient to weldtogether a plot, which has itself an economic, rather thana sentimental or domestic value. This peasant family,by name Lumineau, has, for enerations, held in leaselands belonging to the local nob eman :i payin to him noton1K rents, dues and products, but also a pecu ia r respect,or omage which flavors of mediaevalism. So that onecan almost imagine the feudal system, with its lords andvassals, as still in force in this province of Brittany,which, during the first great Revolution, remained faithfulto the kinown, has s , and which, from those days down to ourw own the greatest aversion to modern ideas.The book pictures the old sys-tem in a decay due partly to natural causes, and partly tooutside disintegrating forces which attack the youngereneration, leaving the older isolated, and in despair.% he army has, of course, claimed a recruit from theLumineau family ; thus, not only deprivin the landtemporarily of a vigorous cultivator, but urthermoreopening to the youth, during hissservice in Algeria, waysof life and vistas of thought fatal to the happiness of aFrench peasant. Again, a grave accident has strickenthe eldest son, sadly crippling and deforming him, render-ing him unfit for marriage, and so destroying the mostcherished of the family hopes. A third son and the elderdaughter, discouraged by the partial failure of the land,the prolonged absence of their favorite and soldier brother,the melancholia and spasmodic violence of the cripple-above all, by the hard, constant, monotonous labor of thefarm, leave, almost without warning, the paternal home toseek employment in the nearest town. The climax ofcalamity for the old father lies in the ravages of thephylloxera, the description of which forms the strongestand most pathetic episode of the book,It occurs after the return of thesoldier from Algeria, and when he is left alone with his



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THE LAND IN DECAY 49-father to do more than a double share of labor. A sorrow-ful picture is first given of the two men uprooting from thesoil of France the vine which once contributed so largelyto her riches ; working with pick-axes of primitive formfashioned for an extinct race of giants ; laboring through-out a cheerless February day, and returning home in thegray t &ight, through frozen fields, along bare hed es,beneath leafless trees and surrounded by the damp, pit essicold ; working and walkinfixed upon the land in fi in silence, with their thoughtsecay. The sadness of thefather is represented as differing from that of the son, sincethe elder man is inspired by a strong, tried love of thefatherland, which rises anew after every blow of Fortune,In uprootinwhen he 1 the dead wood, he already anticipates the days all plant a new vineyard, and pictures tohimself joyous vintages to come in the days of his suc-cessors. In the sons heart, on the contrary, hope promisesnothing, since his love and devotion has weakened, Thefather is the first to break the painful silence ; expressinghimself in the home1his forced task. T L speech of the peasant, and lamentinge son, divided between filial tender-ness and impulse, hesitates to reply. But, at last, with asweeping gesture which points far beyond Brittany, andcarries something like a sea-chill beneath the rough woolengarments of the old peasant, he cries : Yes, the day of our vineyardshas passed ; but the grape thrives elsewhere !At the moment of this cry, theplans of the young man become definite, his future opensplairJ before him,who K He begins, like the brother and sisterave preceded him, to make secret preparations fordeparture. But, unlike them, he does not shrink from thetoil of the fields. He longs for work, but work in themidst of life, joy, hope and liberty. He steals away atnight, but it is afterward known that he embarks forSouth America.



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44 THE LAND IN DECAY

Three members of the onceprosperous family now remain : the father, broken by mis-fortune and abandoned by those whose strong youngarms should have arrested the decay of the land. Besidehim, there are the cripple and a younger daughter, longsince fallen into disgrace because of her love for a farm-laborer, who, early in the story, was dismissed for hispresumption. Th e cripple, wrought to a frenzy by theconsent of his father to allow the unequal marriage, at-tempts one night to visit his former betrothed, believingthat she may yet accept him and so restore him to hisbirthright as the eldest and leader of the family. But thechange of seasons is at hand, and the low marshes ofBrittany are submerged in spring floods, The unfortunateloses control of the boat peculiar to the region,-the yole,-to which he trusts himself, and is found dead by hisfather, who, divining his intention, has followed him, Adramatic scene ensues, picturing the return of the corpseto the farm, and lacking nothing of the power of thegreatest French painters, It is indeed above and beyondany art that can possibly be displayed upon canvas, be-cause it is communicated by human speech. Characters,landscape, the time and the season are as real as thosethat are offered in the world of matter.to have wreaked its full And now misfortune appearsven eanceand upon those who are attac a both upon the land,ed to it by the traditions ofcenturies on centuries. But were the book to close uponthis climax of the fathers grief, and the death or departureof all his sons, no solution would be suggested for theremedy of the land in decay. Hope comes through awoman: the younger daughter, who has suffered notemptations of flight, and who has devoted her dowryinherited from her mother to relieve her fathers pressingneeds. Described as unitin in herself the virtues of theideal peasant, and those w ch have distinguished theibest women of her own old family, she goes to the hus-



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THE LAND IN DECAY 45band of her choice, who is a stranger in the region, poor,and accustomed to serve rather than to command.This union, so ill-suited in theeyes of the prejudiced, contains the elements of salvationfor the land and renewal for the family. It is the sugges-tion of the infusion of new hopes, new love, and newenergy into a sterilized region. It has a basis and prece-dent in science, and therefore is valuable as an economicmeasure. Those born to labor, must, in self-defence,avoid the life of the towns, and the State, considering itsown interests as well as their welfare, must provide thatthey go back to the soil,



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THE SEVEN LAMPS

T HE singular and non-committal titles given by Ruskinto his lectures and books are still a frequent subjectof comment among well-informed persons. For althoughthey are always pertinent, yet their relations to the subject-matter are not such as would be readily perceived even bythe careful and the imaginative. They are elaboratelyprepared, and the work of a scholar, who drew themfrom ancient, or mediaeval sources of history, philosophyor language, Among the most attractive and appropriateof these titles is that of The Seven Lamps of Architec-ture, To explain it, we must go back to the great Jewishsymbol of Li ht and Law: the Menorah, or seven-branched cand estick, which is so sacred and significantin the history of the Hebrews, and which acquired a newvalue when it was associated by the historic Church withthe rite of baptism ; coming then to signify the acceptanceof the illumination and of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.This figure, as was most nat-ural, attracted Ruskin, for whom art was ever a faith anda religion. He adapted and extended its meanin until itstood in his mind for the perfect expression of the Et ildersart, wherein lay, as in the solar spectrum, seven distinctbut harmonious elements. These elements, lamps, orspirits, as he variously names them, are familiar principlestreated in Ruskins own superlative way.The Lamp of Sacrifice wouldseem, if reduced to its lowest terms, to be that spirit ofself-denial and self-forgetfulness which

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The Craftsman - 1901 - 11 - November