Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 6/What may come of the Exhibition, 1862
WHAT MAY COME OF THE EXHIBITION, 1862.
Before the opening of the Exhibition of 1851, we were told to expect a prodigious amelioration of the inconveniences of life, domestic and social, from the co-operation of the wits of the world in mechanical matters. There were some considerable results certainly; but, on the whole, the impression seems to be, that the improvements which such an Exhibition can establish are of the minor sort, domestic and mechanical; while the great discoveries and inventions which will constitute epochs in social history take place in the interval between one Exhibition and another, and perhaps in entire independence of the event. Between 1851 and 1862, some vast additions have been made to the machinery of our civilisation,—any one of which fills a larger space in our minds and our lives than any practical result of the Exhibition. All the devices together that have issued from the great glass-house look small beside the phenomenon of our Queen and the American President having spoken to each other by telegraph from their respective seats of government. It is true, this was done only once; and the chorus of rejoicing expired with that piteous last word of the telegraph when, after weeks of silence, it unexpectedly said "Henley," and never spoke again. Still the thing was done. Leaving the whole subject of the new ships and guns till there is more certainty of what may be expected, and what ought to be done, I may point to an improvement which deeply concerns all maritime populations,—the notice given, by means of the telegraph, to everybody round the coast of probable storms or fine weather. We now see an end to that dreary chapter of accidents,—the loss of nearly all the fishermen of a village, or the wreck of half a fleet of colliers, from sudden storms. Never was the weathercock more important than the Admiralty drum now is, wherever it is set up. It will teach with even more precision by-and-by; and seamen will understand better its meaning and its worth: but already it must have saved hundreds of lives in the course of a few months. I need not look further in this direction: for one or two instances are as good as a dozen to show what I mean. We shall all agree that, important as is the application of glass and iron to the construction of edifices, and manifold as are the improvements in the arts of life, in consequence of the Exhibition of 1851, they cannot compare, individually or collectively, with some achievements which would have taken place at all events, simply because the time was ripe.
In this way arises the suggestion whether there are not two methods by which our inconveniences are extinguished, and our convenience promoted; in one of which these great Exhibitions cannot but assist, while they may have no concern with the other.
If there is some action of our daily life which is complicated, laborious, and expensive in time and trouble, it is very probable that some amelioration may arise through the display of inventions in the Exhibition, or the suggestions which ingenious people may derive from what they see there. There will probably be some simplification of old methods, saving time and trouble, without forsaking the old principle.
But the discoverer, who works without any regard to Exhibitions, annihilates the old way by introducing a substitute—a something quite new, and infinitely superior. If there had been such an Exhibition a generation or two earlier, we might have owed to it a great improvement in the construction of street lamps—in the size and form of the wick, the application of the oil, and the construction of the glass case. But it was a higher order of achievement to set us burning gas. Sir Humphry Davy said publicly that when we could bring down the moon to light our streets, we might use gas for the purpose: and while he talked so, our fathers went on adding threads to their wicks, and trying different shapes for lamps: but the whole method was swept away when the gas was got well in hand, and conducted where it was wanted. In the electric light we have again another principle which may do as much good to another generation, as gas-lighting has to ours.
One such case enables us to understand how others may occur. When we find ourselves constantly inconvenienced by some necessary and universal process and method, we call it a barbarism, and confidently reckon on its being first amended, and at length superseded, as society advances. In analogy with our lighting there is our warming. What a cumbrous process it is! There are tens of thousands of men hewing coal down dark pits. Perhaps they should not count, because there must probably be some other mineral supply, for the creation of heat, if we gave up coal. All the rest of the method is mere coarse, barbarous consumption. We simply burn the coal, and have a large proportion of useless and troublesome stuff with it, to convey to our firesides first, and to carry off afterwards. Look at the bulk of shipping and cartage thus required, and at the number of horses and men, from the first cleavage in the mine to the emptying of the sacks into a London cellar! Look at the disfigurement of the coal country, and at the blacks for ever raining upon the garden shrubs, and in at the windows of our manufacturing towns; and at the hue of Saint Paul's, and all the statues, once white, in the squares of London! Look at the furniture and the pictures in town houses, and at the complexion of those who live in them! Look at the cook's stove-box, and say whether it is not as barbarous as the housemaid's candle-box in the old days of moulds and dips! Look at the perils from coals flying out and pinafores flying in; from linen-horses left before the fire; from choked flues, from overloaded chimneys, from any burning of papers below, and the charring of some ill-placed beam above! A method of warming ourselves so barbarous as this cannot go on for ever. What is likely to happen?
An Exhibition like the past and the proximate is just the machinery for ameliorating the evil. A great deal has been done for many years past. Before Prince Albert was born, the invention of hotwater pipes was applied to conservatories and a few noblemen's mansions; and we have since heard a great deal about economical stoves, and a cleanly consumption of smoke, and hot air, and hot water, and prepared fuel, and cooking by gas, &c., &c. Still, we go on burning the raw mineral, either to warm ourselves, or to heat something which is to warm us. We may have been enriched, a few weeks hence, by fresh suggestions about dealing with the inconveniences; but do we not all believe that some future generation will be warmed without any use of coal at all?—without the burning of any raw material at all? Some of us know that there is a discovery, actually existing among us, of a way of producing and administering heat by means of—Well, I will not specify the method, which it should be left to qualified persons to describe. Suffice it that the requisites are iron and rapid motion, without any fire or fuel at all. The discovery waits for the invention of a method of application more economical than the use of coal. That invention cannot be far off: if it is indeed the only thing wanted: and then, when we have got rid of dirt, smoke, danger, and waste of time, space, and labour, we shall recognise a change in our warming system analogous to that in our lighting.
In connection with the Exhibition, then, we may anticipate any advance which belongs to the lower of the two methods; whereas the higher occurs in the ripeness of time and of men's wits, in complete independence of Exhibitions, and usually of any kind of consultation or demonstration.
Thus learning to confine our expectations within obvious limits, we may fairly speculate on some benefits of convenience likely to arise from the Exhibition. We may consider what are the in conveniences which vex us most; and we shall do well to remember that the way in which amelioration proceeds is usually by simplifying what is complicated and cumbrous.
Almost all improvement in the arts of life has followed this course. Barbaric people have no other idea than of doing everything themselves; whereas the civilised set the agencies of Nature to work for them. From the desperate hard work of kindling fire by twirling a stick in a hole, men got on to the tinder-box, or the burning~glass, and at last to the lucifer-match. The marines of ancient potentates voyaged in ships impelled by the muscular force of scores of rowers, whose oars and other appliances cost a world of trouble and toil; and in time the hoisting and management of a sail enabled three or four men to carry a company of soldiers faster and further than as many score of rowers. The two most conspicuous and familiar instances of this kind of advance are printing and spinning. I need not dwell on the contrast between the monks and other scribes of past centuries. painting every stroke of every letter with a. hair-pencil, or drawing it with a pen, and the pressmen in Printing-House Square, who supply copies millions of times faster than could have been imagined a thousand years ago. Travellers who have seen the Alpine women busy with their distafffs at every turn of the road, or the veiled Arab girls in the yellow desert, spinning the single thread of black wool for ever, and never getting enough, can tell what our Lancashire and Yorkshire mills are as a token of civilisation, and a help to more. Of late we have all been struck by an instance which at present naturally seems to us the most wonderful of all. In the tombs at Thebes, and in the rock temples of India, and in ancient Chinese paintings, we see what a world of pains any representation of objects occasioned to the artist. The little squares into which the Egyptian painter divided his surface show what the merest approach to proportion cost him. In course of ages the art of engraving, by which copies were multiplied, seemed the highest triumph that the case admitted of. Yet the painter went on with stroke upon stroke, and the engraver with line upon line, spending years on, not only the imaginative, but the mechanical part of the work. Now we make the sun our artist; and he does the work in a second of time.
Thus we see in what direction to look for the remedy for our inconveniences.
We make an enormous waste of time and effort every day of our lives in going through details, if indeed it is the function of Nature's forces to do that kind of business for us. It is not long since nearly all the women of every nation, and a great number of the men spent hours of every day in plying the needle; in threading it, in pushing it through and pulling it out, by an effort which engaged most of the muscles of the frame, and which is peculiarly wearing to certain sets of nerves. A few years since, a portion of this labour was saved by machinery which shaped some of our garments, and which finished them at the edges. This was a boon, as far as it went; but now we have the sewing-machine, by which the human use of the needle is superseded, and all the injuriousncss of the employment abolished. An easy treadle does it all, with the help of such ingenuity and. care as all useful employment requires.
What further do we most need in the same direction?
The cumbrousness of our method of writing no doubt strikes us all at times. In our mechanical age it is wonderful that no further advance has yet been made towards simplicity. What an apparatus is this of pen, ink and paper! The invention of steel pens goes but a little way to wards improvement. There is some saving of time in buying our pens ready made; and a trifle of cost: but the use of metal pens instead of the elastic quill is a severe penalty on the saving. School ushers and counting-house clerks may be glad to be saved the old drudgery of pen making and mending; but authors and domestic correspondents prefer nibbing their pens while collecting their ideas to scratching their paper with metal points. As to paper, there is nothing to be objected till some great discovery supersedes the complication of writing by some undreamed-of way of communicating our thoughts with somewhat of the ease and rapidity of speech. But what a nuisance is ink! It is a barbarism altogether. We see this by the incessant efforts made to relieve us. We have inks of many colours and various consistence; and there is no end to the invention of inkstands: but all does not do. Every ink stains indelibly in the spilling; and where is the house in which there has never been any spilling of ink, in study, drawing-room, boudoir, or kitchen! Look at counting-house desks and school-room tables! Look at the dusty, brown, thick fluid in the vestry inkstand and the small shop! Look at the troubles of the traveller who would keep a journal in a far country! He might be living in Jack Cade's time by the ink-horn at his button,—still the least inconvenient way, by the testimony of travellers. In this direction we may hope for something from the Exhibition. We do not want more varieties ingenious inkglasses which, if they do not let the fluid escape, get clogged with it, or will not let it out when and as wanted. We want a new implement which requires no ink at all. Reporters in the galleries or pews of parliament, the courts, or churches do not use ink: but their pencils are a sad trouble: and the writing in their case need not be so black and so indelible as is requisite for books, deeds and letters. Can we not have, from some practical chemist, a kind of pencil which shall make black and indelible marks without being heavy, without needing cutting, and with out using up too fast? Till some magical method is flashed upon the world, whereby ideas may be recorded as the sunlight records form and shadow, we must demand more convenient implements.
Phonetic writers and shorthand writers expose with entire truth the complication of the ordinary method, with its vast apparatus of the alphabet and its million of combinations, arbitrary and burdensome accordingly; but the substituted methods they propose are not, and never will be, widely adopted. I need not go into the reasons of this. They have never commanded assent, as a great discovery always does; and their advocates will go on arguing as they do now, and with much the same result, till the hour arrives when some bright discovery shall enable us to record our thoughts by an act of the mind, without the slow mechanical labour of the hand. Then inkstands will become relics of antiquity, and no more will be heard of the great rag controversy; and the great steel-pen factories at Birmingham will be occupied for some purpose as little imagined as ship-armour and sewing-machines were at the opening of the century.
The complication of our dress is another barbarism. If it is true, as I have read and heard confirmed by those who should know, that the most moderate middle-class female wardrobe consists of not less than 167 separate articles (not counting pins individually), the absurdity is apparent enough. So it is when we consider the hardship to the new-born infant of being plagued with half-a-dozen garments, one on the top of another. Some people have a notion that such complication is a refinement: but they would not think so if they had witnessed the toilettes of any three or four savage nations. Even where these people wear little clothing, they save no time or thought by it. The girls in Nubia, who wear only fringes of leather, spend an infinity of time in twiddling their hair-braids, and soaking every single hair in castor oil. The Red Indian beau spends days in painting his person, as the New Zealander does in tattooing his skin. I need not point out the resemblance between the English and the African or Polynesian belle in the matter of ornament. When rows of shining articles are hung round the neck and arms, it matters little whether they are stones or shells, pearls or fish-bones, beads or sharks' teeth. When the flesh is pierced to hang ornaments in, it is of little consequence whether it is the flap of the ear or the lip, or the nose. The whole practice is essentially barbarous. What I more particularly refer to, however, is the heaping of a series of coverings on the body, to the embarrassment of its movements, and the waste of an infinity of precious hours to all the world. I remember that in 1851 a strong hope was repeatedly and widely expressed that one effect of the Exhibition would be the discrediting for ever of the hideous and irrational head-gear of Englishmen-the hat, which nobody defends; but why stop at any one article when there are so many which might be superseded at a stroke by some inspiration of good sense and taste? Any sensible man or intelligent woman could presently suggest a costume, consisting of a tithe of the present number of articles, which should be more convenient in the wearing than the present English dress, more suitable to the climate of any country, less costly in time and means, and incomparably more graceful. Such a change will not be wrought in a day, now or hereafter: but each Exhibition may prepare the way to it by suggesting a consolidation of articles, and simplifying the requisites of clothing.
Here we have glanced at most of the departments of our daily life—our dress, our writing and printing, our warming and lighting. Our housewives tell us of great simplification of the household ofiices within their experience. As the lucifer-match is to the tinder-box, so is the modern laundry apparatus to the ancient. Washing, drying, and smoothing are now done by machinery, and are superintended by skilled labour. Cookery is already much lightened. The chopping is done by the mincing-machine, far better than by knife and board. Squeezing, paring, mixing, kneading, rolling, cutting-everything will soon be done by the cook's head instead of her strong arms; and, on the housemaid's behalf, we need not despair of the beds making themselves, and the dust taking itself off by word of command, as the sewage of house, street, and city is learning to do. But what of our habitations themselves!
Some centuries hence, it will probably be cited, as proof of the barbarism of our age, that it was still a common practice to construct dwellings as coral edifices are constructed, by an aggregation of particles,—the process requiring an immensity of time and effort. The coral insects cannot help themselves,—nor the silk-worm,—nor the bee, because they have to secrete their own building material, and must be content to use just what they can produce. Men, however, do not create their own building material, but can help themselves to a great variety of it, from various departments of Nature; yet they go on making little cubes of kneaded clay, burning them, and laying them one upon another by millions. If living in damp or windy caves is one kind of barbarism, surely this is another. It might be suitable to the builders of the Babel tower; but it is hardly becoming to the men of a great mechanical age. Without enlarging upon this, or admitting that a brickmaking machinery alters the case while the bricks are laid by hand, I may just point out that the present diversity of construction looks like a promise of progress. We may study the various kinds of houses without particularly liking any, and yet without denying that they afford good suggestion. The most comfortable known dwelling is understood to be the well-constructed log-house, which is built in a week, is free from damp, easily kept clean, cool in summer, and warm in winter, stable and unreverberating, and more durable than the generality of brick dwellings. We cannot have log-houses; but we may take hints from their points of advantage. I am myself far from despising the African and South American houses which are built of clay (we will dismiss the mud) filled into a framework which is removed as the substance dries. We are told that the wooden abodes of Vancouver's Island are fit to live in in a fortnight. The corrugated iron houses which we send out to Australia may be slept in the first night; and they cannot be accused of consisting of too large a number of pieces. They are ugly, however. At present, our greatest advance is building up blocks of stone; and we might rest awhile upon this if there were stone enough cheap enough for everybody. As there is not, we hear with deep interest of inventions by which stone, and even marble, is manufactured. It is no small matter that a great deal of carving of wood and marble is superseded by moulding and casting, whereby much house decoration is brought within the means of others than the wealthy; but it is far more exciting to see how a new generation may discard the barbarism of brick construction, and lodge its humblest members in dwellings which the old world would have classed in the order of palaces.
Every one of these advances will cause a cry on behalf of some working class or another: and on each occasion there will arise fresh proof that civilisation improves the working man's lot more certainly and substantially than any other. Instead of arguing here a matter which always settles itself, I will merely point to the conspicuous instance of agricultural improvement. As the Carolina negro now works the soil with his hoe, and his rude stick of a plough, the British labourer once worked in the field where at present every process is done by machinery. Where every clod was knocked about by the hoe, and every weed pulled up by the hand, and every bean dropped into its hole by human fingers, newly invented implements now do the whole. If the entire process had been foreseen at once, what a clamour there would have been about the fate of the hoe-men and the weeders and the bean setters! Yet, where agriculture is most advanced, the additional labourers required are from two per acre upwards. Instead of surplus labour, we hear now of insufficient numbers and rising wages, as well as of an incessant rise in the quality of the labour. Thus it will be in every department of the arts of life; for new occupation is always created by economy of a lower sort of work. If our Exhibition gives a start to our old civilisation, it will at the same time afford a fresh stimulus to the demand for brains and hands to work our new resources.