MEN?

And now before I make an end, I want to call your attention to
certain things, that, owing to our neglect of the arts for other
business, bar that good road to us and are such an hindrance, that,
till they are dealt with, it is hard even to make a beginning of our
endeavour. And if my talk should seem to grow too serious for our
subject, as indeed I think it cannot do, I beg you to remember what
I said earlier, of how the arts all hang together. Now there is one
art of which the old architect of Edward the Third's time was
thinking--he who founded New College at Oxford, I mean--when he took
this for his motto: 'Manners maketh man:' he meant by manners the
art of morals, the art of living worthily, and like a man. I must
needs claim this art also as dealing with my subject.

There is a great deal of sham work in the world, hurtful to the
buyer, more hurtful to the seller, if he only knew it, most hurtful
to the maker: how good a foundation it would be towards getting
good Decorative Art, that is ornamental workmanship, if we craftsmen
were to resolve to turn out nothing but excellent workmanship in all
things, instead of having, as we too often have now, a very low
average standard of work, which we often fall below.

I do not blame either one class or another in this matter, I blame
all: to set aside our own class of handicraftsmen, of whose
shortcomings you and I know so much that we need talk no more about
it, I know that the public in general are set on having things
cheap, being so ignorant that they do not know when they get them
nasty also; so ignorant that they neither know nor care whether they
give a man his due: I know that the manufacturers (so called) are