THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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indefinitely. It is a sort of cake that you can eat and have, too. Had he put equal skill into raising grain or potatoes he could have had but one crop to sell in a year, and that one would have been subject to the accidents and freaks of nature during the long period of its growth. This is the secret of the universal inferiority of agricultural nations as compared with manufacturing ones.
It was just this faculty and manufacturing skill in the French people—developed in every direction—that enabled them to pay, in three years, that enormous indemnity demanded of them by Germany in 1871. It was the direct result of the general applied art training of the masses—the philosopher’s stone creating gold out of simple raw materials, mixed with brains, taste and dexterity.
The French government maintains the most elaborate and efficient system of free art schools and schools of design that the world knows. As a result her decorative manufactures are unrivaled, and are her greatest source of wealth.
The Columbian Fair has been an object lesson of our position in applied art and its kindred professions. Its architecture is surpassingly beautiful. Our architects, however, after securing more or less knowledge of their subject in one of our four or five good schools, have been abroad to reap the advantages offered by more liberal and far-sighted governments than ours, as well as to study from original masterpieces of the world's architecture.
This is true also of our artists. In both of these departments our standing is creditable, for in these the necessity of rigorous training has been recognized and accepted. Not so, however, with our designers. The great majority of them are practically amateurs. They have never even imagined that there are comprehensive principles underlying design. Their aim is to evolve some fantastic idea that will attract attention by its novelty, irrespective of merit. The community receives a succession of shocks, and mistakes its curiosity for admiration. Of course there are glorious exceptions among our designers, and more every year. But back of their work you will find patient, intelligent study and hard training possibly, a rare case of what —from their demoralizing influence upon designers—I hesitate to call “ happy accidents.” They lure us into relying upon luck rather than upon a comprehensive understanding of cause and effect and conscientious painstaking.
In the main our decorative art is hopeful in its vitality—it is pitiful in its crudeness. It is struggling for existence like a mob, with vigor, but without method or concerted action. Our failures in design are the legitimate result of ignoring theory and trying to stand on the single slender leg of one person’s experiments—discarding the accumulated wisdom and experience of other times and nations.
We have in this country possibly ten fairly good schools of design—all private enterprises—one school to seven million people. Is it any wonder that ugliness is rampant in the land? That we find homely domestic tools, insulted by paint, gilding and a ribbon bow, masquerading apologetically as decorations in our parlors? That parasitical ribbon bows flaunt themselves from every possible coigne of vantage, reducing all things to the level of millinery? It would be ludicrous if it were not so sad.
It is a pitiful expression of the hunger of our people for decorative effects and their blind grouping after the good they scent afar off. They are eager to learn. They only need to be convinced of the necessity and money value of such education. If we could but engraft upon their quick wit and inventiveness the refinement and unseduced patience of the Japanese, our manufacturers would stand pre-eminent.
The Japanese and the French realize that the best results are obtained when the designer is also the workman, and, above all, an artist.
In this country, however, designing is usually spoken of lightly—as a limited business, requiring only originality, and of very little consequence anyway.
In fact, however, the study of design is of particularly far-reaching importance. The material for this study is the visible universe. Everything may give a suggestion of form or color. The range of its application is whatever may be fashioned by man. The field is sufficiently broad—the opportunities are infinite.