ABSTRACT
The primary motive of the arts and crafts movement is, as the name implies, the association of art and labor. Modern industry, in so far as it is characteristically modern, means the machine process; but according to the arts-and-crafts apprehension, only outside the machine process is there salvation. Since the machine process is indispensable to modern culture, both on business grounds and for reasons of economy, this limits the immediate scope of the arts-and-crafts salvation to those higher levels of consumption where exigencies of business and economy are not decisive. The "industrial art" methods are too costly for general business purposes, and the "industrial art" products are too expensive for general consumption. In the arts-and-crafts ritual the requisite sophistication is had by an insistence on genuineness, sincerity; which being interpreted in economic terms means a genuine high labor cost. This requirement boldly traverses the requirements of modern business enterprise as well as of modern, that is to say democratic, culture.
