The mintage of wisdom is to know that
rest is rust, and that real life is in love,
laughter and work.
--_Elbert Hubbard_
I have been asked to write an article about myself and the
work in which I am engaged. I think I am honest enough to sink self, to
stand outside my own personality, and answer the proposition.
Let me begin by telling what I am not, and thus reach the vital issue by
elimination.
First, I am not popular in "Society," and those who champion _my cause in
my own town_ are plain, unpretentious people.
Second, I am not a popular writer, since my name has never been mentioned
in the "Atlantic," "Scribner's," "Harper's," "The Century" or the
"Ladies' Home Journal." But as a matter of truth, it may not be amiss for
me to say that I have waited long hours in the entryway of each of the
magazines just named, in days agone, and then been handed the frappe.
Third, I am not rich, as the world counts wealth.
Fourth, as an orator I am without the graces, and do scant justice to the
double-breasted Prince Albert.
Fifth, the Roycroft Shop, to the welfare of which my life is dedicated,
is not so large as to be conspicuous on account of size.
Sixth, personally, I am no ten-thousand-dollar beauty: the glass of
fashion and the mold of form are far from mine.
Then what have I done concerning which the public wishes to know? Simply
this:
In one obscure country village I have had something to do with stopping
the mad desire on the part of the young people to get out of the country
and flock to the cities. In this town and vicinity the tide has been
turned from city to country. We have made one country village an
attractive place for growing youth by supplying congenial employment,
opportunity for education and healthful recreation, and an outlook into
the world of art and beauty.
All boys and girls want to make things with their hands, and they want to
make beautiful things, they want to "get along," and I've simply given
them a chance to get along here, instead of seeking their fortunes in
Buffalo, New York or Chicago. They have helped me and I have helped them;
and through this mutual help we have made head, gained ground upon the
whole.
By myself I could have done nothing, and if I have succeeded, it is
simply because I have had the aid and co-operation of cheerful, willing,
loyal and loving helpers. Even now as I am writing this in my cabin in
the woods, four miles from the village, they are down there at the Shop,
quietly, patiently, cheerfully doing my work--which work is also theirs.
No man liveth unto himself alone: our interests are all bound up
together, and there is no such thing as a man going off by himself and
corraling the good.
When I came to this town there was not a house in the place that had a
lavatory with hot and cold water attachments. Those who bathed, swam in
the creek in the Summer or used the family wash tub in the kitchen in
Winter. My good old partner, Ali Baba, has always prided himself on his
personal cleanliness He is arrayed in rags, but underneath, his hide is
clean, and better still, his heart is right. Yet when he first became a
member of my household, he was obliged to take his Saturday-night tub out
in the orchard, from Spring until Autumn came with withered leaves.
He used to make quite an ado in the kitchen, heating the water in the
wash-boiler. Six pails of cistern-water, a gourd of soft soap, and a
gunny-sack for friction were required in the operation. Of course, the
Baba waited until after dark before performing his ablutions. But finally
his plans were more or less disturbed by certain rising youth, who timed
his habits and awaited his disrobing with o'erripe tomatoes. The
bombardment, and the inability to pursue the enemy, turned the genial
current of the Baba's life awry until I put a bathroom in my house, with
a lock on the door.
This bit of history I have mentioned for the dual purpose of shedding
light on former bathing facilities in East Aurora, and more especially to
show that once we had the hoodlum with us.
Hoodlumism is born of idleness; it is useful energy gone to seed. In
small towns hoodlumism is rife, and the hoodlums are usually the children
of the best citizens. Hoodlumism is the first step in the direction of
crime. The hoodlum is very often a good boy who does not know what to do;
and so he does the wrong thing. He bombards with tomatoes a good man
taking a bath, puts ticktacks on windows, ties a tin can to the dog's
tail, takes the burs off your carriage-wheels, steals your chickens,
annexes your horse-blankets, and scares old ladies into fits by appearing
at windows wrapped in a white sheet. To wear a mask, walk in and demand
the money in the family ginger-jar is the next and natural evolution.
To a great degree the Roycroft Shop has done away with hoodlumism in this
village, and a stranger wearing a silk hat, or an artist with a white
umbrella, is now quite safe upon our streets. Very naturally, the Oldest
Inhabitant will deny what I have said about East Aurora--he will tell you
that the order, cleanliness and beauty of the place have always existed.
The change has come about so naturally, and so entirely without his
assistance, that he knows nothing about it.
Truth when first presented is always denied, but later there comes a
stage when the man says, "I always believed it." And so the good old
citizens are induced to say that these things have always been, or else
they gently pooh-pooh them. However, the truth remains that I introduced
the first heating-furnace into the town; bought the first lawn-mower; was
among the first to use electricity for lights and natural gas for fuel;
and so far, am the only one in town to use natural gas for power.
Until the starting of the Roycroft Shop, there were no industries here,
aside from the regulation country store, grocery, tavern, blacksmith-shop
and sawmill--none of which enterprises attempted to supply more than
local wants.
There was Hamlin's stock-farm, devoted to raising trotting-horses, that
gave employment to some of the boys; but for the girls there was nothing.
They got married at the first chance; some became "hired girls," or, if
they had ambitions, fixed their hearts on the Buffalo Normal School,
raised turkeys, picked berries, and turned every honest penny towards the
desire to get an education so as to become teachers. Comparatively, this
class was small in number. Most of the others simply followed that
undefined desire to get away out of the dull, monotonous, gossiping
village; and so, craving excitement, they went away to the cities, and
the cities swallowed them. A wise man has said that God made the country,
man the city, and the devil the small towns.
The country supplies the city its best and its worst. We hear of the few
who succeed, but of the many who are lost in the maelstrom we know
nothing. Sometimes in country homes it is even forbidden to mention
certain names. "She went to the city," you are told--and there the
history abruptly stops.
And so, to swing back to the place of beginning, I think the chief reason
many good folks are interested in the Roycroft Shop is because here
country boys and girls are given work at which they not only earn their
living, but can get an education while doing it. Next to this is the
natural curiosity to know how a large and successful business can be
built up in a plain, humdrum village by simply using the talent and
materials that are at hand, and so I am going to tell now how the
Roycroft Shop came to start; a little about what it has done; what it is
trying to do; and what it hopes to become. And since modesty is only
egotism turned wrong side out, I will make no special endeavor to conceal
the fact that I have had something to do with the venture.
In London, from about Sixteen Hundred Fifty to Sixteen Hundred Ninety,
Samuel and Thomas Roycroft printed and made very beautiful books. In
choosing the name "Roycroft" for our Shop we had these men in mind, but
beyond this the word has a special significance, meaning King's
Craft--King's craftsmen being a term used in the Guilds of the olden
times for men who had achieved a high degree of skill--men who made
things for the King. So a Roycrofter is a person who makes beautiful
things, and makes them as well as he can. "The Roycrofters" is the legal
name of our institution. It is a corporation, and the shares are
distributed among the workers. No shares are held by any one but
Roycrofters, and it is agreed that any worker who quits the Shop shall
sell his shares back to the concern. This co-operative plan, it has been
found, begets a high degree of personal diligence, a loyalty to the
institution, a sentiment of fraternity and a feeling of permanency among
the workers that is very beneficial to all concerned. Each worker, even
the most humble, calls it "Our Shop," and feels that he is an integral
and necessary part of the Whole. Possibly there are a few who consider
themselves more than necessary. Ali Baba, for instance, it is said, has
referred to himself, at times, as the Whole Thing. And this is all right,
too--I would never chide an excess of zeal: the pride of a worker in his
worth and work is a thing to foster.
It's the man who "doesn't give a damn" who is really troublesome. The
artistic big-head is not half so bad as apathy.
* * * * *
In the month of December, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, I
printed the first "Little Journeys" in booklet form, at the local
printing-office, having become discouraged in trying to find a publisher.
But before offering the publication to the public, I decided to lay the
matter again before G.P. Putnam's Sons, although they had declined the
matter in manuscript form. Mr. George H. Putnam rather liked the matter,
and was induced to issue the periodical as a venture for one year. The
scheme seemed to meet with success, the novel form of the publication
being in its favor. The subscription reached nearly a thousand in six
months; the newspapers were kind, and the success of the plan suggested
printing a pamphlet modeled on similar lines, telling what we thought
about things in general, and publishers and magazine-editors in
particular.
There was no intention at first of issuing more than one number of this
pamphlet, but to get it through the mails at magazine rates we made up a
little subscription list and asked that it be entered at the post office
at East Aurora as second-class matter. The postmaster adjusted his
brass-rimmed spectacles, read the pamphlet, and decided that it surely
was second class matter.
We called it "The Philistine" because we were going after the "Chosen
People" in literature. It was Leslie Stephen who said, "The term
Philistine is a word used by prigs to designate people they do not
like." When you call a man a bad name, you are that thing--not he. The
Smug and Snugly Ensconced Denizens of Union Square called me a
Philistine, and I said, "Yes, I am one, if a Philistine is something
different from you."
My helpers, the printers, were about to go away to pastures new; they
were in debt, the town was small, they could not make a living. So they
offered me their outfit for a thousand dollars. I accepted the
proposition.
I decided to run "The Philistine" Magazine for a year--to keep faith with
the misguided and hopeful parties who had subscribed--and then quit. To
fill in the time, we printed a book: we printed it like a William Morris
book--printed it just as well as we could. It was cold in the old barn
where we first set up "The Philistine," so I built a little building like
an old English chapel right alongside of my house. There was one basement
and a room upstairs. I wanted it to be comfortable and pretty, and so we
furnished our little shop cozily. We had four girls and three boys
working for us then. The Shop was never locked, and the boys and girls
used to come around evenings. It was really more pleasant than at home.
I brought over a shelf of books from the library. Then I brought the
piano, because the youngsters wanted to dance.
The girls brought flowers and birds, and the boys put up curtains at the
windows. We were having a lot o' fun, with new subscriptions coming in
almost every day, and once in a while an order for a book.
The place got too small when we began to bind books, so we built a wing
on one side; then a wing on the other side. To keep the three carpenters
busy who had been building the wings, I set them to making furniture for
the place. They made the furniture as good as they could--folks came
along and bought it.
The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and
chimney at one end of the Shop. The work came out so well that I said,
"Boys, here is a great scheme--these hardheads are splendid building
material." So I advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads.
The farmers began to haul stones; they hauled more stones, and at last
they had hauled four thousand loads. We bought all the stone in the
dollar limit, bulling the market on boulders.
Three stone buildings have been built, another is in progress, and our
plans are made to build an art-gallery of the same material--the stones
that the builders rejected.
An artist blew in on the way to Nowhere, his baggage a tomato-can. He
thought he would stop over for a day or two--he is with us yet, and three
years have gone by since he came, and now we could not do without him.
Then we have a few Remittance-Men, sent to us from a distance, without
return-tickets. Some of these men were willing to do anything but
work--they offered to run things, to preach, to advise, to make love to
the girls.
We bought them tickets to Chicago, and without violence conducted them to
the Four-o'Clock train.
We have boys who have been expelled from school, blind people, deaf
people, old people, jailbirds and mental defectives, and have managed to
set them all at useful work; but the Remittance-Man of Good Family who
smokes cigarettes in bed has proved too much for us--so we have given him
the Four-o'Clock without ruth.
We do not encourage people from a distance who want work to come on--they
are apt to expect too much. They look for Utopia, when work is work, here
as elsewhere. There is just as much need for patience, gentleness,
loyalty and love here as anywhere. Application, desire to do the right
thing, a willingness to help, and a well-curbed tongue are as necessary
in East Aurora as in Tuskegee.
We do our work as well as we can, live one day at a time, and try to be
kind.
* * * * *
The village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, the
home of The Roycrofters, is eighteen miles southeast of the city of
Buffalo. The place has a population of about three thousand people.
There is no wealth in the town and no poverty. In East Aurora there are
six churches, with pastors' salaries varying from three hundred to one
thousand dollars a year; and we have a most excellent school. The place
is not especially picturesque or attractive, being simply a
representative New York State village. Lake Erie is ten miles distant,
and Cazenovia Creek winds its lazy way along by the village.
The land around East Aurora is poor, and so reduced in purse are the
farmers that no insurance-company will insure farm property in Erie
County under any conditions unless the farmer has some business outside
of agriculture--the experience of the underwriters being that when a man
is poor enough, he is also dishonest; insure a farmer's barn in New York
State, and there is a strong probability that he will soon invest in
kerosene.
However, there is no real destitution, for a farmer can always raise
enough produce to feed his family, and in a wooded country he can get
fuel, even if he has to lift it between the dawn and the day.
Most of the workers in the Roycroft Shop are children of farming folk,
and it is needless to add that they are not college-bred, nor have they
had the advantages of foreign travel. One of our best helpers, Uncle
Billy Bushnell, has never been to Niagara Falls, and does not care to go.
Uncle Billy says if you stay at home and do your work well enough, the
world will come to you; which aphorism the old man backs up with another,
probably derived from experience, to the effect that a man is a fool to
chase after women, because, if he doesn't, the women will chase after
him.
The wisdom of this hard-headed old son of the soil--who abandoned
agriculture for art at seventy--is exemplified in the fact that during
the year just past, over twenty-eight thousand pilgrims have visited the
Roycroft Shop--representing every State and Territory of the Union and
every civilized country on the globe, even far-off Iceland, New Zealand
and the Isle of Guam.
Three hundred ten people are on the payroll at the present writing. The
principal work is printing, illuminating and binding books. We also have
a furniture shop, where Mission furniture of the highest grade is made; a
modeled-leather shop, where the most wonderful creations in calfskin are
to be seen; and a smithy, where copper utensils of great beauty are
hammered out by hand.
Quite as important as the printing and binding is the illuminating of
initials and title-pages. This is a revival of a lost art, gone with so
much of the artistic work done by the monks of the olden time. Yet there
is a demand for such work; and so far as I know, we are the first
concern in America to take up the hand-illumination of books as a
business. Of course we have had to train our helpers, and from very crude
attempts at decoration we have attained to a point where the British
Museum and the "Bibliotheke" at The Hague have deigned to order and pay
good golden guineas for specimens of our handicraft. Very naturally we
want to do the best work possible, and so self-interest prompts us to be
on the lookout for budding genius. The Roycroft is a quest for talent.
There is a market for the best, and the surest way, we think, to get away
from competition is to do your work a little better than the other
fellow. The old tendency to make things cheaper, instead of better, in
the book line is a fallacy, as shown in the fact that within ten years
there have been a dozen failures of big publishing-houses in the United
States. The liabilities of these bankrupt concerns footed the fine total
of fourteen million dollars. The man who made more books and cheaper
books than any one concern ever made, had the felicity to fail very
shortly, with liabilities of something over a million dollars. He overdid
the thing in matter of cheapness--mistook his market. Our motto is, "Not
How Cheap, But How Good."
This is the richest country the world has ever known, far richer per
capita than England--lending money to Europe. Once Americans were all
shoddy--pioneers have to be, I'm told--but now only a part of us are
shoddy. As men and women increase in culture and refinement, they want
fewer things, and they want better things. The cheap article, I will
admit, ministers to a certain grade of intellect; but if the man grows,
there will come a time when, instead of a great many cheap and shoddy
things, he will want a few good things. He will want things that symbol
solidity, truth, genuineness and beauty.
The Roycrofters have many opportunities for improvement not the least of
which is the seeing, hearing and meeting distinguished people. We have a
public dining-room, and not a day passes but men and women of note sit at
meat with us. At the evening meal, if our visitors are so inclined, and
are of the right fiber, I ask them to talk. And if there is no one else
to speak, I sometimes read a little from William Morris, Shakespeare,
Walt Whitman or Ruskin. David Bispham has sung for us. Maude Adams and
Minnie Maddern Fiske have also favored us with a taste of their quality.
Judge Lindsey, Alfred Henry Lewis, Richard Le Gallienne, Robert Barr,
have visited us; but to give a list of all the eminent men and women who
have spoken, sung or played for us would lay me liable for infringement
in printing "Who's Who." However, let me name one typical incident. The
Boston Ideal Opera Company was playing in Buffalo, and Henry Clay
Barnabee and half a dozen of his players took a run out to East Aurora.
They were shown through the Shop by one of the girls whose work it is to
receive visitors. A young woman of the company sat down at one of the
pianos and played. I chanced to be near and asked Mr. Barnabee if he
would not sing, and graciously he answered, "Fra Elbertus, I'll do
anything that you say." I gave the signal that all the workers should
quit their tasks and meet at the Chapel. In five minutes we had an
audience of three hundred--men in blouses and overalls, girls in big
aprons--a very jolly, kindly, receptive company.
Mr. Barnabee was at his best--I never saw him so funny. He sang, danced,
recited, and told stories for forty minutes. The Roycrofters were, of
course, delighted.
One girl whispered to me as she went out, "I wonder what great sorrow is
gnawing at Barnabee's heart, that he is so wondrous gay!" Need I say that
the girl who made the remark just quoted had drunk of life's cup to the
very lees? We have a few such with us--and several of them are among our
most loyal helpers.
* * * * *
One fortuitous event that has worked to our decided
advantage was "A Message to Garcia."
This article, not much more than a paragraph, covering only fifteen
hundred words, was written one evening after supper in a single hour. It
was the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-Nine,
Washington's Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March
"Philistine." The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a rather
trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent
helpers in the way they should go.
The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the
teacups when my son Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the
Cuban war. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing--carried the message
to Garcia.
It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man
who does the thing--does his work--carries the message.