2 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



be able to confine myself strictly within these limits because the entrance 

 of science into our most material businesses cannot be considered without 

 reference to the part that science plays in the whole range of our thoughts 

 and actions. 



The term craftsmanship requires definition. I am supposing it to 

 mean the skill which is exercised in the production of whatever is wanted 

 for human welfare. Imagine an island so cut off from the rest of the 

 world that its inhabitants must depend on themselves for the satisfaction 

 of all their desires, for their food, even if they have no more to do than 

 pick fruit from a tree, for their clothing, for their housing, and other 

 material things. They must also find their own means of satisfying less 

 material cravings : for if they have intelligence they will look for means of 

 studying themselves, their neighbours and the world round about them. 

 Their eyes and ears will ask to be used for the satisfaction of a sense of 

 beauty in form and colour and sound, and their minds will try to reach 

 out beyond what can be seen and heard. It is impossible to proceed to 

 the satisfaction of these desires without the handling of materials, and 

 craftsmanship begins with the skill exercised in the handling. 



What the islanders succeed in achieving by their craftsmanship may 

 justly be described as their wages, they being their own employers. If 

 their wages are to be raised they must somehow increase one or more of 

 the factors on which their success depends. They must be more diligent 

 in the discovery of materials for which a use can be found ; they must 

 become better acquainted with the properties of those materials; they must 

 develop their constructive skill. If they are too primitive to have 

 developed the use of mechanical power they must do everything with 

 their own hands, guided by their own intelligence and their own feeling 

 for what is beautiful and fitting. At every step enter the qualities that 

 go to make craftsmanship, as I would interpret the term. There is 

 knowledge of materials, there is imagination, there is technical skill ; 

 perseverance is wanted, love of the work itself, sympathy with the use 

 that is to be made of it, and with the user. Clearly, on the craftsmanship 

 of the islanders will depend whether they have enough food to go round, 

 enough clothes to wear, whether they have leisure for anything beyond 

 the labour that satisfies their barest necessities. 



And, of course, this isolated group of people will have some 

 characteristic estimation of what kind of wages they want. Their energies 

 may conceivably be devoted only to the production of things that satisfy 

 bodily desires, or they may be bent also on nobler things. I need not 



