“I yence follow’d Marget, the toast amang aw maks—
An Peg hed a red cheek and bonny dark e’e—
_But suin as she fan I depended on labour,
She snurl’d up her neb and nae mair luik’d at me_.
“This meks my words gud; nobbet brag o’ your uncle,
And get a peer hawf-wit to trumpet yer praise,
You may catch whee you will, they’ll caress ye and bless ye,
_It’s money, nit merit, they seek now-a-days_.”
_The Lasses of Carel._
LET us now shift the scene for awhile, and turn our attention once more
to the Crystal Palace.
At last, the long looked-for shilling-day had arrived. Barriers had been
placed up outside the building, so as to stem the expected crush, and a
double force of police had been “laid on” from Scotland-yard, and the
whole of the officials had been ordered to be at their posts an hour or
two earlier than usual, so that by opening the door before the appointed
time, the “rush” might be prevented. Even George Cruikshank himself,
confident that a moiety of the metropolis, at least, would be
congregated outside the building, had prepared a most vivid delineation
of the probable consequences of the rush and crush—the cram and the
jam—that every one expected to take place on the eventful occasion. If
twenty thousand people attend at five shillings, surely, according to
Cocker, said the Executive Committee, five times as many more will come
when the charge of admission is five times less.
But alas for the vain hopes of this vain world! as all the speakers at
all the “May meetings” invariably exclaim; for, on the eventful day, the
hundred thousand visitors “_in posse_,” dwindled down to twenty thousand
“_in esse_.” The two policemen who had been placed outside the gilt cage
of the Mountain of Light, the extra “force” that was stationed beside
the Queen of Spain’s jewels, the additional “Peelites” who had been
quartered at every point and turn of the interior to direct the crowd
which way to move, stared and grinned at one another as they saw the
people saunter, one by one, into the building, instead of pouring in by
tens of thousands, as had been anticipated. The Executive Committee knit
their brows, and bit their thumbs, and then suddenly discovered the
cause of the absence of the people. The masses are busy working for
their bread, and are waiting for their holiday-time, when they always
spend a large amount of their earnings in recreation and enjoyment; and
if they come even by twenty thousands now, surely they will come by
hundreds of thousands then.
Accordingly, the same farce, of barriers and police, is enacted again,
with the same disappointment; for, to the inscrutable wonder of the
Executive Committee, the number of visitors during the Whitsun holidays
is even less than the week before, and then ensue various speculations
as to the cause, and the following reason is, after much cogitation,
gravely propounded in explanation of the anomaly:—“The self-denying
patience of the people, their habitual tendency to postpone pleasure to
business, and their little inclination to rush madly forward in quest of
what can be seen as well, or better, a week or a month hence—these seem
to be the natural and truest solutions of the result.”
Now, unfortunately for this pretty compliment, a trip to Greenwich Fair
or Hampton Court, on this same Whit-Monday, would soon have convinced
the Executive Committee that “the shilling folk” were neither remarkable
for self-denial nor extreme patience in their enjoyments; while the
general observance of “Saint Monday” by the operatives might have
assured any one, in the least acquainted with their characters, that,
far from being distinguished by any habitual tendency to postpone
pleasure to business, they are peculiarly prone to make business give
way to pleasure.
But it was necessary, in order to account for the disappointment, to put
some sentimental gloss on the occurrence; and, therefore, men whose
lives were passed in toil, and to whom pleasure is therefore the highest
possible luxury—merely as rest to the body and recreation to the
faculties—were made to prefer work to enjoyment; while patience,
self-denial, and every virtue under heaven, were ascribed to people,
who, as contra-distinguished from the moneyed classes, are ignorant of
the advantages of saving, and who, getting their money hardly, are ever
ready to taste the delight of spending it. This disposition to cant, and
varnish matters over with a sickly sentimentality, angelizing or
canonizing the whole body of operatives of this country, instead of
speaking of them as possessing the ordinary vices and virtues of human
nature,—as being the same patchwork of black and white,—the same
chequered chessboard, fitted for the game and moves of life,—this
tendency to put high and heroic motives on every-day conduct is the
besetting sin of the age.
None admire the simple sturdy honesty of the working men of England more
than ourselves; but to say that they like work better than pleasure,
would be to chime in with the rhodomontade of the time, and make out
that there is an especial delight in industry,—that is to say, in
continuous labour; whereas this is precisely what is repulsive to human
nature, and what all men are striving, and, indeed, paying large sums of
money to avoid. If industry be such a supreme enjoyment, as the idle
rich ever rejoice in declaring, then where is the virtue of it? where
the merit of doing that which we have a natural bias to do? Let those
who think work a pleasure try a week’s mental or manual labour, and
then, feeling what a negative bliss there is in mere rest, get to know
what it is to yearn, like a schoolboy, for a day’s leisure, ease, and
amusement. It is well for fat and phlegmatic citizens to call people
“lazy scoundrels,” and bid them “go and work;” but let these gentlemen
themselves try their soft hands at labour, even for a day, and then they
will feel how much easier, and, as the world goes, how much more
profitable, it is to trade on others’ labour than to labour for oneself.
No man, says the adage, makes a fortune by the work of his own hands.
“Oh, sir!” replied the “valiant” Spanish beggar, when asked by the rich
merchant why he did not go and work, “You don’t know how lazy I am.” The
rich merchant was, of course, disgusted with the reply, but then he was
not aware how lazy he himself naturally was. He was one of those who
felt satisfied that industry is a special delight (though but rarely
known to be industrious themselves), and who, consequently, believed
that the honest poor always prefer labour to enjoyment, having, in the
words of the Executive Committee, an habitual tendency to postpone
pleasure for business.
But the reason why the shilling folk absented themselves from the Great
Exhibition at first was, because none of their own class had seen it,
and they had not yet heard of its wonders, one from the other. But once
seen, and once talked about in their workshops, their factories, and—it
must be said—their taprooms, each gradually became curious to see what
had astonished and delighted his fellows.
They soon began to see that the Great Exhibition, rightly considered, is
a huge academy for teaching the nobility of labour, and demonstrating
the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature.
It may to the unreflecting appear to require but a small exercise of
skill to grow their food, weave their garments, or construct their
houses; but set your “_independent_” gentleman to do either one or the
other, and what a poor useless wretch he immediately becomes. We have,
indeed, too long been taught to think, that an independent man, like an
honest man, is “the noblest work of God;” as if it were not the noblest
thing a man could do to labour for the food he eats, and as if what we
are led to call an independent gentleman were not the most dependent of
all animals in creation. Put such an one on an uninhabited island, and
would he not be as helpless as an infant? What could he—this
_independent_ man—do, when he had really to _depend_ on none others but
himself for his living?
Far be it from us to assert that manual dexterity or muscular labour is
the _summum bonum_ of human existence; but what we wish to say is, that,
owing so much of our comfort and happiness to both, we should honour
them more than we do; and that, above all, if society would really have
the world progress, it should do away with the cheat, which makes those
men the most “_respectable_” who do the least for the bread they eat. If
we wish to make gentlemen of our working men (we use the word
“gentleman” in its highest Dekkerian sense, and certainly not in its
mere conventional signification), our first step must be to assert the
natural dignity of labour. So long as we look upon work or to it as a
meanness, so long will our workers and toilers remain mean. Let industry
be with us “respectable”—as it is really in the natural arrangement of
things—and the industrious poor instead of the idle rich will then be
the really respectable men of this country.
Let those who doubt the respectability of labour, consider for one
moment what years of thought, and study, and patience, are involved in
even the commonest industrial process. “A man would be laughed at,” says
Mandeville, in his “Fable of the Bees,” “that should discover luxury in
the plain dress of the pauper, in the thick parish coat, and coarse
workhouse shirt beneath it. And yet what a number of people, how many
different trades, and what a variety of skill and tools must be employed
to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth! What depth of thought and
ingenuity, and what length of time must it have cost, before man could
have learned from a seed to raise and prepare so useful a product as
linen! Must not that society be vainly curious among whom this admirable
commodity, after it is made, shall not be thought fit to be used _even
by the poorest of all_, before it is brought to a perfect whiteness,
which is not to be done but with the assistance of great chemical
knowledge, joined to a world of industry and patience? Can we reflect,”
he continues, “not only on the cost laid out in this luxurious
invention, but likewise on the little time the whiteness of it endures
(in which great part of its beauty consists), so that at every six or
seven days, at farthest, it wants cleaning, and is, consequently, while
it lasts, a continual charge to the wearer—can we, I say, reflect on all
this, and not think it an extravagant piece of nicety, that those who
receive alms of the parish should not only have whole garments made of
this operose manufacture, but likewise, that as soon as they are soiled,
we should make use of, in order to restore them to their original
purity, one of the most judicious, as well as difficult compositions
that chemistry can boast—a composition with which, when dissolved in
water, by the help of fire, the most detersive and yet innocent lixivium
is prepared, that human industry or ingenuity has been able to invent?”
But if these arts are sufficient to excite our wonder, especially when
made to contribute to the happiness of the most destitute of our race,
and to confer on our paupers comforts and luxuries, formerly unknown to
our princes, surely the art of working in metal—the manufacture of the
buttons on the workhouse coat, the making of the nails on the bottom of
the workhouse floor, is a thousand times more wonderful. Who can look at
the commonest pocket-knife or padlock, and not feel an intense reverence
for the art and artists that could fashion those most useful instruments
out of a lump of stone? To become conscious of the skill displayed in
the various processes, we should have a knowledge of the difficulties to
be overcome; and nothing will give us so profound a sense of these as to
endeavour to make one or other similar instruments for ourselves. Or if
we wish to have a just appreciation of the intellect required for the
discovery and perfection of the metallurgic arts, let us imagine
ourselves placed on an uninhabited island—another Juan Fernandez—and
then fancy how we, even though we have lived among the very arts all our
days, should set to work. Let us think whether we could make a pin or a
needle out of a piece of rock to save our lives.
Is there any more skill to put words together than to manufacture a
razor out of a lump of iron-stone? _We_ know which seems to us by far
the easier occupation of the two. Nevertheless, without any wish to
indulge in that mock humility which seeks to disparage our own
productions, when, if there be an innate propensity, it is to value our
own work immeasurably beyond its true worth, we must confess that the
one craft appears no more worthy of respect than the other; so, we say
again, the Great Exhibition, where all these matters are forced upon the
mind, rightly considered, is a huge academy for teaching men the true
dignity of even what are thought the inferior grades of labour.
The great fallacy—the most pernicious error of the present day—is the
belief that a knowledge of reading and writing constitutes education.
“Reading and writing,” it has been well said, “is no more education than
a knife and fork is a good dinner.” To teach a man how to read and write
is, as it were, to confer upon him a new sense. All our senses differ
one from another in having various _telescopic_ powers—that is to say,
of perceiving external objects at greater or less distances. For
touching and tasting, it is necessary that the object should be in
immediate contact with the body; for smelling, the object may be
slightly removed from us; for hearing, it may be still more remote; and
for seeing, it may be the most distant of all. Nevertheless, it is
necessary in all these cases that the object of perception should be
_present_ with us: with reading and writing, however, the telescopic
power is immeasurably extended, and we are made cognizant of phenomena
occurring hundreds of miles distant, and hundreds of years ago. As our
senses, therefore, are merely ducts of knowledge, so are reading and
writing merely the means of acquiring information. We might as well
believe that the addition of a nose, or a pair of eyes or ears—that the
faculty of seeing, hearing, or smelling, in short, should make creatures
wise or good, as that the arts of orthoëpy and orthography were the
great panacea for all social and moral evil.
No! if we would really make people wiser and better, we must make them
acquainted with the laws of the material, mental, and moral universe in
which they are placed, and upon which their happiness is made to depend.
A knowledge of the laws of _matter_ enables a man to promote the
physical good—of the laws of mind, the intellectual good—of the laws of
the heart, the moral good, both of himself and his fellow-creatures.
According as we become acquainted with the various substances and
circumstances existing and occurring in the material world, and thereby
come to understand their relation to each other as well as to ourselves,
so are we enabled to give a particular direction to the succession of
events without, and so to alleviate the wants and increase the pleasures
of ourselves and others. According, too, as we get to know the links
which bind thought to thought, as well as the ties which connect our
perceptions with certain classes of relations—with our feelings of
beauty, sublimity, or ludicrousness—so are we enabled to induce pleasant
trains of ideas, and to promote the delight of those around us. And thus
it is in the moral universe. According as we study the connexions
between our acts and emotions, and become convinced of the felicity
which attends the contemplation of any benefit disinterestedly
conferred, and the uneasiness which accompanies the remembrance of any
wanton injury, so are we the more anxious to encourage the good and
restrain the evil impulses of our nature.
Now, the Great Exhibition, looked at in its true light, is, we say once
more, a huge academy for teaching men the laws of the material universe,
by demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external
nature.
One great good the Exhibition assuredly must do, and that is to decrease
the large amount of slop or inferior productions that are flooding the
country, and which, in the rage for cheapness, are palmed off as equal
to the handiwork of the most dexterous operatives. Were the public
judges of workmanship—had they been made acquainted with the best work
of the best workmen, and so possessed some standard of excellence by
which to test the various kinds of labour, it would be impossible for
the productions of the unskilful artisan to be brought into competition
with those of the most skilful. Owing to the utter ignorance of the
public, however, upon all such matters, the tricky employer is now
enabled to undersell the honourable master by engaging inferior workmen,
while the honourable master, in order to keep pace with the tricky
employer, is obliged to reduce the wages of the more dexterous “hands.”
Hence, we see the tendency of affairs at present is, for the worse to
drag the better handicraftsmen down to their degradation, instead of the
better raising the worse up to their pre-eminence.
The sole remedy for this state of things is greater knowledge on the
part of the public. Accustom the people continually to the sight of the
best works, and they will no longer submit to have bad workmanship
foisted upon them as equal to good.
To those unversed in the “labour question,” this may appear but a small
benefit, but to those who know what it is to inculcate a pride of art—to
make the labourer find delight in his labour—to change him from a
muscular machine into an intellectual artist, it will seem perhaps as
great a boon as can be offered to working men. At present, workmen are
beginning to feel that skill—the “art of industrial occupations”—is
useless, seeing that want of skill is now beating them out of the
market. One of the most eminent of the master shoemakers in London
assured us that the skilled workmen in his business were fast
disappearing before the children-workers in Northampton; and, indeed, we
heard the same story from almost every trade in the metropolis. The bad
are destroying the good, instead of the good improving the bad.
The antidote for this special evil is a periodical exhibition of the
works of industry and art. Make the public critics of industrial art,
and they will be sure to call into existence a new race of industrial
artists—but as it is, both the public and the workmen are the prey of
greedy, tricky tradesman.
It was some time before “the shilling folk” could be got to see these
things, and therefore they did not go down in a body, and besiege the
doors of the Crystal Palace, clamouring for admission all of them
together, immediately the price was brought within their means.
Gradually, however, they have come to see the true uses of the Great
Show, and they now attend in almost the same vast concourses as the
sanguine Executive Committee were led to believe they would on the first
day.
The consequence is, that the groups within the building have already
assumed a very picturesque appearance. To those who have watched the
character of the visitors since the opening—the change in the dresses,
manners, and objects of the sight-seers has been most marked and
peculiar.
The alteration, too, has been almost as striking outside the building as
it has in the interior. For the first week or two, the road within a
mile of the “Glass Hive” was blocked with carriages. From the Prince of
Wales’ Gate to Apsley House there stretched one long line of cabs,
omnibusses, carriages, “broughams,” “flies,” now moving for a few
minutes, and now stopping for double the time, while the impatient
visitors within let down the blinds and thrust their heads out to see
how far the line extended.
At every intersecting thoroughfare stood clusters of busy policemen,
seizing horses by the reins, and detaining the vehicles till the cross
current had in a measure ceased. And here might be seen persons
threading between the blocked carriages, and bobbing beneath the horses’
heads, in order to pass from one side of the road to the other. To seek
to pass through the Park gates was about as dangerous an experiment as
“shooting” the centre arch of “Old London Bridge.”
_Then_ the journey to and from the Great Exhibition consumed some hours
of the day, but now there is scarcely a carriage or a Hansom cab to be
seen. The great stream of carriage visitors has ceased (except on the
more expensive days), and the ebb and flood of pedestrians set. The
“southern entrance” is no longer beset with broughams, but gathered
round it are groups of gazers, too poor or too “prudent” to pay for
admission within. The public-houses along the road are now filled to
overflowing, for outside them are ranged long benches, on which sit
visitors in their holiday attire, resting on their way. Almost all the
pedestrians, too, have baskets on their arms, evidently filled with the
day’s store of provisions. The ladies are all “got up” in their
brightest-coloured bonnets and polkas, and as they haste along, they
“step out” till their faces are seen to glow again with their eagerness
to get to the Grand Show; while the gentlemen in green or brown felt
“wide-awakes,” or fluffy beaver hats, and with the cuffs of their best
coats, and the bottoms of their best trowsers turned up, are marching
heavily on—some with babies in their arms, others with baskets, and
others carrying corpulent cotton umbrellas.
And inside the Great Exhibition the scene is equally different from that
of the first week or two. The nave is no longer filled with elegant and
inert loungers—lolling on seats, and evidently come there to be seen
rather than to see. Those who are now to be found there, however, have
come to look at the Exhibition, and not to make an exhibition of
themselves. There is no air of display about them—no social falsity—all
is the plain unvarnished truth. The jewels and the tapestry, and the
Lyons silks, are not now the sole objects of attraction. The shilling
folk may be an “inferior” class of visitors, but at least they know
something about the works of industry, and what they do not know, they
have come to learn.
Here you see a railway guard, with the silver letters on his collar, and
his japan pouch by his side, hurrying, with his family, towards the
locomotive department. Next, you come to a carpenter, in his yellow
fluffy flannel jacket, descanting on the beauties of a huge top, formed
of one section of a mahogany tree. Then may be seen a hatless and
yellow-legged Blue-coat boy mounting the steps of one of the huge
prismatic lighthouses, to have a glance at the arrangements of the
interior. Peeping into the model of the Italian Opera are several
short-red-bodied and long-black-legged Life-Guardsmen; while, among the
agricultural implements, saunter clusters of countrymen in smockfrocks.
On the steps of the crimson-covered pedestals are seated small groups of
tired women and children, some munching thick slices of bread and meat,
the edges of which are yellow with the oozing mustard. Around the
fountains are gathered other families, drinking out of small mugs,
inscribed as “presents for Charles or Mary;” while all over the
floor—walk where you will—are strewn the greasy papers of devoured
sandwiches. The minute and extensive model of Liverpool, with its long
strip of looking-glass sea and thousands of card-board vessels, is
blocked round with wondering artisans, some, more familiar with the
place, pointing out particular streets and houses. And as you pass by
the elaborate representation, in plaster, of Underdown Cliff, you may
hear a young sailor—the gloss upon whose jacket indicates that he has
but recently returned from sea—tell how he went round the Needles last
voyage in a gale of wind. Most of the young men have catalogues or small
guide-books in their hands, and have evidently, from the earnest manner
in which they now gaze at the object, and now refer to the book, come
there to study the details of the whole building.
[Illustration:
_Some of the Drolleries of The Great Exhibition of 1851._
]
But if the other parts of the Great Exhibition are curious and
instructive, the machinery, which has been from the first the grand
focus of attraction, is, on the “shilling days,” the most peculiar sight
of the whole. Here every other man you rub against is habited in a
corduroy jacket, or a blouse, or leathern gaiters; and round every
object more wonderful than the rest, the people press, two and three
deep, with their heads stretched out, watching intently the operations
of the moving mechanism. You see the farmers, their dusty hats telling
of the distance they have come, with their mouths wide agape, leaning
over the bars to see the self-acting mills at work, and smiling as they
behold the frame spontaneously draw itself out, and then spontaneously
run back again. Some, with great smockfrocks, were gazing at the girls
in their long pinafores engaged at the doubling-machines.
But the chief centres of curiosity are the power-looms, and in front of
these are gathered small groups of artisans, and labourers, and young
men whose red coarse hands tell you they do something for their living,
all eagerly listening to the attendant, as he explains the operations,
after stopping the loom. Here, too, as you pass along, you meet, now a
member of the National Guard, in his peculiar conical hat, with its
little ball on top, and horizontal peak, and his red worsted epaulettes
and full-plaited trowsers; then you come to a long, thin, and
bilious-looking Quaker, with his tidy and clean-looking Quakeress by his
side; and the next minute, may be, you encounter a school of
charity-girls, in their large white collars and straw bonnets, with the
mistress at their head, instructing the children as she goes. Round the
electro-plating and the model diving-bell are crowds jostling one
another for a foremost place. At the steam brewery, crowds of men and
women are continually ascending and descending the stairs; youths are
watching the model carriages moving along the new pneumatic railway;
young girls are waiting to see the hemispherical lamp-shades made out of
a flat sheet of paper; indeed, whether it be the noisy flax-crushing
machine, or the splashing centrifugal pump, or the clatter of the
Jacquard lace machine, or the bewildering whirling of the cylindrical
steam-press,—round each and all these are anxious, intelligent, and
simple-minded artisans, and farmers, and servants, and youths, and
children clustered, endeavouring to solve the mystery of its complex
operations.
For many days before the “shilling people” were admitted to the
building, the great topic of conversation was the probable behaviour of
the people. Would they come sober? will they destroy the things? will
they want to cut their initials, or scratch their names on the panes of
the glass lighthouses? But they have surpassed in decorum the hopes of
their well-wishers. The fact is, the Great Exhibition is to them more of
a school than a show. The working-man has often little book-learning,
but of such knowledge as constitutes the education of life—viz., the
understanding of human motives, and the acquisition of power over
natural forces, so as to render them subservient to human happiness—of
such knowledge as this, we repeat, the working-man has generally a
greater share than those who are said to belong to the “superior
classes.” Hence it is, that what was a matter of tedium, and became
ultimately a mere lounge, for gentlefolks, is used as a place of
instruction by the people.
We have been thus prolix on the classes attending the Great Exhibition,
because it is the influence that this institution is likely to exercise
upon labour which constitutes its most interesting and valuable feature.
If we really desire the improvement of our social state, (and surely we
are far from perfection yet,) we must address ourselves to the elevation
of the people; and it is because the Great Exhibition is fitted to
become a special instrument towards this end, that it forms one of the
most remarkable and hopeful characteristics of our time.
[Illustration:
_Odds & Ends, in, out, & about, The Great Exhibition of 1851.
Pub. by D. Bogue 86 Fleet Street_
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------