Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/620

ÆT. 54] except that of the proprietor and vendor. It was contrary to their practice, and injurious, as they conceived, to their interests, that even their own "designer," the artist whom they paid to produce patterns for their workmen to execute, should be known by name, or have any substantive existence, or separate recognition, outside their workshops. As a body of designers—for such in the main they were—the members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society were fighting for their own hand in insisting that he should be so recognized. The further doctrine that the name of the executant workman should, where possible, be given, as well as that of the designer, was no doubt in a measure due to the working of Socialistic, or at all events semi-Socialistic ideas. To Morris, who had thought the whole matter out for years, and was never the victim of phrases, the point seemed a trivial one; it was not by printing lists of names in a catalogue that the status of the workman could be raised, or the system of capitalistic commerce altered in the slightest degree. As a matter of fact, this was essentially a designers' movement: and it was as such that Morris approached it. Any elements of militant Socialism which appeared in it came from other sources; and some of those who had been his own disciples, up to the measure of their capacity, in Socialist doctrine, were surprised, and a little indignant, at the cool view which Morris took of the "responsible executants" of his own designs, and the civil contempt with which he treated the rules and regulations framed by his colleagues or pupils. Here, as always whenever it came to be a question of practical production, he understood exactly how to make the best of things as they are, and was no more the slave of new theories than of old conventions.