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.