THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
745
moral training.’ I know you recognize this to the full in America by having manual and technical instruction introduced into your educational establishments; but nowhere do I think is the principle sufficiently recognized that our hands need training as much as our heads and that training in some home-industry prepares the boy or girl for skilled paying work hereafter, and not only does it train the hand but the eye and the sense of beauty, too. The young people who are taught to draw, carve and model and do carpentry will also surely wish to beautify their own homes and thus become more attached to home life, and more likely to make good husbands and good wives, good fathers and good mothers and good citizens. Then again think of the happiness it brings into a life if there is some useful hobby to pursue, no listless hanging about if the weather is wet, no “I’ve nothing to do mother,” and in consequence a habit is formed of healthy pleasurable occupation which will prove a valuable safeguard against the attractions of the bar in after life, in times of sickness, of sorrow and of old age too, the knowledge of some handicraft which will divert the thoughts from self is a possession not to be despised. So for all reasons the cultivation of home arts and industries among persons of all classes is greatly to be encouraged both for what they prevent as well as for what they promote and for their influence on both national and individual character.
But in order that they may obtain their full scope, whether in commercial, educational, artistic or moral grounds, they need some organizing.
The tendency of the present day is to organize, perhaps to over organize, but in this case it is certainly necessary to make some arrangement whereby the country workers can be put on a level with town workers, and whereby those scattered in rural districts can obtain good designs and can be put in touch with a good market. A considerable movement to endeavor to effect this has been noticeable in the British Isles during the last years, and several associations has been the result. There has been the Royal School of Art Needlework, under Her Royal Highness, Princess Christian, which has had for its object to train workers and to spread beautiful designs and work and the taste for them, and the result of that school and of the sister school in Ireland may be seen in the British show case in this building.
Then there is the Recreative Evening Schools Association, which has for its object to enable boys and girls who have left school to continue their education, and they, recognizing the fact that simple plodding book-work is very unattractive to young people who have been working all day, have introduced into their system the instruction of various crafts and hand-work, as well as other kinds of recreative instruction. The Home Arts and Industries Association touches, however, the country districts of which I have spoken more directly than the other two I have mentioned. They have in the last few years started over five hundred classes in England, Scotland and Ireland, where wood-carving, metal work, embossed leather, basket-work, and such like have been taught. This association has done much good, its aims have been chiefly from the artistic and moral standpoint, rather than from the commercial, though it holds most successful exhibitions and sales annually.
The Scottish and the Irish Industries Associations with which I am chiefly associated, lay great stress on the commercial side, as well as on the educational. Roughly speaking, we may say that both associations have two main aims, one being to open up a market for the goods produced by the peasant workers of Scotland and Ireland, the other being to educate them to keep on producing better and better work and such work as will meet the demands of the public.
In both associations we pride ourselves on not being charitable societies; we are educational and commercial, and we are striving, only striving, to help the people to help themselves through honest work, and in both associations we unite persons of all politics and creeds.
It is to objects such as 1 have mentioned that every penny of the surplus from the Irish Village will be devoted. I have had more than one opportunity of speaking in Chicago of the object of the Irish village, and of the association which erected it,