practice was everywhere strenuously opposed, with the direct aim of creating
and
perfecting the art-artisan. In accepting the Morris principle, the United
Crafts
recognize all that it Implies: First: the raising of the general intelligence
of the
workman, by the increase of his leisure and the multiplication of his means
of
culture and pleasure. Second: a knowledge of drawing as a basis of all the
manual arts and as one*of the essentials of a primary education which shall
be
worthyof the name.
                          With this general intelligence as working capital,
the United Crafts do not exact from their members an innate manual dexterity,
but, strictly in accordance with the Morris principle, they employ the nearest
available aid to accomplish the work at hand. In this way, interest and a
pleas-
urable excitement are awakened in the workman, and the thing created by his
brain and hands becomes the child of his- love which he seeks to develop
and
beautify to the extent of his own resources.
                          Again, as the tendency toward co-operation and
con-
structive Socialism is one of the most marked signs of the times, the United
Crafts
purpose to extend their influence by forming groups of associates at numerous
favorable points throughout the country; these associ6ates being at will
active
workers and handicraftsmen; or. yet again, business firms or private individuals
who desire to build up a national art based upon-sound aesthetic and economic
principles. As the simplest means at their disposal of making known their
exist-
ence and objects, the United Crafts have founded the monthly periodical of
which the present number is the first issue. The position now taken by the
publi-
cation will be maintained, and each successive number will deal with the
relations
of art to labor.
                          As is most fitting, the initial monograph is a
criticism
and study upon the life and work of William Morris, whose talents, time,
ener-
gies and fortune were devoted to practical attempts toward peaceful revolution
and reformation in popular art and in the condition of the workman. The
article, based upon the two recognized authorities, Mackail and Aylmer Vallance,
is a simple statement of fact, accompanied by Inferences and deductions which
are natural and obvious.
                          The second number of "The Craftsman"
will follow
with a similar monograph upon John Ruskin, whose influence was an Important
factor in the artistic and ethical development of William Morris, as is evidenced
by the letters written during the latter's student days at Oxford. The phase
of
Ruskin to be considered, is his attitude toward the great building-art of
the Middle
Ages, which grew out of an Intense-civic and co-operative spirit, whose pulsations
were felt until the negations of the Renascence period forever stilled and
nullified
them. The new subject will be another plea for an art developed by the people,
for the people, and in which the craftsman and the citizen shall be intimately
allied.
                          In a subsequent issue, the "Rise of the Guild
System in
Europe" will be considered, with a maintenance of the same point of
view, from
which art will be regarded not as something apart from common and- every-day
existence, but rather as the very means of realizing life.


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FOREWORD