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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 27

The Nature and Efficiency of the Exhibition

The Nature and Efficiency of the Exhibition.

When an Australasian Exhibition is spoken of you naturally think of the Australasian Courts at the Sydney and Melbourne Exhibitions, and it does not take much thought to arrive at the conclusion that a fac-simile of those courts would be altogether too insignificant to attract attention in London. But my proposal is for an Exhibition of such an entirely different character from any hitherto held that, in considering it, it becomes necessary to dismiss from the mind all previously conceived ideas of Exhibitions. And herein lies its greatest difficulty. The page 5 objective is always so much more powerful than the subjective that, almost without being aware of it, people are apt to think of what they have seen instead of trying to realise the kind of Exhibition I have in view. Nothing is further from my mind than the idea of holding an Exhibition of the ordinary humdrum kind. I agree with my critics, that such an Exhibition would fail to attract. An Exhibition, such as I propose, would not be a mere dead museum or bazaar, but as nearly as possible a living representation of Australasian life, scenery, manners, industry, and resources. The exhibits would not be presented as subjects for admiration in the abstract, but a personal interest would be excited in them by giving such particulars concerning their production as would appeal to the eye and the imagination.

To begin with, the collection of exhibits from each colony would have to be on the same scale as the Victorian Court at the Melbourne Exhibition—the only really representative collection of the resources and industries of an Australian colony which has yet been shown at any exhibition. Then the exhibits of each industry should be shown together in separate departments, instead of all jumbled up together. An undifferentiated mass of anything is meaningless and uninteresting, but directly you classify the component parts of the mass the meaning becomes clear, and interest is at once aroused. Having thus succeeded in attracting the attention of the visitor, he should be provided with further information. To each class of exhibits there should be one or more attendants to give explanations to visitors, photographs (coloured, if possible) illustrating the life and processes in connection with that industry, and a placard placed in some prominent-position, showing the number of hands employed in it, and the rate of wages paid to them. Thus wool would be accompanied by pictures of station life and appliances, placards showing statistics of growth, rates of wages paid to hands, ration scales, &c. Grain and Hour would have photographs attached, showing farms and farming operations, mills and method of transport, and bills giving the fullest information with respect to agriculture, and the life and pay of those either directly or indirectly connected with it, the conditions on which laud could be purchased, &c. Would not such a method of treatment make the exhibit of flour something more to the English farmer and agricultural labourer than a mere mass of extra-refined meal? Would it not thus become to him a living thing, speaking in distinct and unmistakable tones of a far-off land, where the conditions of life are easy, where home is reproduced, where English habits and customs prevail, and where many industries are prosecuted with success? Again, a saddler visits the building. He sees several cases of saddlery, and thus learns that saddles are manufactured in Australia. He looks up from the saddles; and finds a big placard staring him in the face, conveying the information that so many hundred people in that particular colony are engaged in saddlery at wages of from say 10 to 15 shillings. Would not this turn his thoughts powerfully to the advisability of emigrating?

The exhibits have been classified; photographs, models, and other appliances illustrating each industry, and placards giving the striking facts in connection with them are posted conspicuously in their neighbourhood. But this is but the first chapter of the lesson I wish to teach the visitor. So far the object has been to attract his attention; now that it has been engaged, we must follow it up. His mind is now in a condition to receive and digest information, which he would have shied at before; we can now safely bring to bear upon him the lecture and the pamphlet. Short graphic lectures should be delivered in the building daily, with panoramas and models to illustrate the subject; the magic lantern might also with advantage be brought into use. Pamphlets should be distributed gratuitously, giving particulars of the life of each class of settler. These lectures and pamphlets should not, as they have hitherto done, deal with colonial life in a general way. What is everybody's business is nobody's business. They should treat as far as possible of every particular class, of labour. It would not, of course, be necessary to have a separate pamphlet on each trade. There should, for instance, be one pamphlet on the life of the artisan, giving particulars of the rent he would have to pay, the kind of cottage lie would live in (illustrated by a woodcut), the wages he would get, the price of food, clothes, and articles of household use. Then at the end would come the particulars as to each trade, supplied by some competent authority. The life of the farmer, and of the agricultural labourer would be similarly treated in another pamphlet. A third would deal with the life of the miner, and a fourth treat of "Australasia as a field for Investment." Everyone would thus be able to choose the information he was in need of, instead of page 6 having to wade through a dry mass of miscellaneous knowledge. Lectures and pamphlets, like exhibits, must be classified if they are to be serviceable.

Not the least valuable and interesting part of the Exhibition would be really good Government collections, illustrating the fauna, the flora, and the geology of each colony. To say nothing of the possibility of useful discoveries being made by giving European savants an opportunity of seeing these collections, Science is popular at present, and to make the Exhibition attractive we must bring all kinds of influences to bear. Upon that grandest of all aids to success, fashion, which in London at present means what the Prince and Princess of Wales do, we can safely count. H. R. H. would, one can almost say certainly, not only take the presidency of the Exhibition, but also take an active interest in the proceedings. It would soon be considered "the correct thing" to "do" the Australasian Exhibition, and, in England, where the aristocracy go the middle and lower classes follow. For the first two sections a special attraction should be provided, on the principle that there should be a hook for every fish. First, they should see a refrigerating room, with meat, &c., displayed in every state through which it passes from the time it leaves our shores until it goes into the hands of the cook. Having thus prepared their minds they should be passed on to the refreshment rooms, where for half-a-crown they should* be given an "Australasian lunch"—soup, fish, roast, entrees, game, puddings, butter, cheese, fruit, wine, should all be Australasian. Even the bread should be baked of Australasian flour. No one who could afford it would forego the pleasure of being able to say that he had lunched entirely on meats and drinks produced at the other end of the world, or being able to descant critically on the relative merits of Australian kangaroo, New Zealand frost fish, beef, wildfowl, &c. The visitors who had partaken of such a curious meal would tell everybody about the wonderful things they had eaten. They would talk, and we should be advertised. With the savour of our viands in his nostrils, and the generous juice of the Australian grape stimulating his circulation and warming his heart, the visitor would be obliged to confess that these southern lands are not wanting in the elements of civilisation, and we might reach his imagination through his epigastric regions. Nor would this be the only advantage of the luncheon. When people had drunk our wines out of curiosity, and had eaten our meats and found they were good, they would ask for them at the shops, and thus the prejudice, which our frozen food and wine trades are striving to overcome, would disappear.

At least one day in the week the Exhibition should be open free of charge, so that there should not be a working man in London who could not take his family to it. It has been objected that because free museums and picture galleries are not well patronised by the working-classes, that they would not come to see this Exhibition. But the cases do not run on all fours. An Australasian Exhibition would be a temporary novelty of a popular character, well within the understanding of the masses, and purposely made specially attractive for them. The very word museum indicates to most people (myself, I fear, amongst the number) a dry-as-dust sort of place to be carefully avoided, and picture galleries are generally also beyond the taste of the working class. This Exhibition would unquestionably be the most popular, novel, and interesting free show ever offered to the British working man. But, since we specially want to reach the agricultural labourer, this would not be sufficient. Canvassers should, therefore, he sent into the agricultural districts to tell people about the Exhibition, and to distribute to agricultural labourers excursion tickets to come up to London and back free of charge. Objection has been taken to this idea on the ground that these country visitors could not afford to pay for lodging in London. There is, however, no reason why they should have to stay a night. They need only spend one day in the Exhibition, and the travelling backwards and forwards could be done at night. To prevent fraud they should be unable to make use of the return half of their ticket, unless it had been clipped at the gate of the Exhibition. By arrangement with the railway companies over a million French working men were brought from the provinces to the Paris Exhibition free of charge for a very small sum, and £20,000 would do wonders in this direction. I venture to say, moreover, that the mere announcement that labouring men could go to London and return to their homes at the expense of the young British communities at the Antipodes would produce a great and lasting impression on the minds of the masses in the mother country.

Not the least attraction of the Exhibition to the British public will be in the novelty in the idea. The British public like pluck, and above all, pluck in their page 7 descendants; and the idea of reversing the usual order of things, and taking the war into the enemy's camp, so to speak, appeals to the popular imagination. Another source of attraction lies in the very name of the Exhibition. The ordinary mind will always prefer a homogeneous to a heterogeneous conception, a pure breed to a hybrid, and the word "Australasian" has a definite, certain ring. More than this, it tells of a land of which people have begun to hear a little of late, just enough to arouse their attention to the fact that they know nothing about it, and that they would like to know something about it if they could get that knowledge without much trouble. There is a certain mystery and uncertainty, a delicious sense of the adventurous attaching to Australia in the mind of the British public, which an exhibition would act upon. "Queer sort of place Australia; wonder what the deuce they can exhibit; suppose we go and see," would be the sort of feeling a number of people would have. It has been a complaint against International Exhibitions of late that they are little better than bazaars—Regent Street with a halo of Royal commissions thrown around it. The British public, with a yearly improving Regent Street before them, are not enthusiastic about another London International, though it is twenty years since the last was held. But here would be an Exhibition from which the bazaar would altogether be excluded. Not that I would rely solely on solid attractions. There is room for bringing a strong popular element into the Exhibition by representations of bush scenes (such as that which I planned in the South Australian Court at the Melbourne Exhibition), Maori pahs, and other of those touches of Nature which make the whole world kin. A cardboard model of an inch to the foot of some of the busiest parts of Melbourne or Sydney, would be exceedingly effective, and do a great deal to make people realise the existence here of highly organised communities, supplied with all the appliances of civilization. Wax, life size, Australian types, would also attract the wonder of the multitude. I would neglect no feature in connection with Australasia which could attract any class of the community.

It may be argued as regards our manufactures, that people living in England can see better things every day in England. Apart from the interest attaching to the modifications which the circumstances of Australian life have brought about in our manufactures, is there not a special source of attraction in the fact that these things were made in an out of the way half civilized country, such as the ordinary Englishman imagines this to be? It is not to him a grape from a thorn? Would it not surprise—which is the mother of interest—him to see the degree of excellence attained by many of our manufacturers? I answer from practical experience at the Paris Exhibition that it would. If I was asked once I was asked a thousand times whether such and such an article was produced in Adelaide; and though the English people who visited the Paris Exhibition belonged mostly to the educated classes, their astonishment was a perfect picture to behold.

But this Exhibition would appeal not only to the love of the fashionable and the love of the new. When all is said and done, man cannot live merely upon beer and skittles. The strongest source of attraction lies in the fact that it would have a strong practical interest to every class of the English people, from the highest to the lowest. The educated classes do not know what to do with their boys at the present moment; the farmers are finding American and Australian competition too strong to make farming pay, and are on the look-out for fresh fields and pastures new; the working man was never harder up, and agricultural labourers in particular are being driven out of England by the pressure of population. Capitalists have been taken in so often over foreign securities that they are searching for safer fields for investment. Does anyone mean to tell me that all these people will not be glad of an opportunity to learn, in an amusing manner, something about the capabilities of Australasia? If you show a starving man a photograph—which cannot lie, though it may flatter—of a cupboard full of victuals, within an easy walk, will he not take the trouble to look at the photograph? Having seen the photograph; will he not "make for" the victuals?

The ordinary International Exhibitions have doubtless got stale and flat, but that any novelty in the way of an Exhibition, however small, will attract a large number of visitors, the recent successes of the Electric and Fisheries Exhibitions clearly proves. Surely it is plain to the most ordinary understanding that an Australasian Exhibition is capable of presenting more new and interesting features than a Fisheries Exhibition.

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Apart from the sources of attraction to the Exhibition, and the effect produced upon the minds of those who visit it, I would call attention to the enormous amount of information about these colonies which will be spread throughout the United Kingdom by the Press in connection with it. Anyone who glances over recent English tiles will see that every paper, from the "Times" down to the smallest provincial rag, is full not only of descriptions of the Fisheries Exhibition, but of all kinds of information about fish and fisheries which under ordinary circumstances would never have become known to the general public. And so it will be in this case. Not only descriptions of the Exhibition, but of Australasia and Australasian life will be published in every paper in Great Britain and Ireland, and in the leading continental papers. Why this advertisement alone is worth the whole cost of the Exhibition if not a soul came to look at it.

And now that I have laid my proposals before you, let me answer some of the objections which have been raised. One journal, with a singular confusion of thought, has asserted that this proposal is underlain by the same principle as that of the private-venture Exhibitions which I originated. The least reflection will, I think, show that my proposal is for an Exhibition which shall be national in the highest sense of the word as opposed to private. Individual exhibitors at this Exhibition can only seek their own profit out of the public advantages resulting from the Exhibition, and cannot make any direct profit out of it as is the case in International Exhibitions. It must be a national effort for a national purpose. Would not an Exhibition on the lines I have marked out tell the world "something new beyond what we have already told?" The last time we exhibited in England—which is obviously the only place from which we can expect to get any large amount of capital or population—was in 1862; and the whole of the exhibits from the Australian colonies in that Exhibition could have been shown in one decent sized room. Never has anything like a representative collection of our products and manufactures been shown in England or Europe. At the London Exhibition of 1862 our courts were a mere drop in the International bucket. I do not suppose one visitor out of a score even knew that Australia was exhibiting. Can we not then "reasonably expect to get a larger batch of spectators than we have had hitherto?" It has been urged that there would be no local enthusiasm. If the Prince of Wales took the matter up—and his action in trying to get up the Colonial Museum gives good warrant that he would—I do not think we need fear for want of enthusiasm in England.

Nor after all is the Exhibition solely in our own interest. Is it not important to the mother country that her surplus population should be directed to British rather than to American soil, that her capital should be invested within the limits of the Empire, and that the ties between the mother country and this her Australasian daughter should be drawn closer together? It seems to me that these are strong reasons for anticipating the hearty support of our fellow-countrymen in England, and for awakening their enthusiasm.