This is the best feature of the promises held out by the arts and crafts movement, that men shall be interested in the work they do. This may seem to some people an unrealizable idea and a poetic aspiration rather than a possible actuality. A little study of what was accomplished in this line during the Thirteenth Century, will surely prove even to the most skeptical how much of success is capable of being realized in this matter. The men who worked around the Cathedrals were given opportunities to express themselves and the best that was in them as no class of workmen before or since have ever had the opportunity. Every single portion of the Cathedral was to be made as beautiful as the mind of man could conceive, his taste could plan and his hands could achieve. As a consequence the carpenter had the chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the best that was in him.
It is easy to understand under these circumstances with what interest the men must have applied themselves to their tasks. They were, as a rule, the designers as well as the executors of the work assigned them. They planned and executed in the rough and tried, then modified and adapted, until finally as we know of most of the Cathedrals, their finished product was as nearly perfect in most particulars as it is ordinarily given to man to achieve. Their aim above all was to make such a combination of utility with beauty of line yet simplicity of finish, as would make their work worthy counterparts of all the other portions of the Cathedral. The sense of competition must have stirred men to the very depths of their souls and yet it was not the heartless rivalry that crushes when it succeeds, but the inspiring emulation that makes one do as well as or better than others, though not necessarily in such a way as to [{126}] belittle others' efforts by contrast or humble them by triumph.
FOUNTAIN (PERUGIA) [TOWN PUMP]
LAVATOIO (TODI) [PUBLIC WASH-HOUSE]
In these old medieval days England used to be called Merrie England and it is easy to understand that workmen would be profoundly merry at heart, when they had the consciousness of accomplishing such good work. Men must have almost tardily quitted their labor in the evening while they hoped and strove to accomplish something that would be worthy of the magnificent building in which so many of their fellow workmen were achieving triumphs of handicraftsmanship. Each went home to rest for the night, but also to dream over what he might be able to do and awoke in the morning with the thought that possibly to-day would see some noteworthy result. This represents the ideal of the workman's life. He has an interest quite apart from the mere making of money. The picture of the modern workman by contrast looks vain and sordid. The vast majority of our workmen labor merely because they must make enough money to-day, in order that they may be able to buy food enough so as to get strength to work to-morrow. Of interest there is very little. Day after day there is the task of providing for self and others. Only this and nothing more. Is it any wonder that there should be social unrest and discontentment? How can workmen be merry unless with the artificial stimulus of strong drink, when there is nothing for them to look forward to except days and weeks and years of labor succeeding one another remorselessly, and with no surcease until Nature puts in her effective demand for rest, or the inevitable end comes.
It would be idle to say that these men who knew how to make the beautiful things for these cathedrals were not conscious of the perfection of the work that they were accomplishing. The very fact that each in his own line was achieving such beautiful results must have stamped him as thoroughly capable of appreciating the work of others. The source of pleasure that there must have been therefore, in some twenty towns in England alone, to see their Cathedral approaching completion, must have been of itself a joy far beyond anything we can imagine as possible for the workmen of the present day. The interest in it was supreme and was only heightened by the fact that it was being done by relatives and friends and brother workmen, even [{127}] though they might be rivals, and that whatever was done was redounding first to the glory of the Lord to whom they turned with so much confidence in these ages of faith, and secondly, and there was scarcely less satisfaction in the thought, to the reputation of their native town and their fellow-townsmen.
This is the feature of the life of the lower classes in the Thirteenth Century which most deserves to be studied in our time. We hear much of people being kept in ignorance and in servitude. Men who talk this way know nothing at all of the lives of the towns of the Middle Ages and are able to appreciate not even in the slightest degree the wonderful system of education, that made life so much fuller of possibilities for intellectual development for all classes and for happiness in life, than any other period of which we know. This phase of the Thirteenth Century is at once the most interesting, the most significant for future generations, and the most important in its lessons for all time.