Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 5, May 1852

by Various

I rank first among these that of the practicability and ultimate certainty of Universal Peace. There have been several amateur Peace Congresses after a fashion; but I esteem this the first satisfactory working model of a Peace Congress. The men of the Sword and their champions tell us that Nations will not submit their conflicting claims and jarring interests to the chances of Arbitration; but here they did it, and with the most satisfactory results. Individual heart-burnings there must ever be; cases of injustice, neglect of merit, and partiality; there probably were; but as a whole, the award of Prizes at the Fair was discriminating and satisfactory. If the representatives of rival nations there assembled had set to fighting for the honor and credit of their several countries; hired all the bravoes and marketable ruffians they could find to help them; run in debt for more than they were worth; and finally burned up the Glass Palace with all its contents in the heat of the fray—who imagines that the result would have been more conclusive and satisfactory than it now is? Yet the contrast between the settlement of National differences by War and by Arbitration is as favorable to the latter mode as in the parallel case of rival pretensions to superiority in Art and Industry.

But while I hold that Arbitration is the true mode of settling National differences, and War at all times a blunder and a crime on the part of those who wage it, refusing to arbitrate, I do not therefore hold that those who seek only justice should disarm and proclaim their unqualified adhesion to the doctrines of Non-Resistance, and thus invite the despot, the military adventurer, the pirate, to overrun and ravage at their will. I do not believe that peace and justice are in this way attainable, but by quite a different, an almost opposite course. Let the lovers of Freedom and Right repudiate all standing armies, all military conquests, under any conceivable circumstances—all aggressive interference in the domestic concerns of other nations; but let each People be essentially prepared to resist tyranny at home and repel invasion from abroad, each with its own chosen weapons when others shall have proved ineffective. Let the just and pacific take up a position which says to the restless and rapacious, “Be quiet, and do not put us to the disagreeable necessity of quieting you, which you see we are perfectly able to do,”—then and thus we may hope for peace; but not while the “old man,” absolutely relies on driving off the “rude boys” who are “stealing his apples,” with “words and grass” only.

Akin to this is my view of the question of regulated or unrestricted Trade between Nations, which worthily holds so prominent a place in the popular discussions of our time. That men should buy and sell precisely as their several interests (real or fancied) shall dictate, without interference therewith or tax thereon by Governments,—this is a very natural and popular demand, which clearly harmonizes with a prevailing tendency of our time, whereof the deification of the individual will and pleasure is the end. But, standing amidst this labyrinth of British machinery, this wilderness of European fabrics, I cannot but ask,—How, with totally unregulated trade, is the all but resistless tendency of Manufactures and Commerce to Centralization to be resisted? How, for instance, shall we rationally hope for the rapid, extensive naturalization of new Arts, the establishment of new and difficult branches of Manufacture, requiring large capital, practiced skill and ample markets to ensure their success, in any quarter of the globe but Europe, while that continent remains the focus of the world’s commercial activity and thrift? Suppose, for example, an American should be able to produce the richest and most tasteful fabrics of the French or Flemish looms as cheaply as, or even more cheaply than, his European rivals,—what are his chances for success in the manufacture? Are there ships departing from our seaports daily to every inhabited portion of the earth, laden with the assorted cargoes of ordered and anxiously expected American fabrics? Have we great mercantile houses engaged in buying up such American fabrics for exportation? Nay, do our own Countrywomen stand ready to buy his Bareges or Laces at the prices which they are daily and freely paying for just such goods from Europe? Suppose he could fabricate a hundred thousand pieces per annum at the lowest possible price for which they can be made in Europe, could he sell them as fast as produced? No, he could not; he does not. The producers in immediate proximity to, in intimate relations with, the “merchant princes” of Europe, who are the life-long factors of the traders of India, of Australia, of Asia Minor, Africa and Russia, have an immense advantage over any rivals located on the Western Continent, or at any similar distance from the commercial centers of Western Europe. The rule that “To him who hath shall be given, while from him who hath not shall be taken away even that he hath,” is perpetually and powerfully operative to concentrate the Manufactures and Trade of the world upon London, Paris, and their out-of-town workshops, which, for all commercial purposes, are a part of themselves. This Centralization, unchecked, tends to depopulate and barbarize the rest of the earth to build up a bloated and factitious prosperity in Western Europe—a prosperity whereof the Laboring Millions are instruments, not sharers—a prosperity whereof a few immense fortunes, amassed at the cost of the world’s impoverishment, are the sole enduring trophies. The system which in the name of Free Trade is calculated to secure a monopoly of Production and Commerce in all but the ruder Arts and Manufactures to Great Britain, France and Germany, tends to tax the food-grower and the artisan half the value of their respective products for the cost of transporting them to and exchanging them with each other, and so keep them in perpetual vassalage and debt to the “merchant princes,” instead of rendering them neighbors and direct exchangers, and thus saving the heavy cost of reaching each other across an ocean and a continent. These convictions are not new to me, but they were strengthened by weeks of earnest observation in the Crystal Palace. More and more was I there convinced that Price is not an infallible measure of Cost, and that a foreign fabric is not proved cheaper than a home-made one because it is purchased in preference, nor even because it is sold at a lower price. If the whole Earth is ever to be truly Civilized, it must be by the diffusion of the Useful Arts and their Machinery rather than of their finished products. If Universal Labor is ever to be constantly employed and fairly rewarded, it must be through a more direct and intimate relation of laborer with laborer; not through the system of complexity, aggregation and needless expense wherein the grain-grower of Illinois hires, through half a dozen intermediates, his Iron made in Wales, and sends his grain thither to pay for the work, instead of having it done at the ore-bed in his township, with the coal which underlies the whole County. I know how strong is the current against this view of Labor’s true interest, but the world will refuse to be ruled by names and plausibilities for ever.

But the Crystal Palace has other lessons for us than those of Political Economy—it has Social suggestions as well. Here are Hollow Brick, destined, I think, to supersede nearly all others, saving half the expense of solid brick for material and transportation; being far more quickly and cheaply burned; far more easily handled and laid; rendering houses entirely free from dampness, less susceptible to Summer’s heat and Winter’s cold, while proffering new facilities for warming, ventilation, &c. The invention and diffusion of this Brick alone seem to me worth to mankind the cost of the Exhibition. Here, too, is Claussen, with his Flax discoveries and processes, whereby the entire fiber of the plant is separated from the woody matter of the stalk and rendered as soft, fine, white and tractable as the choicest Sea-Island Cotton, which it greatly resembles; while, by a little change in the mode of preparing it, it is made closely to imitate Linen, Cotton or Woolen, and to blend freely in the same web with either. The worth of this discovery to mankind can hardly be over-estimated. Here, too, is his Circular Loom, steadily weaving bags without a seam, and capable of infinite varieties of practical application. Here is McCormick, with his masterly Reaper, cutting as clean as Death’s scythe, and almost as rapidly; so that the field of waving grain, which the eye could scarcely measure in the morning, has been transformed by it into a field of naked stubble before evening. Here is Ericsson, with his new Caloric Engine, threatening to reduce steam to its primary insignificance—as, indeed, hundreds have threatened before, but as yet none have quite accomplished. Let us hope that some of the present noble strivers will be more successful; for, indeed, steam, though it has done the world good service, is a most expensive ally; the great bulk and weight of fuel and water it requires to have carried along with it have rendered it thus far entirely useless for locomotive purposes except on a liquid or metallic track: while the frequent stoppages it exacts, the nicety of management it demands, and the serious disasters its use involves, unite to proclaim that a blessed day in which mankind shall be able to dispense with it. Whether Ericsson, Page, or some other “visionary,” shall achieve for us that victory, I dare not predict; but that its achievement is close at hand, I affirm with undoubting confidence.

A kindred improvement is about to be inaugurated in the more extended and diversified employment of Gas. A hundred models of Gas Stoves, Gas Burners, Gas Cooking Ranges, etc., were exhibited at the Fair, each warranted, (as usual,) to save half the fuel and render treble the service of any other; yet I was not able to designate any one of them as particularly meritorious, nor did the Jury on this department award a premium to any. All seems yet crude and infantile in this field of invention. Yet the study of the various models and contrivances for Gas-burning there presented, fixed me in the novel faith that Gas is ultimately to be not only the main agent of illumination but the chief fuel also of all cities and villages; that the time is at hand when the head of a family, the solitary lodger, requiring either heat or light, will simply touch a bell in his own room and be supplied with the indicated quantity of Gas, whether for culinary purposes, for warmth, for light, or altogether; and that thus the cost, the trouble, the dust, of making fires in all parts of a building, carrying fuel thither and removing ashes therefrom, will be obviated; and a single fire, constantly maintained, subserve admirably the purpose of them all, saving the labor and cost of five hundred wasteful kindlings and clearings, beside affording heat at the moment it is wanted, and stopping its consumption the instant the want is satisfied.

This is but one among a thousand noiseless agencies constantly preaching the advantages and economies of Combination, and indicating the certainty that through Coöperation lies the way whereby Labor is to emerge from bondage, anxiety and need into liberty and assured competence. This truth, long apparent to the eye of Reason, threatens to be made palpable even to stolidity and stagnation by the sharp spur of Necessity. Rude, rugged Labor must organize itself for its appointed task of production, or it will soon have nothing to do. It must concentrate its energies for the creation of commodious and economical homes, or it will have no home but the Union Work-house. It must save and combine its earnings, for the purchase and command of Machinery; or Machinery, owned by and working for Capital alone, will reduce it to insignificance, want, and despair.

On every side the onward march of Invention is constant, rapid, inexorable. The human Reaper of thirty years ago, finds to-day a machine cutting grain twenty times as fast as ever he could; he gets three days’ work as its waiter, where he formerly had three weeks’ steady harvesting: the work is as well done as of old, and far cheaper; but his share of the product is sadly diminished. The Planing Machine does the work of two hundred men admirably, and pays moderate wages to three or four; the Sewing Machine of moderate cost, performs easily and cheaply the labors of forty seamstresses; but all the seamstresses in the world probably do not own the first machine. And so muscular force, or mere Labor, becomes daily more and more a drug in the market, shivers at the approach of winter, cringes lower and lower at the glance of a machine-lord or landlord, and vainly paces street after street, with weary limbs and sinking heart, in quest of “something to do.”

The only effectual remedy for this deplorable state and still more deplorable tendency is found not in Destruction but in Construction, not in Anarchy and war on the rights of Property, but in Order and the creation of more property by and for the Poor—not in envy and hatred of the Rich, but in general study and imitation of the forecast and frugality by which they were made rich, which are as potent this hour as they ever were, and which wise Coöperation will render effective for the Poor of to-day. In this country, where so much land is still unappropriated and the legal right of Association is absolute and universal, the Laboring Classes are masters of their own destiny, and that of their brethren throughout the world. A thousand young men, inured to labor and as yet unburthened with families, can save at least one hundred dollars each in the space of two years if they will; and by wisely and legally combining this in a capital of $100,000, investing it judiciously in Land, Machinery and Buildings, under the direction of their ablest and most responsible members, they may be morally certain henceforth of constant employment for each, under circumstances which will ensure them the utmost efficiency and the full reward of their labor. To Woman, whose work is still more depressed and still more meagerly rewarded, the means of securing emancipation and just recompense are substantially the same. The workers, in every department of industry, may secure and own the Machinery best calculated to give efficiency to their labor, if they will but unitedly, persistently try. Through the scientific Association of Labor and Capital, three-fourths of them may within five years accomplish this, while by heedlessness and isolated competition they are sure to miss it, and see their condition grow gradually worse and worse. Labor working against Machinery is inevitably doomed, as the present condition of the hand-loom weavers all over the globe sufficiently attests; Labor working for Machinery, in which it has no interest, can obtain in the average but a scanty, precarious and diminishing subsistence; while to Labor working with Machinery which it owns and directs, there are ample recompense, steady employment, and the prospect of gradual improvement. Such is one of the great truths confirmed by the lessons of the Crystal Palace.

Another truth forcibly taught there is that of the steadiness of the march of Invention and the infinite capacity of the laws and forces of Nature to minister more and more readily and amply to the sustenance and comfort of Man. We are obviously as yet on the bare threshold of chemical discovery and mechanical contrivance for the benefit of Man. The inventor of the steam engine still lived within the memory of many of us; yet even he never dreamed of the stupendous improvements already made on his invention, and the infinite adaptations to human wants of which it is fully proved susceptible. A first-class North River or Sound Steam-boat, much more an Atlantic Steam-ship, would have astounded even him. But though the capacities of Steam are not half exhausted, we grow dissatisfied with its performance and impatient of its conditions; we demand its power without its weight, its bulk, its cost, its explosive tendencies, or rather those of the elements from which it is evolved—and Electricity, Air, Gunpowder, and other potencies are analyzed and interrogated in quest of the most advantageous substitute—a search which will ultimately achieve success. The only question is one of time. So in every department of mechanics and manufactures: The victory of to-day opens the path to grander and more beneficent victories to-morrow. There never was a single mind capable of conceiving and working out the idea of the Power Printing-Press of to-day, nor that of the best Carpet-Looms and Paper-Mills in use; each has been produced by gradual, step-by-step improvement; the goal of one inventor serving as the starting-point of his successor; and often an invention which failed to subserve its intended purpose has been found eminently useful in a very different sphere and connection; or, after having been cast aside as worthless, has supplied the necessary hint to another inventor, who has been guided by it to a new achievement of signal beneficence. No real penetration into the arcana of Nature’s forces was ever fruitless or unsuggestive. The unpractical side of a newly discovered scientific truth indicates the position and nature of the practical side as well. To my mind nothing is clearer than this—the immense strides and vast scope of invention and discovery during the last age, render morally certain the achievement of far more and greater triumphs during the like period just before us. The Railway and its train are by no means the utmost possibilities of over-land locomotion; the Telegraph is not the last word of electricity; the Steam-ship is not the acme of Ocean navigation. These ennobling triumphs herald others which shall swiftly succeed them; and so in all the departments of applied science. And among the agencies which aided and accelerated the march of Invention, which impelled the car of Industrial Progress, I doubt not that our children, looking back on that progress from heights whereof we can but vaguely dream, will honorably distinguish the World’s Exhibition of 1851.

Nor can we hesitate to class among the lasting benefits of this Exhibition the wider and deeper appreciation of Labor as a chief source of human enjoyment and a ground of respect and honor for its votaries, I know how little sincerity or depth there is in the usual Fourth-of-July declamation in behalf of the dignity of Labor, the nobleness of Labor, and the like, by men who never did a bona fide day’s work with their hands unless absolutely driven to it, and who would be ashamed of being caught wheeling a barrow or wielding a spade, unless absolutely for exercise or pastime; yet, since “Hypocrisy is the homage which Vice pays to Virtue,” even this empty glorification of Labor has some value as a demonstration, if not of what the fortunate think, at least of what they think they ought to think. But the tribute paid to Labor in the Great Exhibition was far deeper and higher than this. Here were tens of thousands gathered daily to study and admire the chosen products of the loom, the forge, the shop, the studio; nine-tenths of them from no other impulse than that afforded by the pleasure and instruction found therein. Can all this sink into the ground and be forgotten? Shall not we, for instance, who presume ourselves better appreciators of labor than the gilded aristocracies and squalid peasantries of Europe, think more of Industrial capacity since we feel that our country was saved from disgrace at this grand tournament of Industry by the genius of Hobbs, of Steers, of Dick, of McCormick? And shall not the Dukes, the Lords, the Generals, the Honorables, who met from day to day to inspect, scrutinize, compare and judge the rival products of England, France, Germany and America, in order to award the palm of excellence to the worthiest in each department—who severally felt a thrill of pleasure when a countryman bore off the palm, and a pang of disappointment and chagrin when none such was found entitled to commendation,—shall they not henceforth hold in juster esteem the sphere of Creative Art wherein such trophies were lost or won? I cannot doubt the beneficent influence of this Exhibition, both in inspiring workers with a clearer consciousness of the quiet dignity of their own sphere, and in diffusing, deepening, a corresponding appreciation in the minds of others. If so, who shall say that the Great Exhibition was held in vain?