ART AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Training in art in American schools desirable in order to place the future citizens in harmony with their surroundings-Resources now existing in the community for general art culture-Labor the great source of wealth-The community equally interested in exchange of its "labor" for works of art, whether exchange is made by private citizens or public officials-The relation of the community to its expenditures for education, whether public or private- This Report is in the nature of an appraisal of the public, and a portion of the private, resources on hand; educationally available for the training of skilled artists, and artisans, who shall develop the artistic manufactures and industries of the people - Tendency of books, paintings, sculptures, and art objects to gravitate from private to public ownership;to concentrate in Public Libraries and Art Museums.

Already in the previous pages, many phases of the discussion as to the new educational demands in the public schools and other educational agencies, have been illustrated and many reasons why such changes were required have been given, accompanied by references to the successful results of similar experiments, in justification of the advocacy in these papers of the general adoption by the schools of America of the proposed innovations.

The additional argument arising from a realization of the importance that the development of a people should be in harmony with their surroundings, and that to effect this should be a controlling purpose in any scheme of public education has been reserved till now.

A public school course of training which should accomplish this for all, which should so inform every pupil in regard to the elementary principles common to all the forms of art as to give them, in some degree, an intelligent appreciation of the qualities that give value to the products of artistic industries; and which, at the same time, should best fit those who look forward to lives of industrious labor for subsequent training in such artistic industries as will be the most desirable for the community and most renumerative to the individual, would certainly seem to invite the appellation "Utopian," had it not been already successfully established.

In a Republic, in which there are no fixed classes, it is the more

desirable that the elementary education given to all should be so simple, broad and thorough as to suffice for a sure foundation on which to build. Upon this basis of knowledge, common to all, each individual may develop in such direction and to such completeness, as ability, inclination and controlling circumstances permit.

Without the power of appeal to a common standard of morals, of justice and of manners, which implies considerable knowledge of these subjects by all the people, no organized community, other than one under the rule of a despot, would be possible. Knowledge by the people of those things which affect their common interest, is an indespensable pre-requesite to any organized form of civilization compatible with liberty and progress. Since such a common basis of elementary knowledge is so essential to the development of self governing civilized communities; it is only a logical deduction, a necessary corollary, that if it is desirable that a community should develop in any given direction, there must first be a general dissemination among the people of the elementary knowledge essential to such development.

In the first of these papers the fact that such knowledge of all matters relating to the arts was a common possession of those peoples whose Art has won the admiration of the ages was clearly shown. tory and theory are in perfect accord.

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If then it is desirable that the people of the United States become an art-loving and an art-producing people, it is certain that, in order to effect this, some elementary knowledge of art must be universally disseminated; and that the education of the people must be such as will both fit them to appreciate and enjoy art, and, also, to become skillful in the technical employments of the industrial arts. Such general elementary education of the people can, in the United States, only be attained by means of the free public schools. If it is urged, in objection, that the people of Greece or of the Italian Republics had in their time no similar training in schools, the answer is easy since it is evident that the people needed no such formal teaching; for, from earliest childhood, they were every where surrounded, in the life of the streets, the forum, the temples, the churches, by works of great artists, which the children were wont to hear discussed and criticised, as matters of personal and common interest and concern, by their elders, and so, their unconscious education in art went on continuously.

In England and in the United States it is far otherwise. Such art instruction as is received by the youth of these countries must be, for

the most part, designedly imparted. In this country the public schools furnish the only adequate agencies. The Nation of to-morrow has its birth in the schools of to-day. If then, the people of the United States are ever, as a nation, to have an artistic development, the seeds of that growth must be planted in the schools of the children.

In view of the statement in the preceding paper as to the era of luxury and ostentation which is approaching, and of the industrial demands which such an era will develop, problems usually relegated to the political economists press for immediate and practical solution. It is evident from the history of the past few years that the people of the United States are already large consumers of articles of art and luxury; it is certain, that the consumption of these articles must largely increase.

The question who shall produce these articles is of vital importance to the educator, the taxpayer, and the political economist. Shall they be made in other countries by foreign artists and artificers? Shall they be made here by trained foreigners who immigrate to thiscountry; or, Ishall the school children of this country, the cost of whose training is paid for by the taxpayers, be so trained at school as to fit them to make such articles of beauty and luxury as a rich people require and at whatever cost will obtain? The adoption of art industrial training in schools has been herein urged from other points of view; but, though so different, they are not antagonistic, nor do they obscure this aspect of the situation. The argument springing from the anticipated increase of this present demand for art works is complementary to the reasons before adduced, both confirmatory and encouraging,- since it offers a partial solution to the problem, as to "how, and where, the art workers when trained, could find employment?"

The demand arising from this class of palace builders previously referred to, bears somewhat adversely upon the project of introducing mere industrial training in the schools, the "hand work," now somewhat strenuously urged. To have only the technical skill of the blacksmith, or the carpenter, will not suffice.

It is a higher skill, a more refined form of labor, that alone can meet the coming demand. The training to qualify workers to meet this, must be absolutely artistic. It must be, by a course of elementary and progressive art training, such as Walter Smith projected, carried out to its completion. The taste must be trained, the highest ideals of art comprehended, the technicalities of art working in whatever material S. Ex. 209

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may be chosen, fully mastered. The public schools can and should fit the pupil so that such technical skill can be, subsequently, most readily acquired.

This art training will also be found to be as desirable for the art purchasers as for the art workers. There is a very different point of view from which this subject may be profitably considered; and that is, one which concerns itself with the attitude towards the art interests of the country, of the owners of great fortunes, the probable purchasers of the handiwork of these future artist workers. In view of its bearing upon the future art development of this country, it is a matter of importance that these people should be possessed of some correct knowledge of art, if they are to expend their money for works of art. For a very practical reason, the community, as we shall presently see, is very deeply interested that such expenditures should be wisely made. It by no means follows in the United States, as yet, that the possession of wealth necessarily implies any form of culture; least of all, of art culture. Nor ought lack of the latter to be held, in any sense, as a reproach to the individual, because this country has heretofore, the Centennial Exhibition alone excepted, been absolutely destitute of opportunities for the acquisition, by the public generally, of art knowledge. Many of the excuses for various shortcomings, which are based upon the plea that this is a young country, are absurd; because, in a knowledge of literature, for instance, the first settlers were on an equality with the most intelligent of their English countrymen; and Americans have continued to keep themselves fully informed as to the literary progress of modern Europe, while the amazing development of the sciences is of very recent growth, and in these, America admits no inferiority to the rest of the world ;— but, when the fine arts are in question, the plea is valid. For it must be remembered that this fair land was a wilderness, in which the first settlers were forced to endure privations and sufferings of every kind; for shelter and food, the bare necessities for human existence, could only be scantily provided by the hardest labor. When the added fact, is recalled that these settlers cherished the most earnest religious abhorrence of every form of art, it is easy to see that there was little opportunity for its existence.

Certainly there was nothing in the surroundings of the struggling colonists to stimulate any abnormal development of the arts of adorn. ment, while the religious sentiments, to the inspiration of which the

noblest achievements of art have been ever due, were active to repress, not to develop, all such instincts!

The sporadic appearance, a little more than a century later, among the Quakers, a people whose religious opposition to art was intense, of the child Benjamin West whose inborn instinct for painting overpow ered every obstacle;-and, amid other surroundings, of Allston, who, forty years later, evinced a genius for art at once delicate and powerful, are instances that go far to prove the existence in man of a strong tendency to expression by means of the arts;—an instinct which may be long repressed by untoward circumstances, as it was through the Colonial period of our history, but which, since it is an inherent quality of human nature, must eventually manifest itself.

In fact, in the leading cities of the young Republic there were at a very early period in our history occasional individual artists, mostly portrait painters, and in four cities there were incorporated associations of artists and other people of culture, for the promotion of the fine arts; nor, for the last century, have the arts been without a certain amount of cultivation and patronage in these United States, while the rapidity and extent of the growth of an interest in art has been one of the most notable incidents of the recent progress of the country. Still, despite these facts, it remains that opportunities for any knowledge of art on the part of the people of the United States, as a whole, have been so uncommon, that such knowledge has been not only not incumbent on any particular person, but often absolutely unattainable. In the cities of Europe, an unconsious art influence pervades the atmosphere, and, if heredity goes for anything, this same influence has been exerted upon many successive generations; besides, there, a knowledge and love of art is sedulously cultivated, both in the education of the young and by means of public art collections. Now the United States possesses no immediate power to partially remedy this deficiency, except by direct training in the public schools; this has been shown to be practicable.

In this country where large fortunes are often accumulated in a single lifetime, it is more than probable that many a bright child who to day is a pupil in the public schools, will, in the future, be found in that class of wealthy possible art purchasers just referred to; the influence of the elementary art training, which is urged for adoption in the public schools, is as desirable for the art purchasers as for the art workers; and it is for the true prosperity of the art industries that