But the creative effort is not necessarily an individual matter. It may be possible for a group of people to associate cordially and freely together with a single creative purpose and endeavor. It may be possible for each worker to experience the joy of creative work as he takes part with others in the planning of the work along with the labor of fabrication. It is a creative experience or dull labor as his association with others in the solution of the problem is freely pursued and genuine, or as it is forced and perfunctory.

My justification for making this assertion will be recognized by every one who has had the opportunity to attend shop meetings of a newly organized trade union. These meetings are unique as they disclose the force in a productive group, and the value of giving the individuals engaged in routine work the opportunity to pool their common experience and pass judgment on methods of work. Whatever decisions these workers come to, none are fully realized or freely pursued under conditions which industry imposes. But in the course of shop meeting discussions, it becomes clear to an observer that methods of work is as absorbing a topic as the relation of the work to the wage. The routine which is the apparent result of the division of labor, becomes under discussion a matter of technical import. The workers' knowledge of labor saving devices and their resources for inventing new ones are as expert as is the business man's knowledge of how labor cost can be saved. This matter under discussion is of high interest and concern. There is an integrity in the concern which evidently springs from experience and the suppressed interest in perfecting methods and the inter-relation of the workers in a shop. The vitality and intelligence of these machine tenders may well inspire the agitator who addresses their meetings to curse a system which withholds full knowledge of the workshop and blocks the opportunity for eager workers to try out new schemes born of intensive experience and failure to function in the fullness of their capacity.

Industry offers opportunities for creative experience which is social in its processes as well as in its destination. The imaginative end of production does not terminate with the possession of an article; it does not center in the product or in the skill of this or that man, but in the development of commerce and technological processes and the evolution of world acquaintanceship and understanding. Modern machinery, the division of labor, the banking system, methods of communication, make possible real association. But they are real and possible only as the processes are open for the common participation, understanding and judgment of those engaged in industrial enterprise; they are real and possible as the animus of industry changes from exploitation to a common and associated desire to create; they are real and possible as the individual character of industry gives way before the evolution of social effort.

We speak of interdependence in industrial enterprise as though it were some new thing. The early interdependence had its roots in the common knowledge and use of an inherited technology, where property was common in the common use of it. Interdependence due to modern technology has increased, and the interdependence which characterizes our own time is economic. The tools of industry as well as the natural resources are owned, and only by application to the owner can a man live or labor. However disastrous that ownership has been to past generations, it has bound men together in their use of what we ironically call labor saving devices; devices which have not saved labor in the interest of labor.

Out of this close association of men in industry have grown our national and international business corporations and our national and international labor unions. These corporations and unions are transforming local and provincial relations into cosmopolitan acquaintanceship. The recognized value of the acquaintance is in the extension of knowledge of people through their use and wont of material things, of the ways and means of life outside limited and personal areas. The acquaintanceship does not imply friendship or sympathy or understanding among men or nations, it does not necessarily result in wisdom, and to date, it does not result in a larger social spirit. The acquaintanceship is based not on mutuality of interest, but rather on rivalry and misinterpretations.

While our institutional life is an acknowledgment that interdependence is a necessary factor in modern wealth production, we still measure the strength of a man, or a society, or a nation, and say of all that they are strong or weak as they are able apparently to stand alone. We have not yet discovered that a desire to stand alone in an enterprise where people are of necessity dependent, is a weakness and that our ability to cooeperate with others in such an enterprise is a measure of our strength, "From a social standpoint dependence denotes a power rather than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it makes him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relation to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone, an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remediable suffering of the world."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey—Democracy and Education, p. 52.]

This provincial desire of individuals to stand apart and prove to themselves and to others that they are exceptional people is a primitive ambition in conflict with the actual facts of a present day society where interdependence is a law of living. This conflict is kept alive by the industrial motive of exploitation of people and of wealth. Exploitation precludes sympathy as it precludes growth. "For sympathy—as a desirable quality is something more than mere feeling; it is cultivated imagination for what men have in common and rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them." And further, Professor Dewey remarks: "It must be borne in mind that ultimately social efficiency means neither more nor less than capacity to share in a give-and-take experience. It covers all that makes one's own experience more worth while to others and all that makes one participate more richly in the worth while experiences of others."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey—Democracy and Education, p. 141.]

What Professor Dewey says in reference to the growth of children and adults is as abundantly significant in its application to society. "Normal child and normal adult alike ... are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not the difference between growth and no growth, but between the modes of growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiassed responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness."[A]

[Footnote A: John Dewey—Democracy and Education, p. 59.]

As America and the greater part of Europe have been for over a century devoting their attention to coping with specific scientific and economic problems, is their manhood due to appear? Is the raw, immature character of present day association and interdependence to be enriched by sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness and openness of mind? In the midst of this world war I venture no prediction on the appearance of manhood. But clearly there is a line of action for educators to pursue. Clearer than ever before it is evident that it is the business of educators to see that schemes of education are introduced which do not fit children into a system of industry that serves either Empire or business, but a system that serves whole-heartedly creative enterprise as it might be pursued in the period of youth as well us in adult life. Within the past century and particularly in the past generation we have made brave efforts at cooeperation, but our failures to realize the spirit of cooeperation are as notorious as the efforts themselves. The effort to work together in industry has been brutal rather than brave. We shall account for this brutality in industry and recognize why the spirit for cooeperation in other fields has failed, as we distinguish between a puerile desire of individuals to express themselves and their impulses for creative enterprise.

As industry through the ages has changed from the isolated business of provisioning a family to the associated work of provisioning the world, it has blazed a pathway for relationships which are socially creative. But art in social relationships will not be realized until a passionate desire for the unlimited expression of creative effort overcomes inordinate desires of individuals for self-expression. Art in living together is possible where the intensive interest of individuals in their personal affairs and attainments, in their social group, in their vocation, in their political state, is deeply tempered by a wide interest and sympathetic regard for the life of other groups and people. Art in social relationships is contingent on broad sympathies and extended relationships, and it is contingent as well on ability to work for social ends while remaining in large measure disregardful of the personal stakes involved. Because of our inability to lose our personal attachment for our own work, because of what it may yield us in personal ways, the world never yet has experienced the joy and creative possibility of associated effort And because it has not we have still to experience art in social contact.

In group work there may be as much power to release emotional and intellectual creative force as in individual work; there may be more—we do not know. There is a tendency we do know in isolated, individual creative effort, unless highly charged with creative impulse, to cultivate personal equations intensively, limit relationships, and circumscribe vision. As the movement of our time is toward world acquaintanceship, the desire of individuals to limit their experiences for the sake of intensifying them, signifies from a social point of view as well as a personal, a neurotic tendency. There is a common and false supposition that the neurotic temperament is induced in the world of art. It is true that an art environment attracts people whose creative impulse is feeble or not sufficiently strong to sublimate the desire for intensive personal excitation. Such people choose art associations because they are limited to individual expression and not because of the overpowering necessity to do work which is creative. As the era in which we live represents a struggle for associated work and common interests and its highest concept is opposed to limited interests and autocratic rule, we may well give our best endeavor to realizing creative impulse in the field of associated effort, in the hope that the field of art will be some day coextensive with life, and that its expressions will not be confined to the limited world of sculptors, painters, musicians and poets.

THE END