WORKSHOP PLUS LAND. 241 



ing statement that " cheap things make cheap 

 men." But we were then puffed up with 

 commercial pride and our economists laughed 

 at him. "Now, suddenly," as Mr. C. R. Ashbee 

 says in his stimulating book, Craftsmanship 

 and Competitive Industry, " we are faced with 

 the phenomenon, a monster with two heads, 

 that we have never observed before. A vast 

 output of useless, sweated, cheap industries, a 

 vast growth of nerveless, characterless, under- 

 fed, cheap men and women. The monster 

 stands face to face with our civilisation, it 

 threatens to extinguish our culture, to destroy 

 our life as a people." 



Cheap men react upon industry, in that 

 they, driven by necessity, demand cheap 

 goods. So the more artistic productions are 

 at the present denied to the great mass of 

 the working people. Yet among the more 

 highly paid of the artisan class there is a 

 growing tendency to abolish the cheap and 

 nasty bric-a-brac articles in house furnishing, 

 causing repeated purchase and a tax upon the 

 time and temper of the already overworked 

 house drudge, and to substitute for these 

 hideous and useless articles others of utility, 

 beauty, and durability. Dust-bins will not be 



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