The Modern Gospel of Good Work

Progress, Volume XII, Issue 4, 1 December 1916, Page 809

The Modern Gospel of Good Work

From the "Architects' and Builders' Journal"

The Design and Industries Association, whose special aim is to bring about a better standard of taste in all things of common usage by drawing together the producer, the distributor, and the consumer, have issued a fourth pamphlet, written by Mr. Clutton Brock, who, with great directness and vivacity sets forth his creed of work. The following arc some interesting passages relating to the taste of the general public and those who control it: — Beauty to most people consists, not in design, but in what they call "style"; and style changes as quickly as fashion in dress. Thus, people get a notion that high finish is inartistic, as it is when it is finish for the sake of finish; they suppose that there is some mysterious virtue in the roughness of peasant art; and they will buy objects in which this roughness is imitated for commercial purposes, objects that are merely badly made. . . .

Good design and good workmanship produce beauty in all objects of use. That is the common sense of the matter. But human beings never attain to common sense unless they aim at something beyond it. There must be a kind of religion of workmanship, if workmanship is to be good; and a religion of design, if there is to be good design. It never is good unless both designer and workman do their best for the sake of doing it. "What we need most in England now is this religion; and we need a condition of things, a relation of all the parties concerned, in which it will be possible to do good work for the sake of doing it. When we have that, we shall have art soon enough. And it is not an impossible or unnatural relation, for it has often existed in the past.

The delight in doing a job well for its own sake is just as natural to man as greed or laziness or fraudulence. There is a natural force in him making for good work, as there is a natural force making for bad. Unfortunately the force making for bad work is helped, at present, in England, by circumstances which can be overcome, and by a body of mistaken opinion which can be refuted. But the circumstances can be overcome only if the opinions are changed. Thus, both manufacturers and shopkeepers often believe that they are utterly at the mercy of the public taste, and that the public taste is quite irrational; the public does not want good design or workmanship; the only way to success is to tempt it with continually changing

fashions. Unfortunately such beliefs become true, if acted upon, in trade as in politics. The public can easily be demoralized in both cases. It has not a fixed and certain taste of its own. It does not know what it wants, but is subject to suggestion; and if it is beset with articles ill made and ill designed but following some new and violent fashion, it will come to believe that these are the articles which it wants. Tradesmen, like politicians, can be demagogues, and can make their fortunes by demagogy. But there is promise as well as danger in the fact that the public taste is plastic. The mistake in England has been the belief that it is plastic only in one direction, or, rather, the belief that it is not plastic at all, but always in favour of plausible rubbish. Producers think they are giving the public what it wants, when really the}' are forcing upon it what they think it wants. The fact is that they can force upon it what they choose to give it. This is not true of the individual producer. He probably is not strong enough to withstand any general tendency of the mass of producers but still it is the tendency of the producers that controls him, not the tendency of the public. So producers in the mass can control their own tendency, since they can persuade the public that it likes what they choose to give it. Therefore the question is whether they shall blindly, and without any forethought or organization, submit to a general tendency imposed upon them by the worst among themselves, or whether they shall exercise their will in combination to persuade the public that it likes what is good. The future of all English industry depends upon their decision. . . .

It has been proved again and again, as Morris himself confessed, that individual artists of genius, though they may make a small public for themselves, cannot affect the condition of a whole industry; and that art schools, though they may produce armies of trained students, cannot force an industry to use those students, cannot even train them so that they shall be useful to an industry. At present the art-student is a separate genus, something quite different from the artist, and seldom able to become one. The country is full of art-students who have never become artists, who, remain capable only of producing art-students' work, or of teaching others to produce it. Manufacturers are impatient of them, and they are contemptuous of manufacturers, both with some reason. For the vice of our artistic education is that it can turn a youth, with no artistic capacity whatever, into a very skilful art-student; while the vice of our industries is that they do not want artistic capacity. They only want designers who will do quickly, exactly, and cheaply, what they are told to do. Thus the designer is the slave, not one of the captains of industry. Indeed, industry has no captains at all, except, perhaps, the commercial traveller. It is lie who is supposed to know what the public wants. It is his taste which controls design; and all the while it is not his taste at all, but what he supposes to be the taste of the public. And the public buy what they suppose to be the

taste of someone else, so that design is not con-

trolled by any real taste at all, by any actual likes or dislikes, but only by a general desire to follow some imaginary standard. This system of unreality can only be destroyed by the collective will of all those who are concerned in the industries where it prevails. We can have neither good workmanship nor art unless objects are made according to the liking of someone, and it is useless to try to make them according to the liking of the public. That only means a process of blind experiment; for, since the public do not know what they like, no one, not even the commercial traveller, can know. Therefore there is nothing for it but to produce articles in which the liking, the taste, the zest, of the producer is expressed. That is the only way to excellence; and it can only be done, as I have said, by co-operation among manufacturers, designers, and shopkeepers. There is, at present, in England, far more jealousy between competing manufacturers than in Germany or America. This jealousy is itself a symptom, not only of a low conscience, but of a low state of enterprise and capacity, of timidity rather than of adventure. For in the long run the prosperity of a country depends upon the general excellence of its industries; and general excellence

cannot be attained by blind and jealous competition. In this matter manufacturers must learn from men. of science. Science advances rapidly because men of science are concerned for its advance rather than for their own pockets or reputations. So industry will advance in this country, both in quality and prosperity, when all concerned in it aim at a general excellence. And apart from all material questions, to aim at a general excellence, to forget yourself in that aim, is the only way to enjoy your work, and so to make life worth living. Commerce is a dreary business when its one aim is to make money; how dreary many of our articles of commerce prove, for they are made only to sell, and they have an ugliness which betrays the joylessness of all who are concerned in the production of them. They will not be able to compete, already they are failing to compete, with articles from other countries, which have more of a joy of a public spirit in them, and therefore more adventure, more sparkle, more beauty. ...

So the cause of the Design and Industries Association means more than.a little pleasure for cultured people. It means what Ave call the social question. It means ultimately a change in the relations between producer and consumer; it means, in fact, the future of civilization. For you cannot have civilization where the lives of millions are sacrificed to produce rubbish for thousands who do not enjoy it when it is produced. That means a perpetual conflict growing always more bitter until it leads back to barbarism. This is not a political matter and it cannot be settled by a political struggle. So long as the workman has to produce rubbish he will not be satisfied with his work or his life, no matter how large, his wages may be or how short his hours. He will be satisfied only when he has work that will satisfy his soul; and he will get that only when the public want it from him. . . .