between artistic supply and social demand have become vitiated, if the conditions of the market, or of society, are unfavourable to the reception of products of true worth, then the artist must to some extent be an active party in the struggle for getting things set right.
That does not mean that, if he has a gift for the designing of stage-scenery, he should necessarily be involved in a struggle to secure a good drainage system (though even that should have an interest for him) but it does mean very much that he should be tremendously interested in the education of his own and the public mind to the point of receiving good drama rather than bad, in order that his art may have worthy material to work upon; and as good drama largely arises from a lively conscience and the quickening in the community of new ideas, he will wish his public a keen and open mind on all social questions.
Similarly a man who designs for textile fabrics should be very much concerned indeed in getting cleanly conditions and pure air in the towns and dwelling-houses where his designs have to live and look beautiful, or grow ugly and rot. And there you get set before you in small, the opposition between the interests of Art and the supposed interests of trade. It is—or it is supposed to be—in the interest of trade that things should wear out or get broken, and be replaced by other things. It is in the interest of Art that they should not wear out, that they should last; that every-
