THE REAL PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIALISM.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 43, 14 November 1907, Page 11

THE REAL PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIALISM.

Ought tho nation to continuo tho factory system, or to return to small. workshops? asks a writer in the " New Are wo getting tho, best work out of ourselves by our opon market, or should we adopt measures of protection; is tho unlimited use of machinery good for industry as distinct from capita]; ought prices to be fixed or subject to incalculable fluctuation j should workshop control'be in tho hands of commercial travellers or of master workmen? These aro tho real, problems of industrialism, and problems, too, which no mere Socialist'can solve. For their solution tho nation will have to depend upon the experience of trades unionists; and, in our opinion, the next congress would 'bo ,mor'p usefully employed in their discussion than in the -rlis-* cussion of political questions long since committed,to the charge of an efficient parliamentary party. ' . ' ... Very interesting in this connection is an article in the ■'" Nation" on The Happy Craftsman, which reviews Professor Mackail's appreciation of William Morris. Morris, he said, "had found tho . world. But"in so doing ho had also found the secret of the world—fraternity. He had found out tho great truth that solitary life is sterilo life; that art is not, or ought not to be, an abstract and lonely thing, but the joint energy of minds and hands! working in common sympathy. This social ideal reached him first Mil-the'shape of a httlo group ot friends; then of a larger association of artists and craftsmen, until finally it took shape in tho famous phrase of his mature years, ' Art by tho people and for the people, a joy to tho maker and tho user.' " ; Community and "joy to tho maker — those -were the distinguished motives ot Morris's life far. more truly than all his decorative creations ■ in colour or word. AVriting of their early association in Oxford, Burne-Jones afterwards said "that time was blue summer and always morning, and the air sweet and full, of- bells." That is tho natural effect ■of ungrudging community. for somo high purpose, aiid perhaps it is not fantastic to notico that tho words call up a ; .picture such.as Morris always most delighted I in—p. picture of young and beautiful England, of "a London small, and, white, and clean," of cheaping-steads with grey' houses gathered round a church, and of men and women going about their cheerful occupations, while beyond the gold and purple heath gloomed a prehistoric forest land. Such was the ideal to which ho, constantly turned from • among the hideousness of modern factory life—an ideal enwoven with memories of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to him never very far away. But it was not tho beauty of tho scono he cared for so much as the imagined joy of tho people, contrasted with the monotonous and uninteresting toil of our working classos now. There is a lino in " Tho Life and Death of Jason" whero he speaks of- .the'; .modern world as "meshed within tho-smoky net or unrejoicing labour." \