Show I 1 TIMELY TOPICS I S LABOR AND W WORK RK We make many more things than our ancestors made But who can l look ok at a seventeenth century American or English farmhouse or at a thirteenth century little medieval medieval medieval me me- village church or for that matter at an Eskimo storm coat In a a. showcase In a museum and feel sure that in making common things commonly and generally well well fine fine in form staunch In stuff durable beautiful for common everyday use use we we have made any progress at all The fact is that we know in this particular aim and end of work we have gone b backward We complain that the things we buy now are poor In their material and we copy the old things still for their form and we say eay that in the old days there were real mechanics real skilled workers real craftsmen But how Were Nvere they produced d In the age when workmanship was at its greatest height height In in the age when almost any village in western Europe with its own brains and hands could make a church which metropolitan metropolitan metro metro- politan architects are now proud to copy how copy how was work organized Why the designers of or things and the makers of or things and the managers of the making snaking at that time were not different persons but the very same persons or else if different they were intimately and continuously continuously continuously contin contin- acquainted and associated with one another In Inthe Inthe inthe the dal daily y doing of or their work But workmanship requires a unity of ot understanding It requires a continuous human cooperation between design and management and execution To restore that cooperation between all elements of industry is now Inthe in inthe inthe the thought of the whole world But Bu when we restore It we shall get simply a modern version of ot the very same old human relations in which work was once for every worker a mingling of or himself with the plan planning ping of it and with the ordering of it it-in it in a harmony of ot effort erfort which off-hand off could produce masterpieces of workmanshIp as readily for the corners of kitchens as asfor asfor asfor for the chancels of cathedrals Chicago Chicago Dall Dally Daily News |