Chapter V: Part 5

Throughout the community, rich or poor delegate no manual labour which can be done at home. Every girl of every class is a good needlewoman and dressmaker. Every boy is trained to be a skilful carpenter and is not ashamed of sewing on his buttons or darning his socks. Industrious habits, habits of making use of odd moments in practical home work, enter into every sphere. The great war taught the wiser how much outdoor assistance could be dispensed with. The colossal rise in wage obliged even the well-to-do to learn to turn their hands to the simplest duties connected with _home_. In time this beneficial result will become automatic, and a far simpler as well as more dignified life is certain to result from it. Of scholars, artists, writers and musicians there is a goodly number, which is increasing, owing to less hurry and more concentration, the result of better physical conditions. Men of the highest attainments, who are following the professions, inspired by peace and moderate expenditure of money, keep their minds fresh by light labour on the land, which they prefer to SPORT; indeed, SPORT, once made a business, is rather despised. It is thought to be enervating, and an idle, unproductive way of “getting through time.” Mental vitality is increased by labour which became necessary to men of small means through the rise of wages and reckless increase of rates and taxes. It now seems to permeate the richest as well as the poorest classes, so men are becoming more dignified and self-helpful.

§ 27

Theoretical politics and party conventions are ruled out by strenuous practical occupations. Instead of being the last subject for action, _useful citizenship is the first_. Politics used to be abstractions put into phrases by _doctrinaires_. The text completed, its result was pigeon-holed, under the fallacy that the object was attained when, indeed, it had only been talked about. People are now united, hence can govern themselves. There is no need for sermons upon thrift and economy; they are practised. Politicians have been taught that their words formed easy back-doors for the exit of action. The people are interested now from top to bottom in deeds. Theories which do not lead to action represent waste of energy; energy displayed in every section of the community is in demand.

Some return to more primitive social conditions is evidently an invigorating process. An easy way of getting through life by facilities which militated against effort was unstiffening the back of the English character. Instead of saying to himself, “How much can I do myself?” the majority was saying, “How much can I delegate?” “We were on the look-out for a very beneficent fairy who would perform miracles, and so, instead of effort, we were trusting to ease. Now, we are sweeping our own floors instead of wasting our little savings upon paying for the doing of it. We were thinking that sweeping our houses clean was a tax upon time, an exhausting expenditure of physical energy. Experience is telling us the opposite.” “Mental energies are revived, even stimulated, by automatic industry which is a rest to them. While a man is sweeping his house or garden, he can think, and think well. He can organise his work.” These words I heard from the mouth of a scholar. I heard the same thought expressed by a skilled craftsman, differently, but analogous. “The lack of domestic servants is proving a blessing to us all,” I heard a woman say. “We did not know, under the old self-indulgent system, how long a day was, and what a lot of time we wasted. We had forgotten we had hands, strong muscles and vigorous aptitudes. We paid a high price for the neglect to which we had submitted our physical energies. We suffered from ‘boredom’ and other evils consequent upon indolence. Now, we do not ask ourselves how we shall dispose of the day. That question is answered before it is asked. We have our duties to perform to the Commune, as members of it, to our homes as sacred trusts as our palaces of pleasure as well as duty. We know what are our responsibilities. We accept and use them, in the city and home.” As my spirit grew in experience and closer observation, I noticed that in matters of dress or costume there was little difference between the classes. Constant changes of fashion created to supply the tradesmen when novelties were so constantly demanded from them, are out of date. The garments of the rich may be more elaborately adorned, be more sumptuous, more composed of silk than wool, but in their simple cut they are not differentiated from those of the poorer classes.

“We do not make them all at home,” I heard an elegantly attired lady of high rank say. “That would be unfair; because we can afford to give employment, expensive though it is. At the same time, quite half is made at home. Even in houses of the rich the peaceful sound of the loom prevails. Our daughters are all taught to use it, for who knows when they may be compelled to do so. It is wise to instruct the young in occupation which they may be called upon to use in darker times. Besides,” the lady added, “girls need quiescent employment to establish character. It is not that the arts are ceasing to flourish or the elegancies of mental cultivation are curtailed; it is only,” as the lady went on to say, “now that we are more busy we have more time. A girl can study a language while she works her loom, or another can read to her.” This led me to wonder if peripatetic teaching was usual? It is, for, in schools young people are encouraged while learning by heart, reciting or reading aloud, to personate, by action the drama or tale they are telling. This habit, no doubt, has arisen from the high position the drama and all that belongs to histrionic training takes in the new life. Artists and such who are called by their genius to create are not a set apart, nor are they regarded any longer as harmless lunatics. Being, by the nature of their calling constructors, they are expected to help in the affairs of the Commune, not only as specialities but as intelligences well adapted to other forms of construction than those demanded from their own work. The mind of an artist of any kind, in letters, graphic or plastic arts, or music, is a well tuned instrument. It must be so, or success is out of the question.

§ 28

Being imaginative, a follower of any of the Arts sees miles ahead of the less endowed crowd. Besides being a useful person in that respect, it is good for his temperament to be called away from a groove wherein, if he allows himself to remain, he becomes a machine, and his art suffers. The strongest faculty for creation cannot be used for many hours daily, it cannot keep up the tension of creation as a machine. A mind demands repose by change of work, which can be obtained in serving upon councils where special aptitudes of foresight and imagination are useful. Thus, coming into contact with other minds, the individual is broadened. He is not an ascetic except in his study; outside of that he is a man of the world and capable of dealing with what are called “plain men,” which does not always mean wise ones. It is related of an Italian philosopher that he spent his days with the peasants on his little estate, the evenings in his study. Not a bad division of the day Socrates would have told us. In the Agora of Athens, wise men found both folly and wisdom: folly to refute, wisdom to encourage. Plato’s Republic is an effort to show that a democracy, under restraint, is the fairest form of government. First, the conception of the scheme founded upon the greatest good for the greatest number, to be followed by activity in its promotion. Experience is gained as activity proceeds, discussion follows experience. The bud is before the blossom. The fruit is selected; what is rotten is thrown away. It is futile to discuss a question, and tear it into rags before it has been set in motion. There is a point in progress when not to start the top spinning is folly. The top, when once started, must be whipped continually. It stops spinning as soon as the strokes of the whip subside. The great fault of the late administration was the policy of “Wait and see.” A blind man may wait; doing so will not help him to see! To imagine that committees, based only on theories, have settled all the pros and cons, is to put the cart before the horse. Committees can do no more than propose such and such starting points for action. The rest must be left to the executive. Too often, no action follows the sittings of an elaborate scheme.

§ 29

To delay action is as ineffectual as to hurry it. The great war taught that the complete preparation of Germany failed of success because the moral element at the bottom of extreme diligence and multifarious ingenuity was _rotten_. The Allies were unprepared, England most so of all (notwithstanding some historians). England was not prepared for the great struggle, but she and her Allies had justice on their side, hence they won. After the war reconstruction should have started at once, which means that abuses which the war has brought into prominence should have been stopped or England would suffer permanently. It appears that politicians narrow and personal in their ambition were unable to effect the change. They delayed action even at moments of serious danger, lest their party should suffer defeat. Now, no one cares twopence about “Party,” the question before Democracy is, What is to be done in spite of Party Government? A democracy, to be enduring, must govern itself. No party must be in the ascendant, except the one which is in combination with all parties, _e.g._, the unity not the equality, of classes. The Agora was a place in disorder, where every man’s hand was against his neighbour. The crowd was led by unwise agitators. Ignorance and unwisdom are nearly related. We were tired to death of theories, of Government promises, of its failure to keep them, of leaders who were broken reeds, who, under pretence of giving Freedom exercised Tyranny. So we listened to wiser men than they, we resolved no longer to be ignorant, and becoming convinced that, as ignorant, we are not fitted to take part in Government, we would pull ourselves together and once more be men and work as good citizens.

These latter words and the statements which precede them formed the substance of a lecture delivered in the Town Hall by a factory worker this very evening. And what a contrast in tone it exhibits to that truculent one which disfigured whatever hidden justice there might have been in similar and dissimilar orations emanating from the same source. This one was as wise as the other was foolish. Like Socrates, we may now go to the Agora and find wisdom.

“Plato’s Republic aimed at completeness in Theory and discipline in Action. The New Democracy aims at making itself aristocratic in practice. It aims to promote activity in every corner and enterprise of life. We do not pretend that our class is the only one necessary to welfare. It was ignorance that in past times made us think that; bad guidance as well. We recognise ourselves to be branches of the great Tree of Life, whose roots are embedded in the soil of Truth. We recognise ourselves to be as waves in a great stream progressing, meandering, ever moving on from its source to the sea. We recognise the sea to be as a deep scheme which nature has provided, subject to storm, stress, and calm; we bring to its salt waters invigorating drops of freshness from the hills and collected in the plains. We are not at work alone, now, whatever our work be. We are brothers in a great family, not jealous egoists. Time was when we thought of little else than money. We thought that the educated, the refined and learned class was made up of enemies who would make us slaves. We see we were wrong. They are our real friends. Our enemies they are who we thought were our friends, we see that now. Our friends will give us _a real democracy_, in which we may have a voice if we please. The others would give us a sham one, and rule not only our theories but our actions and with a tyranny as ruthless and obstructive to progress as any autocracy.”

From the Agora wise words come now, from which all can learn. The people were _becoming_ corrupted, they have been too wise to _become_ corrupt. I think that most of us who have given ourselves the trouble to think knew that good leadership was what was wanted. First convincing, then leading, not looking back, but going to the root of things which were discordant and pruning them away, that is what was wanted.

They, of the past, wanted an “Ideal,” but they did not know it. Indeed, they scorned the idea of something that was like religious sectarian dogma. It was to them something hopeless and abstract, and quite outside “Life,” with which it had no touch. They thought high wages, wealth, indeed Mammon in any form, was the god they needed, and to that they made their way, growing more and more discontented, cynical, envious and suspicious. That was the matter with the people who had once been patterns to all Europe as honest workmen. England once simple, happy, industrious (_not industrial_) had become complicated, discontented, IDLE.

§ 30

In my peregrinations, which became more and more absorbing as my spirit grew more bold, I listened eagerly, not as an eavesdropper, but as one keen to learn. One evening, it was winter--I heard a discourse on “Happiness” by a craftsman, one of those living in the new houses I have visited. He was an old man who had lived in the dark, narrow dogs’ kennels of the dark, dirty city which is no more--the city of discontent, of bad government, of callousness. He spoke earnestly, but not with rhapsody. What he said was convincing from the cool sincerity of his diction and manner. “Happiness,” he said, “is rooted in the soil of LABOUR; in _doing_, not theorising. In being so occupied as to leave no time for a morbid outlook. The old saying, which I did not, and few seemed to understand, ‘Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might.’ We were taught not to do that. We were taught to work as little as possible, to receive much, and give almost nothing. Good workmen were under a ban. If some of us wished to do our utmost we were bullied and suspected. The industrious of us were pushed aside by the idle. Bad, dishonest workmen were applauded, they lived on the labour of their fellows. We were taught to make other nations labour for us--to sell bad goods for large prices.

“The standard of work was lowered. Cheap German goods were encouraged in the markets. A balance of our wages (a large one) went to support trades unions. The good workman grew poor, the bad grew rich. It was a state of things which took all the strength of an honest man to combat. Honest men grew rare and more rare. Dishonesty flourished. Leaders became fanatics. They were of our class. Ignorant of cause and effect we were, but they were noisy, they spoke platitudes, their arguments (if arguments they could be called) were founded upon catch words which sounded wise, but were foolish. They pretended to work for the great cause of Liberty and Equality. They _did_ nothing of the kind. They feathered their nests from our labour and grew rich. They were well paid for the cause they preached. Liberty was dragged more and more into the far distance. We thought we had been slaves; we found we had been free. We found we were being mastered by unscrupulous men. We grew more and more suspicious, more and more hostile. We thought revolution would put things straight. Taught, that the Government was weak (which was not far wrong), that anarchy would give us what we wanted, that if we defied the Government, if we used German methods of might against right, we must win. To starve our country into submission was a method preached to us which, in our hearts, we were unwilling to believe. If we did not obey we were threatened. Those of us who would not stood the chance of starvation. The great railway strike of 1919, wicked as it was, because it very nearly approached attempted murder of innocent people, failed. That strike it was that opened our eyes. Surely we were being led on the wrong road! Faith in our leaders left us. They _began to hedge_. We saw that. Then we knew they were false and untrustworthy and we broke loose from them, which, having done, we began to find who were our friends. We came to the conclusion that we must get to work again and be honest once more. We did so, and on every side found helping hands. Hence the city of Liberty and Peace in which we live now. We know we were ignorant, we resolved to learn. We knew we had been idle and greedy. We knew the life we had led could not make good citizens or happy ones. We resolved to labour, to give up coarse excitements in leisure time.

“We tried it. We formed our own Union, which had for its motto, ‘All Labour is dignified,’ but it depends upon the labourer to make it so. ‘Help yourselves and you will be helped,’ is such a truism it seems needless to quote, but there are many truisms of which we need to be often reminded. We know now that reform must come from the bottom. If the foundations are rotten the veriest palace will fall. We know that in us lies the foundation of the State. Before the State is reformed we must reform ourselves, and this we are doing. When it is accomplished we shall be fit to take part in the rule of our country, and we are on the road to do it, in the meantime we are learning the difficult task of SELF RULE, and in that, even if it be labour to do it, it is lightened by the vision it provides, and the happy conscience it engenders. Now, we are children of Liberty, before we were cripples and chained to doctrinaires and wind-bags.”

The tone of this discourse, of which is given only an epitome is, as it were, the text of all that is working its way, and the means employed in its success my dream will go on to relate.

§ 31

An important neglected industry is revived. I noticed many men with deeply stained arms and hands; they were the dyers. It did not much matter that coal-tar dyes slipped through English fingers and were developed in Germany, because the colours they made were vulgar and discordant, far more in harmony with Teutonic taste than English. Many years ago the author of these pages was in Algiers and heard of local dyers there, some Arabs, but mostly Moors they were. A black Soudanese servant of his told him of them. At once he took advantage of this and put into their hands fine muslin strips, which they converted into colour as exquisite as possible. Now rags, the remnants retain their freshness. A yellow like crocus, a pink rose, a lustrous black shot with copper, a green like fresh ivy leaves, an iris purple, and a blue like the sea at Malta. He tried to get the colour copied--there were no dyers with the skill to do it. Since those days (50 years ago), and quite recently, I hear that enterprising people from the New City have learnt many a secret from Eastern dyers. In this instance, instead of spoiling oriental taste for colour, alas! a habit of the commercial English, they are learning from them. India is helping England out of her bad taste. More beautiful tints I never saw than those in my dream. The sight of them made my spirit think how much we might learn from the East of value instead of pushing our tasteless goods where for centuries beauty has prevailed. The eye is pleased now in the New City, instead of displeased. Beautiful colour seems to grow naturally, the streets and gardens are full of it.

Every garment gives a lively note which is the key to interchanges of harmonies of colour only to be compared with exquisite music. The trade of the dyer has become an Art which creates pictures at every turn of the road and field.

§ 32

Why is the New City so orderly and yet so free? How is it that life seems to run so smoothly, and yet without monotony? Trades are located as they were in Ancient Greece and Rome, in a measure also in Europe and England in better times than ours were a while ago. Chaos is no more. The hundred headed hydra, personified in “the middle-man,” that robber of the earnings of labour, is becoming extinct, owing in large measure to the more extended use of the market, where as we have seen practically any article can be purchased at a reasonable price which leaves a reasonable profit for the producer. This has led to a diminution of shops, which are no longer heterogeneously planted in residential quarters. Every tradesman has to take out a licence for which he pays, the money going to the Commune. There is the Butchers’ Quarter, a blessing indeed. No longer are wayfarers offended by the barbarous sights of bleeding corpses, of blood sprinkling the footways. If such horrors must be, they are hidden. No butcher is permitted to make a public display of his bloody trade. Meat, when not sold in the Market, is found in a district set apart for a necessary, if disgusting, trade, but its products are not before the public eye. The shop is not _on the street_, it is located behind it. The same law applies to poulterers, indeed, to all trades which, of necessity, contain objectionable matter. A large, but not universal, part of the fish trade is carried on by the weekly market; but, owing to the swift destruction of freshness, and fish being a health-giving food (besides being cheap) there is a considerable demand for fresh as well as salt water fish, therefore shops for its sale are a necessity. Fishmongers alike with butchers have their locality.

Those trades which are disconnected with unpleasant associations are not excluded from public gaze. Only those of them which produce _litter_ are restricted in residential quarters. Silversmiths, and all shops associated with handicrafts, are permitted on the public streets, of which they are ornaments, but these also take out a licence, but the tax is smaller than for objectionable trades. The order thus established is in no sense inconvenient. Electric tramways (only one line is permitted) run in the broad streets. They are not allowed in the narrow. The lovely city of Florence has been well nigh spoiled by liberty to run trams in streets not more than 25 feet wide. The English Communes took note of that. When facilities for quick locomotion are not regulated, they constitute a nuisance, are destructive of peace, and become a tyranny. “Companies” pretended to study the convenience of citizens, in reality studied their own financial success, and let other considerations take their chance.

All foreign goods of whatever kind, save those provided by British Colonies, are taxed. Free trade is only permitted to the colonials. Since this has been a law of all the Communes, British trade has increased, British output is larger, and greater activity of production has proved the wisdom of a law which encourages local enterprises. Every householder is bound to keep clean the footway immediately touching his habitation, but the cleanliness of the roadway is under the direction of the Commune. Wandering over every portion of the city in my dream I have seen no squalor. Poverty there is and always must be, but squalor, the result of want of self respect and bad early training, no! The people have risen above it. Where industry is (not industrialism) squalor can find no place. A man who keeps the tools of his trade in good order, who is proud of the work of which they are the implements, and who respects his home, is particular about “appearances.” So is a good wife, so are good sons and daughters.

§ 33

Home life is but a little picture of the extended scene outside. Disorder in smaller matters leads to disorder in greater. While the Commune is responsible for order on a large scale, every citizen is responsible on a smaller scale. The half is greater than the whole! Order must be a first principle of the home, as it must be of the Commune, which is but an extended home. The new city being small compared to the monstrous, heterogeneous places of muddle in the past, and leisure greater, there is less call for swift locomotion. The new people walk more, and are, consequently, more healthy. So the streets are not congested by traffic, and people are not all in the muddle-minding strain of “hurry.” Where order is, leisure is certain. Busy, or rather, industrious people always find time, it is only an ill-regulated day that produces “hurry-scurry.” Outside my dream, I never knew an industrious man complain of want of time. William Morris, as industrious a man as ever breathed, never complained of interrupters. After a visit from a friend, and none took greater pleasure than he in giving him welcome, Morris was at his work again in a “twinkling.” The man who orders his day wisely is alert, ready at any moment to concentrate his energy. The idle, not the industrious, grumble about want of time. The real question, and one that is serious, is the use to which leisure is subjected. The so-called working class (by the way, every man worth his salt is a working man) is coming to know that, and that ill-used leisure is a sin against order, and here in the new life he has set his mind against it. From what has been recounted of my dream the reader already knows that, but as it proceeds, my dream will show how order, punctuality, and reverence for the uses which leisure should breed is permeating the entire community and becoming a habit, hence idle folk are in the minority, indeed, they are despised.

§ 34

It has been read from my dream, so far, that, while material welfare of the people is one object, and a prominent one, the Commune, as the guiding spirit of the new life, is fully conscious of the wise saying of Jesus Christ, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the Spirit of God.” We had eyes and saw not, ears and heard not; noble intuitions we repulsed, aspirations we neglected, and we were taught elaborate creeds out of touch with realities. Blind, too often, to the beauties of nature and its sisters “The Arts,” we had grown deaf to the songs of birds, to music of the winds moaning, or joyfully singing, among forest trees. We had ceased to sing as we worked. Indeed, the natural joys granted us to receive have ceased to please, ceased to be a part of life. To the arts, which seek to crystallise visions inspired by God’s gift of exquisite nature, we had become blind and deaf. They had ceased to move us, ceased to inspire us, ceased to raise us from the mire of money grabbing. So eager we were for wealth that we pursued it blindly as the only object of our energies. We had lost touch with half, and the better half, of life, and the soul of England was becoming hardened, insensitive, and ANIMAL. Good, in some ways the hard Puritan was dead to the beauty of God’s work. He thought he was spiritual. He did not know that there is soul in all matter. In this respect he was more _un_christian than a pagan, who, at least, saw the gods and recognised them in the movement of the stars, in the dawn, in the shining midday, and the splendour of sunset time. The old pagan found God in all nature, as he found him in great art. He saw into the very heart of the marble from which Phidias carved Olympian Zeus. He saw the spirit of Pallas Athene under the ivory and golden statue in the Parthenon.

The Puritan cut himself off from _All Beauty_. Instead of seeing good in God’s greatest works and in man’s most inspired creations, he saw evil. His mind was distorted, a cripple; and little did he dream that his spiritual nature was really a material one. To his narrow and crooked creed much of the apathy of the modern mind is to be traced. “As it was wicked to see beauty, to worship it as God made it, let us make ourselves rich.” What a Creed?

With the neglect of _agriculture_ came the Tyranny of _industrialism_. With an apathy towards Art, towards its great mission to display the beauty of the soul in the array of material presentation, the soul of England was growing degenerate. It was becoming GERMAN, and what lower place than that can be found for a country so great as England has been! We have to remake England, and we mean to do it. We mean to learn from the Pagans, to reinstate much of their teaching. We mean to cultivate the teaching of Jesus Christ, who drew a lesson from the “lilies of the field,” the death of a sparrow, His generosity to the mistake of a troubled woman. Who, from the Cross blessed a thief, who, dying in agony, forgave his enemies, who taught the gospel of _thou_ more than I, who would give to Cæsar as well as to God, and, above all, whose noble life was pressed on by human as well as Divine love. Jesus Christ was a poet and artist as well as a prophet and reformer. The life of the soul was everything to Him. Wealth for wealth’s sake is a phantom, a chimera. We mean to go back to find a fairer road to happiness than the modern world would give us. While we accept facilities for greater comfort, we mean to use them wisely, not to overwhelm us, but to help us. We wish to help the people to see beauty, and in their lives to live up to the vision. To live, not as a preparation for another and happier life, to reward in a future state, but to live and see with clear eyes the one which is now ours to make or mar it. Every man and woman who labours is praising God, so long as the labour is not from _greed_, but from a fixed principle to enrich the soul of the people by first enriching our own.

§ 35

These words and a great many more I heard said, not in a church, but in the Town Hall by a great artist, and they led me to search. In my dream I had seen how the principles he dwelt upon were already at work in the homes of the people in municipal government, which was seeking Justice and Fraternity. So I extended my travels and observations.

The walls of the churches are growing busy with beauty. The fear of idol worship is no more. Men know now, being better instructed, that it was not the wooden effigy _but the soul it put into a shape_, that was worshipped. It was a symbol, sometimes an ugly one, but still a symbol of Divine Power. The crafts are symbols of industry, of faithfulness to an ideal that only the best work counts for good, hence underlying their technical merit is a great truth that the people are understanding, and of which they are conscious, so they have pride in the ethic as well as æsthetic quality of what they are doing; but in no spirit of priggism or sermonising is this, just simply it is a pleasurable sensation added to the fulfilment of duty. For what a man does unwillingly will be bad, what he does pleasurably will be good and impressive.

Many of the pictures are strange, some would call them childish. Perhaps they are _childlike_ because they express intensity without rhetoric. To affect to be what one is not is humbug. Every “primitive” did his best. He tried hard to make his pictures look like nature. His hand was not so cultivated as his imagination. The image he formed in his mind was more complete than his power to portray it. Looking at works of art by “a primitive,” if we have the discriminating sensibility, we see what he saw and follow his mental effort, which compensates for technical shortcomings. To _affect_ childishness is to prove imbecility. What we like in the new world pictures is their real _naïvete_. That the authors of them are untaught is obvious, but there is that in them which compensates. They are done by men who believe in what they are doing and are feeling it with intensity. An academic critic can find plenty to criticise, but nothing to laugh at. The simplicity evinced comes from the fact that their authors ARE _primitive_. I heard said they are mostly by peasants, who, like the noblest of French artists, J. François Millet, saw _simply_. Even when the subjects are biblical or so-called “religious,” the artist has used modern costume, which, seeing in an abstract, not photographic, manner, he has invested with poetical interest. A return to agricultural life is everywhere evident. It is producing, or reinstating, a healthy mental temperament which industrialism was well-nigh killing. This natural aptitude to create in art and to do so sincerely is not only prominent among the people, whose chief labour is agricultural, it is shown in the design of “industrials” also, who, not wholly emancipated by the artificiality of their labour earning hours, “let themselves go” in their leisure time and show by what they produce that even their straightforward simplicity has not been killed by the monotony of their wage-earning hours. They are not machines in their off hours, but human beings who have something to say for themselves which may be uncultured, but is a spontaneous expression of something they like to think of and enjoy making.

§ 36

Machinery can never be made to feel, the hand can do nothing worth having without “feeling.” A bit of craftsmanship, like a building, a statue, a picture, a song, or a tale, gives itself away at once. If the impulse was artificial or insincere, it is at once obvious that the man who made it was not an artist; he might be anything else, but not that. The exact quantity of pleasure taken in the creation of a work of art is visible at once, in that sense the maker of it exposes his soul. The revival of craftsmanship is evident everywhere in the new city. The best designers are the best workmen. We never hear it said, “Oh, yes, he can design, but cannot make.” The craftsman makes well what he has well designed. Being simple, he asks himself, “What is the object for? What is it intended to do when it is made?” Having made up his mind to solve that question, the first in good design, he proceeds to make it answer that purpose, and something good and interesting is the result. The artist has used his intelligence from first to last, so what he makes is something that has life in it, because it is a reflection of the life of its creator. As craftsmanship grows in estimation, machinery is delegated to do what it can do well, not ill. Furthermore, the extension of the demand for craftsmanship provides occupation which may be entirely thus occupied, or only in leisure hours, and leisure hours so occupied are educational, and not only that, they are productive, inasmuch as their authors sell their productions and so add to their earnings in a manner that is useful to them and beneficial to the community.

As with the churches, so with all public buildings, which are (by the way) not made to “pattern” in accordance with this or that “style”--Gothic, Classic, Renaissance, or what not. The art they exhibit rises out of the “plan.” They are not “faced” with a skin of stone or stucco to look what they are not. The outside does not conceal but expresses the “plan.” Construction is not hidden, but revealed. Ornament is not “stuck on,” it is a growth out of construction. To an eye artificially accustomed to “shams” the new buildings look austere. They seem to reflect a serious people who want to tell the truth. Should it be necessary to erect them in steel or iron, the metal is treated against the action of weather, but is not concealed. If it forms the skeleton, the skeleton is visible, and so all through the construction. Stone looks like stone, wood like wood, and metal like metal. This principle carried out does not make for monotony, but for the reverse. These serious and impressive public buildings are, as it were, the picture galleries of the city. Not executed in a hurry, the subjects of the wall paintings are well thought out by a select committee of learned men and artists. They are proceeding. As yet some are incomplete, but enough are finished to demonstrate the care taken in their subject matter, which is not only local, but embodies episodes of English history. While being pleasant to the eye, they tell pleasant and noble tales of the lives of our ancestors who made England great. Again here, as we noticed in the churches, there is much original simplicity, which does not ape archæology, or rather does not make that valuable science the first necessity. Looking at them one feels they could only have been done to-day. The impress of what is best in the modern mind is there, not artificial, but sincere and vital. Presently we shall leave the city to see what agriculture is doing.

§ 37

We have seen that the Fine Arts are not commercial incidents in the life here, they are part of the scheme of it. The Drama is also not only a source of pleasure or, of momentary emotion. It is held to be a prominent factor in education, whose mission it is to elevate intelligence, encourage noble ardour, stimulate heroism and provide beauty. Under the old system the Drama was too often used ill. The play played down to the people, often exciting the lower passions. To be made familiar with vice is, in a measure, to take part in it. To sow vice on the boards of the stage is to make it popular. The idea that vice is romantic is combated now. Vice is ugly, as virtue is lovely. Art has no business with ugliness except it be used as a contrast to beauty. To perpetuate ugliness by Art is like encouraging the durance of the plague. Higher intelligence verified by education should be employed to uplift, not depress, choice. Lower intelligence must be guided by the higher!

What is being done by Art in the churches, in public buildings, gives evidence that the people are regarding it as essential, not as a thing to be played with. Our city, not being large, is manageable. Being near the country, every citizen is in touch with country life. Indeed, there are few who do not labour on their own bit of garden in however small a way. Country life is not foreign to the artizan or to the factory worker. SQUALOR, that curse of big cities, the result of ignorant and debased people herding together, is unknown here. Poverty there is, of course, that must be everywhere, but it need not be debasing. So much that was degrading has gone. _Sloth_ is no more. What was useless is purged away, and what were positive scandals of misrule have been replaced by order, sobriety and uplifting. It is recognised that while a city must be a centre of commerce it need not be that of greed, and need not be divorced from country life. Hence the gardens provide for the people adequate means of employment in such matters; so that while the city is commercial, it is not out of touch with many forms of agriculture; and the blanched, hopeless faces in the past too prevalent, are replaced by bronzed faces and the open happy countenances of a contented industrious people.

What has been gained? Fraternity. A clean atmosphere and more sun, more leisure and more work, a broader outlook on the life of a city, expanded agriculture and education, greater variety of pleasures, a more _human_ as well as _humane_ ideal, and an equable government covering a great variety of interests, with absence of class legislation, death to profiteering, and education in honesty for tradesmen. What has been lost? Squalor, trade tyranny, jobbery, pollution of rivers, smoke, drunkenness, bloodless bodies and ill-nourished souls, and, above all, selfish class egoism. Government is carried on with less talk and more action. There is not less but more money in the country, which is more distributed. Agriculture pays sufficiently. The middleman having found his match, tradesmen can no longer extort from workers prices they cannot afford to pay. Politicians have not the opportunity of getting the country into a muddle and then muddling their way out of it by false promises to whichever class is for the moment uppermost. The people, better educated, are not easily led by windbags. They see that the whole nation counts before the individual, that a nation which, for temporary wealth, neglects to till the land to (as far as possible) produce, but purchases from foreign countries its food, is neglecting the first duty to the community. It has come to them to know that the success of agriculture is the first necessity to be secured. The people are being taught that a country which in an emergency cannot feed itself off its own land may be at the mercy of its enemy at any moment. The great war taught them that the weakest spot was not to be found in difficulty to make guns and shells and even an army in a hurry, but in providing them and the people at home with food. Empty bellies are bad generals! And so the people have turned to, and resolve that their country shall never again be exposed to the risk of a great _débâcle_, which was nearer than politicians desire them to know. While our cities are better organised, more healthfully disposed, they are smaller in area; hence congestion which produces squalor, is no more. A large proportion of what were useless folk, undisciplined, and a drag upon the State, as well as a shame to it, are performing the first duty of man, the tillage, the care of, and the provisioning of the land in all matters connected with agriculture. Agriculture being first now, industrialism second, the cities are released from over-population, and the countryside is adequately populated. Owing to the growth of an agricultural population, more small towns and villages are growing up all over England. Much of what was not a relative but positive scandal is no more. There is plenty of work for everybody who chooses to find it and take it. It is considered unmanly to live on doles.

Cities are not less but more successful commercial centres. But the influx is native, not foreign. England supplies herself out of the exertions of her people, for she is no longer buying necessities from foreign markets, but from her own. The country is the source of the wealth of the towns. The great war taught that in the future England must be self-providing. She must grow her own timber, her own fruit and corn, provide her own meat and, as far as possible, in case of another naval war, provide her own fish from inland sources as well as from the sea. Her fine rivers, her lakes, her ponds must be kept stocked with fresh water fish. To do this, the pollution of all inland waters is absolutely, not relatively, forbidden, not forbidden by an Act of Parliament which is quite a negligible affair when made by lawyers who leave open a back door for the escape of a rich delinquent, who will pay a nominal fine over and over again if it suits his purpose to destroy valuable fish by the thousand. What does the payment of a nominal fine mean to a rich manufacturer? Nothing. The pollution of rivers as of the air has been stopped by the people, who very rightly say, “We will not be deprived of the food provided for us by our rivers, and we will not be deprived of a grain of corn unnourished by the sun, or a blade of grass for the cattle poisoned by deleterious acids from factories.” “We have a right,” they say, “to pure water, to pure air, and all the benefits from life-giving rays of the sun essential in a country placed as England is in the centre of the sea, where clouds must always hide a considerable portion of sunlight.” The people are learning from science that light is essential to life, that darkness is a symbol of death.

§ 38

A few sentences back, arboriculture has been mentioned. Let us see how in the new England, it has become a factor in the wealth of the country, how, once almost wholly neglected, it has become an industry at once profitable, engaging and health-giving. It takes time to grow a forest. Time will come when coal gives out, of that there is no doubt, so the sooner we set to work to provide wood for burning as well as for building the better. It is clear, then, that England must provide wood. A war which would prevent influx of wood into England might happen at any moment. Millions a year are spent on a navy to protect commerce, but that navy may be rendered powerless by mine-sowing, by stealthy under-water craft which, with one torpedo, can sink the biggest ship ever constructed, or by a bomb from an aeroplane, become a wreck in a moment. If that be so, it is obvious that to neglect provision for such a fatality would be the height of folly, which even a party politician cannot fail to acknowledge. It is clear, then, that Britain must have wood, and wood of her own growing. I gather from my travels that this is at last being accomplished. Wherever, in the length and breadth of Britain, Forests can be planted and trees grown, the Communes see to it. Some counties lend themselves to the form of industry which forestry implies more than others. Certain trees suffer from situations where storms of wind prevail, some do not suffer. The fir tribe will flourish well in windy districts, but sand is necessary for their root nourishment. This is proved by the miles of fir forests grown on the flat lands between the Carrara Mountains and Leghorn, and on the damp but still sandy districts around Ravenna. Most trees, to flourish, need drainage, but some will flourish where there is none. So now, in Britain, forests are being planted wherever possible, so long as they do not interfere with open land necessary to the growth of corn.

To one of these forests I made my silent, unseen way, and it was a revelation. Thousands of hands were occupied. Forest life is primeval, it is dignified; it is a life by itself quite away from the distractions of city life; it breeds a hardy race. A self-contained life, it is pre-eminently health producing. The settlers live in wooden huts built by themselves in glades cleared for the purpose. In a measure the people are supported with food, for game is plentiful, and fish from lakes and ponds made for the purpose and constantly restocked are sufficient to supply nourishing food. Game laws are no more. There is no stoppage in production. Fresh stocks of game and fish are constantly coming in, and this is an industry by itself, which provides labour, ingenuity and expert technical knowledge.

The people have made their own “close time” in breeding seasons, and have learnt not to consume more than they can breed. I heard it said that mistakes were made at first, which experience rectified. Laws followed the dictation of necessity. Wages are low but sufficient, as the greater part of food is provided by nature. One law is obligatory. When a tree is cut down, another small one is immediately planted in its place, so there are no gaps and no waste. For this purpose there are nurseries managed by experts in the growing of young saplings from seed. This industry is a specialised one, needing great skill. It is pleasant to hear the merry sound of the axe, the music made by wind among the branches, and the sound of singing as the people work is a sign of their health and happiness. The huts built of wood are erected upon posts driven deep into the ground. Their habitable parts above the ground are reached by an open stairway. The ground floor, well concreted, is the receptacle for forestry implements.

The forest is warm in winter, cool in summer. Wood only is permitted as fuel; it would cost too much to get coal there; besides, the people would object to the smoke of that bituminous and blackening product. From what I hear said, colliery owners disliked the innovation; it would reduce their profits. They considered that they, and they only, held rights on fuel to provide warmth, but public opinion obliged them to stop their class prejudice in their own favour. Every block of buildings has its vegetable and fruit gardens for whose well-being, for light and air, spaces are cleared of trees.

§ 39

Never were seen healthier children or more honest countenanced people--the men at the labour, the women at their looms. The men are hunters, too. They employ the ancient bow and arrow, so the sweet silence is not spoiled by the irritating sound of firearms so closely connected with war and all its abominations. The skins of stags and roe deer form winter garments made at home, for there are no shops here. Every household provides its own needs. Here and there are artificial lakes where the people bathe and swim. After all, a primitive life is the natural one, to which we soon revert when the artificiality of life in cities is far distant.