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A Socioeconomic Essay About the Arts and Crafts Movement 比治山大学現代文化学部紀要，第16号，2009 Bul. Hijiyama Univ. No.16, 2009 41 A Socioeconomic Essay about the Arts and Crafts Movement 佐 中 忠 司 Tadashi SANAKA Abstract It is one of chief aims of this paper to make a rethinking of so-called Arts and Crafts movement in connection with manual industry. The second one is the disentanglement of the esoteric conception of such `value' raised by John Ruskin as ` intrinsic value'. In order to make an approach to the subject, a comparison of value is carried out between Karl Marx and Ruskin. In referring to the notion of `alienation', this essay also explores the socioeconomic implications of labour power and life-style within the bounds of production and consumption. Preface By 1860 a few people had become profoundly disturbed by the level to which style, craftsmanship, and public taste had sunk in the wake of the industrial revolution and its mass-produced and banal decorative arts. So-called Arts and Crafts movement was English aesthetic movement of the second half of the 19th century that represented the beginning of a new appreciation of the decorative arts throughout Europe. It was a very broad, loosely structured movement, embracing numerous strands of thought and practice. It also aimed to reassert the importance of craftsmanship in the face of increasing mechanization and mass production. The movement had its basic ideas mostly of John Ruskin. He was the most eloquent and influential of the writers who hated the type of highly decorated, machine-made products that dominated the Great Exhibition (1851). He believed that the beauty of medieval art sprang from pride in individual craftsmanship and deplored the aesthetic as well as the social effects of individualization. Ruskin himself may have had some ideas of passing from theory to actual social organization and teaching at the time when he planned the Guild of St George in 1871, but it was left to the businesslike genius of William Morris to translate Ruskin's ideas into practical activities. They had shared nostalgic longing for the standards of craftsmanship of the medieval guilds. I. Socioeconomic Background to Arts and Crafts Movement Industrial Revolution and British Empire The industrial revolution began in about 1750, marking a major turning point in human society. Many people moved from the countryside to work in the rapidly growing towns. Britain was the first country to change in this way. Within 100 years since the threshold the country developed from an agricultural society into an industrial nation with trading links across the world; almost every aspect of industrial affair had eventually a great effect on British social and economic life in many ways. 42 佐 中 忠 司 These were mostly made possible by the discovery of steam power and the invention of the steam engine together with a number of operating machines; the first industrial revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the second industrial revolution, around 1850. Mainly in textile manufacturing, the introduction of steam power fuelled primarily by coal, wider utilization of water wheels and powered machinery underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries. Technological and economic progress to be attributed to the innovative kind of operating machines of the time gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. The impact of this change on society was enormous; many important devices were contrived to be introduced into a various parts of the national industry whereby small handicraft business was mostly doomed to decline or to disappear from the economy on the whole. Starting a factory required a lot of money and a new class of rich people, called capitalists, began to wield their influence in general. In due course, big factories were built which could produce a wide variety of goods in large quantities. As a result, the factory system was largely responsible for the rise of the modern city, as large numbers of workers migrated into the cities in search of employment in the factories. Businessmen survived by driving their competitors out of business. The result was often a monopoly, an industry where competition no longer existed. The same kind of development soon began in other countries in Europe and in the US. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia. Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's ` imperial century'. Queen Victoria's rule was the longest of any British king or queen, and happened eventually as Britain's greatest period of world power and industrial development. At that time Britain had no equal in the leading economic and political power in the world, and wanted to protect her interests and also increase her international influence by obtaining new lands. British imperial strength was underpinned by the dazzling results of the industrial revolution, for example, the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. Britain used to be said as an empire ` on which the sun never sets'. The British Empire was at its largest and most powerful around 1920, when about one fourth of the world's population lived under Her rule and over a quarter of the land in the world belonged to Her. Being second to none at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica(Latin for ` the British Peace', modelled after Pax Romana), and a foreign policy of ` splendid isolation'. It was the period of relative peace in Europe when the British Empire controlled most of the key naval trade routes and enjoyed unchallenged sea power. It refers to a period of British imperialism after the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, which led to a period of overseas British expansionism. Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain dominated a superior position in world trade. This led to the spread of the English language, the British Imperial system of measures, and rules for commodity markets based on English common law. She effectively controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, which has been characterised by some historians as ` informal empire'. However, it was not long before that the industrialization of Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the United States of America further A Socioeconomic Essay about the Arts and Crafts Movement 43 contributed to the decline of British industrial supremacy following the 1870 s. Handicraft Industries in Adversity Over a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the country. Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories, but these were often under strict working conditions with long hours of monotonous labour dominated by a pace set by machines. One of serious problems was that there were few checks on a company's activities. Unrest continued in other sectors as they industrialised, such as agricultural labourers in the 1830s, when large parts of southern part of the country were affected by the Captain Swing disturbances. Threshing machines were a particular target, and rick burning was a popular activity. Living conditions during the time varied from the splendour of the homes of the owners to the squalor of the lives of the workers. Thanks to the socioeconomic effects attendant on the revolution, working conditions remained awful and people worked long hours for little money. Factories became known as sweatshops, and were dirty, noisy, dangerous places. It is often reported that huge numbers of the working class used to die due to diseases spreading through the cramped living conditions. The characteristic qualities associated with middle-class people of the 19th century are sometimes called Victorian values. Some people think they are mainly good, and see them as including loyalty, self-control and the willingness to work hard. It is style of architecture, furniture making, and decorative art of the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901. But there are also critical ways of looking that they are mainly bad, and see them as lack of social concern for the poor, and lack of a sense of humour. The era was influenced by significant industrial and urban development, and the massive expansion of the British Empire. There began a transition in parts of Great Britain's previously manual labour and draft-animal-based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. Although the transition to industrialisation was not without difficulty, even for much of the 19th century, production was here and there done in small mills, which were typically water-powered and built to serve local needs. And then each factory to a greater or lesser degree would have its own steam engine and a chimney to give an efficient draft through its boiler. In some other cases the transition to factory production was not so much divisive. Increasing mass production by machines, on the other hand, threatened the existence of craft skills in various parts of the country. The development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal followed the mechanisation of the textile industries with increasing speed. In the end, the rapid industrialisation of the British economy cost many craft workers their jobs. Many people, such as John Ruskin, believed in designing objects and architecture primarily for their function, and not for mere appearance, acting not a little in favour of the development of the Arts and Crafts movement, with its nostalgia for the medieval way of life.
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