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Page 60
Sirs, I have spoken of thoughtful men who feel these evils: but
think of all the millions of men whom our civilisation has bred, who
are not thoughtful, and have had no chance of being so; how can you
fail then to acknowledge the duty of defending the fairness of the
Earth? and what is the use of our cultivation if it is to cultivate
us into cowards? Let us answer those feeble counsels of despair and
say, We also have a property which your tyranny of squalor cheats us
of; we also have a morality which its baseness crushes; we also have
a religion which its injustice makes a mock of.
Well, whatever lesser helps there may be to our endeavour of giving
people back the eyes we have robbed them of, we may pass them by at
present, for they are chiefly of use to people who are beginning to
get their eyesight again; to people who, though they have no
traditions of art, can study those mighty impulses that once led
nations and races: it is to such that museums and art education are
of service; but it is clear they cannot get at the great mass of
people, who will at present stare at them in unintelligent wonder.
Until our streets are decent and orderly, and our town gardens break
the bricks and mortar every here and there, and are open to all
people; until our meadows even near our towns become fair and sweet,
and are unspoiled by patches of hideousness: until we have clear
sky above our heads and green grass beneath our feet; until the
great drama of the seasons can touch our workmen with other feelings
than the misery of winter and the weariness of summer; till all this
happens our museums and art schools will be but amusements of the
rich; and they will soon cease to be of any use to them also, unless
they make up their minds that they will do their best to give us
back the fairness of the Earth.
In what I have been saying on this last point I have been thinking
of our own special duties as cultivated people; but in our
endeavours towards this end, as in all others, cultivated people
cannot stand alone; nor can we do much to open people's eyes till
they cry out to us to have them opened. Now I cannot doubt that the
longing to attack and overcome the sordidness of the city life of
to-day still dwells in the minds of workmen, as well as in ours, but
it can scarcely be otherwise than vague and lacking guidance with
men who have so little leisure, and are so hemmed in with
hideousness as they are. So this brings us to our second question.
How shall people in general get leisure enough from toil, and truce
enough with anxiety to give scope to their inborn longing for
beauty?
Now the part of this question that is not involved in the next one,
How shall they get proper work to do? is I think in a fair way to be
answered.
The mighty change which the success of competitive commerce has
wrought in the world, whatever it may have destroyed, has at least
unwittingly made one thing,--from out of it has been born the
increasing power of the working-class. The determination which this
power has bred in it to raise their class as a class will I doubt
not make way and prosper with our goodwill, or even in spite of it;
but it seems to me that both to the working-class and especially to
ourselves it is important that it should have our abundant goodwill,
and also what help we may be able otherwise to give it, by our
determination to deal fairly with workmen, even when that justice
may seem to involve our own loss. The time of unreasonable and
blind outcry against the Trades Unions is, I am happy to think, gone
by; and has given place to the hope of a time when these great
Associations, well organised, well served, and earnestly supported,
as I KNOW them to be, will find other work before them than the
temporary support of their members and the adjustment of due wages
for their crafts: when that hope begins to be realised, and they
find they can make use of the help of us scattered units of the
cultivated classes, I feel sure that the claims of art, as we and
they will then understand the word, will by no means be disregarded
by them.
Meantime with us who are called artists, since most unhappily that
word means at present another thing than artisan: with us who
either practise the arts with our own hands, or who love them so
wholly that we can enter into the inmost feelings of those who do,--
with us it lies to deal with our last question, to stir up others to
think of answering this: How shall we give people in general hope
and pleasure in their daily work in such a way that in those days to
come the word art SHALL be rightly understood?
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