PRODUCTION AND CREATIVE EFFORT


As a human experience, the act of creating, the process of fabricating
wealth, has been at different times as worthy of celebration as the
possession of it. Before business enterprise and machine production
discredited handwork, art for art's sake, work for the love of work,
were conceivable human emotions. But to-day, a Cezanne who paints
pictures and leaves them in the field to perish is considered by the
general run of people, in communities inured to modern industrial
enterprise, as being not quite right in his head. Their estimate is
of course more or less true. But such valuations are made without the
help of creative inspiration, although the functioning of a product
has its creative significance. The creative significance of a product
in use, as well as an appreciation of the act of creating, would
be evident if modern production of wealth, under the influence of
business enterprise and machine technology, had not fairly well
extinguished the appreciation and the joy of creative experience in
countries where people have fallen under its influence so completely
as in our own.

It is usual in economic considerations to credit the period of
craftsmanship as a time in the evolution of wealth production that was
rich in creative effort and opportunity for the individual worker.
The craftsmanship period is valued in retrospect for its educative
influence. There was opportunity then as there is not now for the
worker to gain the valuable experience of initiating an idea and
carrying the production of an article to its completion for use and
sale in the market; there was the opportunity then also as there is
not now, for the worker to gain a high degree of technique and a