[Footnote: Read before the Worcester Free Industrial Institute, June 25,
1885.]
By DANIEL C. GILMAN, President of the Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore.
I cannot think of a theme more fit for this hour and place than
handy-craft. I begin by saying "handy-craft," for that is the form of
the word now in vogue, that which we are wonted to see in print and hear
in speech; but I like rather the old form, "hand-craft," which was used
by our sires so long ago as the Anglo-Saxon days. Both words mean the
same thing, the power of the hand to seize, hold, shape, match, carve,
paint, dig, bake, make, or weave. Neither form is in fashion, as we know
very well, for people choose nowadays such Latin words as "technical
ability," "manual labor," "industrial pursuits," "dexterity,"
"professional artisanship," "manufacture," "decorative art," and
"technological occupations," not one of which is half as good as the
plain, old, strong term "hand-craft."
An aid to hand-craft is rede-craft--the power to read, to reason, and to
think; or, as it is said in the book of Common Prayer, "to read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest." By rede craft we find out what other men
have done; we get our book learning, we are made heirs to thoughts that
breathe and words that burn, we enter into the life, the acts, the arts,
the loves, the lore of the wise, the witty, the cunning, and the worthy
of all ages and all places; we learn, as says the peasant poet of
Scotland,
"The song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render--
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor!"
I do not pit rede-craft against hand-craft. Quite otherwise, I call them
not foes (as some would), but friends. They are brothers, partners,
consorts, who can work together, as right hand and left hand, as science
and art, as theory and practice. Rede-craft may call for books and
hand-craft for tools, but it is by the help of both books and tools that
mankind moves on. Indeed, we shall not err wide of the mark if we say
that a book is a tool, for it is the instrument which we make use of in
certain cases when we wish to find out what other men have thought and
done. Perhaps you will not be as ready to admit that a tool is a book.
But take for example the plow. Compare the form in use to-day on a
first-rate farm with that which is pictured on ancient stones long hid
in Egypt--ages old. See how the idea of the plow has grown, and bear in
mind that its graceful curves, it fitness for a special soil, or for
a special crop, its labor-saving shape, came not by chance, but by
thought. Indeed, a plow is made up from the thoughts and toils of
generations of plowmen. Look at a Collins ax; it is also the record
of man's thought. Lay it side by side with the hatchet of Uncas or
Miantonomoh, or with an ax of the age of bronze, and think how many
minds have worked on the head and on the helve, how much skill has been
spent in getting the metal, in making it hard, in shaping the edge, in
fixing the weight, in forming the handle. From simple tools, turn to
complex; to the printing press, the sewing machine, the locomotive,
the telegraph, the ocean steamer; all are full of ideas. All are the
offspring of hand-craft and rede craft, of skill and thought, of
practice put on record, of science and art.
Now, the welfare of each one of us, the welfare of our land, the welfare
of our race, rests on this union. You may almost take the measure of a
man's brain, if you can find out what he sees with his eyes and what he
does with hands; you may judge of a country, or of a city, if you know
what it makes.
I do not know that we need ask which is best, hand-craft or rede-craft.
Certainly "the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee." At
times, hand-craft becomes rede-craft, for when the eye is blind the hand
takes its place, and the finger learns to read, running over the printed
page to find out what is written, as quickly as the eye.
In these days, there are too many who look down on hand-craft. They
think only of the tasks of a drudge or a char-boy. They do not know the
pleasure there is in working, and especially in making. They have never
learned to guide the fingers by the brain. They like to hear, or see, or
own, or eat, what others have made, but they do not like to put their
own hands to work. If you doubt what I say, put a notice in the paper
asking for a clerk, and you will have a, hundred answers for every one
that will come when you ask for a workman. So it comes to pass that
young men grow up whose hands have not been trained to any kind of
skill; they wish, therefore, to be buyers and sellers, traders, dealers,
and so the market is overstocked with clerks, book-keepers, salesmen,
and small shop-keepers, while it is understocked in all the higher walks
of hand-craft. Some men can only get on by force of arms, lifting,
pounding, heaving, or by power of sitting at counter or a desk and
"clerking it."
Machinery works against hand-craft. In many branches of labor, the hand
now has but little to do, and that little is always the same, so that
labor becomes tiresome and the workman dull. Machines can be made to cut
statuary, to weave beautiful tapestry, to fashion needles, to grind
out music, to make long calculations; alas! the machine has also
been brought into politics. Of course, a land cannot thrive without
machinery; it is that mechanical giant, the steam engine, which carries
the corn, the cotton, and the sugar from our rich valleys to the hungry
of other lands, and brings back to us the product of their looms.
Nevertheless, he who lives by the machine alone lives but half a life;
while he who uses his hand to contrive and to adorn drives dullness from
his path. A true artist and a true artisan are one. Hand-craft, the
power to shape, to curve, to beautify, to create, gives pleasure and
dignity to labor.
In other times and in other lands, hand-craft has had more honor than it
has had with us. Let me give some examples. Not long ago, I went to one
of the shrines of education, the Sorbonne in Paris. Two paintings adorn
the chapel walls, not of saints or martyrs, nor of apostles or
prophets, perhaps I should say of both saints and prophets, _Labor_ and
_Humilitas_, Industry and Modesty.
The touch of Phidias was his own, and so inimitable that a few months
ago, an American, scanning, with his practiced eye, the galleries of the
Louvre, recognized a fragment of the work of Phidias, long separated
from the Parthenon frieze which Lord Elgin sent to London. The
sculptor's touch could not be mistaken. It was as truly his own as his
signature, his autograph. Ruskin, in a lecture on the relation of Art to
Morals, calls attention to a note which Durer made on some drawings sent
him by Raphael: "These figures Raphael drew and sent to Albert Durer
in Nurnberg, to show him his hand, '_sein hand zu weisen_."' Ruskin
compares this phrase with other contests of hand-craft, Apelles and
Protogenes showing their skill by drawing a line; Giotto in striking a
circle.
In the household of the Kings of Prussia, there is a custom, if not
a law, that every boy shall learn a trade. I believe this is a fact,
though I have no certain proof of it. The Emperor Wilhelm is said to be
a glazier, the Crown Prince a compositor, and on the Emperor's birthday
not long ago his majesty received an engraving by Prince Henry and a,
book bound by Prince Waldemar, two younger sons of the Crown Prince. Let
me refer to sacred writ; the prophet Isaiah, telling of the golden days
which are to come, when the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in
the land, nor the voice of crying, when the child shall die an hundred
years old, and men shall eat of the fruit of the vineyards they have
planted, adds this striking promise, as the culm of all hope, that the
elect of the Lord shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
Now, in view of what has been said, my first point is this: We who have
to deal with the young, we all who love our fellow-men, we all who
desire that our times, our city, our country, should be thrifty, happy,
and content, must each in his place and way give high honor to labor.
We, especially, who are teachers and parents, should see to it that the
young get "hand-craft" while they are getting "rede-craft." How can this
be done?
Mothers begin right in the nursery, teaching little fingers to play
before the tongue can lisp a sentence. Alas! this natural training has
often been stopped at school. Hitherto, until quite lately, in schools
both low and high, rede-craft has had the place of honor, hand-craft has
had no chance. But a change is coming. In the highest of all schools,
universities, for example, work rooms, labor places, "laboratories," are
now thought to be as useful as book rooms, reading rooms, libraries.
What mean those buildings which you have seen spring up within a few
years past in all the college greens of New England? They are libraries
and laboratories. They show that rede-craft and hand-craft are alike
held in honor, and that a liberal education means skill in getting and
skill in using knowledge; that knowledge comes from searching books and
searching nature; that the brain and the hand are in close league. So
too, in the lowest school, as far as possible from the university, the
kindergarten has won its place and the blocks, and straws, and bands,
the chalk, the clay, the scissors, are in use to make young fingers
deft. Between the highest and the lowest schools there is a like call
for hand-craft. Seeing this need, the authorities in our public schools
have begun to project special schools for such training, and are looking
for guidance far and near. At this intermediate stage, for boy and girls
who are between the age of the kindergarten and the age of the college
or the shop, for youth between eight and sixteen, there is much to be
done; people are hardly aware how much is needed to secure fit training
for the rising generation.
It seems sometimes as if one of the most needed forms of hand-craft
would become a lost art, even good handwriting. We cannot give much
credit to schools if they send out many who are skilled in algebra, or
in Latin, but who cannot write a page of English so that it can be read
without effort.
Drawing is another kind of hand-craft, quite too much neglected. I think
it should be laid down as a law of the road to knowledge, that everybody
must learn to draw as well as to write. The pencil maybe mastered just
as readily as the pen. It is a simpler tool. The child draws before
he writes, and savages begin their language with pictures; but, we
wiseacres of this age of books let our young folks drop their slate
pencils and their Fabers, and practice with their Gillotts and their
Esterbrooks. Let us say, in every school and in every house, the child
must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot
afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French
book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life
of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur,
whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I
turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and
I found the old story--"the child was father of the man." This
philosopher, whose eye is so skilled in observing nature, and whose hand
is so apt in experiments, is the boy grown up whose pictures were so
good that the villagers thought him at thirteen an artist of rank.
Girls should learn the first lesson of hand-craft with the needle; boys
may (and they will always prize the knowledge), but girls must. It is
wise that our schools are going back to old fashioned ways, and saying
that girls must be taught to sew.
Boys should practice their hands upon the knife. John Bull used to laugh
at Brother Jonathan for whittling, and Mr. Punch always drew the Yankee
with a blade in his fingers; but they found out long ago in Great
Britain that whittling in this land led to something, a Boston notion,
a wooden clock, a yacht America, a labor-saving machine, a cargo of
wooden-ware, a shop full of knick-knacks, an age of inventions. Boys
need not be kept back to the hand-craft of the knife. For in-doors there
are the type case and printing press, the paint box, the tool box, the
lathe; and for out doors, the trowel, the spade, the grafting knife. It
matters not how many of the minor arts the youth acquires. The more the
merrier. Let each one gain the most he can in all such ways; for arts
like these bring no harm in their train; quite otherwise, they lure good
fortune to their company.
Play, as well as work, may bring out hand-craft. The gun, the bat, the
rein, the rod, the oar, all manly sports, are good training for the
hand. Walking insures fresh air, but it does not train the body or mind
like games and sports which are played out of doors. A man of great fame
as an explorer and as a student of nature (he who discovered, in the
West, bones of horses with two, three, and four toes, and who found the
remains of birds with teeth) once told me that his success was largely
due to the sports of his youth. His boyish love of fishing gave him his
manly skill in exploration.
I speak as if hand-craft was to be learned by sport. So it may. It may
also be learned by labor. Day by day for weeks I have been watching from
my study window a stately inn rise from the cellar just across the road.
A bricklayer has been there employed whose touch is like the stroke of
an artist. He handled each brick as if it were porcelain, balanced it
carefully in his hand, measured with his eye just the amount of mortar
which it needed, and dropped the block into its bed, without staining
its edge, without varying from the plumb line, by a stroke of hand-craft
as true as the sculptor's. Toil gave him skill.
The second point I make is this: If you really value hand-craft,
buy that which shows hand-craft, encourage those who are engaged in
hand-craft, help on with your voice and with your pocket, those who
bring taste and skill and art into the works of their hand. If your
means are so small that you only buy what you need for your daily wants,
you cannot have much choice, you must buy that which is cheapest; but
hardly any one within the sound of my voice is so restricted as that;
almost if not quite every one buys something every year for his
pleasure, a curtain, a rug, a wall paper, a chair, or a table not
certainly needed, a vase, a clock, a, mantel ornament, a piece of
jewelry, a portrait, an etching, a picture. Now whenever you make such a
purchase, to please your taste, to make your parlor or your chamber more
attractive, choose that which shows good handiwork. Such a choice will
last. You will not tire of it as you will of that which has but a
commonplace form or pattern.
I come now to a third point. That which has just been said applies
chiefly to things whose price is fixed by beauty. But handicraft gives
us many works not pleasing to the eye, yet of the highest skill--a
Jacquard loom, a Corliss engine, a Hoe printing press, a Winchester
rifle, an Edison dynamo, a Bell telephone. Ruskin may scout the work of
machinery, and up to a certain point may take us with him. Let us
allow that works of art marked by the artist's own touch--the gates of
Paradise by Ghiberti, a shield by Cellini, a statue by Michael Angelo,
are better than all reproductions and imitations, better than plaster
casts by Eichler, electrotypes by Barbedienne, or chromos by Prang. But
even Ruskin cannot suppress the fact that machinery brings to every
thrifty cottage in New England comforts and adornments which, in the
days of Queen Bess, were not known outside of the palace. Be mindful,
then, that handicraft makes machines which are wonders of productive
force--weaving tissues such as Penelope never saw, of woolen, cotton,
linen, and silk, to carpet our floors, cover our tables, cushion our
chairs, and clothe our bodies; machines of which Vulcan never dreamed,
to point a needle, bore a rifle, cut a watch wheel, or rule a series
of lines, measuring forty thousand to an inch, with sureness which the
unaided hand can never equal. Machinery is a triumph of handicraft as
truly as sculpture and architecture. The fingers which can plan and
build a steamship or a suspension bridge, which can make the Quinebaug
and the Blackstone turn spindles by the hundred thousand, which can turn
a rag heap into spotless paper, and make myriads of useful and artful
articles from rough metal, are fingers which this age alone has evolved.
The craft which makes useful things cheap can make cheap things
beautiful. The Japanese will teach us how to form and finish, if we do
not first teach them how to slight and sham.
A fourth point is this. If hand-craft is of such worth, boys and girls
must be trained in it. This, I am well aware is no new thought. Forty
years ago schools of applied science were added to Harvard and Yale
colleges; twenty years ago Congress gave enough land-scrip to aid in
founding at least one such school in every state; men of wealth, like
many whom you have known and whom you honor, have given large sums for
like ends. Now the people at large are waking up. They see their needs;
they have the means to supply what they want. Is there the will? Know
they the way? Far and near the cry is heard for a different training
from that now given in the public schools. Many are trying to find it.
Almost every large town has its experiment--and many smaller places have
theirs. Nobody seems to know just what is best. Even the words which
express the want are vague. Bright and thoughtful people differ as to
what might, can, and should be done. A society has been formed in New
York to bring together the needed data. The Slater trustees, charged
with the care of a large fund for the training of freedmen, have said
that manual training must be given in all the schools they aid. The
town of Toledo in Ohio opened, some time since, a school of practical
training for boys, which worked so well that another has lately been
opened for girls. St. Louis is doing famously. Philadelphia has several
experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. In New York there
are many noteworthy movements--half a dozen at least full of life and
hope. Boston was never behindhand in knowledge, and in the new education
is very alert, the efforts of a single lady deserving praise of high
degree. These are but signs of the times.
Some things may be set down as fixed; for example, most of those who
have thought on this theme will agree on the points I am about to name,
though they may or may not like the names which I venture to propose:
1. Kindergarten work should be taught in the nurseries and infant
schools of rich and poor.
2. Drawing should be taught in schools of every grade, till the hand
uses the pencil as readily as the pen.