formidable task that seemed to be set before them by Professor Geddes.
However, when they left abstract civics, as they had it portrayed to
them in these papers, and turned to the architectural or the historical
side of concrete civics, there should be no better guide than Professor
Geddes, whose labours in Edinburgh, and whose projected schemes for the
improvement of Dunfermline, were becoming widely known.
MR. TOMKINS (_of the London Trades Council_) said:
If before any person was allowed to serve on our different public
bodies, he should be required to attend a course of lectures such as
those given by Professor Geddes on civics, that would surely be a means
of developing his social interests, and would tend to eliminate that
self-interest which too often actuated public men. There was nothing
more difficult than for workmen to-day to be able to take larger views.
The workman's whole business was now so different from what is was in
the days of the arts and crafts guilds of the Middle Ages; they now
found him ground down into some little division of industry, and it was
quite impossible for him to work in his own way. Thus he got
narrow-minded, because concentrated on some minor process. He was kept
at work with his nose to the mill the whole time, and it became too
exhausting for him to try and take these larger views of life. He often
thought of the amount of talent and energy and practical beauty which
was wasted in our workshops to-day. Referring to the Garden Cities of
this country and the United States, Mr. Tomkins said the idea of getting
great Trusts to use their money in a social spirit, and not merely to
get the workers tied to their mills, was really something which opened
out a vista of grand possibilities in the future; but if any movement
was to be successful it would be necessary to teach the great masses of
workers, and to create a real sound social public opinion amongst them.
PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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