SMITH, Arthur Lionel
Type
4th December 1850 to 12th April 1924
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Biographical Text
Smith was Master of Balliol College, and played host to many of the conferences from 1920-24.
Smith was born in London on 4 December 1850. He was effectively orphaned when his father died young and his widowed mother emigrated to Italy and then to the USA, leaving Smith at Christ’s Hospital, where he was educated. He then attended Balliol College, Oxford, winning first-class honours in classical moderations and literae humaniores, and also the Lothian Prize for history. In 1874 he became a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and from 1876-9 studied for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. He married Mary Florence in 1879.
Smith then returned to Oxford where he took up a post teaching history at Balliol College. He was elected a fellow of Balliol in 1882, became dean in 1907 and master in 1916. He was active in university politics, and in 1907 played an instrumental role in building ties between the university and the Workers’ Educational Association. He also promoted women’s education at the university and for many years lectured at Lady Margaret Hall. From 1916 he served on the archbishops’ committee on industrial problems, and from 1917-19 chaired the Ministry of Reconstruction’s committee on adult education. Smith died in Oxford on 12 April 1924.
Smith published very little, and according to Patterson (2004) he had no great interest in publishing, preferring to express himself through teaching and public speaking. He took a strong interest in education, especially for the more disadvantaged, and it is probable that this is the connection that led him to Seebohm Rowntree. Smith was certainly a strong supporter of the conferences, and was a major reason why Rowntree chose to make Balliol their permanent base. Smith himself attended every conference and gave a lecture once a year up until his death.
The best of his lectures is probably ‘Religion and industrial life’ in 1921. Smith begins by setting out the purpose of industry as he sees it:
The aim of industrial life is in itself a noble aim. It is to make man the master of things. It seeks to effect this by conquering the material world by skill and science, by enterprise and toil, that this world may be turned to the service of man, or, in Bacon’s noble phrase, ‘the glory of God and the relief of man’s estate.’ The spirit of industrial life should be worthy of this aim; it should be a spirit of service.
Central to this aim is collaboration and co-operation between all parties involved in making industry work:
The industrial sphere should, therefore, enlist the motive of co-operation as well as that of healthy competition. It should find room for the qualities of disinterested devotion like that of the scientist or doctor, and even chivalrous self-sacrifice like that of the soldier. It should be able to evoke that loyalty, mutual confidence and even comradeship which are latent in corporateness and come forth in a life of corporate endeavour and achievement. It should appeal at once to the sense of craftsmanship and the artistic instinct which exist in many men, and also to the sense of practicality and organisation which is a strong impulse in able men. It is evident that such qualities exist in abundance in the world of business and labour, but the economic environment allows them too little opportunity of expression.
To do these things, Smith says, is to invoke the spirit of Christianity and bring it into industry:
That the true life of man is the life of brotherhood, not of strife; that the true wealth of a body politic consists in the persons composing it, to whom the use of all forms of property should be subservient; that industry rightly conceived is a social service, not a selfish competitive struggle; that all men who labour have the right to live honourably by their labour, and all men the duty to labour in order to live; that the resources of a Christian community must be used to provide necessaries for all, before they are applied to providing luxuries for a few; these truths are self-evident, and the economic life of a Christian society, or indeed any healthy society, must be based upon them.
Bibliography
Patterson, R.L., ‘Smith, Arthur Lionel’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Original Source
‘Education as a factor in industry’, 1920, Balliol College
‘Religion and industrial life’, 14 April 1921, Balliol College
‘Concluding lecture’, April 1922, Balliol College
‘Concluding lecture’, 23 April 1923, Balliol College