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.