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"The Roycrofters" is the legal name of our institution. It is a corporation, and the shares are distributed among the workers. No shares are held by any one but Roycrofters, and it is agreed that any worker who quits the Shop shall sell his shares back to the concern.
My best friends have been workingmen, homely women and children. My father and mother are members of my household, and they work in the Shop when they are so inclined. My mother's business now is mostly to care for the flowers, and my father we call "Physician to The Roycrofters," as he gives free advice and attendance to all who desire his services.
He believed in me, loved me, hoped for me. Whether I disappointed him at times is not important. I know my average must have pleased him, because the night he said Farewell to the Roycrofters he spoke well of me, very well of me, and he left the Roycroft Institution in my charge. He sailed away on the "Lusitania" intending to be gone several weeks.
To five hundred Roycrofters, to the Village of East Aurora, and to a few dozen personal friends scattered over the face of the earth, I am Bert Hubbard, plain Bert Hubbard and as Bert Hubbard I want to be known to you. I lay no claim to having inherited Elbert Hubbard's Genius, his Personality, his Insight into the Human Heart. I am another and totally different sort of man.
For years they have accomplished the work that has invited your admiration. You may expect much of them now. The support they have given me, the confidence they have in me, is as a great mass of power and courage pushing me on to success. This thought I would impress upon you: It will not be the policy of The Roycrofters to imitate or copy. This place from now on is what we make it.
Faraday was a bookbinder's apprentice, a fact that should interest all good Roycrofters. Evenings, when Sir Humphry Davy lectured at the British Institution, the young bookbinder was there. After the lecture he would go home and write out what he had heard, with a few ideas of his own added. For be it known, taking notes at a lecture is a bad habit good reporters carry no notebooks.
No one else could have done it as he did. No one else can now do it as he did. So, for very sentimental reasons which overbalance the strong temptation to continue "The Philistine" I consider it a duty to pay him the tribute of discontinuing the little Magazine of Protest. The Roycrofters, Incorporated, is a band of skilled men and women.
We do our work as well as we can, live one day at a time, and try to be kind. The village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, the home of The Roycrofters, is eighteen miles southeast of the city of Buffalo. The place has a population of about three thousand people. There is no wealth in the town and no poverty.
Steam was coming in, and the factories were starving out the roycrofters. It is hard to change in order to change your mind, you must change your environment. The merchants used to buy their materials and take them to the weaver, and tell him how they wanted the cloth made.
The Roycrofters have many opportunities for improvement not the least of which is the seeing, hearing and meeting distinguished people. We have a public dining-room, and not a day passes but men and women of note sit at meat with us. At the evening meal, if our visitors are so inclined, and are of the right fiber, I ask them to talk.
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