the Socialist movement, and we all of us, Morris and his colleagues included, felt that the advance of the Socialist cause was of incomparably greater importance to the advance of art than was the success of an annual junketing of artists and fashionable dilettanti. Was it not self-evident that an Art Congress, especially one whose professed object was to promote 'the interests of Art and Industry,' which could be spoiled by the propaganda zeal of one or two of the foremost art craftsmen of the day, was already foredoomed to futility? Anyway, whether wittingly or unwittingly 'spoiled by the Socialists,' the Edinburgh meeting proved to be the last assembly of the short-lived Art Congress Association.
Morris commented briefly on the Congress in the next issue of the Commonweal:
'The Art Congress,' he wrote, 'was on the whole a dull affair, and would have been very dull indeed, but that to a Socialist its humours showed some signs of the times. It goes without saying that, though there were people present who were intent on playing the part of Art-philanthropists, all the paper readers, except the declared Socialists, showed an absurd ignorance of the very elements of economics; and also, of course, that the general feeling was an ignoring of the existence of the working class except as instruments to be played on.... Socialist artists and craftsmen (since there were none but Socialists capable of taking on the job) were set to lecture audiences of Edinburgh working men on the due methods of work for producing popular art, though both lecturers and workmen audiences knew but too well that such art was impossible for wage-slaves to make or enjoy.'
'However,' continued Morris, 'the said lecturers did not hide this fact under a bushel; and since, as a reactionary Edinburgh evening paper angrily declared, the Socialists had ruined the Congress, it is probable that their plain speaking had some effect. It must also be said that the
