EXHIBITIONS AND THE PUBLIC
By THE RT. HON. WALTER ELLIOT, M.P.
AN Exhibition is the palace of the crowds. The Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 was the first of its kind. London circles knew that it would bring the crowds and feared it. " There will be revolution," they said. But a happy crowd is the last thing in the world to make a revolution, and at an Exhibition the crowd is happy. Everything which works successfully is worth study ; and this, invented almost accidentally, has worked its magic again and again, ever since. The customer has made the show and the customer is always right. Exhibitions reach the public. Why ?
There is first, perhaps, the vast desire of the public for knowledge. In these days especially, when the wanton unreliability of print is so great, when news is shot out so green that anything said tonight may be contradicted tomorrow morning, a thin film of disbelief coats anything which the ordinary person sees in " the papers." I watched the crowds milling slowly round the huge Russian pavilion in Paris this year. They passed by, unseeing, sheets upon sheets of statistics, on progress in schools, in mines, in textiles in organisation. " Ah !—de la propagande ! " they said, and clustered like bees round an ordinary Soviet four-seater motor-car. They passed by Canada's exhibits, graphs of trade and commerce, lit cases of samples, lumber and grain ; they had to be moved on from an-old lady weaving, about whom Canada had been so sensitive that no province would take her under its name. They want to know. They want to know in language they understand and believe. Here is that language, the language of things.
The crowds also love the compliment paid them. " This is done for you." The well-to-do can travel, horizontally or vertically, to see these marvels. The man in the street must have them brought to him. Here in an afternoon in London in 1851 he saw all Europe and half the world besides. Here in 1901 in Glasgow he saw and heard the coming rhythms of the twentieth century. Here at Wembley he saw the Empire of which he had so often had a report, and realised a little, a very little, of how much effort will be needed to give momentum and direction to these huge masses of land and population. New Zealand did it, South Africa did it, Chicago has done it, New York will do it the year after next. Paris has done it resoundingly, repeatedly, till she is professional. Next year it is Scotland's turn.
We are trying to repeat in Scotland the great compliment to the ordinary man, the average fellow. We shall bring the best we can collect of art, of engineering, of industry, of Empire. In a park on a hillside beside the Clyde, beside the sea, beside the Highland hills, and beside Glasgow, we shall sketch for him, as we should sketch for the King— as we have sketched for the King—what the Empire has to say to Scotland and what Scotland says in return. Millions come to these spectacles. Six millions came to London in 1851 ; eleven millions to GlasgOvi -in 1901 ; twenty-seven millions to Wembley in 1924 and 1925. Any unit in' these millions may see all that a King sees. The crowd enjoys the compliment.
It is not an idle compliment. Millions of folk require millions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of hours of labour. It takes a great resolution to hazard such effort, both of finance and of work, and the crowd can see that it is so. Any guest responds to entertainment which shows care and forethought by his host, and here is care and forethought indeed.
There is a third argument, the presence of speed, a quality which is sometimes a vice and sometimes a virtue, but which in Scotland at least we need most certainly to see in action. These great steel tents, run up against the sky, these unfamiliar surfaces, outlines, colours, twelve months ago existed only in elevations and drawing plans, and tomorrow will be cleared and the grass set to grow again under our feet. In a city where the slums are taking on a quality of the eternal, where our fathers built black tenements of stone, sky-high, per- manent, indestructible, so that the children's teeth are set on edge, a touch of the white magic of modern times i certainly a merit, whatever it may be in ancient and beautiful towns and sides. Though even there—the quays of the Seine in Exhibition-time had a novel charm, an old friend in fancy dress, One would not like it always—yet, for a night.. .. Meanwhile, at Bellahouston, above Glasgow, above Clydes- dale, Tait's Tower is going up, anchored on 3,000 tons of concrete, a hill topped with steel. The Palace of Engineering has been built in three months from grass-roots to roof; and the 31s acre Palace of Industry in even a shorter time. If as much could be done for the houses of the people, for the workshops of our trades—and it can be done.
Speed—in design and in construction, and if at first you don't succeed, try again, try again. No revolution should be crystallised for all time, least of all an industrial revolution. The crowd from the black countries knows that by instinct, and hungers for a .little impermanence. Here it will be found.
Yet in spite of all, the more we change the more we remain the same. So London, through its fancy dress, showed vigorous, poetical, commercial ; and Paris democratic, logical, ordered, mature, superior ; and Chicago, I am told, furious and sentimental, and St. Louis, I know, slovenly in charm, on the Mississippi, a beauty in her kimono, the very South.
We in Scotland, dancing with difficulty, will doubtless show you, behind the stucco, our hard hills and our soft skies, our achievements and our failures, our fears and our hopes. And if you leave us more hopeful than you find us —why, it is mainly for that, that we shall set out our booths for the Empire and for the world next year at Bellahouston. These things the public knows. It loves them. Therefore it will come.
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