Harriet Martineau

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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of Englishmen-the hat, which nobody defends; but why stop at any one article when there are so many which might be superseded at a stroke by some inspiration of good sense and taste? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”