4 i4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



AST IN INDUSTRY. 



By FRANK T. CARLTON, 



TOLEDO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL. 



The Significance of the Arts and Crafts Movement. 

 "^V USING the last century the productive powers of man were multi- 

 -"-^ plied many times by the utilization of the energy of coal and 

 water through the agency of steam and electricity. As a result 

 the human race has been lifted from a condition of struggle for the 

 necessities of life to a higher plane of material comfort. With the 

 increase of material wealth has been ushered in the new spirit of 

 democracy. Leisure, culture, education, art and work are now con- 

 ceived to be the birthright of all. Universal education and culture 

 has heretofore been impossible because of the meager productivity of 

 the unaided man. The arts and crafts movement of to-day is demo- 

 cratic. It proclaims to the world that beauty, skill and education are 

 for all ; and that the common thing should be made beautiful, and the 

 beautiful, universal. If the machine enables us to produce the 

 necessities of life for all, it is, nevertheless, the skilled human hand 

 which must adorn and beautify these products. The hand must find 

 its province where the machine can not go. In its proper sphere, the 

 machine may make beautiful things, and may even excel the hand; 

 it is not the use of the machine, but the abuse of machine production, 

 which should be deprecated ; without the machine much of our present 

 material comfort would be impossible. 



Art is a form of industry, and industry properly applied always 

 brings forth a work of art. The mechanic, fashioning the accurate 

 and splendid tool, produces a work of art; the man, forming with 

 infinite care the lenses of the great Lick telescope, brings into being 

 another work of art. The automatic screw machine and the steam 

 engine are as certainly works of art as the painting or the sculpture- 

 of the great masters of the Eenaissance. There is and can be no real 

 art considered entirely apart and distinct from industry and the in- 

 dustrial life of the people. As Emerson has said : ' ' Beauty must come 

 back to the useful arts and the distinction between the final and the 

 useful arts be forgotten." Art is a way of doing things and resides 

 in the common as well as in the uncommon, at home as well as abroad, 

 in the present as well as in the past. 



The old craftsmen were artists. They wrought with infinite care 

 as much for the satisfaction of doing good and true work as for the 

 money value of the product. The products of the craftsman's skill 



