Handiwork

“ In those early handicraft days such work was an art as well as a science; and surely the craftsmen loved their labor, else they could not have exercised the patience necessary to the attainment of such excellence. ”

“ But through the centuries of its earlier growth the handicraft industry, simply as a routine of workmanship, shaped the conditions of life for the common people more pervasively and consistently than any other one factor. Its discipline, therefore, was of protracted duration and touched the current habits of thought in an intimate and enduring fashion; so as to leave a large and enduring effect on the institutions of the peoples among whom it prevailed. ”

“ In the old order the worker owned his tool, selected his material, controlled the process of his task, and often was master of the sale of the finished product. Hence, as has so often been shown, the character of a man was so obviously a part of the stock-in-trade of the worker, his judgment, probity and skill were so clearly causes of his success in handicraft, that the ethical training of life came definitely through the exercise of work-power. ”

“ It appears that this uneven distribution of wealth arises out of the technological exigencies of handicraft and of the petty trade which characteristically runs along with the handicraft industry in its early stages.132 In its earliest, impecunious beginnings, handicraft as known in mediæval Europe was like its congener, the manual arts of the savage and lower barbarian peoples, in that the whole material equipment requisite to its pursuit consisted of a skilled workman and an extremely slender kit of tools. ”

“ So of every one who practises, apparently automatically, a long-familiar handicraft. The smith turning his tongs as he smites the iron, the carpenter wielding his plane, the lace-maker with her bobbin, the weaver at his loom, all will answer the same question in the same way by saying that they have a feeling of the proper management of the implement in their hands. ”

“ Time was when, for the most part, the skilled artisan, who was master of his trade, worked at home in his own house, assisted, it might be, by a few younger workmen or journeymen. Into his house and family he would receive one or two young lads to learn, during a seven years' engagement, the art and mystery of his craft; the master himself working and teaching them his work, feeding and clothing them, and receiving from them in return the value of the services which, as they became more apt in their work, they were able to render. ”

“ The discipline of the handicraft industry enforces an habitual apprehension of mechanical forces and processes in terms of manual workmanship,—muscular force and craftsmanlike manipulation. This discipline touches238 first, and most intimately and coercively, the classes engaged in the manual work of industry, but it also necessarily pervades the community at large and gathers in its net all individuals and classes who have to do with the facts of industry, near or remote. ”

“ There must be a good forge and fire, an anvil, and proper tools, all in the hands of a workman of some experience and skill. Successful forge work can hardly be considered among the handicrafts easily adapted to the needs of the amateur working without instruction and with poor equipment. But with good tools, proper equipment, and a little experience any clever boy will be able to design and fashion many useful articles for the home which have real artistic merit. ”

“ A further and most satisfactory result is noticeable in the recent establishment of workshops under proper control, where boys can gain some idea of the value of manual labor, and the respect due to careful handicraft. ”

“ When the eye and hand can be trained, the mind informed, and the child at the same time entertained, a needed work is indeed being accomplished; and in ‘Handicraft and recreation for girls,’ the parents will find a valuable aid in accomplishing this triple task. The first half of the volume ... is devoted to the handicrafts. Here the most explicit directions are given for spinning, weaving, ... as well as for making complete miniature copies of a Japanese village, a Russian village, an Indian village and an old colonial kitchen.... ”

“ Amateur societies and classes were in existence, like the Home Arts and Industries Association, which had established village classes in wood-carving, metal work, spinning and weaving, needlework, pottery and basket-work, and the public interest in handicraft was steadily growing. ”

“ The discipline of everyday life under the handicraft economy was a discipline in pecuniary self-help as well as in workmanship. In the popular ideal as well as in point of practical fact the complete craftsman stood shrewdly on his individual proficiency in maintaining his own pecuniary advantage, as well as on his trained workmanship; and the gilds were organised to maintain the craft’s advantages in the market, as well as to regulate212 the quality of the output. ”

“ Cannot machinery, in the hands of self-respecting and well-paid artisans, do our cleaning, sewing, moving, and decorating? Cannot the training of children become an even greater profession than the attending of the sick? ”

“ And in order that I may enjoy this life it is necessary that from morning till night house-porters, dvorniks, cooks (male and female) , footmen, coachmen, and laundresses, should work; to say nothing of the manual labour necessary so that the coachmen, cooks, footmen, and others may have the instruments and articles by which and upon which they work for me,—axes, casks, brushes, dishes, furniture, glasses, shoe-black, kerosene, hay, wood, and food. All these men and women work hard all the day and every day in order that I may talk, eat, and sleep. ”

“ It asserts, moreover, the value of the practice of handicraft as a good training for the faculties, and as a most valuable counteraction to that overstraining of purely mental effort under the fierce competitive conditions of the day; apart from the very wholesome and real pleasure in the fashioning of a thing with claims to art and beauty, the struggle with and triumph over the stubborn technical necessities which refuse to be gainsaid. ”

“ Every exercise in handicraft should embody an educational principle, making sure the training of the judgment, the eye, or the memory, and tending to develop skill, patience, accuracy, perseverance, dexterity or artistic appreciation. ”

“ With so many other laborers in the field, and considering their task, we scarcely dare think of the miserably small pay they must receive for their labor. We wonder how they can live. And yet they have a certain wholesome, thrifty appearance—their clothes, although coarse, are not ragged; they look well and strong, and they work with an energy which would imply a certain satisfaction in their task well done. ”

“ As we practise spade husbandry almost exclusively, and devote our grounds to gardening purposes, we can furnish employment to quite a number. For those who prefer mechanical pursuits, we have a printing-office, book-bindery, stereotype-foundry, lithographing and wood-engraving establishment, paint-shop, silk-weaving manufactory, and shoe-shop, as well as those trades which are carried on for the most part out of doors, such as masonry and carpentry. The girls are mostly employed in household duties, and are in great demand as servants and assistants in the households of our farmers. ”

“ I want some manual training equipment for wood-working and metal working, and a blacksmith and wagon shop, in which the boys may learn to shoe horses, repair tools, design buildings, and practise the best agricultural engineering. So I want a blacksmith and handyman with tools regularly on the job—and he’ll more than pay his way. I want some land for actual farming. I want to do work in poultry according to the most modern breeding discoveries, and I want your cooperation in that, and a poultry plant somewhere in the district. ”

“ So then, along with books and the art of school teaching, we must train the girls to the trades of cooking, of dressmaking, of nursing, of type-setting, of running knitting and sewing machines; we must teach the boys carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe and harness making, agriculture, the raising of improved stock and the running of machinery. ”

“ I know that I am expressing the opinion of some of the largest as well as the most enlightened employers of labor, when I say that there is a real danger that, from the extreme of no education, we may run to the other extreme of over-education of handicraftsmen. And I apprehend that what is true for the ordinary hand-worker is true for the foreman. Activity, probity, knowledge of men, ready mother-wit, supplemented by a good knowledge of the general principles involved in his business, are the making of a good foreman. ”

“ Its ambition to turn out a constant succession of the best possible craftsmen, rather than theoretic students, makes it the best means yet arrived at of moral and mental development inseparable to my thinking from the purely utilitarian value of handicraft training. ”

“ The ideal handicraftsman developing under an ideal social order “shall put his own individual intelligence and enthusiasm into the goods he fashions. So far from his labour being ‘divided,’ which is the technical phrase for his always doing one minute piece of work and never being allowed to think of any other, so far from that, he must know all about the ware he is making and its relation to similar wares; he must have a natural aptitude for his work so strong that no education can force him away from his special bent. ”

“ Let us take manual work again—for instance, carpentry. Manual work can be leisure if it is work done for the sake of the art that is involved and for the cultivation of an artist. It is labor if it is done for compensation. ”

“ Let pupils visit some factory and tell what they saw. A shoe shop, a tailor's shop, a blacksmith shop, are simple factories. Discuss other occupations, and let pupils bring pictures of people at work in any of the loading industries.
Most people earn their living by doing some kind of work. We call people's work their occupation. Let us see what are the great occupations of the world.
We all eat food made from plants, and from plants we get cotton and linen for clothes. ”

“ The handicraft system comes true to the same characterisation in so far that it was dominated by a routine of workmanship and so far as, in effect, its life-history falls in an era of prevailingly peaceable conditions; and such a characterisation holds true of the industrial community proper through the period during which handicraft is the ruling factor in the community’s habitual range of interest. ”

“ The basal fact in that room is that it is a workshop, doing actual things in sewing, spinning, and weaving. The children come into immediate connection with the materials, with various fabrics of silk, cotton, linen, and wool. Information at once appears in connection with these materials; their origin, history, their adaptation to particular uses, and the machines of various kinds by which the raw materials are utilized. Discipline arises in dealing with the problems involved, both theoretical and practical. Whence does the culture arise? ”

“ And the earlier the period of life at which the handicraftsman has to enter into actual practice of his craft, the more important is it that he should devote the precious hours of preliminary education to things of the mind, which have no direct and immediate bearing on his branch of industry, though they lie at the foundation of all realities. ”

“ A man of means and University education who deliberately kept a shop, a poet who chose to exercise a handicraft, not as a gentleman amateur, but under the ordinary conditions of handicraftsmen, was a figure so unique as to be all but unintelligible. ”

“ And now, what should this industrial education be? Many men, hastily looking over the subject, have jumped to the conclusion that it should consist in simply teaching the plain arts of husbandry and of mechanics; that is, that the great object should be to train young men simply or mainly to hoe or spade or plough in the fields, or to make chairs or shoes, or hats or boats, in the shops. ”

“ Each man has his own special line of work, the labor being divided among pen-men, knockers-down, stickers, scalders, bristle-snatchers, scrapers, shavers, hangers or "gamble-men," gutters, hose-boys, slide-boys, splitters, cutters with their attendants, weighers, cleavers, knife-men, ham-trimmers, shoulder-trimmers, packers, salters, weighers and branders, lard-men, bookkeepers, porters and laborers, of whom fifty will unitedly dispose of a hog once in every twenty seconds. ”

“ Necessary work has to do with providing the necessaries of life. These are food, clothing, shelter, light, heat and every other service or commodity which helps to keep us alive and adds to our efficiency as human beings.
Anyone, therefore, who is producing food or preparing it is a necessary worker. So are the great armies of workers who are engaged in producing materials out of which all kinds of necessary clothing are made, and other workers who make necessary clothing from wool, cotton, linen, etc. ”

“ Wood-work, carving, work in metal or leather, pottery, basket-plaiting, bookbinding, needlework and embroidery, knitting, netting hammocks and so forth—the only limit to the number of such crafts is the limit to the knowledge and energy of those who can start and direct them, and to the space available, as some can only be carried on in rooms reserved for such work. ”

“ Before closing the door upon the atelier, the factor of its personnel deserves a moment's attention. I refer now to the workers—not in their social or human capacity, but merely as merchandise-producers. Their labor is expended almost exclusively in the creation of supposed beauty. ”