more permanent style of furnishing, by making age beautiful and change unnecessary; and so it sets free a great amount of human labour for other purposes; not merely the labour of the textile workers who have not to provide new covers, but the labour of the upholsterers, who are not called upon to rip off a series of old covers and fit on new ones, dragging old nails out and driving fresh nails in, with the result that the framework of the chair itself is presently worn out and a new one required in its place. All that labour is saved.
That small example is important because it exemplifies those possibilities of permanence attaching to certain forms of hand-labour out of which can be developed a school of textile manufacture indigenous in character—indigenous in that you give it time to become embedded in its domestic setting, and to make for itself domestic history. It enables you to develop an appreciation for subtleties of colour, and to secure tones and harmonies which you cannot get ready-made in a shop: it gives to a piece of furniture life-value.
But it is bad for trade!
Now why is it bad for trade? It is bad for trade because our modern industrial conditions have brought us to this pass, that it is no longer our national aim to direct labour and set it free for other work that really needs to be done. Our national problem is rather to find work for people, at times even to invent needs, and to create a fictitious turnover in
