But it cannot be too frequently emphasised that we are not to accept the present subordination of social life to the exigencies of the machine industry. That the machine industry is here to stay need not be argued; and we may dismiss as impracticable the suggestion of a return to the handicraft system. The machine industry must be retained for the production of utilities where no question of beauty or ornament arises; and it should be so ordered as to reduce the purely mechanical operations entailed in the manufacture of the staple commodities to a minimum. Consequently care should always be had to prevent an exaggerated emphasis upon the place of the machine industry in education. It is not to be pretended that mechanical processes can ever in themselves minister substantially to the joy of life. The best that can be said is that their present disadvantages can be materially reduced; but not even the sense of partnership and democratic control, the shortening of hours and the addition of intellectual interest, taken all together, can turn factory life into “a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.” Some emphasis has already been laid upon the difference between productive and creative activity. Creation is not merely production, but reproduction, that is to say, the activity in which we express _ourselves_ for the joy of the thing itself. The present writer was brought up in a slate-quarrying town in North Wales. The workers spent their time in mining and dressing roofing-slates—an industry which involves no special skill save only in the department of slate-splitting. This is handwork and no satisfactory mechanical substitute for it has yet been contrived; and there is much emulation among the workers in this process. Apart from this there is nothing note-worthy about the industry except the very considerable extent of partnership which prevails (or used to prevail) in the work itself and of fellowship in the dressing shops. But after the day’s work was done there was a somewhat remarkable activity of another kind. Sometimes a worker would take a piece of raw slate home with him and spend his spare time in turning it into candlesticks or some other article by means of a lathe or by direct manual work. The result from an artistic standpoint was doubtless very crude; but it was interesting and instructive to observe the almost instinctive way in which men, released from necessary toil, turned to the production of things of beauty. This free self-expression took other forms in other men. Welsh quarrymen have always been well-known for their literary tastes; and the town contained a considerable number of quite capable writers of both prose and verse in the Welsh language. Others there were—and these were a large number—whose dispositions were musical; and since the purchase of musical instruments was as a rule beyond these men’s pockets, they devoted themselves to vocal music. The congregational singing in the