January 20, 1916. 
LAND AND, WATER 
THE FORUM. 
A Commentary on Present-day Problems. 
IN The Forum of the issue before last, the 
present writer dealt in the manner of a 
devil's ad\'ocate with some British charac- 
teristics tending to hamper the '■■ effective- 
ness of British work. That informal commentary 
has brought, among other documents,- two of 
exceptional interest : the one a letter of protest 
against the doctrine of" finishing the screw-driver," 
thr" other a fantastic little book, beautifully 
printed and boldly illustrated, with the. title of 
The Devil's Devices* sent by its author. It is 
not likely to be a coincidence that the writer of 
the letter is the illustrator of the book. But 
though it may be prudent to be on one's guard 
against such amiable little conspiracies in the 
future, and to beware of establishing awkward 
precedents, the writer of these comments gladly 
confesses that he would have been sorry to have 
missed the wit and wisdom of The Devil's Devices, 
and is happy to have the opportunity of introduc- 
ing it to readers of this page. 
The burden of both letter and book is that 
efficiency and organisation are — the Devil. The 
assumption of both correspondents was that 
''eflficiency and organisation " were tlie, chief and 
only gods set up for worship in the commentary 
under discussion. . .; , . 
--Says the writer of the letter : — "May I point 
olit' that there Vs ' a real case against finishing the 
sci'c\'v-driver ' as ahycae who has used Specialised 
td61s Well knows: \\'hatever may be the state of 
.aifairs in factories (the further extension of the 
methods suitable to which wouldbfe a doubtful 
j:;;ood), the tool which will do only one job and 
that only in one Way is a nuisance' and an ex- 
fi-dvagant nuisance." But can this position be> 
reasonably'maintained ? Is it not really, the result 
of the craftsman's bias against any threatening of 
the liand-worker's primitive processes? Such a 
bids is eminently justifiable in the case of such 
monstrosities as machine carving and the various 
fakements and imitations to which the machine 
is prostituted in modern production. But a 
very clear distinction needs drawing between work 
which the machine does as well as or better than 
the man, and that which the man does'better than 
the machine. '■ • 
To return to screw-driving. After all the 
screw is itself a machine. EVen^ the most 
primitive screw-driver must be a tool tnore or less 
specially adapted for the purpose of drivnng screws, 
and can only have a quite secondary, and as one is 
inclined to think, misapplied usefulness dn opening 
packing-cases or as a weapon of offence. ' Indeed, 
this plea against specialised tools' is hard" to under- 
stand. No craftsman does, ill actual fact, use a 
chisel for screw-driving, nor does one cut the pages 
of a book with one's razor. If the ratcheted, semi- 
automatic screw-driver does intact drive screws as 
well as the primitive tool, who or what in the world 
is the worse if it drives them quicker ? If the 
improved angle of its blades drives them better, 
• •■The Devil's Pevicps," or " Control vcrsu.s Service," by 
Pnuglas Pepler, with woodcut.^ by Eric Gill.' Published at the Hamp- 
shire House workshops. Hammersmith. I9'5' 
is there anything but gain ? Indeed, if an absolutely 
automatic screw-driving ni<u.?hine were economic- 
ally profitable, there could be no possible objec- 
tion to its adoption, or at any rate no pssible way 
of preventing its adoption. There is no logical 
position save that of going back to the wc-^den 
dowel — if that indeed be logical ! ; 
For what the writer of the letter really means 
is that he regrets the whole development of the 
machine era. But no solution of our problems 
can ever be sound which ignores the facts of our 
actual environment. We are. not, nor are likely 
ever to find ourselves in reformed Ercwhon where 
the . wise folk, . seeing the mastery which the 
machines threatened to acquire over men, broke 
them all and made it a crime to invent one. Only 
such a solution as accepts the. actual, substantial 
and irrevocable facts of our day, which tries to 
eradicate certain obvious weaknesses and make 
certain practicable improvements within the 
general lines of what we had best call our develop- 
ment rather than our progress, is worthy of atten- 
tion. The rest is crying for the moon. 
It does indeed seem a much more reasonable 
because a more practicable proposition to hold 
that a machine should be contrived, to do everv- 
thing that . it can do better and quicker than a 
man, and that the fine of advance of the man should 
be to provide himself with the leisure and the educa^ 
tion andto develop the healthful energy necessary, to 
create those things which it is certain that the 
machine can never create. Such things, for in- 
stance, as. works of art,, which only the unreflective 
consider to be of secondary importance in life. . 
To a certain extent the artist can and should 
even capture and control the machine. This is quite 
obvious, for instance, in the case of printing. It still 
remains true that the more closely the craftsman 
is in touch with the machine and the more direct 
the process, the more personality can be got into 
the reproduced picture. For instance, hand-inked 
and hand-pulled lithographs are of a finer artistic 
quality than any printed on the most accurate 
machine with mechanically distributed ink and 
perfect impression. . But very tolerable results 
are produced by purely mechanical printing pro- 
cesses. The lithograph remains a good example 
because there does not arise the controversial 
question as to the iniquity or otherwise of photo- 
mechanical engraving. If the original lithograph 
be beautiful in design and rich in colour, all but 
those most subtle nuances, which rightly have 
value for the instructed connoisseur, will be 
retained by skilled mechanical printing. 
The application of this can be made very 
obviously to extend to furniture. If a table is 
rightly planned, machine sawing, planing and 
mortising, with only the final fitting and finishing 
performed by the craftsman, will produce more 
quickly and more economically a thing as useful, 
and all but as beautiful as one that is worked 
throughout by hand. This matter is more signi- 
ficant than might at first appear. It is unques- 
tionable that the English craftsman of the later 
decades of the nineteenth century, who inspired 
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