hen in 1875 it was
found necessary to reconstitute it, that Morris might legally hold the
position which he had from the outset won by his exertions, this could
not be effected without loss, nor without a certain friction between the
partners. So, however prosperous the business might seem to be through
its monopoly of certain wares, it was difficult even for a skilful
financier to make on each year a profit which was in any way
proportionate to the fame of the work produced. But in 1865 Morris was
fortunate in finding a friend ready to undertake the keeping of the
books, who sympathized with his aims and whose gifts supplemented his
own; and, for the rest, he had read and digested the work of Ruskin, and
had learnt from him that the function of the true merchant was to
produce goods of the best quality, and only secondarily to produce a
profitable balance-sheet.

How it was that from being the head of an industrial business Morris
came to be an ardent advocate of Socialism is the central problem of his
life. The root of the matter lay in his love of art and of the Middle
Ages. He had studied the centuries productive of the best art known to
him, and he believed that he understood the conditions under which it
was produced. The one essential was that the workers found pleasure in
their work. They were not benumbed by that Division of Labour which set
the artisan laboriously repeating the same mechanical task; they worked
at the bidding of no master jealously measuring time, material, and
price against his competitors; they passed on from one generation to
another the tradition of work well done for its own sake. He knew there
was another side to the picture, and that in many ways the freedom of
the mediaeval craftsman had been curtailed. He did not ask history to
run backwards, but he felt that the nineteenth century was advancing on
the wrong line of progress. To him there seemed to be three types of
social framework. The feudal or Tory type was past and obsolete; for the
richer classes of to-day had neither the power nor the will to renew it.
The Whig or Manchester ideal held the field, the rich employer regarding
his workmen as so many hands capable of producing so much work and so
much profit, and believing that free bargaining between free men must
yield the best economic results for all classes, and that beyond
economic and political liberty the State had no more to give, and a man
must be left to himself. Against