On Friday week (December 3rd) Mr. Chamberlain delivered an excellent
address to the Birmingham art students. Art schools could not hope to manufacture geniuses, but they could help the workers in the appropriate trades and crafts to do their ordinary work better. The business of a school like that at Birmingham was to produce first-rate craftsmen, not tenth-rate artists. That sounds a truism, but as a matter of fact, it is a truism very little acted upon, and we are extremely glad to see it driven home by Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain went on to ask how it was that the work turned out in the early Victorian epoch was of such appalling ugliness. He attributed a good deal of this to the rush of prosperity among the mass of the people. This prosperity caused a sudden and immense demand by uncritical purchasers for all sorts of things, and these things were turned out with reckless profusion by machinery. Mr. Chamberlain ended his speech by an appeal to the spirit of municipal pride not to tolerate in the externals of our cities ugliness, squalor, and grime. If the people of our great towns could be made to realise not only that it is not necessary to turn our great manufacturing centres into grabby infernos, but that it is a positive disgrace to do so, we should not merely gain in health and happiness, but, we believe, also in wealth. Sluttishness and dirt are usually pure waste. It is no more economical than it is beautiful to half consume your coal and throw in- dustrial " by-products" into the streams rather than find some means of using them beneficially. Birmingham led the way in getting the people their political rights. Will it not lead the way now in securing to the people their right to a clean earth and a clean sky P
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