Do we? We may escape the town by train or motor—running the risk in either case of a smash—but we cannot escape commercial enterprise. The very trees and houses sprout with business cards, and the landscape along some of our principal railway lines seems owned by the vendors of drugs. Turning away our eyes from such annoyances, commercial enterprise, again, has us in all sorts of alluring announcements of all sorts and sizes in innumerable newspapers and magazines, which, like paper kites, can only maintain their position by extensive tails. The tail—that is, the advertisement sheets—keeps the kite flying—and the serial tale keeps the advertisers going, perhaps, also. Anyhow, the gentle reader is obliged to take his news and views, social or political, sandwiched or flavoured with very various and unsought and unwanted condiments, pictorial or otherwise. Thus, public attention is diverted and—nobody minds! But it is in these insidious ways that that repose or detachment of mind favourable to the sense of beauty is destroyed, and thus, to put it in another way, we are in danger of losing our lives, or the best that life can give, in getting our living—or, well, perhaps it might be true to say in some cases, a substantial percentage on our investments.
In obedience, too, to the requirements of the great god Trade, whole districts of our fair country are blighted and blackened, and whole populations are made dependent upon mechanical, monotonous, and often dangerous toil to support the international commercial race for the precarious world-market.
Under the same desperate compulsion of commercial competition, agriculture declines, and the country side is deserted. The old country life, with its festivals and picturesque customs, has disappeared. Old houses, churches, and cottages have tumbled into ruin, or have suffered worse destruction by a process of smartening up called "restoration." The people have crowded into the overcrowded towns, increasing the competition for employment, the chances of which are lessened by the very industry of the workers themselves, and so our great cities blindly become huger, more dangerous, and generally unlovely, losing, too, by degrees their relics of historic interest and romance they once possessed.
Even in the art-world, and among the very cultivators of beauty we detect the canker of commercialism. The compulsion of the market rules supply and demand, and the dealer becomes more and more dominant. The idea of the shop dominates picture shows, and painters become almost as specialized as men of science, while genius, or even ordinary talent, requires as much puffing as a patent medicine. Everyone must have his trade label, and woe to the artist who experiments, or discovers capacities in himself for other things than his label covers.
Every new and sincere movement in art has been in direct protest and conflict with the prevailing conditions, and has measured its progress by its degree of success in counteracting them, and, in some sense, producing new conditions. The remarkable revival of the handicrafts, or arts and crafts movement, of late years may be quoted as an instance; but it is a world within a world; a minority producing for a minority; although the movement has done valuable work even as a protest, and has raised the banner of handwork and its beauty in an age of machine industry.
Other notable movements of a protesting, protective, or mitigating nature are at work in the form of societies for the protection of ancient buildings, for the preservation of historic spots and the beauty of natural scenery, for the abolition or abatement of the smoke nuisance, for checking the abuses of public advertisement, for the increase of parks and open spaces, and for spreading the love of art among the people.
Indeed, it would seem as if the welfare of humanity and the prospects of a tolerable life under modern conditions were handed over to such societies, since it does not seem to be anybody's business to attend to what should be everybody's business, and we have not even a minister to look after such interests. The very existence of such societies, however, is a proof of the danger and destruction to which beauty is exposed under modern conditions.
Social conditions are the outcome of economic conditions. In all ages it has been the system under which property is held—the ownership of the means of production and exchange—which has decided the forms of social life. The expansion of capital and the power of the financier are essentially modern developments, as also is unrestricted commercial competition, though this seems to lead to monopoly—a heretofore unexpected climax. Modern existence in such circumstances becomes an unequal race or scramble for money, place, power, or mere employment. The social (or rather unsocial) pressure which results really causes those sordid aspects, pretences, aggressions, and brutal contrasts we deplore. Private ownership is constantly opposed to public interest. The habit of regarding everything from the narrow point of view of money value and immediate profit as the determining factors in all transactions obscures larger issues and stultifies collective action for the public good.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury of public opinion, perhaps I have said enough to support the case of beauty against modern social and economic conditions. I do not ask for damages—they are incalculable. She stands before you, a pathetic figure, obscured in shreds and patches, driven from pillar to post, disinherited, a casual, and obliged to beg her bread, who should be a welcome and an honoured guest in every city and country, and in every house, bearing the lamp of art and bringing comfort and joy to all.