Vol. XX, No. 
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 
A PART OF AMERICA'S RECONSTRUCTION JOB 
By RICHARD F. BACH of the Metropolitan Museum 
HE words industrial art imply the 
relation of art to industrial or 
mechanical production, which in 
daily parlance signifies the rela- 
tion of appealing- form and color 
to utility. They mean that useful- 
ness, while remaining an essential 
objective, is shorn of its ability to 
contribute to cultural progress if 
it is not made sufficiently attrac- 
tive to contribute pleasure to human environment. This 
relation between industry and art is embraced in the word 
design, a type of thinking that Americans have been too 
ready to let others do for them these many years. 
Objects of industrial art without an adequate inspiration 
in design serve their function as well as a piano played 
when out of tune. 
American business men are known to be shrewd, yet 
their shrewdness is too momentary in its application. In 
the great field of the industrial arts commanding an outlay 
of $5,000,000,000 each year these very business men have 
not taken thought for the future. They wail for the de- 
signers that Europe has recalled, they lament the fate of 
American furniture, and turn around to make just what 
they have made before with a minimum improvement on 
the plea that design is too expensive, whereas correct 
reasoning would show that good design is an investment 
costing less than any other single factor in industrial arts 
production when considered in terms of ultimate cash 
returns. 
There is but one help for manufacturers in the industrial 
arts field — only one ; education. They must educate design- 
ers, they must establish schools for training designers, they 
must realize that design is a cash asset, an all-for-business 
investment in every piece they turn out, in every yard of 
goods they print or weave. They must appreciate that de- 
sign does not mean ''fancy" pieces or over-elaboration. In 
short, they must come to the conviction that design means 
quality and that good design commands a good price. Birch 
is not mahogany; garish convolutions are not ornament. 
Refinement is the index of taste and taste is the keynote 
of American industrial advance. Education points out the 
difference between the artistic progress of France and the 
industrial art stalemate of America. 
In many branches of life men have been the salvation of 
their business enterprises in the training of those to whom 
they pay salaries. In the industrial arts field the voice of 
not one manufacturer has been heard in favor of schools 
to teach designers. Rather a million dollars for mass out- 
put to achieve large selling figures now than five thousand 
dollars toward a school whose human product will make 
the one million into ten within a few years. Rather hun- 
dreds of thousands of inferior designs to serve as drugs 
for American taste than a few hundred of high quality de- 
signs that will gain for us the international respect with- 
out which our product will command no price abroad. 
April J 91 9 
Rather self-seeking individual iactoiy output than unified 
patriotic endeavor for the good of America. 
Schools we must have— in every branch of industrial art 
production we must have school training as a feeder for 
the factory of the future. Designers will surely always 
come up from the ranks, but if there are potential design- 
ers in the ranks of factory hands, they deserve the chance 
to make the journey toward a designers' salary by the line 
of least resistance. 
The school is a part of the factory and the fact that it 
is not under the same roof with the machinery of produc- 
tion does not alter this truth. To hesitate to train designers 
to turn out the best for the American market is to waste 
material, to waste effort, to waste money, to waste the pre- 
cious time which we have lost in depending upon Europe 
so long. 
To the manufacturer we say: The schools you help to 
found now will not thank you for your patronage, for you 
will be doing yourself a favor in contributing to their sup- 
port. In founding schools you are simply putting money 
in bank. They will return many times your cash invest- 
ment. They will bring you designers capable of raising 
American standards to an eminent position among nations. 
Is it worth while to help yourself? Is it worth while to 
help your field of production? Is it worth while to help 
America ? 
By all means let education do the job— let "schools, 
schools, always schools" be your slogan and let us have 
these schools now. Every day lost is a handicap. If you 
have faith in the future of American industrial art, build 
for that future. Do it now. 
The Metropolian Museum of Art is a large central labora- 
tory for the designers and manufacturers of the metro- 
politan district. In fact, its lines of effort reach to remote 
corners of the country. It maintains lending collections 
of many kinds— photographs, lantern slides, maps, charts, 
actual samples of textiles and laces, casts, and even post 
cards. It distributes annually many thousands of photo- 
graphs which are used directly for working up designs in 
the designing rooms of industrial arts producing plants, 
the cost of such photographs being so nominal a considera- 
tion that that department of the Museum is constantly over- 
worked. In the Museum building it maintains enormous 
collections of direct value to men in the practical fields, a 
convenient textile study room, ten thousand samples of tex- 
tile art of all times, many costumes — this much in the 
textile field alone. The entire collection of industrial arts 
objects embraced under the general title of decorative arts 
numbers fifty thousand. There are published a large num- 
ber of bulletins and leaflets describing the work of the 
Museum in the educational field. These are widely dis- 
tributed in many thousands each year. 
There is maintained a decent service involving the entire 
time of three Museum instructors engaged in bringing home 
to visitors of all kinds and classes the value of individual 
pieces or of entire collections. There are given annually 
several courses of public lectures. There is maintained for 
the benefit of manufacturers, designers, craftsmen, and 
