24
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
lections of public reports which have been made on previous Expositions supplied the means of forming a clear idea, both of the nature and value of these productions. As a rule they have added simply a heavy printing bill to the other expenses of representation. This experience the Massachusetts commissioners felt no ambition to repeat. A general report of our own could easily have been compiled, which would have included, in a compendious form, much that has already appeared in the columns of the press. A large body of perfunctory reports of a similar character could also have been procured from others at a moderate cost. Neither of these methods of completing our work commended itself to our judgment. Very serious difficulties, however, presented themselves in the way of any systematic plan of reports calculated to be of real value. Two plans on which they might be prepared suggested themselves. The first looked to a comparison of results presented in the Vienna Exposition with those observed in the expositions of London or of Paris. Such a comparison, properly instituted and developed by competent hands, should reveal more or less accurately the departments in which industry or art had made advances, or had retrograded, between the expositions. Had it been within our power to carry out this scheme of reports, the result could not but have been most instructive, as showing the hidden influences which had been and now were in operation in different countries. The conception was, however, too general, and presupposed a command of means and of agents altogether beyond the reach of a state commission. The other plan was calculated to be of more immediate interest to Massachusetts. A very brief study of the Exposition sufficed to show, that, so far as America was concerned, the articles contributed to it were divided by a broad line of demarcation into two classes. In one class were included the articles of practical utility, including especially all labor-saving appliances; in the other were those results of human skill, the production of which was due to a more educated hand or to a more developed artistic taste ; which showed a finer touch or a more thorough technical training. As regards the first class of exhibits, revealing a ready resource and a great, though somewhat coarse, practical ingenuity, America, even