The Business Of Decoration Previous Page (18)
This seems to be the keynote of the difficulty with all of our American business. It is present throughout the system, and in the arts it simply becomes more than ever noticeable.. The men who actually produce articles of use and beauty are universally underpaid,
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A large living room with Jacobean and Elizabethan pieces.
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A living room combining English, French and Italian,
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DECORATORS AND TRADESMEN 23
whereas the demand is never ending for those who can unload them on the public. Tens of thousands of unnecessary salesmen tour the country every year, in every line of work, duplicating each other's efforts with the retailer or the consumer, while at home in the factories and workshops the articles that they sell are dreamed over and designed and improved and constructed by draftsmen and dreamers and workers whose salaries do not average one-tenth as much as theirs. That is our system of industry. One may hope that some day this will undergo a change.
Meanwhile, the same process appears in interior decoration, but with more disastrous results than occur in making and marketing hats or shoes or razors, for the decorative establishment is supposed to create an artistic unity: a thing of beauty, utility and charm. When Mrs. X strolls into a shop and announces that she has a drawing room to furnish she is turned over to Mr. Salesman A, who often is called up automatically by the doorman because it happens to be " his turn." He attempts to sell her a suite from the floor, and if he cannot, he asks for an appointment to visit her home and look at the room. If his talk is plausible enough this is apt to be granted, especially if madam has already determined to have this particular concern do the work. When he calls, he tries to persuade her to discard whatever she may have in the room already, because he can thus subsequently persuade her to spend the maximum amount of money, and also because his own labors are reduced by not having to work around existing things. Failing in this, if his taste is good, he suggests relieving the room of its worst
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