in the large number of books and magazines devoted to house-planning,
construction, decoration, furnishing, and garden-craft. The success
which has attended these publications, and their marked influence,
give some measure of the magnitude of this revolt.

But now attention must be called to a significant, and somewhat
sinister fact. The professional in these various fields of æsthetic
endeavour, has shown either indifference or active hostility toward
all manner of amateur efforts at self-expression. Free verse aroused
the ridicule of the professors of metrics; the Little Theatre movement
was solemnly banned by such pundits as Belasco and Mrs. Fiske; the
Community Chorus movement has invariably met with opposition and
misunderstanding from professional musicians; and with few exceptions
the more influential architects have remained aloof from the effort
to give skilled architectural assistance to those who cannot afford to
pay them ten per cent.

Thus everywhere do we discover a deadening hand laid upon the
self-expression of the democratic spirit through beauty. Its enemies
are of its own household; those who by nature and training should
be its helpers hinder it instead. Why do they do this? Because their
fastidious, æsthetic natures are outraged by a crudeness which they
themselves could easily refine away if they chose; because also they
recoil at a lack of conformity to existing conventions--conventions
so hampering to the inner spirit of the Newness, that in order to
incarnate at all it must of necessity sweep them aside.

But in every field of æsthetic endeavour appears here and there a
man or a woman with unclouded vision, who is able to see in the
flounderings of untrained amateurs the stirrings of _demos_ from his