This beauty should not be monopolized by any one class. About the places
where we work, we should have, as far as possible, something of the
beauty of the world. We should have wide, shaded streets and parks, even
in great cities; towers and pinnacles; sky-lines of vigor, grace, and
massive strength. Cannot department stores be artistically fashioned and
built? Cannot market-houses have arches and arabesques? May not even the
Bourse have something about it suggestive of great art? Cannot our
streets have curves and storied cross-ways? Cannot porters and draymen
have somewhat to arouse and satisfy aesthetic instincts? Cannot our
day-laborers be granted vision?
Why should we have the Gothic cathedral, with its exquisite traceries
and carvings, pillars and reredos and screen, for men to pray in, one or
two hours a week, and the hideous, grime-covered, foul-smelling,
overheated factories, in which men and women spend their working-lives?
This is what Christianity must do: it must implant joy and beauty, as
well as honesty and fidelity, in the way, place, and thought of work!
When religion, education, art, and brotherly affection have joined hands
in a charmed circle, we shall have new ideas of working-places, as well
as of praying-places, and of living-places! It is not enough that a
factory should be situated, as the best factories now are, in the open
country, with sunshine and fresh air.
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