ds the machine that
industrial advance will lie not in the direction of improvement in
machinery, but in the recovery and education of the workman. This
refusal to apply "the art of life" to industry continually drives out
of it many promising young people. Some of them, impelled by a
creative impulse which will not be denied, avoid industry altogether
and demand that their ambitious parents give them lessons in "china
painting" and "art work," which clutters the overcrowded parlor of the
more prosperous workingman's home with useless decorated plates, and
handpainted "drapes," whereas the plates upon the table and the rugs
upon the floor used daily by thousands of weary housewives are totally
untouched by the beauty and variety which this ill-directed art
instinct might have given them had it been incorporated into industry.

I could cite many instances of high-spirited young people who suffer a
veritable martyrdom in order to satisfy their artistic impulse.

A young girl of fourteen whose family had for years displayed a
certain artistic aptitude, the mother having been a singer and the
grandmother, with whom the young girl lived, a clever worker in
artificial flowers, had her first experience of wage earning in a box
factory. She endured it only for three months, and then gave up her
increasing wage in exchange for $1.50 a week which she earns by making
sketches of dresses, cloaks and hats for the advertisements of a
large department store.

A young Russian girl of my acquaintance starves on the irregular pay
which she receives for her occasional contributions to the Sunday
newspapers--meanwhile writing her novel--rather than return to the
comparatively prosperous wages of a necktie factory which she regards
with horror. Another girl washes dishes every evening in a cheap
boarding house in order to secure the leisure in which to practise her
singing lessons, rather than to give them up and return to her former
twelve-dollar-a-week job in an electrical factory.

The artistic expression in all these cases is crude, but the young
people are still conscious of that old sacrifice of material interest
which art has ever demanded of those who serve her and which doubtless
brings its own reward. That the sacrifice is in vain makes it all the
more touching and is an indictment of the educator who has failed to
utilize the art instinct in industry.

Something of the same sort takes place among many lads who find little
o