UC-NRLF 
 
 EMD Oil 
 
THE RESTORATION OF THE 
 GILD SYSTEM 
 
THE RESTORATION OF 
 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR J. PENTY 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN AND CO., LTD. 
 
 25, HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY 
 
 1906 
 
CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
" TRUST THYSELF." 
 
 tr* 4 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 READERS of the following pages will 
 probably be aware that the idea of 
 restoring the Gild system as a solution of the 
 problems presented by modern industrialism 
 is to be found in the writings of John Ruskin, 
 who put forward the proposition many years 
 ago. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, as Ruskin failed 
 to formulate any practical scheme showing 
 how the Gilds could be re-established in 
 society, the proposal has never been seriously 
 considered by social reformers. Collectivism 
 may be said to have stepped into the breach 
 by offering a plausible theory for the recon- 
 struction of society on a co-operative basis, 
 and Ruskin's suggestion was incontinently 
 relegated to the region of impractical dreams. 
 
 My reason for reviving the idea is that 
 while I am persuaded that Collectivism is 
 
 b 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 incapable of solving the social problem, the 
 conviction is forced upon me that our only 
 hope lies in some such direction as that fore- 
 shadowed by Ruskin, and in the following 
 chapters I hope to show that it is not impos- 
 sible to discover practical ways and means of 
 re-establishing the Gilds in our midst. 
 
 In order to understand the full significance 
 of the present proposals they should be con- 
 considered in conjunction with the theory 
 put forward by Mr. Edward Carpenter in 
 " Civilization, Its Cause and Cure." Indeed 
 the present volume aims at forging the links 
 required to connect the theory there enunci- 
 ated with practical politics. 
 
 Two other books which have an import- 
 ant bearing on the subject, and might be 
 read with advantage, are Carlyle's " Past and 
 Present " and Matthew Arnold's " Culture 
 and Anarchy." 
 
 HAMMERSMITH, 
 
 August, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CJ?AP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE COLLECTIVIST FORMULA ... I 
 
 II. SOCIAL EVOLUTION 44 
 
 III. THE SPHERE OF POLITICAL REFORM . 57 
 
 IV. THE GILD SYSTEM 62 
 
 V. HOW THE GILDS MAY BE RESTORED . 73 
 
 vi. CONCLUSION 95 
 
 IX 
 
2 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 lation of industry may be entrusted," political 
 philosophers rush to the opposite extreme, 
 and propose to remedy the defect, first by the 
 regulation, and finally by the nationalization 
 of land, capital, and the means of production 
 and exchange ; which measures, we are told, 
 by changing the basis of society from a com- 
 petitive to a co-operative one, will, by pro- 
 viding the necessary conditions, eradicate 
 every disease from the body politic. 
 
 Such a remedy would be perfectly reasonable 
 if the evil to be combated were that of com- 
 petition. But it is not. It is true that com- 
 petition , as it manifests itself in modern society, 
 is a force of social disintegration. But this is 
 not because it is necessarily an evil thing; 
 but because the conditions under which it is 
 to-day pursued are intrinsically bad. That the 
 competition of to-day differs from that of the 
 past, we unconsciously recognize when we 
 
 Allen and Bernard Shaw have called themselves Socialists. 
 Collectivism is a definitely formulated scheme of reform, 
 developed within the last twenty years, which, owing to 
 the superior logic of its position, has beaten all rival 
 Socialistic theories out of the field. In a word the term 
 Collectivism may be said to indicate the generally accepted 
 means of arriving at the Socialist ideal. 
 
FORMULA 3 
 
 speak of commercial competition. Competi- 
 tion as it existed under the Gild System, when 
 hours and conditions of labour, prices, etc., 
 were fixed, was necessarily a matter of quality; 
 for when no producer was allowed to com- 
 pete on the lower plane of cheapness, com- 
 petition took the form of a rivalry in respe<5t 
 to the greater usefulness or beauty of the thing 
 produced. With the passing of the control of 
 industry from the hands of the craft-masters 
 into those of the financier and the abolition 
 of the regulations of the Gilds, the era of com- 
 mercial competition was inaugurated, and 
 what was formerly a healthy and stimulating 
 fadlor became a dangerous and disintegrating 
 reactionary force; for competition between 
 financiers means a competition for cheapness, 
 to which all other considerations must be 
 sacrificed. 
 
 F*r the sake of clearness, therefore, we will 
 define the terms competition and commercial- 
 ism, as follows: Commercialism means the 
 control of industry by the financier (as op- 
 posed to the master craftsman) while com- 
 petition means the rivalry of producers. 
 
 Viewing Collectivism in this light, we find 
 
4 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 that it seeks to eliminate, not commercialism, 
 but competition. In so doing it establishes 
 more securely than ever the worst features of 
 the present system. The mere transference 
 of the control of industry from the hands of 
 the capitalist into those of the state, can make 
 no essential difference to the nature of the 
 industry affefted. In Belgium, for example, 
 where the bread-making and shirt-making 
 industries have been nationalized, it has been 
 found impossible to abolish sweating, or to 
 introduce a shorter working day. 1 This 
 abandonment of the principle of social justice 
 at the outset doubtless foreshadows its aban- 
 donment for ever; since, as Colledlivists be- 
 come more and more concerned with practical 
 politics, the difficulties of asserting their 
 ideals, together with the establishment of 
 their system of organization, will likewise be 
 more and more increased. Moreover, after 
 its establishment, the difficulties of reforming 
 any State Department are well known; and 
 how shall society be prevented from acquiesc- 
 ing in the present commercial abuses, under 
 
 1 "The Social Unrest; Studies in Labour and Socialist 
 Movements," by John Graham Brooks. 
 
FORMULA 5 
 
 a colledtivist regime, and treating them as in- 
 evitable evils? 
 
 This question is a very pertinent one, since, 
 according to the economics of Collectivism, 
 every industry nationalized must be made to 
 pay, and a Government charged with the 
 administration of any industry would become 
 interested in its continuance as a business, 
 quite apart from its usefulness or otherwise, 
 or whether or no it had been called into exist- 
 ence by some temporary and artificial need 
 of modern civilization. Thus the Govern- 
 ment at the present time, having nationalized 
 the telegraphs, becomes interested in the con- 
 tinuance of gambling, the use of the system 
 in connexion with the turf and the markets 
 being its real basis of support, and not the 
 comparatively insignificant percentage of 
 work undertaken in respe<5t to the more 
 human agencies which require it. Again, 
 were existing railways nationalized, Govern- 
 ment would become interested in the con- 
 tinuance of wasteful cross distribution, called 
 into existence by the competition of traders. 
 Similarly, the gradual development of muni- 
 cipal trading and manufacture would tend to 
 
6 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 militate against the depopulation of towns. 
 And this conservative tendency is inevitable, 
 since Collectivism can only maintain its 
 ground as a national system so long as it 
 justifies the claims of its advocates to financial 
 soundness. 
 
 Co-operation in its inception aimed at the 
 establishment of an ideal commonwealth, 
 but the co-operative ideal has long since de- 
 parted from the movement, and little but a 
 scramble for dividends remains. In like man- 
 ner it is not unreasonable to suppose that 
 Collectivism, having made its appeal for 
 popular support on the grounds of its capa- 
 city to earn profits for the public, would suffer 
 a similar degeneration. The electorate, in 
 their profit-making zeal, would certainly not 
 remedy abuses if their dividends were to be 
 lowered, for they would still retain the super- 
 stition that only by producing dividends could 
 their finances be kept in a healthy condition. 
 Inasmuch as the ultimate control of industry 
 would rest in the hands of the financier, pro- 
 duction for profit and not for use would con- 
 tinue. For what other test can there be of a 
 financier's skill except his ability to produce 
 profits? 
 
FORMULA 7 
 
 In a word Collectivism means State Com- 
 mercialism. 
 
 So long as the people are attached to their 
 present habits of life and thought, and pos- 
 sess the same ill-regulated tastes, a State De- 
 partment, charged with the administration of 
 industry, would be just as much at the mercy 
 of supply and demand as at present, while the 
 fluctuations of taste would be just as disturb- 
 ing to them as the fluctuations of public 
 opinion are to the politician. 
 
 This brings us to the great political fallacy 
 of the Colleclivist doctrine namely, the as- 
 sumption that Government should be con- 
 ducted solely in the interests of man in his 
 capacity as consumer a superstition which 
 has survived the Manchester School; for a 
 little consideration will convince us that in a 
 true social system the aim of Government 
 would not be to exalt either producer or con- 
 sumer at the expense of the other, but to 
 maintain a balance of power between the two. 
 
 The policy of exalting the consumer at the 
 expense of the producer would be perfe<5tly 
 sound, if the evils of the present day were 
 caused by the tyranny of the producer. But 
 
8 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 is it so? It is true that trade is in such a 
 hopeless condition that the consumer is very 
 much at the mercy of unscrupulous producers. 
 The cause of this, however, is not to be found 
 in the preference of producers generally for 
 crooked ways, but in the tyranny of con- 
 sumers which forces the majority of producers 
 to adopt malpractices in self-defence. Doubt- 
 less all trade abuses have in their origin been 
 the work of individual producers. They grow, 
 in the first place, because without privileges 
 the more honourable producers are powerless 
 to suppress them, and secondly, because con- 
 sumers generally are so wanting in loyalty to 
 honest producers, and are so ready to believe 
 that they can get sixpennyworth of stuff" 
 for threepence, that they deliberately place 
 themselves in the hands of the worst type of 
 producer. In every department of life the 
 successful man is he who can lead the public 
 to believe they are getting something for 
 nothing, and generally speaking, if consumers 
 are defrauded by producers, it is because they 
 deserve to be. The truth of this statement 
 will be attested by all who, in any department 
 of industry, have made efforts to raise its 
 
FORMULA 9 
 
 tone. Everywhere it is the tyranny of the 
 consumer that blocks the way. For example, 
 anybody who has followed the history of the 
 Arts and Crafts movement, and noted the 
 efforts which have been made to raise the 
 quality of English production must be con- 
 vinced that this is the root of the difficulty. 
 If the public were capable of a tenth part of 
 the sacrifice which others have undertaken 
 on their behalf, we might see our way out 
 of the industrial quagmire. 
 
 This evil would not be remedied by bring- 
 ing industry under State Control. Rather 
 would it be intensified. Art in the past had 
 its private patrons, and while these continue 
 some good work may still be done. But the 
 artist is powerless when face to face with a 
 public body whose taste recognizes no ultim- 
 ate standard, but taken collectively is always 
 the reflection of the vulgarity its members see 
 around them. As we may assume that private 
 patrons would cease under Collectivism, so 
 Art's last support would disappear also. What- 
 ever good work has been done for the public 
 during the past century has been in the main 
 the result of accident. Collective control fore- 
 
io THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 shadows, not the abolition of poverty in our 
 midst, by the dire6Hon of industry passing 
 into the hands of wise administrators, but the 
 final abandonment of all standards of quality 
 in produftion, owing to the complete sub- 
 jeftion of all producers to the demoralizing 
 tyranny of an uninstrufted majority. 1 
 
 This commercial notion of Government 
 solely in the interests of consumers leads the 
 Collectivist into strange company. It leads 
 him to acquiesce in such a pernicious system 
 as the division of labor. Ruskin claimed thatj 
 the subjeftive standard of human happiness,! 
 not the objeftive monetary standard assumed! 
 by previous political economists, was the final 
 test of the social utility of production. If we 
 accept Ruskin's position, surely we must con- 
 sider man primarily in his capacity as pro- 
 
 1 In judging the probable effects of the Colle&ivist con- 
 trol of industry we must look to the way it would be likely 
 to work in the average provincial town. We are not 
 justified in regarding the L.C.C. as in any way typical. 
 The circumstances which have made the L.C.C. what it 
 is now are not likely to occur again. And there is every 
 reason to believe that when the wave of municipal 
 enthusiasm has gone that the L.C.C. may degenerate in 
 the same way as the late London School Board. 
 
h 
 
 I FORMULA 1 1 
 
 ducer. From this standpoint a man's health, 
 mental and moral, must depend upon the 
 amount of pleasure he can take in his work. 
 But we deprive the worker of this means of 
 happiness and strive to replace it by such in- 
 stitutions as free libraries and popular lectures, 
 which all lie outside the sphere of his real 
 life. This policy would appear to be based 
 on the idea that man should live a conscious 
 double life. In the first place he must submit 
 to any indignity he may be called upon to 
 suffer by the prevailing system of industry, 
 and secondly, he should aim in his leisure 
 time at self-improvement. He thus destroys 
 in the morning what he has built over-night. 
 Like a mad sculler who pulls both ways at 
 once he describes a rapid circle, and giddily 
 imagines he is making immense progress for- 
 ward. To unite these warring forces in man 
 and to make him once more simple, harmon- 
 ious and whole, he must again be regarded 
 first and foremost in his capacity as producer. 
 Another reason for the primary considera- 
 tion of the producer, which should be inter- 
 esting to the democrat is that to legislate on 
 the basis that all are consumers, while only 
 
12 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 some are producers, is obviously to put a 
 premium upon idleness, for only the idle 
 consume without producing. This funda- 
 mental defect of reasoning has thus rendered 
 possible the paradox that while the Man- 
 chester School expended its moral indignation 
 in protesting against idleness and luxury, by 
 the very measures it advocated have idleness 
 and luxury been mainly increased. 
 
 Let us pass on to a consideration of the 
 principles of Collectivism in their application 
 to particular problems. With regard to the 
 question of Trusts, Colleftivists assert that 
 industries will become more and more subject 
 to their domination, and that the State is then 
 to step in and nationalize them. 
 
 Now, if we look at the matter carefully, 
 we shall find that the development of industry 
 into Trusts is by no means universal. It holds 
 good in those branches of industry which 
 deal with the supply of raw materials, in dis- 
 tribution, in railways and other monopolies, 
 in the branches of production where mechan- 
 ism plays an all important part and which 
 command universal markets. On the other 
 hand, there are branches of industry where 
 
FORMULA 13 
 
 no such development can be traced. It does 
 not apply to those industries which, in the 
 nature of things, rely upon local markets, such 
 as the building trades; nor to those in which 
 the element of taste enters, as the furnishing 
 and clothing trades. It is true that the large 
 capitalist exists in these trades, but this does 
 not mean that the small builder, furnisher 
 and clothier will eventually be thrust out of 
 the market. The big contractor exists in the 
 building trades, not because he can produce 
 more cheaply than the smaller one, as a care- 
 ful comparison of prices would show; nor is 
 it because the work is better done, his raison 
 (fetre is rather to be found in the circum- 
 stance that large building contrails can only 
 be undertaken by builders possessed of large 
 capital. Again, the existence of large firms 
 in the furnishing and clothing trades cannot 
 be taken as an indication of the growth of 
 efficiency in those trades, such reduction of 
 cost as has taken place having been obtained 
 in the main at the expense of true efficiency; 
 while again, the growth of large retail houses 
 is in no sense due to a reduction of prices, 
 rather has it been due in some measure to 
 
14 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 the same causes which brought the large 
 building firms into existence, and to the 
 system of advertising which leads an ignor- 
 ant public to suppose they are getting a 
 superior article for their money. Nay, if we 
 go further into the matter, we shall find that 
 so far from these huge organizations securing 
 a higher degree of efficiency in production 
 than smaller firms, they owe their very exist- 
 ence to the general degradation of industry 
 to the faCt that the craftsman has so de- 
 clined in skill, that he has become the cat's- 
 paw of capitalism. It is only where crafts- 
 manship has declined, and the skilled craftsman 
 has been replaced by the mechanical drudge, 
 that capitalist control secures a firm foothold. 
 It cannot be insisted upon too strongly that 
 capitalist organization, whether private or 
 public, is built upon and presupposes the 
 degradation of the craftsman. Being organ- 
 ized for the produftion of indifferent work, 
 they are normally working incapable of any- 
 thing else; for in the production of good 
 work, the craftsman must have liberty to 
 follow the line of a consecutive tradition 
 a condition which capitalist organization 
 
FORMULA 15 
 
 denies, its function being not to develop a 
 tradition of design in handicraft but to adjust 
 the efforts of the craftsman to the whims of 
 a capricious public. 
 
 This view, which was originally formed 
 from personal observation and experience of 
 the conditions now obtaining in industry, is 
 amply corroborated by the testimony of 
 Prince Kropotkin. In " Fields, Factories 
 and Workshops," he says: "The petty trades 
 at Paris so much prevail over the factories 
 that the average number of workman em- 
 ployed in the 98,000 factories and workshops 
 of Paris is less than six, while the number of 
 persons employed in workshops which have 
 less than five operatives is almost twice as 
 large as the number of persons employed in 
 the large establishments. In fad:, Paris is a 
 great bee-hive where hundreds and thousands 
 of men and women fabricate in small work- 
 shops all possible varieties of goods which 
 require taste, skill and invention. These 
 small workshops, in which artistic finish and 
 rapidity of work are so much praised, neces- 
 sarily stimulate the mental powers of the 
 producer; and we may safely admit that if 
 
1 6 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 the Paris workmen are generally considered, 
 and really are, more developed intellectually 
 than the workers of any other European 
 capital, this is due to a great extent to the 
 work they are engaged in ... and the ques- 
 tion naturally arises: Must all this skill, all 
 this intelligence, be swept away by the 
 factory, instead of becoming a new fertile 
 source of progress under a better organiza- 
 tion of production ? must all this inventive- 
 ness of the worker disappear before the 
 faftory levelling? and if it must, would such 
 a transformation be a progress as so many 
 economists, who have only studied figures and 
 not human beings, are ready to maintain? " 
 
 Kropotkin here lays his finger on the weak 
 point of modern sociological theories. They 
 are based upon estimates of figures rather than 
 estimates of men. The correct statement of 
 this issue is perhaps to be found in the didlum 
 that organization on a large scale secures 
 efficiency up to a certain point, which varies 
 in each industry, and when that point is 
 reached, degeneration sets in. On the one 
 hand the quality of the work declines, while 
 on the other, administrative expenses show a 
 
FORMULA 17 
 
 tendency to increase out of their proper pro- 
 portion, owing to the fadt that personal con- 
 trol gradually disappears; and this is probably 
 one of the causes which oblige many large 
 firms gradually to adopt sweating practices. 
 Expenses must be cut down somewhere, and 
 the workers have to suffer. 
 
 And now that we have found Colle6Kvist 
 prognostications respecting the future of the 
 Factory system to be based upon insufficient 
 data, let us turn to Colleftivist opinions re- 
 spe6ting the future of machinery; in this 
 connexion we observe that Collectivism 
 teaches that machinery will be used more in 
 the future than at present. The circumstance 
 that many who identify themselves with Col- 
 lecftivism hold to the idea of William Morris, 
 and quote him on sundry occasions, in no 
 wise affedts the Colledtivist position, which 
 is antagonistic to that held by Morris. Mor- 
 ris's opposition to machinery was based in 
 the first place upon the perception that there 
 is no temperament in work produced by ma- 
 chinery, and in the next upon a recognition 
 of the principle that its use tended to sepa- 
 rate the artist and craftsman more widely than 
 
 c 
 
1 8 THE COLLECT! VIST 
 
 ever, whereas the restoration of industry to 
 health demands their reunion. 
 
 But how is a reunion possible under a Col- 
 leftivist regime ? Surely if social evolution 
 has separated the artist and craftsman, further 
 progress along present lines must tend to 
 separate them still further, and not to draw 
 them together. Hence it is we feel justified 
 in identifying Collectivism with the mechan- 
 ical ideal of industry. 
 
 It may be said that the solution of our 
 problems is to be found in a further devel- 
 opment towards mechanical perfection, and 
 this contention would be perfectly reasonable 
 if the object of man's existence were to make 
 cotton and buttons as cheaply as possible ; 
 but considering that man has a soul which 
 craves some satisfaction, and that the progress 
 of mechanical invention degrades and stulti- 
 fies it by making man more and more the 
 slave of the machine, we feel justified in as- 
 serting that real progress lies along other 
 lines. Up to a certain point it is true that 
 mechanical invention is for the benefit of the 
 community, but such inventions must be dis- 
 tinguished from the mass of mechanical con- 
 
FORMULA 19 
 
 trivances which are the humble slaves of 
 commercialism, and witnesses to the diseased 
 state of society. To invent a machine to re- 
 duce the amount of drudgery in the world 
 may reasonably be claimed as an achievement 
 of Science ; but to reduce all labour to the 
 level of drudgery, to exploit Science for com- 
 mercial purposes, is an entirely different mat- 
 ter. Machinery being a means to an end, 
 we may test its social utility by considering 
 the desirability or otherwise of the ends it is 
 to serve. And what are the ends which have 
 determined the application of machinery to 
 modern industry? Not the satisfaction of 
 human needs, or the production of beautiful 
 things, but primarily the satisfaction of the 
 money-making instinct, which, it goes with- 
 out saying, is undesirable. There are very 
 few things which machinery can do as well 
 as hand labour, and so far as my personal 
 knowledge extends, there is nothing it can 
 do better. Hand rivetted boilers are preferred 
 to machine rivetted ones; while the most 
 delicate scientific instruments have to be made 
 by hand. In facft, wherever careful fitting is 
 valued the superiority of handwork is ac- 
 
20 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 knowledged. In the crafts, on the other 
 hand, machinery is valueless, except for heavy 
 work, such as sawing timber; though even 
 here, where timber is exposed to view, it 
 suffers in comparison with hand sawing and 
 hewing, which has more temperament about 
 it. In production, therefore, the only ulti- 
 mate use of machinery to the community is 
 that in certain heavy work it saves labour, 
 which, considered from the point of view of 
 the development of the physique of the race, 
 is of very questionable advantage ; or that it 
 reduces the cost of production. This again, 
 however, is a doubtful advantage, since the 
 increase of material possessions beyond a cer- 
 tain point is extremely undesirable. Without 
 machinery there would be plenty for all and 
 to spare, if it were not for the greed of in- 
 dividuals; and machinery, by facilitating the 
 production of goods in immense quantities, 
 so far from eliminating the spirit of avarice 
 by satisfying it, appears only to give it a cu- 
 mulative force. Machinery has creeled the 
 most effective class barrier yet devised. Again, 
 considered in relation to locomotion the bene- 
 fits of mechanism are very doubtful. If rail- 
 
FORMULA 21 
 
 ways and steamboats have brought Chicago 
 nearer to London, the world is more com- 
 monplace in consequence, and it is very much 
 open to question whether the romance, the 
 beauty, and the mystery of the world which 
 mechanism seems so happy in destroying, 
 may not in the long run prove to be the 
 things most worth possessing, and the hurry 
 and dispatch which are everywhere wel- 
 comed as the heralds of progress, admitted 
 to be illusory. 
 
 Then Colle6tivists are in a quandary over 
 the Fiscal Question. Finding themselves un- 
 able to accept either the position of the Pro- 
 tedtionists or that of the Free Traders, the 
 Fabian Society has formulated a scheme 
 which is supposed to harmonize with the 
 principles of Collectivism. In the trad: en- 
 titled " Fabianism and the Fiscal Question," 
 the Society suggests, as a solution for the pre- 
 sent crisis, that the trading fleet between our- 
 selves and the colonies be imperialized, when 
 the conveyance of goods might be made free 
 to all. Surely this would not lead towards 
 Collectivism ; rather would it intensify one 
 of the worst evils of the present system which 
 
22 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 Collectivism proposes to cure namely, the 
 evil of cross distribution. 
 
 This brings me to the question of universal 
 markets, which Colleftivists generally assume 
 to be a permanent factor in industry. 
 
 To some extent, of course, this will be so, 
 and we must at the outset differentiate be- 
 tween a certain legitimate trade which in 
 the nature of things must always exist, and 
 its present abnormal development, which can 
 only be regarded as symptomatic of disease. 
 
 That India should export tea to us appears 
 quite reasonable, but why we should export 
 cotton goods to India is not so clear. The 
 former is a natural trade, because climatic 
 conditions will not permit us to grow our own 
 tea. The latter, however, is not ultimately 
 rooted in actuality, but owes its existence to 
 the creation of artificial conditions, to the 
 circumstance that machinery for the purpose 
 was first invented in Lancashire, and to the 
 facl that we exploited foreign markets for our 
 benefit in consequence. But this may not 
 last. In the long run India must be able to 
 manufacture cotton goods for herself, if the 
 test to be applied is merely that of compara- 
 
FORMULA 23 
 
 tive cost, but when we remember that there 
 are other faftors in production which ought 
 to be considered, and which will be taken 
 into account when man re-awakens to the fal 
 that profit is not the Alpha and Omega of pro- 
 dudlion, the change is certain. The re-estab- 
 lishments of just standards of quality in produc- 
 tion by the revival of art and the restoration 
 of a sense of morality in trade demand the 
 substitution of local for universal markets. 
 
 Of this there can be no question. For it is 
 evident that one at least of the conditions of 
 the restoration of the moral sense. in trade is 
 that the cash nexus be supplanted by the 
 personal nexus in trade relation, and this can 
 only be possible under social conditions in 
 which producer and consumer are known to 
 each other. While again it may be argued 
 that so long as universal markets are regarded 
 as essential to trade, industry must continue 
 to be of a speculative character, owing to the 
 circumstance that supply precedes demand. 
 To reverse this unnatural order of things is 
 essential to production for use, and this in- 
 volves, among other things, the restoration 
 of local markets. 
 
24 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 In like manner the necessities of Art demand 
 the restoration of local markets. If beauty is 
 ever to be restored, and the ordinary things 
 of life are to be once more beautiful, it is 
 certain that local markets will have to be 
 restored. If Art were healthy the wholesale 
 importation of articles of foreign manufacture 
 would not obtain. An artistic public would, 
 for the most part, demand goods of local 
 manufacture, the beauty of which reflected 
 those experiences common to their own life. 
 Thus the English would not import Japanese 
 Art, to any extent, recognizing that, though 
 Japanese Art is admirable in Japan, it is yet 
 so entirely out of sympathy with Western 
 Art as to introduce an element of discord 
 when placed in an English room ; while again, 
 for the same reason, the Japanese would not 
 import English Art. 
 
 A possible objeftion to this assumption is 
 that in the most vigorous periods of art a con- 
 ^iderable trade was carried on in exchanging 
 the artistic works of different countries, 
 that, in fa6l, many of the finest examples 
 of craftsmanship which were distributed over 
 Europe in the Middle Ages and earlier often 
 
FORMULA 25 
 
 emanated from one centre. For instance, 
 carved ivories were mostly made in Alex- 
 andria, and so far from the trade which ex- 
 isted in them adting in a way derogatory to 
 the interests of Art, they, as a matter of faft, 
 exercised a very stimulating influence upon 
 the art of the age. To this I answer, that such 
 a trade, which exists for the exchange of 
 treasure, is a fundamentally different thing 
 from a trade which exchanges the ordinary 
 commodities of life, since while the former 
 may operate to widen the outlook in the 
 artistic sense, the effedt of the latter is to 
 precipitate all traditions of design into hope- 
 less confusion and anarchy, because, when 
 carried on on a large scale, production for 
 foreign markets does not take the form of 
 sending to other countries specimens of the 
 best craftsmanship which a nation can pro- 
 duce, but of supplying cheap imitations of 
 the genuine and native craftsmanship to other 
 lands a most ruinous commerce ; for while 
 abroad the underselling of native craftsman- 
 ship tends to destroy the living traditions of 
 those countries, its operations are no less 
 harmful at home, by their tendency to con- 
 
26 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 fuse rather than consolidate a national tradi- 
 tion of design. 
 
 In the long run a universal trade in every- 
 day commodities could only be favourable to 
 Art on the assumption that internationalism 
 were the condition of healthy artistic aftivity. 
 And this is not so. An international art would 
 involve the gradual elimination of all that is 
 of local and provincial interest ; and when 
 this elimination is complete there is very little 
 left. It would not be untrue to say that the 
 Renaissance failed because its ideas were in- 
 ternational, it strove to eliminate all that was 
 of merely local interest in art, and the result 
 was a final and complete imbecility such as 
 never before existed. 1 
 
 Similarly, when we turn to consider the 
 financial side of Collectivism we discover 
 similar fallacies. The nationalization of capi- 
 tal does not recommend itself to us as a 
 solution of present day financial difficulties, 
 since, according to one point of view the 
 
 1 In this connection it may be interesting to observe that 
 the abandonment of the international ideal of the Renais- 
 sance and an acceptance of national and local traditions 
 underlies much of the success of the present architectural 
 revival. 
 
FORMULA 27 
 
 economic difficulty arises not so much from 
 an unequal distribution of wealth as from the 
 faft that so much of the labour of the com- 
 munity produces not wealth but " illth," to 
 use Ruskin's word. The capital we account 
 for in the columns of the ledger is, indeed, 
 only of a very theoretical character. For, in 
 spite of statistical calculations (which to all 
 appearances may be used to prove anything 
 it is desired to prove), we are not becoming 
 richer, but poorer every year, and this we 
 believe is to be accounted for by our system 
 of finance, which, not studying things, but 
 only the profit and loss account of them, fails 
 to distinguish between what are assets and 
 what are liabilities. 
 
 As an illustration of what I mean let us 
 take a concrete instance Tramways. Now 
 it is evident that from the point of view of 
 the private capitalist, whose aim is the making 
 of profit, that the possession of a tramway is 
 to be reckoned as an asset. From the point of 
 view of the community, however, it is alto- 
 gether different. A municipal tramway is 
 not an asset, but a liability in the national 
 ledger. It is true that the possession of a 
 
28 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 tramway by a municipality enables the com- 
 munity to intercept profits which otherwise 
 would swell the pockets of the private capi- 
 talist, but this does not constitute such a 
 tramway a public asset ; it merely decreases 
 the liability. A tramway is a liability because 
 it is not one of the ultimate needs of human 
 society, but an artificial one, arising through 
 the abnormal growth of big towns and cross 
 distribution. If a man has to travel from 
 New Cross to the City every day for employ- 
 ment he helps the tramway to pay its divi- 
 dends, but he is the poorer for having to take 
 the journey. He is perhaps richer by the time 
 he saves as compared with the time he would 
 lose in having to walk. But the fadt that a 
 man lives in one part of the town and works 
 in another is itself an evil reduced to the 
 terms of national finance it is a liability, and 
 no juggling of figures can make it into any- 
 thing else. Hence it is that while conveni- 
 ence may suggest the expediency of munici- 
 palities owning their own tramways, we are 
 not justified in reckoning them as national 
 assets, or in supposing that the change from 
 private to public ownership is a step in the 
 solution of the social problem. 
 
FORMULA 29 
 
 The same test may be applied to all the 
 activities of Society though the applica- 
 tion of the principle will be very difficult. 
 For exactly what in civilization will con- 
 stitute an asset, and what a liability, will 
 often be most difficult to determine. Per- 
 haps on due consideration it may appear that 
 civilization itself is entirely of the nature of 
 a liability which man pays for by the sweat 
 of his brow ; that the secret of the present 
 financial crisis is that civilization has become 
 so artificial that he cannot pay the price 
 demanded. At any rate, the more we reduce 
 the number of our wants the richer intrinsic- 
 ally we become as a nation. Hence it appears 
 to me that granting, for the sake of argument, 
 that the nationalization of industry is possible, 
 the proper course of aftion to adopt would 
 be not to commence with the nationalization 
 of the means of distribution, but with pro- 
 duction, beginning at the bottom of the in- 
 dustrial scale with agriculture, and building 
 up step by step from this bedrock of actuality, 
 taking care always to avoid the multiplica- 
 tion of works of a temporary character, and 
 building for posterity. It is precisely because 
 
3 o THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 ever since the commencement of the era of 
 commercialism, we have individually and 
 collectively proceeded upon the principle of 
 letting posterity take care of itself, that 
 society has become burdened with the main- 
 tenance of an ever increasing number of 
 institutions to satisfy the temporary needs of 
 society, that we are becoming poorer. 1 
 
 Closely allied to the foregoing financial 
 fallacy, and in some measure the cause of it, 
 is the more or less unconscious acceptance 
 by Colledtivists of the opinion held by the 
 Utilitarian Philosophers that the expenditure 
 of surplus wealth upon art does not operate 
 in the interests of the community. This is 
 an error since from the point of view of 
 national finance such expenditure provides a 
 safety valve which prevents internal compli- 
 cations. The cutting down of expenditure 
 upon Art does not, as Political Economists 
 
 1 Local taxation rose from 17,000,000 in 1869 to 
 40,000,000 in 1900, owing to increase of expenditure in 
 Poor Law, Education, Police, Burial Boards, Street Im- 
 provements, Sewerage, Isolation Hospitals, Port Sanitary 
 Authorities, Lunatic Asylums, Baths, Washhouses, Road- 
 making, Lighting, etc. H. T. Muggeridge, Pamphlet on 
 the Anti-Municipal Conspiracy. 
 
FORMULA 31 
 
 appear to argue, benefit the people, owing to 
 the direftion of surplus wealth into new pro- 
 duftive enterprises, rather in the long run 
 has it proved to have the opposite effeft of 
 aggravating the problem. Let us take an 
 illustration. 
 
 A hundred men are engaged in produftion; 
 let us make an artificial distinction, and say 
 that seventy-five are engaged in the produc- 
 tion of physical necessities, and twenty-five 
 in the produftion of art (using the word art 
 to indicate those things which do not direftly 
 contribute to the maintenance of the body). 
 A machine is invented which enables fifty 
 men to do the work which hitherto had 
 given employment to seventy-five. The 
 balance of produftion is now destroyed, for 
 there will be a hundred men competing for 
 seventy -five places. It is evident, therefore, if 
 the balance in produftion is to be restored, 
 one of two things must be done; either the 
 hours of labour must be reduced all round, 
 or the surplus profit created (be it in the 
 hands of Consumer or Producer), must be 
 used in employing the twenty-five displaced 
 menupontheproduftionof Art. Other faftors 
 
32 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 may come in and modify the problem, such 
 as the increased demand for utilities owing 
 to their reduced price, but they are relatively 
 insignificant owing to the fact that as it is 
 not customary under such circumstances to 
 raise the wages of the workers, the limit of 
 the consumption of utilities is practically 
 fixed. Neglecting this arrangement to pro- 
 vide employment for the displaced twenty- 
 five men, disease is spread throughout industry 
 by the destruction of the balance between 
 demand and supply. They must find employ- 
 ment somehow, and so it happens under our 
 commercial society they are used for fighting 
 purposes, becoming travellers or touts in the 
 competitive warfare for the trade which is 
 now insufficient to give employment to all 
 would-be workers. The benefit which the 
 invention of the machine should bring to 
 society is thus lost. The ultimate effect is 
 not to cheapen but to increase the cost of 
 commodities, since it tends to swallow up 
 even the normal profits in fighting machinery, 
 and prices have to be raised, or the quality 
 lowered to make up the difference. 
 
 But the evil does not end here. For now, 
 
FORMULA 33 
 
 when the markets are filled to overflowing, 
 there can be no mistaking the evil resulting 
 from the pradlice to which an almost religious 
 sanction has been given by our Political 
 Economists, of systematically re-investing 
 surplus wealth in new productive enterprises, 
 since it tends to reduce wages by the over- 
 capitalization of industry in addition to rais- 
 ing the cost of commodities. The congested 
 state of our markets makes it exceedingly dif- 
 ficult for new industrial enterprises to be suc- 
 cessfully floated. Investment is consequently 
 taking the form of converting private busi- 
 nesses into limited liability Companies. Thus 
 a private business with a real capital of say 
 50,000 is floated as a Company with a 
 nominal capital 0^75,000; theextra^25,ooo 
 going in goodwill and promotion expenses. 
 And now that the business has more Capital 
 it will be apparent that to maintain the same 
 dividends as hitherto (necessary to maintain 
 credit, if for nothing else), expenses must be 
 reduced in every direction. Hence it gener- 
 ally happens that when a private firm is con- 
 verted into a Company, unless a strong Trade 
 Union exists, wages are cut down; if a Union 
 
 D 
 
34 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 prevents this, the old men are discharged to 
 make room for younger and more energetic 
 ones, while no opportunity is lost of increas- 
 ing the price of commodities to the public 
 or of adulterating the article to reduce its 
 cost. 
 
 This, it is safe to say, is substantially what 
 is taking place to-day. Yet, on the whole, 
 Colledlivists, while incidentally regretting 
 the reduction of wages, welcome the change 
 as a step towards the nationalization of capital. 
 To me, however, this change wears a different 
 aspeft, for it is obvious that so long as we con- 
 tinue to accept the present principle of finance 
 that all capital should produce interest 
 and to harbour the utilitarian fallacy that 
 expenditure upon Art is a dead loss to the 
 community, the over-capitalization of industry 
 must tend to increase. The fundamental facl 
 is that so long as the present principles of 
 finance remain unchallenged, the mere trans- 
 ference of capital from private to public 
 ownership can have no appreciable effecT: on 
 the problem, since a public body accepting 
 these theories must, like a private manufac- 
 turer, put the interests of capital before the 
 
FORMULA 35 
 
 interests of life and between these two there 
 is eternal conflict. 
 
 The current commercial practice of re- 
 investing dividends is directly responsible for 
 the development of class separation by with- 
 drawing money from circulation where it is 
 needed and causing it to circulate in orbits 
 where it is not required. Whilst on the 
 human side it is responsible for the great con- 
 trasts of extravagance and poverty in modern 
 society, on the industrial side it has struck at 
 the roots of all healthy production. It im- 
 poverishes works of real utility to create sur- 
 pluses to be spent upon works of luxury 
 making Art an exotic and artificial thing, 
 since its true basis is in utility and not in 
 luxury. For it is one of the paradoxes of our 
 so-called utilitarian age that it is always im- 
 possible to get sufficient money spent on real 
 utilities to make them substantial. We first 
 impoverish works of real utility, and having 
 thus succeeded in rendering all useful labour 
 utterly unendurable, we expend the surpluses 
 in providing such diversions as free libraries, 
 art galleries, and such like. 
 
 Yet why should utilities be expedted to 
 
36 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 pay dividends? Why should it always be as- 
 sumed that what is intended for use should 
 yield a profit, and what is intended for luxury 
 not? Why, for instance, in municipal ex- 
 penditure should it be assumed that houses 
 for the working classes should be self-sup- 
 porting, while art galleries and free libraries 
 are a charge upon the rates? Why should not 
 some of the money which is spent upon these 
 things be spent in making municipal houses 
 more beautiful ? And if it be right for one 
 thing not to pay dividends, why not another ? 
 Frankly, I can see no reason, except the 
 superstition of financiers and the fatal ten- 
 dency of all things to crystallize into formulas. 
 In the case cited, a more generous expendi- 
 ture upon such things as municipal houses 
 would do more to encourage Art than ex- 
 penditure upon art galleries, if at the same 
 time means could be devised whereby gen- 
 uine and not commercial architects could be 
 employed to build them. It is certain that 
 the substantially-built houses and cottages ot 
 the past were never built to earn dividends, 
 and we shall never be able to house the 
 poorest classes so long as we do expect these 
 
FORMULA 37 
 
 returns. The fact is that in really healthy 
 finance, as in life, there is no formula, and it is 
 precisely because modern reformers have 
 never seriously questioned the truth of mo- 
 dern principles of finance that they are power- 
 less to introduce really effedtive measures of 
 social reform. 
 
 Another instance of the failure of Collect- 
 ivism comes out in the Fabian tract entitled 
 " Twentieth Century Politics, a policy of 
 National Efficiency," by Mr. Sidney Webb. 
 In this tract Mr. Webb gives an outline of 
 what he considers should constitute the poli- 
 tical programme of a really progressive re- 
 form party. After dealing separately with 
 particular reforms, Mr. Webb passes on to 
 consider ways and means of effecting them. 
 And here he is beaten. For the life of him 
 he cannot see where the impetus to carry 
 them into effect is to come from. And so, in 
 desperation, he proposes a measure to arti- 
 ficially stimulate political aftivity, which 
 is worthy of " Punch," but is quite wasted 
 in a Fabian Tract. 
 
 Recognizing that the Local Government 
 Board has always to be coercing its local 
 
38 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 authorities to secure the National minimum, 
 Mr. Webb says: "for anything beyond that 
 minimum, the wise minister would mingle 
 premiums with his pressure. He would by 
 his public speeches, by personal interviews 
 with mayors and town clerks, and by the 
 departmental publications, set on foot the 
 utmost possible emulation among the various 
 local governing bodies, as to which could 
 make the greatest strides in municipal ac- 
 tivity. We already have the different towns 
 compared, quarter by quarter, in respeft to 
 their death rates, but at present only crudely, 
 unscientifically, and perfunftorily. Why 
 should not the Local Government Board 
 avowedly put all the local governing bodies 
 of each class into honorary competition with 
 one another by an annual investigation of 
 municipal efficiency, working out their sta- 
 tistical marks for excellence in drainage, 
 water supply, paving, cleansing, watching 
 and lighting, housing, hospital accommoda- 
 tion, medical service, sickness experience 
 and mortality, and publicly classifying them 
 all according to the result of the examina- 
 tion ? Nay, a ministry keenly inspired with 
 
FORMULA 39 
 
 a passion for national efficiency, would call 
 into play every possible incentive to local im- 
 provement. The King might give a ' Shield 
 of Honour ' to the local authority which had 
 made the greatest progress in the year, toge- 
 ther with a knighthood to the mayor and a 
 Companionship of the Bath to the clerk, the 
 engineer, and the medical officer of health. 
 On the other hand, the six or eight districts 
 which stood at the bottom of the list would 
 be held up to public opprobrium, while the 
 official report on their shortcomings might 
 be sent by post to every local eleftor, in the 
 hope that public discussion would induce the 
 inhabitants to choose more competent ad- 
 ministrators." (Presumably Mr. Webb would 
 accept Mr. Mallock's definition of the mo- 
 dern conception of progress, as an improve- 
 ment which can be tested by statistics, just 
 as education is an improvement that can be 
 tested by examinations.) 
 
 The most interesting of all the contradic- 
 tions in which Collectivism has become in- 
 volved, and which more than any other ex- 
 poses the weakness of the position of its 
 advocates is one which during the late war 
 
40 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 split the party in two ; for while all Collec- 
 tivists recognized that the war was a com- 
 mercial one, waged in the interests of un- 
 scrupulous South African financiers, only part 
 of them declared against it on the grounds 
 of its manifest injustice, the remainder argu- 
 ing that the best policy for Colleftivists was 
 to allow the war to run its course, for the 
 reason that as internationalism and not na- 
 tionalism was the condition of the future, a 
 united South Africa would, notwithstanding 
 the present injustice, hasten the Colleclivist 
 millenium. 
 
 Now both these positions are valid accord- 
 ing to the theories of Collectivism. The first 
 is a necessary deduction from the position 
 Colleftivists have assumed respecting the 
 morality of trade. Recognizing the growth 
 of capitalism to be the cause of the present 
 evils in society, they were perfectly justified 
 in opposing its encroachments. Yet, taking 
 their stand on this ground, they come into 
 collision with their own theory of social 
 evolution, which teaches them that the growth 
 of capitalistic control and of internationalism 
 is a necessary step in the development of 
 
FORMULA 41 
 
 society towards the social millenium. While 
 again, those who took their stand on the 
 social evolution of Collectivism found them- 
 selves in the unfortunate position of having 
 to compromise with all the evils which they 
 set out to eradicate. 
 
 What, then, is the significance of Collec- 
 tivism? Is it a product merely of the disease 
 of Society, or a sign of health in the body 
 politic? The answer is that it contains the 
 elements of both. Collectivism came into ex- 
 istence to do a definite work, with the fulfil- 
 ment of which it will assuredly disappear. 
 As Liberalism appeared in opposition to the 
 corrupt oligarchies of the eighteenth century, 
 so Collectivism has come into existence to 
 correft the evils which Liberalism brought 
 with it to dispel the laissez-faire notions 
 of the Manchester school to expose the in- 
 humanities of commercialism to re-awaken 
 the moral sense of society, and to restore to 
 it the lost ideal of a corporate life. To Col- 
 leftivism we are indebted for these ideas, 
 and in their affirmation it has amply justified 
 its existence. It may be, also, that the statis- 
 tical method which it has pursued, though 
 
 
42 THE COLLECTIVIST 
 
 impossible from the point of view of social 
 re-constru6Hon, was yet the only way of im- 
 pressing certain broad truths on the national 
 mind. It has indeed set forces in motion 
 which may yet be turned in the direction of 
 true social re-construction. But just as Liber- 
 alism failed because it had to use the pluto- 
 cracy as the force with which to effect its 
 purpose, so Collectivism must fail because it 
 has had to make its appeal to the crowd. 
 
 Feeling comes nearer to truth than logic, 
 and in the hesitation of the masses to respond 
 to his appeal, the Colleftivist may, if he will, 
 see the condemnation of his own measures. 
 The people would be right in neglecting 
 this appeal; in so acting there is unconscious 
 wisdom. The people feel instinctively that 
 Government is not their affair ; it leads them 
 out of their depth, and with true inspiration 
 hitherto they have refused to interfere where 
 they cannot understand. They are right also 
 in another and profounder sense. Not only 
 is their indifference a sign that politics have 
 moved out of contact with actuality, but they 
 instinctively feel that Utopia does not lie 
 along the road the Colleftivist indicates; for 
 
FORMULA 43 
 
 in its appeal Collectivism made one great 
 and fundamental error. It has sought to 
 remedy the evils occasioned by the individual 
 avarice of the few by an appeal to the avarice 
 of the many as if Satan could cast out 
 Satan. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 * I A HE underlying cause of this failure of 
 X Collectivism to fulfil the conditions re- 
 quired for the establishment of a sound social 
 system is that in concentrating its attention 
 too exclusively upon the material evils ex- 
 isting in Society it loses sight of the spiritual 
 side of the problem; for indeed, rightly con- 
 sidered, the evils which the Colleftivist seeks 
 to eradicate are ultimately nothing but the 
 more obtrusive symptoms of an internal spi- 
 ritual disease. Religion, art and philosophy 
 have in these latter days suffered a serious 
 decline, and the social problem, as popularly 
 understood, is the attendant symptom. 
 
 The truth of this is borne in upon us when 
 we view the present state of things from the 
 standpoint of social evolution. We may then 
 see how the growth of this external material 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION 45 
 
 problem coincides at every point with an 
 internal spiritual decline, which separating 
 religion, art and philosophy from life, has 
 plunged Society into the throes of material- 
 ism, with its concomitants of ugliness and 
 money-making, the reckless pursuit of which 
 throughout the nineteenth century has left 
 us for our heritage the Rings, Trusts and 
 Monopolies which exploit Society to-day. 
 For had the spiritual forces in Society not 
 dwindled into impotence, social evolution 
 would not thus have tended towards the ig- 
 noble ideal of Collectivism, but towards that 
 finer individualism upon which the Socialism 
 of the future must be founded. 
 
 To understand how these things are re- 
 lated we must go back to the time of the 
 Renaissance in Italy, when the effort was 
 made to graft the ideas of antiquity upon the 
 Christian nations of Europe. The civiliza- 
 tion of the Middle Ages was undoubtedly a 
 lapse from that of Paganism, in that the 
 freedom of thought formerly permitted was 
 everywhere stamped out by the dogmas of 
 Christianity. Yet, strangely enough, though 
 from one point of view this lapse is to be 
 
46 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 regretted, it achieved a useful work, for in 
 addition to bracing the moral fibre it became 
 the means of enlarging the experience of the 
 race. If it put boundaries to the intellect, it 
 thereby enlarged the boundaries of the ima- 
 gination. For it was precisely because in the 
 Middle Ages men had their minds at rest 
 about the thousand and one doubts and diffi- 
 culties which beset the pursuit of the in- 
 telleftual life, that they were able to develop 
 that sense of romantic beauty which enabled 
 them to build the cathedrals and abbeys 
 which cover Europe. 
 
 And so, without committing ourselves to 
 the unlikely theory that the Middle Ages 
 were in every respect an ideal age, and while 
 certain that in many respects that time suffers 
 in comparison with our own, I think we 
 must admit its superiority in some directions. 
 It was greater than our own in that it pos- 
 sessed a " sense of the large proportions of 
 things," and according to its lights it pursued 
 perfection. For pursuit of religion and art 
 were then the serious things of life, while 
 commerce and politics, which have to-day 
 usurped our best energies, were strictly sub- 
 
SOCIAL DEVOLUTION 47 
 
 ordinated to these attributes of perfection. 
 The result of this condition of things, in its 
 reaction upon Society, was that men found 
 it possible to put into practice the diftum 
 "Love thy neighbour as thyself"; and the 
 principle of mutual aid became everywhere 
 recognized in the structure of society. Each 
 sedlion of the community had its own appro- 
 priate duties to perform, while any confusion 
 of function was jealously guarded against. In 
 the cities the craftsmen and merchants were 
 organized into gilds ; the former for their 
 mutual protection and education, and for the 
 maintenance of fine standards of quality in 
 produdtion, and the latter for facilitating the 
 exchange and distribution of merchandise. 
 On the other hand, the land held in large 
 feofs under the feudal system by the nobility 
 was formed and administered on a carefully 
 organized system, while the political status 
 of each individual was defined and guaranteed 
 by feudal law and the universal code of mo- 
 rality supplied by the teachings, and enforced 
 by the authority of the Roman Church. 
 
 Similarly, when we consider the external 
 life of that age, what most impresses us is the 
 
48 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 marvellous and universal beauty of everything 
 that has survived to our own time. The 
 mediaeval period was not only great in its 
 architecture, but the very humblest forms of 
 craftsmanship, even the utensils, were beauti- 
 ful^ What a contrast to our day, where ugli- 
 is just as universal. It matters little 
 where we look, in the city or the suburb, in 
 the garden or in the house ; at our dress or 
 our furnishings; wherever modernity is to 
 be found, vulgarity is also there. For this 
 ugliness knows no exception save in the work 
 of an insignificant and cultivated minority 
 who are in conscious opposition to the present 
 order of society. The Renaissance brought 
 about this change by cutting at the roots of 
 tradition 1 which hitherto had been the sup- 
 port of the Middle Ages. 
 
 he sense of a consecutive tradition has so 
 
 1 "In a traditional art each product has a substance and 
 content to which the greatest individual artists cannot 
 hope to attain it is the result of organic process of thought 
 and work. A great artist might make a little advance, a 
 poor artist might stand a little behind, but the work as a 
 whole was customary, and was shaped and perfected by a 
 life-experience whose span was centuries." " Mediaeval 
 Art," by Professor W. R. Lethaby. 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION 49 
 
 completely disappeared from modern life, 
 that it is difficult for most of us to realize 
 what it means. To greater or lesser extent in 
 the form or custom or habit it is always pre- 
 sent with us in debased forms. Yet this is 
 a different thing from that living tradition 
 which survived until the Renaissance, the 
 meaning of which will be best understood by 
 considering its relation to the arts. 
 
 Tradition then, in relation to the arts, may 
 be defined as a current language of design, 
 and, indeed, design in the Middle Ages 
 bears a striking resemblance to the language 
 of speech, in that the faculty of design was 
 not as it is to-day, the exclusive possession of 
 a caste a body of men who give prescrip- 
 tions for the craftsman to dispense but, like 
 language, was a common possession of the 
 whole people. Certain traditional ways of 
 working, certain ideas of design and technique 
 were universally recognized, so that when 
 the craftsman was called upon to design he 
 was not, like his modern successor, compelled 
 to create something out of nothing, but had 
 this tradition ready to hand as the vehicle of 
 expression understood by all. It was thus 
 
 E 
 
50 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 that the arts and crafts of former times were 
 identical the artist was always a craftsman, 
 while the craftsman was always an artist^In 
 the production of architecture no architect 
 was employed in the modern sense to con- 
 ceive and supervise every detail, since as 
 every craftsman was in some degree an artist, 
 it was the practice of each craft to supply its 
 own details and ornaments, the craftsman 
 being subject only to such general control as 
 was necessary to secure a unity of effeCt. 
 Architecture was thus a great co-operative 
 art, the expression of the national life and 
 character. 
 
 We realize, perhaps, more fully what tradi- 
 tion means when we compare the conditions 
 of craftsmanship in those days with those 
 which obtain to-day. The modern craftsman, 
 deprived of the guidance of a healthy tradi- 
 tion, is surrounded on all sides by forms which 
 have persisted, though debased and vulgar- 
 ized, while the thought which created them 
 has been lost. Consequently, he uses them 
 not merely without any perception of their 
 meaning, but as he does not realize that they 
 ever had any meaning, he has as much chance 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION 51 
 
 of making himself intelligible as a man whose 
 speech is a hopeless jargon of all tongues, 
 and who has lost the capacity of realizing 
 that any word he uses has ever actually had 
 a definite meaning. 
 
 In these circumstances the designer or 
 craftsman of to-day has a task of far greater 
 magnitude to perform in order to produce 
 creditable work than had his predecessors. It 
 is not merely a question of possessing good 
 taste, since before he can design he must re- 
 cover for himself a language of expression. 
 He must, therefore, be not merely an artist, 
 but an " etymologist of forms," so to speak, 
 in addition. How, then, can we wonder if 
 little good work is produced? 
 
 Similarly we find the absence or degrada- 
 tion of tradition exercises its baneful influence 
 in every department of life, for just as the 
 craftsman cannot design beautifully because 
 he has lost hold of a living tradition of design, 
 so men are unnatural and inhuman because 
 they have lost the art of right living, spon- 
 taneity and instin6l having given place to 
 conventions and fashions which exercise an 
 intangible tyranny over their vidlims. Inci- 
 
52 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 dentally I would refer to the corroborative 
 testimony of Mr. Bernard Shaw, who em- 
 phasizes the same truth in " Man and Super- 
 man." Mr. Shawobserves that English critics 
 disapproved of Zola's works not because they 
 considered them immoral, but because never 
 having been taught to speak decently about 
 such things, they were without a language by 
 
 h to express their ideas, 
 b return to our subject: I said that the 
 Renaissance, by cutting at the roots of tradi- 
 tion,_brgught about the changed state of 
 things we see around us to-day. In seeking 
 to liberate man from the fetters of the Middle 
 Ages the Renaissance unfortunately destroyed 
 what was really good and valuable. 
 
 ithout minimizing in the least the ulti- 
 mate benefits which the growth of the spirit 
 of criticism stimulated by the Renaissance has 
 in store for the human race, the development 
 of that spirit has so far been attended with 
 disastrous consequences. It is admitted that 
 by undermining the authority of the Church 
 and the Bible, criticism has largely destroyed 
 the spirit of consecration to ideals, but it is 
 not generally recognized that this same spirit 
 
 1 O 
 
 what 
 
 w 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION 53 
 
 operating upon the arts has brought about 
 their decline, by separating them from life. 
 First we see the gradual formation of canons 
 of taste; then follows the growth of academies 
 which impose rigid classical standards upon 
 the people, and finally, tradition, which has 
 hitherto been the source of vitality in the 
 arts, is everywhere extinguished and a com- 
 plete divorce is effected between Art and 
 Life. 
 
 Art, ceasing to be the vehicle of expression 
 for the whole people, now becomes a play- 
 thing for the connoisseur and the dilettante^ 
 hidden away in galleries and museums, while 
 Life, having lost the power of refined expres- 
 sion, crystallizes into conventions and be- 
 comes ugly in all its manifestations. 
 
 Simultaneously with this separation of art 
 from life comes the separation of the artist 
 from the craftsman. The fine arts having 
 turned their back upon their humble breth- 
 ren, craftsmanship everywhere degenerates 
 into manufacture uniformity having sup- 
 planted variety as the ideal of production, 
 machines are invented for multiplying wares. 
 Faftories are built to contain the machinery, 
 
54 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 and labour is organized for the purpose of 
 working it, while universal markets arise 
 through thedesire of avaricious manufacturers 
 to find some temporary escape from the evils 
 of over-production. And now, when supply 
 has got ahead of demand, comes a complete 
 divorce between production and use owing 
 to the circumstance that under such condi- 
 tions, speculation, and not human need, be- 
 comes the motive force of production. Busi- 
 ness and money-making become the all-ab- 
 sorbing interest of life, while democracy takes 
 its rise in the seething discontent engendered 
 by the growth of such conditions simultan- 
 eously with the degeneration of the Gilds 
 into close corporations, and the subsequent 
 exclusion of the journeyman, who is thereby 
 deprived of the position he formerly held in 
 the social scheme. 
 
 Such would appear to be the true inter- 
 pretation of social evolution Religion, Art 
 and Philosophy having separated themselves 
 from life,business,money-makingand politics, 
 hitherto subordinated to the pursuit of these 
 other attributes of perfection, become the all 
 absorbing interests of life. To this reversal 
 
SOCIAL EVOLUTION 55 
 
 of the natural order of things is to be attri- 
 buted the growth of the social problem. 
 
 What the future has in store for us it is 
 indeed difficult to say. It would seem that 
 the present system is doomed to collapse 
 through its own internal rottenness. Com- 
 mercialism will reap as it has sown a social 
 catastrophe is clearly its fit and proper har- 
 vest. For a century we have been putting off 
 the evil consequences of unregulated pro- 
 dudtion by dumping our surpluses in foreign 
 markets; but this cannot continue indefinitely, 
 for the problem which on a small scale should 
 have been boldly faced a century ago, when 
 machinery was first introduced, will have to 
 be dealt with on a gigantic scale. The for- 
 eigner, who was once our customer, has now 
 become our competitor ; and so instead of 
 expanding markets we have to face the pro- 
 blem of contracting markets. The appearance 
 therefore of a large and ever-increasing un- 
 employed class becomes inevitable. The prob- 
 ability is that this phenomenon will make its 
 appearance in America, where industrial con- 
 ditions are fast ripening for such a catastrophe. 
 Until quite recently America was occupied 
 
56 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 not so much in the production of wares as in 
 manufacture of machinery. It is obvious that 
 when all this machinery becomes engaged in 
 aCtual production the output available for 
 exportation will be enormously increased ; 
 and it is stated on very good authority that 
 the competition we have already experienced 
 from America is as nothing in comparison 
 with what we are likely to encounter during 
 ' the next few years. Meanwhile, the growth 
 of Trusts, Combines and Monopolies, by 
 eliminating the waste consequent upon com- 
 petition, tends in the same direction. 
 
 Under these circumstances, we shall be well 
 advised to prepare for eventualities. Though 
 unable to save existing society, it may yet be 
 possible to build something out of its ruins. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SPHERE OF POLITICAL REFORM 
 
 IN passing to the constructive side of our 
 theme, it is first necessary to realize clearly 
 that as commercialism, not competition, is 
 the evil from which modern society suffers; 
 the real battles of reform are to be fought in 
 the industrial, not in the political arena. To 
 abolish commercialism it is necessary to trans- 
 fer the control of industry from the hands of 
 the financier into those of the craftsman, and 
 as this change is ultimately dependent upon 
 such things as the recovery of a more scru- 
 pulous honesty in respel to our trade relation- 
 ships, the restoration of living traditions of 
 handicraft, and the emergence of nobler con- 
 ceptions of life in general, it is evident that 
 the nature of the reforms is such as to place 
 the centre of gravity of the reform move- 
 ment outside the sphere of politics. 
 
58 THE SPHERE OF 
 
 At the same time it is well to remember 
 that, though the solution is not a political 
 one it has, nevertheless, a political aspect, for 
 in this endeavour to reform industry the 
 legislature may assist. Recognizing the truth 
 that nobler conceptions of life are essential 
 to the salvation of society, and that the de- 
 sired change should be in the direction of 
 simpler conditions of life, the legislature can 
 greatly facilitate such a change by the wise 
 expenditure of that portion of the surplus 
 wealth of the nation which they would derive 
 from the taxation of unearned incomes. In 
 the long run it is the expenditure of surplus 
 wealth which determines in what direction 
 industrial energy shall be employed; and just 
 as foolish expenditure is the forerunner of 
 depression and decay, so wise expenditure 
 imparts health and vigour to the body politic. 
 " The vital question for individual and for 
 nation," as Ruskin said, " is not, how much 
 do they make ? but to what purpose do they 
 spend?" 
 
 As to the way in which the expenditure 
 of wealth could be used to facilitate the 
 spiritual regeneration of society, the first con- 
 
POLITICAL REFORM 50 
 
 dition of success is a more generous and 
 magnanimous spirit than is customary to- 
 day; in a word, we should not expecT: too 
 much for our money, since, until the spirit 
 of society is changed in this respeft, there 
 can be no possibility of returning to simpler 
 conditions of life. Until then sweating, jerry- 
 work, dishonesty and quackery will remain 
 with us, and the producers will continue to 
 be slave-driven. 
 
 The evil, moreover, does not end here. 
 The attendant symptom of this pernicious 
 system is that with our minds bent always 
 upon making bargains, it comes about that 
 less regard is paid to the intrinsic value than 
 to the market value of things, and we thus 
 create conditions under which the gulf separ- 
 ating the two is ever widening, until finally 
 the anti-climax of the ideal of wealth ac- 
 cumulation is reached in the circumstance 
 that it becomes daily more impossible to buy 
 things worth possessing. To reverse this un- 
 natural order, therefore, and to let our choice 
 be determined by the intrinsic value than to 
 the market value of things, is the second 
 condition of successful expenditure. 
 
60 THE SPHERE OF 
 
 There are two direflions in which an im- 
 mediate increase of expenditure is called for 
 in the national interest. In the first place 
 there can be no doubt that a serious attempt 
 should be made to revive agriculture 1 in this 
 country, for apart from its temporary com- 
 mercial value, agriculture has an intrinsic 
 value as a faftor in the national life, in that 
 it strengthens the economic position of the 
 country at its base. Secondly, a substantial 
 increase should be made in our national ex- 
 penditure upon art, particularly by a more 
 generous and sympathetic patronage of the 
 humbler crafts; for not only would such ex- 
 penditure tend to relieve the pressure of 
 competition, but since the true root and 
 basis of all art lies in the health and vigour 
 of the handicrafts, a force would be definitely 
 set in motion which would at once regener- 
 ate industry and restore beauty to life in- 
 
 1 This issue will be found exhaustively dealt with in 
 the recently issued Fabian TracT: entitled " The Revival 
 of Agriculture," with which I feel perfectly in accord. It 
 remains, however, to be said, that the principles underly- 
 ing this tra& are not in harmony with the formulated 
 dogma to which members of the Fabian Society are asked 
 to subscribe. 
 
POLITICAL REFORM 61 
 
 dustry and beauty being two of the most 
 powerful faftors in the spiritual regeneration 
 of the race. 
 
 In answer to some who complained that 
 Athens was over-adorned, even as a proud and 
 vain woman tricks herself out with jewels, 
 Pericles replied that " superfluous wealth 
 should be laid out on such works as, when 
 executed, would be eternal monuments of 
 the glory of their city, works which, during 
 their execution, would diffuse a universal 
 plenty; for as so many kinds of labour and 
 such a variety of instruments and materials 
 were requisite to these undertakings, every 
 art would be exerted, every hand employed, 
 almost the whole city would be in pay, and 
 be at the same time both adorned and sup- 
 ported by itself." Such was the old-time 
 solution of the unemployed problem; both 
 the spiritual and material needs of the people 
 are here provided for. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 * I A HE conclusion to be deduced from the 
 J^ last chapter was that the wise expend- 
 iture of surplus wealth, and, indeed, all 
 exercise of wisdom, demands that man be 
 spiritually regenerated. 
 
 It is obvious that by spiritual regeneration 
 something very different is meant from the 
 morbid and sickly sentimentality which very 
 often passes for spirituality to-day; rather 
 must we be understood to mean the recovery 
 by society of that " sense of the large pro- 
 portion of things " as Pater calls it, which in 
 all great ages of spiritual activity was in a 
 greater or less degree the common possession 
 of the whole people, and while giving a man 
 a new scale of values may be said to com- 
 pletely change the individual nature. In this 
 connexion it is well to remember that though 
 
THE GILD SYSTEM 63 
 
 in one sense the individual nature is unchange- 
 able, the facft remains that the intelleftual 
 atmosphere which we breathe will determine 
 the particular mode in which it will express 
 itself; and that whereas a prejudiced and 
 sectarian atmosphere, by refusing the higher 
 nature its medium of expression, will encour- 
 age the expression of the lower nature, so a 
 wider outlook on life, an atmosphere in which 
 the nature and essential unity of things are 
 more clearly discerned, will by transmuting 
 values keep the selfish motives more effec- 
 tually in subjection. It is thus that the 
 recovery of the sense of the large proportion 
 of things by the individual members of the 
 community must precede all substantial re- 
 form. It is this sense which is the great 
 socializer, making always for Collective ac- 
 tion. There can be no Socialism without it. 
 No better example could be found of the 
 way in which its absence militates against 
 social reform than the common attitude of 
 sociological thinkers towards the present pro- 
 posal of re-establishing the Gild system in 
 society. One and all of them, without further 
 inquiry, dismiss Ruskin's proposal as a hark- 
 
64 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 ing back to Mediaevalism merely because 
 the links which separated his proposals from 
 practical politics were not in his day capable 
 of being forged. In all this we see that 
 characteristic failure of the modern mind to 
 distinguish clearly between what is immedi- 
 ately practicable, and what must ultimately 
 be brought to pass, and its incapacity to ad- 
 just the demands of the present to the needs 
 of the future. 
 
 Tested by such principles the restoration 
 of the Gilds wiUappear not merely reasonable 
 but inevitable.TBeing social, religious, and 
 political as well as industrial institutions, the 
 Gilds postulated in their organization the 
 essential unity of Hfej And so, just as it is 
 certain that the reaRamment of intellectual 
 unity must precede the reorganization of 
 society on a Co-operative basis, it is equally 
 certain that the same or similar forms of 
 social organization will be necessary again in 
 the future. 
 
 For the present we shall regard them 
 merely as political and industrial organiza- 
 tions, for these are the aspeCts which im- 
 mediately concern us. The question of their 
 
THE GILD SYSTEM 65 
 
 restoration as religious and social organiza- 
 tions is outside the scope of the present 
 volume, depending as it does upon the set- 
 tlement of many theological and scientific 
 questions which we do not feel qualified to 
 discuss. To give the reader some idea of 
 what the Gild system really was one cannot 
 perhaps do better than quote from a lecture 
 by Professor Lethaby on " Technical Educa- 
 tion in the Building Trade " (for though 
 this has particular reference to the building 
 trades, the same conditions obtained in every 
 trade), and to supplement this by adding the 
 rules of the Cloth Weavers of Flanders as 
 given by William Morris in " Architecture, 
 Industry and Wealth." 
 
 " In the Middle Ages," says Professor 
 Lethaby, " the masons' and carpenters' gilds 
 were faculties or colleges of education in 
 those arts, and every town was, so to say, a 
 craft university. Corporations of masons, 
 carpenters, and the like, were established in 
 the town; each craft aspired to have a college 
 hall. The universities themselves had been 
 well named by a recent historian ' Scholars' 
 Gilds/ The gild which recognized all the 
 
66 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 customs of its trade guaranteed the relations 
 of the apprentice and master craftsman with 
 whom he was placed; but he was really ap- 
 prenticed to the craft as a whole, and ultim- 
 ately to the city, whose freedom he engaged 
 to take up. He was, in fact, a graduate of 
 his craft college and wore its robes. At a 
 later stage the apprentice became a com- 
 panion or a bachelor of his art, or by pro- 
 ducing a masterwork, the thesis of his craft, 
 he was admitted a master. Only then was he 
 permitted to become an employer of labour 
 or was admitted as one of the governing body 
 of his college. As a citizen, City dignities 
 were open to him. He might become the 
 master in building some abbey or cathedral, 
 or as king's mason become a member of the 
 royal household, the acknowledged great 
 master of his time in mason-craft.) With 
 such a system was it so very woHHerml that 
 the buildings of the Middle Ages, which 
 were indeed wonderful, should have been 
 produced?" 
 
 Let us now glance at the rules of the 
 Cloth Weavers of Flanders. " No master to 
 employ more than three journeymen in his 
 
THE GILD SYSTEM 67 
 
 workshop; no one under any pretence to 
 have more than one workshop ; the wages 
 Jixed per day, and the_jniumber of hours also; 
 no work should be done onJaoIidays^ if piece- 
 work (which was allowed) the price per yard 
 fixed, but only so much and no more to be 
 done in a day. No one allowed to buy wool 
 privately, but at open sales duly announced. 
 No mixing of wools allowed; the man who 
 uses English wool (the best) not to have any 
 other on his premises. English and foreign 
 cloth not allowed to be sold. Workmen not 
 belonging to the Commune not admitted 
 unless hands fell short. Most of these rules 
 and many others may be considered to have 
 been made in the direct interest of the work- 
 men. fNpw for the safeguards to the public. 
 The workman must prove that he knows his 
 craft duly; he serves as apprentice first, and 
 then as journeyman, after which he is ad- 
 mitted as a master if he can manage capital 
 enough to set up three looms besides his 
 own, which of course he could generally do. 
 Width of web is settled; colour of list accord- 
 ing to quality; no work to be done in a frost 
 or bad light. All cloth must be ' walked ' or 
 
68 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 ' fulled ' a certain time, and to a certain 
 width, and so on and so on. Finally, every 
 piece of cloth must stand the test of examina- 
 tion, and if it fall short, goes back to the 
 maker, who is fined; if it comes up to the 
 standard it is marked as satisfactory." 
 
 The point to remember in all this is that 
 the individual craftsman was privileged, and 
 privileged he must be if he is to remain a 
 conscientious producer. For privilege not 
 only protected him from unscrupulous rivals 
 but also secured him leisure at his work a 
 very necessary condition of good work. The 
 framers of these regulations grasped one great 
 sociological facT: which is not clearly under- 
 stood to-day, namely, that rogues are very 
 dangerous men and that it is impossible to 
 keep control over them by granting that 
 measure of liberty which permits of unfair 
 competition. "'I say unfair competition, be- 
 cause the Gilds did not aim at the suppression 
 of competition, but at that particular form of 
 it which we designate commercial competi- 
 tion. By preventing the lower competition 
 for cheapness the plane of the struggle was 
 raised and a competition of quality was the 
 
THE GILD SYSTEM 69 
 
 result. This was of course thoroughly healthy 
 and stimulating, for it secured in the indus- 
 trial struggle not the c survival of the fittest ' 
 but the ' survival^of the best ' in the broadest 
 sense of the word./as the general excellence of 
 mediaeval craftsmanship abundantly proves. 
 
 That the Gild System is the only system 
 of organization under which production can 
 be healthy I am fully persuaded; but whether 
 it will again be applied to distribution is per- 
 haps open to question. The probability is 
 that the distribution of raw material in the 
 future will be undertaken by the State under 
 some form of Colleftivist administration with 
 nationalized railways. 1 With regard to the 
 nationalization of the land, this will probably 
 be one of the last reforms we shall achieve. 
 For if it be true, as Mr. Edward Carpenter 
 has pointed out, that the crust of convention- 
 ality and artificiality in which the modern 
 
 1 It may probably be found convenient to utilize the 
 existing means of distribution as embodied in the Co- 
 operative Society for supplying the ordinary necessities of 
 life ; this of course would not apply to such branches of 
 production as the furnishing and building trades, where it 
 is essential to true efficiency that no middleman interpose 
 between the craftsman and his customer. 
 
7 o THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 world is embedded is a change or growth 
 coincident with the growth of property and 
 the ideas flowing from it, does it not follow 
 that so long as this crust of conventionality 
 remains the nationalization of the land must 
 remain impracticable, since, so long as the 
 people are addicted to their present habits 
 and modes of life they will rally to the sup- 
 port of a system the abolition of which would 
 individually threaten their social existence. 
 
 As to the form which the Government of 
 the future will take it is not improbable that 
 the division of funftion between the Upper 
 and Lower Chambers will continue, with this 
 difference, that whereas the lower chamber 
 would be ele&ed by the people in their 
 private capacity the members of the Upper 
 Chamber would be nominated by the Gilds. 
 
 Such an arrangement would seem to secure 
 for democracy what at present it appears to 
 be incapable of securing for itself the leader- 
 ship of the best and wisest. Accurate think- 
 ing does not readily lend itself to platform 
 oratory, and so it happens that owing to a 
 disability to enforce their views at public 
 meetings the community is deprived of the 
 
THE GILD SYSTEM 71 
 
 services of a large seftion of the most thought- 
 ful members of the community. The crea- 
 tion, however, of an upper chamber whose 
 members were the nominees of the Gilds 
 would remedy this defedt by removing ora- 
 tory from the list of necessary qualifications 
 for political life, and with the wisest at the 
 helm the present anarchic tendencies of 
 democracy would be checked; the principle 
 of authority on a popular basis would be 
 thereby established, while a balance of power 
 between the various interests on the State 
 would be automatically maintained. 
 
 Should this predition prove to be a true 
 one, and should Society again revert to the 
 Gild system, we shall be in a position to 
 realize their value more adequately. With 
 our knowledge of the consequences of un- 
 fettered individual competition, society will 
 be able to guard itself more securely against 
 the growth of those evils of which we have 
 had so bitter an experience. And so while 
 the prospeft of social salvation inspires us 
 with hope, it may be well to remember that 
 society is not to be saved by the establish- 
 ment of any social regime , since, until each 
 
72 THE GILD SYSTEM 
 
 individual member of society has sufficient 
 moral courage to resist the temptation to 
 pursue his own private ends at the expense 
 of the commonweal, and possesses the mental 
 outlook necessary to enable him at all times 
 to know in what direction the best interests 
 of the community lie, social institutions once 
 established will tend inevitably to degenerate, 
 for inasmuch as [all institutions are but the 
 expression of national life and character, the 
 integrity of the individual can alone secure 
 the integrity of the State. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW THE GILDS MAY BE RESTORED 
 
 PASSING on now to consider the pro- 
 blem of ways and means of re-introduc- 
 ing the Gild System, the first facl we must 
 grasp is that the Gilds cannot be re-estab- 
 lished by further evolution upon the lines 
 along which society is now travelling, but by 
 the development of those forces which run 
 counter to what maybe considered the normal 
 line of social evolution. 
 
 Of these, the first force which will be in- 
 strumental in restoring the Gilds is the Trade 
 Union movement. Already the unions with 
 their elaborate organizations exercise many 
 of the functions which were performed by 
 the Gilds; such, for instance, as the regula- 
 tion of wages and hours of labour, in addition 
 to the more social duty of giving timely help 
 to the sick and unfortunate. Like the Gilds, 
 
74 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 the Unions have grown from small begin- 
 nings, until they now control whole trades. 
 Like the Gilds also, they are not political 
 creations, but voluntary organizations which 
 have arisen spontaneously to protect the 
 weaker members of society against the op- 
 pression of the more powerful. In three re- 
 spects only, as industrial organizations, are 
 they differentiated from the Gilds. In the 
 first place, they accept no responsibility for 
 the quality of the wares they produce. Se- 
 condly, masters are not permitted to become 
 members of these organizations; and thirdly, 
 they do not possess monopolies in their sepa- 
 rate trades. 
 
 Of course, these are very important differ- 
 ences differences in fal which for the time 
 being are insurmountable. The circumstance 
 that modern industry is so completely in the 
 grip of the financier and speculator is alone 
 sufficient to prevent any speedy transforma- 
 tion of the Unions into Gilds, since so long 
 as it exists it is difficult to see how masters 
 and men could belong to the same organiza- 
 tion. The question, therefore, which we re- 
 quire to answer is this : Will industry con- 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 75 
 
 tinue to be controlled by the financier, or are 
 there grounds for supposing that the master- 
 craftsman will supplant him in the future ? 
 
 My answer to this question is, that we 
 have very good grounds for supposing that 
 the craftsman will supplant the financier. 
 Speculation brings its own ruin. It is already 
 ruining the workman, and in proportion as it 
 succeeds in this it will undermine effective de- 
 mand, and so ultimately destroy thevery source 
 of its dividends. This prediction is based on 
 the assumption that society will quietly 
 acquiesce in the operation of the speculator, 
 but the probability being, as has already been 
 shown, that a revolution will result, the ruin 
 will be considerably hastened. Meanwhile, 
 there are two agencies at work in modern 
 society which are destined to supplant the 
 large faftory by the small workshop. The 
 first of these is the increasing use which is 
 made of eledtricity for the distribution of 
 power at a cheap rate, and the second is the 
 gradual raising of the standard of taste and 
 craftsmanship. 
 
 Respecting these, it is easy to see that 
 just as the introduction of steam power 
 
76 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 created the large faftory by concentrating 
 industry, so eleftricity, by facilitating the 
 distribution of power, will render possible 
 the small workshop in the future. It is true 
 that the growth of the factory system pre- 
 ceded the introduction of steam power and 
 machinery. This, however, in turn was pre- 
 ceded by a decline in craftsmanship which, 
 by substituting uniformity for variety in the 
 praftice of industry, made such development 
 possible. And so it may fairly be assumed 
 that just in proportion as the standard of 
 taste and craftsmanship is raised, the factory 
 system will tend to disappear. The practice 
 of good craftsmanship demands that care be 
 taken with the quality of the work; it de- 
 mands that work be done leisurely; that the 
 worker shall receive a fair price for his work 
 and that he shall have security of employ- 
 ment. All these things commercialism and 
 the faCtory system deny him and must deny 
 him, for the two are essentially antagonistic. 
 The victory of the one must mean the death 
 of the other. 1 
 
 1 A possible objedtion to this is that the raising of the 
 standard of taste will not affeft the engineering trades. 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 77 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of the 
 second force which is preparing the way for 
 the restoration of the Gilds, namely, the Arts 
 and Crafts movement, which exists to pro- 
 mote the revival of handicraft. Recognizing 
 that the true root and basis of all art lies in 
 the handicrafts, and that under modern con- 
 ditions the artist and craftsman have, to their 
 mutual detriment, become fatally separated, 
 the Arts and Crafts movement sought to 
 remedy this defect by promoting their re- 
 union. 
 
 Writing on the Revival of Handicrafts and 
 Design, 1 Mr. Walter Crane says: "The move- 
 ment indeed represents, in some sense, a re- 
 volt against the hard mechanical life and its 
 insensibility to beauty (quite another thing 
 to ornament). It is a protest against that so- 
 called industrial progress which produces 
 shoddy wares, the cheapness of which is paid 
 
 The answer is that the engineering trades will shrink 
 immeasurably in the future. The growth of the engineer- 
 ing trades corresponds with the growth of artificial con- 
 ditions of life, and as life in the future will be lived under 
 simpler conditions, they will shrink proportionately. 
 
 1 Arts and Crafts Essays. A collection of essays by 
 members of the Arts and Crafts Society. 
 
78 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 for by the lives of their producers and the 
 degradation of their users. It is a protest 
 against the turning of men into machines, 
 against artificial distinctions in art, and against 
 making the immediate market value, or pos- 
 sibly of profit, the chief test of artistic merit. 
 It also advances the claim of all and each to 
 the common possession of beauty in things 
 common and familiar, and would awaken the 
 sense of this beauty, deadened and depressed 
 as it now too often is, either on the one hand 
 by luxurious superfluities, or on the other 
 by the absence of the commonest necessities 
 and the gnawing anxiety for the means of 
 livelihood; not to speak of the every-day 
 ugliness to which we have accustomed our 
 eyes, confused by the flood of false taste or 
 darkened by the hurried life of modern towns 
 in which huge aggregations of humanity 
 exist, equally removed from both art and 
 nature, and their kindly and refining in- 
 fluences. 
 
 " It asserts, moreover, the value of the 
 practice of handicraft as a good training for 
 the faculties, and as a most valuable counter- 
 action to that overstraining of purely mental 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 79 
 
 effort under the fierce competitive conditions 
 of the day; apart from the very wholesome 
 and real pleasure in the fashioning of a thing 
 with claims to art and beauty, the struggle 
 with and triumph over technical necessities 
 which refuse to be gainsaid. And, finally, 
 thus claiming for man this primitive and 
 common delight in common things made 
 beautiful, it makes, through art, the great 
 socializer for a common and kindred life, for 
 sympathetic and healthy fellowship, and de- 
 mands conditions under which your artist 
 and craftsman shall be free. 
 
 " ' See how a great a matter a little fire 
 kindleth.' Some may think this is an ex- 
 tensive programme a remote ideal for a 
 purely artistic movement to touch. Yet if the 
 revival of art and handicraft is not a mere 
 theatrical and imitative impulse; if it is not 
 merely to gratify a passing whim of fashion, 
 or demand of commerce; if it has reality and 
 roots of its own; if it is not merely a little 
 glow of colour at the end of a sombre day 
 it can hardly mean less than what I have 
 written. It must mean either the sunset or 
 the dawn." 
 
8o HOW THE GILDS 
 
 We do not, of course, need to take this 
 war-cry at its face value. It is one thing to 
 declare a principle, it is another to reduce it 
 to practice. And looking at the Arts and 
 Crafts movement to-day it seems to resemble 
 the sunset rather than the dawn. It cannot 
 be denied that up to the present, while the 
 movement has succeeded in popularizing the 
 idea, it has for the most part failed to reduce 
 it to practice. A favoured few, possessed of 
 means or social advantages, have succeeded in 
 establishing themselves before the public, but 
 the number is comparatively insignificant. 
 The majority, after struggling for a few years, 
 have lost heart, and a depression of the move- 
 ment has followed in consequence. 
 
 Sunset, however, is followed by dawn, and 
 while we frankly recognize that the move- 
 ment is suffering from a reaction, we are not 
 justified in concluding that failure is its in- 
 evitable doom: 
 
 Tasks in hours of insight willed ,-, 
 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled, 
 
 says Matthew Arnold. The movement is for- 
 tifying itself upon more impregnable strong- 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 81 
 
 holds, for viewed from the inside it may be 
 seen that the centre of gravity of the move- 
 ment is being slowly transferred from artistic 
 and dilettante circles to the trade. Hitherto 
 the movement has suffered from weakness in 
 three directions. The first was its isolation 
 from the trade; the second, the general ab- 
 sence of intelle6tual patronage fashion 
 having been the guiding and controlling in- 
 fluence with the vast majority of its patrons; 
 and the third has been lack of knowledge as 
 to the sociological bearings of the movement, 
 such as would have enabled it to direct its 
 energies in the most effective way. 
 
 The gulf which has hitherto separated the 
 movement from the trade shows a tendency 
 to become bridged over. In many directions 
 there are signs that the trade is being gradu- 
 ally leavened; the wave of feeling which 
 created the Arts and Crafts movement has at 
 length reached the workers, and there is good 
 reason to believe that the first condition of 
 widespread success namely, the co-opera- 
 tion and goodwill of the trade will ere long 
 be attained. 1 
 
 1 In this connection special mention should be made of 
 G 
 
82 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 The patronage afforded to the crafts by 
 fashionable circles, if it has not altogether 
 ceased, is rapidly decreasing, and though, in 
 the general absence of intelligent patronage 
 the Arts and Crafts movement has every 
 reason to be grateful to fashion for keeping 
 the flame alive, we are persuaded that the 
 withdrawal of such patronage will prove to 
 be no evil, since, so long as the movement 
 accustomed itself to look to fashion for its 
 support, the work produced must necessarily 
 be of an exotic nature, while the really valu- 
 able work which the movement stands for, 
 namely, the restoration of beauty to life, is 
 retarded. 
 
 The greatest weakness of all, however, is 
 that hitherto the movement has never clearly 
 understood its own sociological bearings a 
 defecT: which the present volume aims at 
 remedying. In the long run I am persuaded 
 that the movement will never be able to make 
 much headway until it possesses a social 
 theory which accords with its artistic philo- 
 
 the admirable work done towards leavening the workers by 
 the L.C.C. Technical Schools since Professor Lethaby was 
 appointed Art Adviser to the Council. 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 83 
 
 sophy since until then it can never have 
 a common meeting ground with the public; 
 it will be unable to get support of the right 
 sort, and without such support its value as a 
 force in social reconstruction will be im- 
 paired. 
 
 I feel well advised in ranking the Arts and 
 Crafts movement as one of the forces of social 
 reconstruction, and that not merely because 
 art is the eternal enemy of commercialism, 
 but because of the peculiar relation in which 
 it stands to modern society. This is the first 
 time in history that art has progressed in 
 advance of the age in which it is practised. 
 Hitherto new movements in art have been 
 preceded by popular movements which have 
 prepared a public capable of understanding 
 them. Thus, the Humanists in Italy pre- 
 pared the way for the revival of Classical 
 Architecture at the time of the Renaissance, 
 and similarly the Anglo-Catholic movement 
 provided a public for the Gothic Revivalists 
 and the pre-Raphaelites. I cannot but be- 
 lieve that there is great significance in this 
 fact and that art is one of the great forces of 
 social reconstruction destined to roll back the 
 
84 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 wave of commercialism. At any rate, art is 
 no longer able to follow the trend of the age, 
 and sooner or later it will have to choose be- 
 tween being thrust out of society by the ever- 
 increasing pressure of commercial conditions 
 of existence, and definitely taking in hand 
 the work of social reconstruction. 
 
 The obvious way in which this is to be 
 accomplished is by joining hands with other 
 reform movements. Instead of seeking to 
 understand each other, reformers have at- 
 tempted solutions of their own separate prob- 
 lems, regardless of the efforts of others to 
 solve kindred difficulties, with the result that 
 one and all have lost their way amid the ex- 
 pediencies and compromises of practical poli- 
 tics. Hence it would appear that the imme- 
 diate work before us is the promotion of in- 
 tellectual unity by a return -to fundamentals, 
 the result of which would be not only to 
 unite the different sections of reform move- 
 ments with each other, but to unite them 
 with the public. 
 
 There are many signs that the tendency of 
 modern thought is in this direction. One re- 
 sult of the failure of all reform movements to 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 85 
 
 realize their dire6t intentions has been the 
 growth of a general consensus of opinion that 
 all substantial reform demands the spiritual 
 regeneration of the people. On this point it 
 is clear that sociologists, scientists, artists, 
 philosophical thinkers, politicians and re- 
 formers are coming to some agreement. 
 Moreover, it is becoming apparent to an ever 
 increasing body of thinkers that gambling, 
 drink, and many other social ills have their 
 roots in modern industrial conditions; that 
 so long as the majority are compelled to fol- 
 low occupations which give no scope to the 
 imagination and individuality of the worker, 
 nobler conceptions of life, in other words, 
 spiritual regeneration, are strangled at their 
 roots; and that the cultivation of the aesthetic 
 side of life is the great need of the day. 
 
 Meanwhile, abstract thought is tending in 
 the same direction. What was ordinarily 
 called philosophic materialism has of late 
 years receded very much into the back- 
 ground, and in its place we find a restoration 
 of belief in the immortality of the soul 
 through the growing acceptance of the doc- 
 trines of re-incarnation and karma, and the 
 
86 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 tendency to admit the claims of mysticism. 
 The necessity of a revival of religion of some 
 kind is becoming very generally admitted. 
 Consequently we do not hear so much of 
 militant agnosticism as of a tendency to try 
 and find out what are the really essential 
 things in religion. 
 
 The discoveries of modern science are con- 
 firming this tendency. One has only to men- 
 tion Sir William Crooke's experiments with 
 radiant light, the Rontgen rays, the N. rays, 
 Dewar's liquid air experiments, the Hert- 
 zian currents, the discovery of radium, and 
 Mr. Butler Burke's investigations into the 
 origin of life, to show that the abandonment 
 of the doctrine of the physical origin of life 
 (so incompatible with spiritualistic concep- 
 tions) is not very far distant. To the lay 
 mind, at any rate, the postulation by science 
 of the existence of a universal consciousness 
 interpenetrating all matter as the explanation 
 of the contradictory results of investigations 
 conducted by the chemist and the physicist, 
 the astronomer and the geologist, implies 
 such an abandonment. Hopeful as this ten- 
 dency undoubtedly is, the prospects of unity 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 87 
 
 are still more hopeful now that the estab- 
 lishment of a just standard of taste in art, in 
 conformity with a philosophic conception of 
 its nature, is within sight. After a century 
 of experiment and failure, art is at last 
 emerging from the cloud of darkness which 
 through the nineteenth century enveloped it. 
 It is difficult for those who are not pro- 
 fessionally engaged in the arts to realize the 
 enormous strides which have been made in 
 architecture and the crafts during the last 
 fifteen years, owing to the circumstance that 
 so little good work finds its way into the 
 streets of our great cities. Yet the advance 
 is remarkable. The reason of this is that as 
 a result of our experiments the fundamental 
 principles of art are becoming more gener- 
 ally understood. The architect of to-day 
 realizes that architecture is not a system of 
 abstract proportions to be applied indiffer- 
 ently to all buildings and materials, but that, 
 as already stated, the true root and basis of all 
 art lies in healthy traditions of handicraft; 
 that, indeed, it is impossible to detach design 
 from the material to be used, since in its ul- 
 timate relationships design is an inseparable 
 
88 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 part of good quality. The discovery of this 
 principle, which was foreshadowed by Rus- 
 kin in that famous chapter in the " Stones 
 of Venice " entitled " The Nature of Gothic," 
 is rapidly rejuvenating modern art. Com- 
 mencing with the establishment of traditions 
 of handicraft, architecture by reaction is being 
 regenerated. It is not unreasonable to expe<5l 
 that this new standard will gradually find its 
 way into the finer arts of painting and sculp- 
 ture. Painting and sculpture can never be 
 healthy except when practised in subordina- 
 tion to architecture, and as patronage of the 
 arts is now so grudgingly given, frequent op- 
 portunities for successful collaboration are 
 not likely to be forthcoming. 
 
 We may safely anticipate that the new 
 ideas now germinating in the arts will grad- 
 ually find their way into other branches of 
 acSlivity. It may be true, perhaps, that the 
 aestheticism of the connoisseur is often a very 
 superficial thing. Nevertheless it is the step- 
 ping stone to higher attainments; for no man 
 in the long run can study aesthetics apart 
 from the realities they symbolize. The Gothic 
 revival and the pre-Raphaelite movement at 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 89 
 
 their inception may be regarded as in many 
 respefts superficial. Yet they have led to the 
 discovery of truth in a hundred fields of re- 
 search; indeed it is difficult to say for what 
 they are not responsible. To them in the last 
 analysis we owe the re-creation of the whole 
 fabric of design, while indirectly they have 
 re-created the past for us in a manner never 
 understood before. Incidentally it may be 
 pointed out that the forces they set in motion 
 have not only supplied the key to the prob- 
 lems discussed in these pages, but have also 
 supplied the fadts necessary for their proper 
 statement. While again it is to the aesthetic 
 movement in literature that we owe the re- 
 vival of interest in folk lore, symbolism and 
 peasant life. 
 
 It will be thus, as element is added to 
 element, that a soil will be prepared wherein 
 new spiritual conceptions may take their rise. 
 Ideas of spirituality have hitherto been asso- 
 ciated with ideas of beauty. And just as 
 spiritual truth is not to be expressed apart 
 from the medium of beautiful form, so beauty 
 of form is not ultimately to be detached from 
 spiritual truth. It will be thus that the pur- 
 
9 o HOW THE GILDS 
 
 suit of beauty will tend to re-awaken and to 
 give reality to the spiritual life. Not that 
 the worship of beauty can ever be sufficient 
 to constitute a religion, but that the seeking 
 after beauty in all relationships of life (for 
 society must pass through a state of self- 
 conscious aestheticism ere beauty can resume 
 its proper and subordinate funftion) is more 
 likely to lead us into the vicinity of spiritual 
 things than a breathless pursuit of riches and 
 ugliness. 
 
 Such appear to be the main outlines of an 
 intellectual unity to which we may reasonably 
 look forward in the future; if, indeed, it can 
 be called intellectual unity, for the unity 
 which we anticipate will frankly recognize 
 that the basis of all thought is emotional 
 rather than intellectual, that thought is no- 
 thing more than the emotions become self- 
 conscious a conclusion which a modern 
 writer has expressed in the striking phrase: 
 " Reason can clear away error; it can give us 
 no new light." 
 
 Meanwhile the external conditions of 
 modern society are co-operating to lift the 
 masses out of the grooves in which they move 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 91 
 
 and have their being. Rapid mechanical de- 
 velopment has not lessened but increased the 
 drudgery of the world ; money-making has 
 not, as our political economists prophesied, 
 made the many rich, but has precipitated the 
 masses into the most abjed: poverty the world 
 has ever seen, while free trade and universal 
 markets have not inaugurated an era of peace 
 and goodwill among nations, but have plunged 
 society into endless wars. Hence the majority 
 of people to-day, feeling that the tendency of 
 modern civilization is to add more to the 
 sorrow than to the joy of life, are beginning 
 to ask themselves what Carlyle and Ruskin 
 were asking themselves fifty years ago 
 whither modern civilization goeth. And so 
 it is not unreasonable to expedl that the force 
 which is to carry us back to the Gild system 
 is now germinating in our midst. The failure 
 of modern society to realize itself will result 
 in an effort towards finding lost roads. The 
 people will come to connect the Golden Age 
 with the past again rather than with the 
 future. And such a change is just what is 
 wanted to unite the people with the intellect 
 of the age. For it is the popular superstition 
 
92 HOW THE GILDS 
 
 exalting the present age at the expense of the 
 past which, more than anything else, perhaps, 
 separates ignorant from cultured people, who, 
 being better informed, are, on the one hand, 
 unable either to take part in popular activi- 
 ties, and on the other, to get a following 
 themselves. 
 
 A reverence for the past, then, is the hope 
 of the future. This is the testimony of hist- 
 ory. Consider what the consciousness of a 
 glorious past did for the Italians of the Re- 
 naissance. It was the hope of restoring the 
 ancient splendour of the Senate and the Re- 
 public which created the force that gave 
 birth to the great achievements of that era. 
 And though this ambition was not realized, 
 the ideal which it inspired in the national 
 mind remained a force of reconstruction. In 
 like manner a reverence among the English 
 people for the achievements of the Middle 
 Ages in architecture and the crafts, and of the 
 Elizabethan era in literature, would become 
 an influence co-ordinating a multitude of our 
 national activities. The spirit of emulation 
 which such a reverence would engender in 
 society, by setting certain forces in motion, 
 
MAY BE RESTORED 93 
 
 would add just those ingredients which are 
 lacking and lead us out of the quagmire 
 of materialism toward the realization of a 
 happier and more beautiful life. 
 
 Evidence is not wanting that the change 
 will be in the direction here indicated. It is 
 only a century ago that Sir Walter Scott 
 thought it necessary to apologize to his 
 readers for his love of Gothic Architecture. 
 Compare England to-day with the England 
 of 1851, with its insolent belief in its own 
 self-sufficiency. If external evidence be called 
 for, take as a common instance the develop- 
 ment of the trade in antique furniture and 
 bric-a-brac, yet many of the men who set 
 this force in motion are still with us. Indeed, 
 the change of feeling which is now to be seen 
 coming over the national mind appears to be 
 nothing more than a change which was con- 
 summated in the world of art three-quarters 
 of a century ago, for just as the eighteenth 
 century architects thought they had reached 
 a state of perfection equalled only by the 
 ancients, so the mid - nineteenth century 
 thought itself on the high road towards per- 
 fedtion. Subsequent experience, however, 
 
94 HOW GILDS MAY BE RESTORED 
 
 revealed the idea in each case to be illusory 
 a false development preparatory to accele- 
 rated decline, since, being essentially artificial, 
 both had moved out of contact with actuality. 
 And just as it was found necessary in the arts 
 to seek a new source of inspiration in a study 
 of Mediaevalism, so society by a reverence 
 for the past may renew its lease of life. We 
 live the life of the past to-day in our thoughts, 
 to-morrow we may live it in reality. Thus 
 hopes may be entertained that what has been 
 may again be, and under new conditions with 
 new possibilities, may be again in fuller 
 measure and more complete perfection. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 HAVING stated the direction in which 
 social salvation may be sought, it re- 
 mains for us to define more precisely the 
 immediate work which is to be done; for, 
 though it has been shown that the solution 
 of our problems depends ultimately upon the 
 regeneration of the spiritual life of the people, 
 it is to be feared that such a generalization is 
 insufficient as a guide to aftion, aftion being 
 based rather upon what is sensuously appre- 
 hended in the concrete than upon what is 
 intellectually comprehended in the abstract. 
 To enter further into detail, therefore, it ap- 
 pears to us that the spiritual regeneration of 
 society might be facilitated if the reform 
 movement could be persuaded to concentrate 
 its energies upon: 
 
96 X CONCLUSION 
 
 i st. The stimulation of right thinking 
 upon social questions. 
 
 and. The restoration of a spirit of rever- 
 ence for the past. 
 
 3rd. The dissemination of the principles 
 of taste. 
 
 4th. The teaching of the elements of 
 morality, especially in relation to com- 
 merce. 
 
 5th. The insistence upon the necessity of 
 of personal sacrifice as a means to the 
 salvation alike of the individual and of 
 the State. 
 
 Respecting these, the first has always been 
 
 1 O J 
 
 part of the reform programme, and therefore 
 does not require elaborating. The second is 
 recommended not in advocacy of a dogmatic 
 or emotional reversion to obsolete models, 
 but because a reverence for what was really 
 good and valuable in the life of the past must 
 not only form the basis of all rational culture, 
 and thereby of clear thinking in sociology as 
 in other topics, but because it would provide 
 the best antidote to the iconoclasm of the 
 present age, with its tendency to over-rate its 
 own importance, thereby enabling the mind 
 
CONCLUSION 97 
 
 to gauge to what extent progress, and to what 
 extent retrogression have taken place. In a 
 word, it is the only way of restoring to the 
 national mind the sense of the right propor- 
 tion of things. 
 
 The dissemination of taste is necessary not 
 only to teach people how to live reasonably, 
 for taste is the best protection which the in- 
 dividual can possess against the love of ostenta- 
 tion and vulgar display, but it is a necessary 
 condition of the abolition of commercialism. 
 Until we can reform popular taste it is to be 
 feared we shall have to submit to commercial- 
 ism, since commercialism has its roots in the 
 vulgarity of modern life on the one hand, and 
 the general debasement of taste on the other. 
 The need of the hour is not more schools of 
 art, producing an unlimited supply of amateur 
 artists with an exaggerated sense of their own 
 capacities, but schools of taste which would 
 teach them how little they know. 
 
 Again, it is necessary to teach the principles 
 of morality in order to awaken people to the 
 immorality of conventional morals. 1 This is 
 
 1 The reader could not do better than read the Essay 
 H 
 
98 CONCLUSION 
 
 especially true of the ethics of business, where 
 precept and practice have drifted so far apart 
 that there is great danger of the sense of 
 honesty disappearing from amongst us. 
 
 Lastly, the insistence upon the necessity of 
 personal sacrifice as a means to the salvation 
 alike of the individual and of the State is 
 particularly necessary to-day, because social 
 reformers have ceased to insist upon it. Never- 
 theless, sacrifice, as hitherto, remains the law 
 of life. To attain the higher good the lower 
 must be sacrificed. Hence it is that just as 
 for the individual salvation the higher plea- 
 sures may only be attainted by the sacrifice 
 of the lower, so the welfare of the State de- 
 mands that the individual members forego per- 
 sonal advantages for the general well-being 
 that indeed they cultivate the spirit of those 
 Spartan envoys, who, when asked whether 
 they came with a public commission or on 
 their own account, replied, " If successful, 
 for the public; if unsuccessful, for ourselves." 
 What a contrast to the spirit of to-day to 
 the spirit which animates so many men of 
 
 on the " Defence of Criminals," in " Civilisation, its 
 Cause and Cure," by Mr. Edward Carpenter. 
 
CONCLUSION 99 
 
 pious and progressive opinions, who shuffle 
 off their personal responsibility wherever 
 possible to the shoulders of the State. It is 
 not by these, but by those who can realize 
 their responsibilities and are prepared to make 
 the necessary sacrifices, that reform will be 
 achieved. To resist commercialism is in these 
 days to resist the devil in the nearest and 
 most obvious sense of the word, since until a 
 man has successfully overcome its temptation 
 he is incapable of really valuable work, for 
 he will lack clearness of vision. A man may 
 read and think as much as he pleases, but if 
 he be without the courage to test his con- 
 clusions by practice he can possess no vital 
 knowledge. His thoughts will lack precision. 
 It is only by living his thoughts that they 
 may be focussed to the surrounding circum- 
 stances of life. As was said of old, " If thine 
 eye be single thine whole body shall be full 
 of light." 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the changes ne- 
 cessary to the spiritual regeneration of the 
 people. In the meantime the constructive 
 forces in society will be unable to make much 
 
ioo CONCLUSION 
 
 headway. For as Carlyle says, " If you have 
 much wisdom in your nation, you will get it 
 faithfully collected; for the wise love wisdom, 
 and will search for it as for life and salvation. 
 If you have little wisdom you will get even 
 that little ill-collected, trampled under foot, 
 reduced as near as possible to annihilation/' 
 For the same reason until we can get some 
 wisdom in the English nation, Trades Union- 
 ism, which we have come to regard as the 
 new centre of order, will be too much on the 
 defensive to work definitely for the salvation 
 of society, while the revival of art and handi- 
 craft, upon which the abolition of commer- 
 cialism in one sense depends, will be unable 
 to break down the barriers which restrict its 
 operations to a very limited sphere. It cannot 
 be insisted upon too strongly that this reform 
 cannot be achieved unless art reformers secure 
 the good will and co-operation of the public. 
 The experience of the Arts and Crafts move- 
 ment has proved conclusively that unless the 
 public can be persuaded to give organized 
 support to the movement and are prepared 
 to take a share in the sacrifices involved, pro- 
 fessional effort can avail nothing. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 And yet, do what we can, sooner or later 
 we come into collision with the spiritual 
 degradation of society. So long as people 
 persist in their present extravagant habits of 
 life their expenditure must always tend to 
 get ahead of their incomes, and they will put 
 up with the jerry and false in consequence. 
 Modern life is an exaft counterpart of 
 modern art. It is fundamentally insincere, 
 lacks restraint, worships shams. We have, as 
 Carlyle says, " given up hope in the Everlast- 
 ing and True, and placed hope in the Tem- 
 porary, half or wholly false/' The further we 
 inquire into the decadence of modern art the 
 more we find that every aspeft of it, yea, 
 every line of it corresponds to some trait in 
 the national character. It is the art of a 
 people who have descended to every decep- 
 tion for the purpose of making money. 
 Never did popular art more faithfully repre- 
 sent the national life than to-day. 
 J According to the old conception, art, re- \ 
 /ligion, ideas, integrity of work, the pursuit 
 of perfe6lion, were looked upon as the serious 
 things of life, while business and money- 
 making were subservient things, considered 
 
102 CONCLUSION 
 
 relatively unimportant, for men had a rever- 
 ence for the truth and abhorrence for the 
 false. And this we maintain is the right 
 conceptio'n. Except a Society acknowledge 
 the real things of life, and be true to them 
 it cannot remain healthy. It is not economic 
 causes outside our individual control which 
 have given rise to the social problem, but 
 the degradation of the spiritual which has 
 followed the usurpation of life by business 
 and money-maJcmgT"^? 
 
 And this is the choice we are called upon 
 to make. Are we content to continue living 
 as a nation of Philistines, indifferent alike to 
 poetry, religion, ideas and art, worshipping 
 vulgar success, wasting our precious gifts in 
 sordid speculative enterprises and our leisure 
 in senseless luxury, dissipation and excite- 
 ment? If so we shall continue to wallow in 
 the troughs of commercialism, and no solution 
 of our problems is possible, though every 
 voice in the land should demand it. Unless 
 individually we are prepared to live for the 
 truth and to make sacrifices for it, Society 
 will remain as at present at the mercy of 
 the speculator, the sweater, the hustler, the 
 
CONCLUSION 103 
 
 mountebank and the adventurer. For there 
 can be no remedy. More important to a 
 nation than the acquisition of material riches 
 is the welfare of its spiritual life. This is the 
 lesson the social problem has to teach us; 
 not until it is learned shall we emerge from 
 the cloud of darkness in which we are 
 enveloped. 
 
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