in the markets. A balance of our wages (a large one) went to support
trades unions. The good workman grew poor, the bad grew rich. It was
a state of things which took all the strength of an honest man to
combat. Honest men grew rare and more rare. Dishonesty flourished.
Leaders became fanatics. They were of our class. Ignorant of cause
and effect we were, but they were noisy, they spoke platitudes, their
arguments (if arguments they could be called) were founded upon
catch words which sounded wise, but were foolish. They pretended to
work for the great cause of Liberty and Equality. They _did_ nothing
of the kind. They feathered their nests from our labour and grew
rich. They were well paid for the cause they preached. Liberty was
dragged more and more into the far distance. We thought we had been
slaves; we found we had been free. We found we were being mastered
by unscrupulous men. We grew more and more suspicious, more and more
hostile. We thought revolution would put things straight. Taught,
that the Government was weak (which was not far wrong), that anarchy
would give us what we wanted, that if we defied the Government, if we
used German methods of might against right, we must win. To starve
our country into submission was a method preached to us which, in
our hearts, we were unwilling to believe. If we did not obey we were
threatened. Those of us who would not stood the chance of starvation.
The great railway strike of 1919, wicked as it was, because it very
nearly approached attempted murder of innocent people, failed. That
strike it was that opened our eyes. Surely we were being led on the
wrong road! Faith in our leaders left us. They _began to hedge_. We
saw that. Then we knew they were false and untrustworthy and we
broke loose from them, which, having done, we began to find who were
our friends. We came to the conclusion that we must get to work again
and be honest once more. We did so, and on every side found helping
hands. Hence the city of Liberty and Peace in which we live now. We
know we were ignorant, we resolved to learn. We knew we had been idle
and greedy. We knew the life we had led could not make good citizens
or happy ones. We resolved to labour, to give up coarse excitements
in leisure time.
“We tried it. We formed our own Union, which had for its motto, ‘All
Labour is dignified,’ but it depends upon the labourer to make it so.
‘Help yourselves and you will be helped,’ is such a truism it seems
needless to quote, but there are many truisms of which we need to be
often reminded. We know now that reform must come from the bottom.
If the foundations are rotten the veriest palace will fall. We know
that in us lies the foundation of the State. Before the State is
reformed we must reform ourselves, and this we are doing. When it is
accomplished we shall be fit to take part in the rule of our country,
and we are on the road to do it, in the meantime we are learning
the difficult task of SELF RULE, and in that, even if it be labour
to do it, it is lightened by the vision it provides, and the happy
conscience it engenders. Now, we are children of Liberty, before we
were cripples and chained to doctrinaires and wind-bags.”
The tone of this discourse, of which is given only an epitome is,
as it were, the text of all that is working its way, and the means
employed in its success my dream will go on to relate.
§ 31
An important neglected industry is revived. I noticed many men with
deeply stained arms and hands; they were the dyers. It did not much
matter that coal-tar dyes slipped through English fingers and were
developed in Germany, because the colours they made were vulgar and
discordant, far more in harmony with Teutonic taste than English.
Many years ago the author of these pages was in Algiers and heard
of local dyers there, some Arabs, but mostly Moors they were. A
black Soudanese servant of his told him of them. At once he took
advantage of this and put into their hands fine muslin strips, which
they converted into colour as exquisite as possible. Now rags, the
remnants retain their freshness. A yellow like crocus, a pink rose,
a lustrous black shot with copper, a green like fresh ivy leaves,
an iris purple, and a blue like the sea at Malta. He tried to get
the colour copied--there were no dyers with the skill to do it.
Since those days (50 years ago), and quite recently, I hear that
enterprising people from the New City have learnt many a secret
from Eastern dyers. In this instance, instead of spoiling oriental
taste for colour, alas! a habit of the commercial English, they are
learning from them. India is helping England out of her bad taste.
More beautiful tints I never saw than those in my dream. The sight
of them made my spirit think how much we might learn from the East
of value instead of pushing our tasteless goods where for centuries
beauty has prevailed. The eye is pleased now in the New City, instead
of displeased. Beautiful colour seems to grow naturally, the streets
and gardens are full of it.
Every garment gives a lively note which is the key to interchanges
of harmonies of colour only to be compared with exquisite music. The
trade of the dyer has become an Art which creates pictures at every
turn of the road and field.
§ 32
Why is the New City so orderly and yet so free? How is it that
life seems to run so smoothly, and yet without monotony? Trades
are located as they were in Ancient Greece and Rome, in a measure
also in Europe and England in better times than ours were a while
ago. Chaos is no more. The hundred headed hydra, personified
in “the middle-man,” that robber of the earnings of labour, is
becoming extinct, owing in large measure to the more extended use
of the market, where as we have seen practically any article can be
purchased at a reasonable price which leaves a reasonable profit
for the producer. This has led to a diminution of shops, which are
no longer heterogeneously planted in residential quarters. Every
tradesman has to take out a licence for which he pays, the money
going to the Commune. There is the Butchers’ Quarter, a blessing
indeed. No longer are wayfarers offended by the barbarous sights of
bleeding corpses, of blood sprinkling the footways. If such horrors
must be, they are hidden. No butcher is permitted to make a public
display of his bloody trade. Meat, when not sold in the Market,
is found in a district set apart for a necessary, if disgusting,
trade, but its products are not before the public eye. The shop
is not _on the street_, it is located behind it. The same law
applies to poulterers, indeed, to all trades which, of necessity,
contain objectionable matter. A large, but not universal, part of
the fish trade is carried on by the weekly market; but, owing to
the swift destruction of freshness, and fish being a health-giving
food (besides being cheap) there is a considerable demand for fresh
as well as salt water fish, therefore shops for its sale are a
necessity. Fishmongers alike with butchers have their locality.
Those trades which are disconnected with unpleasant associations
are not excluded from public gaze. Only those of them which produce
_litter_ are restricted in residential quarters. Silversmiths, and
all shops associated with handicrafts, are permitted on the public
streets, of which they are ornaments, but these also take out a
licence, but the tax is smaller than for objectionable trades. The
order thus established is in no sense inconvenient. Electric tramways
(only one line is permitted) run in the broad streets. They are not
allowed in the narrow. The lovely city of Florence has been well nigh
spoiled by liberty to run trams in streets not more than 25 feet
wide. The English Communes took note of that. When facilities for
quick locomotion are not regulated, they constitute a nuisance, are
destructive of peace, and become a tyranny. “Companies” pretended
to study the convenience of citizens, in reality studied their own
financial success, and let other considerations take their chance.
All foreign goods of whatever kind, save those provided by British
Colonies, are taxed. Free trade is only permitted to the colonials.
Since this has been a law of all the Communes, British trade has
increased, British output is larger, and greater activity of
production has proved the wisdom of a law which encourages local
enterprises. Every householder is bound to keep clean the footway
immediately touching his habitation, but the cleanliness of the
roadway is under the direction of the Commune. Wandering over every
portion of the city in my dream I have seen no squalor. Poverty
there is and always must be, but squalor, the result of want of self
respect and bad early training, no! The people have risen above it.
Where industry is (not industrialism) squalor can find no place. A
man who keeps the tools of his trade in good order, who is proud of
the work of which they are the implements, and who respects his home,
is particular about “appearances.” So is a good wife, so are good
sons and daughters.
§ 33
Home life is but a little picture of the extended scene outside.
Disorder in smaller matters leads to disorder in greater. While the
Commune is responsible for order on a large scale, every citizen is
responsible on a smaller scale. The half is greater than the whole!
Order must be a first principle of the home, as it must be of the
Commune, which is but an extended home. The new city being small
compared to the monstrous, heterogeneous places of muddle in the
past, and leisure greater, there is less call for swift locomotion.
The new people walk more, and are, consequently, more healthy. So
the streets are not congested by traffic, and people are not all in
the muddle-minding strain of “hurry.” Where order is, leisure is
certain. Busy, or rather, industrious people always find time, it
is only an ill-regulated day that produces “hurry-scurry.” Outside
my dream, I never knew an industrious man complain of want of
time. William Morris, as industrious a man as ever breathed, never
complained of interrupters. After a visit from a friend, and none
took greater pleasure than he in giving him welcome, Morris was at
his work again in a “twinkling.” The man who orders his day wisely
is alert, ready at any moment to concentrate his energy. The idle,
not the industrious, grumble about want of time. The real question,
and one that is serious, is the use to which leisure is subjected.
The so-called working class (by the way, every man worth his salt is
a working man) is coming to know that, and that ill-used leisure is
a sin against order, and here in the new life he has set his mind
against it. From what has been recounted of my dream the reader
already knows that, but as it proceeds, my dream will show how order,
punctuality, and reverence for the uses which leisure should breed is
permeating the entire community and becoming a habit, hence idle folk
are in the minority, indeed, they are despised.
§ 34
It has been read from my dream, so far, that, while material welfare
of the people is one object, and a prominent one, the Commune, as
the guiding spirit of the new life, is fully conscious of the wise
saying of Jesus Christ, “Man does not live by bread alone but by
every word that proceeds from the Spirit of God.” We had eyes and saw
not, ears and heard not; noble intuitions we repulsed, aspirations
we neglected, and we were taught elaborate creeds out of touch with
realities. Blind, too often, to the beauties of nature and its
sisters “The Arts,” we had grown deaf to the songs of birds, to music
of the winds moaning, or joyfully singing, among forest trees. We
had ceased to sing as we worked. Indeed, the natural joys granted us
to receive have ceased to please, ceased to be a part of life. To
the arts, which seek to crystallise visions inspired by God’s gift
of exquisite nature, we had become blind and deaf. They had ceased
to move us, ceased to inspire us, ceased to raise us from the mire
of money grabbing. So eager we were for wealth that we pursued it
blindly as the only object of our energies. We had lost touch with
half, and the better half, of life, and the soul of England was
becoming hardened, insensitive, and ANIMAL. Good, in some ways the
hard Puritan was dead to the beauty of God’s work. He thought he
was spiritual. He did not know that there is soul in all matter. In
this respect he was more _un_christian than a pagan, who, at least,
saw the gods and recognised them in the movement of the stars, in
the dawn, in the shining midday, and the splendour of sunset time.
The old pagan found God in all nature, as he found him in great art.
He saw into the very heart of the marble from which Phidias carved
Olympian Zeus. He saw the spirit of Pallas Athene under the ivory and
golden statue in the Parthenon.
The Puritan cut himself off from _All Beauty_. Instead of seeing good
in God’s greatest works and in man’s most inspired creations, he saw
evil. His mind was distorted, a cripple; and little did he dream that
his spiritual nature was really a material one. To his narrow and
crooked creed much of the apathy of the modern mind is to be traced.
“As it was wicked to see beauty, to worship it as God made it, let
us make ourselves rich.” What a Creed?
With the neglect of _agriculture_ came the Tyranny of
_industrialism_. With an apathy towards Art, towards its great
mission to display the beauty of the soul in the array of material
presentation, the soul of England was growing degenerate. It was
becoming GERMAN, and what lower place than that can be found for a
country so great as England has been! We have to remake England, and
we mean to do it. We mean to learn from the Pagans, to reinstate much
of their teaching. We mean to cultivate the teaching of Jesus Christ,
who drew a lesson from the “lilies of the field,” the death of a
sparrow, His generosity to the mistake of a troubled woman. Who, from
the Cross blessed a thief, who, dying in agony, forgave his enemies,
who taught the gospel of _thou_ more than I, who would give to Cæsar
as well as to God, and, above all, whose noble life was pressed on by
human as well as Divine love. Jesus Christ was a poet and artist as
well as a prophet and reformer. The life of the soul was everything
to Him. Wealth for wealth’s sake is a phantom, a chimera. We mean
to go back to find a fairer road to happiness than the modern world
would give us. While we accept facilities for greater comfort, we
mean to use them wisely, not to overwhelm us, but to help us. We wish
to help the people to see beauty, and in their lives to live up to
the vision. To live, not as a preparation for another and happier
life, to reward in a future state, but to live and see with clear
eyes the one which is now ours to make or mar it. Every man and
woman who labours is praising God, so long as the labour is not from
_greed_, but from a fixed principle to enrich the soul of the people
by first enriching our own.
§ 35
These words and a great many more I heard said, not in a church, but
in the Town Hall by a great artist, and they led me to search. In
my dream I had seen how the principles he dwelt upon were already
at work in the homes of the people in municipal government, which
was seeking Justice and Fraternity. So I extended my travels and
observations.
The walls of the churches are growing busy with beauty. The fear of
idol worship is no more. Men know now, being better instructed, that
it was not the wooden effigy _but the soul it put into a shape_,
that was worshipped. It was a symbol, sometimes an ugly one, but
still a symbol of Divine Power. The crafts are symbols of industry,
of faithfulness to an ideal that only the best work counts for good,
hence underlying their technical merit is a great truth that the
people are understanding, and of which they are conscious, so they
have pride in the ethic as well as æsthetic quality of what they are
doing; but in no spirit of priggism or sermonising is this, just
simply it is a pleasurable sensation added to the fulfilment of duty.
For what a man does unwillingly will be bad, what he does pleasurably
will be good and impressive.
Many of the pictures are strange, some would call them childish.
Perhaps they are _childlike_ because they express intensity
without rhetoric. To affect to be what one is not is humbug. Every
“primitive” did his best. He tried hard to make his pictures look
like nature. His hand was not so cultivated as his imagination.
The image he formed in his mind was more complete than his power
to portray it. Looking at works of art by “a primitive,” if we
have the discriminating sensibility, we see what he saw and follow
his mental effort, which compensates for technical shortcomings.
To _affect_ childishness is to prove imbecility. What we like in
the new world pictures is their real _naïvete_. That the authors
of them are untaught is obvious, but there is that in them which
compensates. They are done by men who believe in what they are doing
and are feeling it with intensity. An academic critic can find
plenty to criticise, but nothing to laugh at. The simplicity evinced
comes from the fact that their authors ARE _primitive_. I heard
said they are mostly by peasants, who, like the noblest of French
artists, J. François Millet, saw _simply_. Even when the subjects
are biblical or so-called “religious,” the artist has used modern
costume, which, seeing in an abstract, not photographic, manner, he
has invested with poetical interest. A return to agricultural life
is everywhere evident. It is producing, or reinstating, a healthy
mental temperament which industrialism was well-nigh killing. This
natural aptitude to create in art and to do so sincerely is not only
prominent among the people, whose chief labour is agricultural,
it is shown in the design of “industrials” also, who, not wholly
emancipated by the artificiality of their labour earning hours, “let
themselves go” in their leisure time and show by what they produce
that even their straightforward simplicity has not been killed by the
monotony of their wage-earning hours. They are not machines in their
off hours, but human beings who have something to say for themselves
which may be uncultured, but is a spontaneous expression of something
they like to think of and enjoy making.
§ 36
Machinery can never be made to feel, the hand can do nothing worth
having without “feeling.” A bit of craftsmanship, like a building, a
statue, a picture, a song, or a tale, gives itself away at once. If
the impulse was artificial or insincere, it is at once obvious that
the man who made it was not an artist; he might be anything else, but
not that. The exact quantity of pleasure taken in the creation of a
work of art is visible at once, in that sense the maker of it exposes
his soul. The revival of craftsmanship is evident everywhere in the
new city. The best designers are the best workmen. We never hear it
said, “Oh, yes, he can design, but cannot make.” The craftsman makes
well what he has well designed. Being simple, he asks himself, “What
is the object for? What is it intended to do when it is made?” Having
made up his mind to solve that question, the first in good design,
he proceeds to make it answer that purpose, and something good and
interesting is the result. The artist has used his intelligence
from first to last, so what he makes is something that has life
in it, because it is a reflection of the life of its creator. As
craftsmanship grows in estimation, machinery is delegated to do what
it can do well, not ill. Furthermore, the extension of the demand
for craftsmanship provides occupation which may be entirely thus
occupied, or only in leisure hours, and leisure hours so occupied
are educational, and not only that, they are productive, inasmuch as
their authors sell their productions and so add to their earnings in
a manner that is useful to them and beneficial to the community.
As with the churches, so with all public buildings, which are (by
the way) not made to “pattern” in accordance with this or that
“style”--Gothic, Classic, Renaissance, or what not. The art they
exhibit rises out of the “plan.” They are not “faced” with a skin
of stone or stucco to look what they are not. The outside does
not conceal but expresses the “plan.” Construction is not hidden,
but revealed. Ornament is not “stuck on,” it is a growth out of
construction. To an eye artificially accustomed to “shams” the new
buildings look austere. They seem to reflect a serious people who
want to tell the truth. Should it be necessary to erect them in steel
or iron, the metal is treated against the action of weather, but is
not concealed. If it forms the skeleton, the skeleton is visible,
and so all through the construction. Stone looks like stone, wood
like wood, and metal like metal. This principle carried out does not
make for monotony, but for the reverse. These serious and impressive
public buildings are, as it were, the picture galleries of the city.
Not executed in a hurry, the subjects of the wall paintings are well
thought out by a select committee of learned men and artists. They
are proceeding. As yet some are incomplete, but enough are finished
to demonstrate the care taken in their subject matter, which is not
only local, but embodies episodes of English history. While being
pleasant to the eye, they tell pleasant and noble tales of the lives
of our ancestors who made England great. Again here, as we noticed in
the churches, there is much original simplicity, which does not ape
archæology, or rather does not make that valuable science the first
necessity. Looking at them one feels they could only have been done
to-day. The impress of what is best in the modern mind is there, not
artificial, but sincere and vital. Presently we shall leave the city
to see what agriculture is doing.
§ 37
We have seen that the Fine Arts are not commercial incidents in the
life here, they are part of the scheme of it. The Drama is also not
only a source of pleasure or, of momentary emotion. It is held to
be a prominent factor in education, whose mission it is to elevate
intelligence, encourage noble ardour, stimulate heroism and provide
beauty. Under the old system the Drama was too often used ill. The
play played down to the people, often exciting the lower passions.
To be made familiar with vice is, in a measure, to take part in it.
To sow vice on the boards of the stage is to make it popular. The
idea that vice is romantic is combated now. Vice is ugly, as virtue
is lovely. Art has no business with ugliness except it be used as a
contrast to beauty. To perpetuate ugliness by Art is like encouraging
the durance of the plague. Higher intelligence verified by education
should be employed to uplift, not depress, choice. Lower intelligence
must be guided by the higher!
What is being done by Art in the churches, in public buildings,
gives evidence that the people are regarding it as essential, not as
a thing to be played with. Our city, not being large, is manageable.
Being near the country, every citizen is in touch with country life.
Indeed, there are few who do not labour on their own bit of garden in
however small a way. Country life is not foreign to the artizan or
to the factory worker. SQUALOR, that curse of big cities, the result
of ignorant and debased people herding together, is unknown here.
Poverty there is, of course, that must be everywhere, but it need not
be debasing. So much that was degrading has gone. _Sloth_ is no more.
What was useless is purged away, and what were positive scandals of
misrule have been replaced by order, sobriety and uplifting. It is
recognised that while a city must be a centre of commerce it need not
be that of greed, and need not be divorced from country life. Hence
the gardens provide for the people adequate means of employment in
such matters; so that while the city is commercial, it is not out
of touch with many forms of agriculture; and the blanched, hopeless
faces in the past too prevalent, are replaced by bronzed faces and
the open happy countenances of a contented industrious people.