AFTER THREE MONTHS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7014, 1 February 1901, Page 4

AFTER THREE MONTHS.

: , + . . ■ THE CANTERBURY JUBILEE EXHIBITION, A MOST SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE. PUBLIC SPIRITED PROMOTERS: THE LESSON TAUGHT BY THE EXHIBITSTo those who ihave been frequent in their attendance at the Exhibition, the closing scene of which for the public was enacted last evening, there must have been prominently manifest one thing. That one thing -was the number of men of public spirit the city has within, her boundaries. For days and even nights not a few members of the Committee hardly left the building until lie work of getting the exhibits in order !had! "been, got sufficiently f orward td allow of their taking a muchneeded rest. The Executive was strong, no doubt, but not a bit stronger than, the work required, end to them all the public, and especially the season ticket-holders, owe a deep debt of gratitude for the. entertainment (to put it on the very lowest platform) afforded by the Exhibition. There is no need to individualise in this matter, for from . the President himself downwards there were to be found enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and painstaking ccmmitteemen "Whose time^ talent, andi best efforts were devoted, from the opening to the close, to furthering the objects of the Exhibition. . Doss anyone ask what good has the Exhibition, done? The answer to the question is in one word — much! Take for instance the Workers' Section. There was work displayed there the sight of which roused in many young minds the dormant or latent instinct of constructiveness, and the young hands itched i» make the essay. Was the sight that Mr Q. H. Elliott presented to the assembled audience in the great hall on Thursday evening indicative of useless work? Could anyone note the battalion of youths, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-two, who came at Mr Elliott's call to the platform, with beaming eye and hearts elate, to receive their gold medals at the hands of the President, trophies won in the arts of peace, and the rewards of skill acquired by industrial effort perseveringly sustained? . Could anyone look upon that scene and fail to realise that those competitions had roused a spirit of . emulation amongst the young men for whom the day must come when we must look to them to take leading and foramost places in the ranks of our noblest of all armies, the industrial? Those young men in the competitions were measuring themselves, each with his fellow, and to most of them Pope's magnificent line will apply?— " Not free from faults, yet not too vain to mend." Then the finished work shown by our industrial firms was a revelation in itself to us all, as well as an education to many. A glance round the bays in. which were shown the handicraft of " the workers in brass and in iron," showed the tremendous progress that has been made within the last few years, and that this young scion of the JJntisn Empire, though far away from the parental, home, and- learning the arts of peace in cur distant islands of the Southern Sea, has as sturdy an arm as his sire, and that the qualities of that sire'ase reproduced in him— his right hand has not lost its cunning, nor his left hand its skill. Does the magnificent furniture made at our local factories teach no lesson? Do the triumphs of the loom that were so much in evidence, show any. inferiority to the products of the looms of older lands? Can the cities of the Homo countries better, to any marked degree, the skill rhown by our workers in leather, whether in shoe or in saddle, or in the manufacture of the leather itself from the hide or skin of the animal? All along the line the very best has been shown in every department of labour and skill, and the province .has reasou to be proud of her workers, so many of whom have over this Exhibition earned the knighthood of industry. . Yes, the Exhibition has done good, if in no higher way than to show to tha great mass of the people .that our industries have reached such a standard of excellence that we hardly now need the aid of the parent country or her neighbours, but can stand alone, depending almost wholly on the skill and industry of our own sons and daughters. And for this, if for nothing else, we are indebted to the public-spirited men whose large-hearted loyalty conceived the idea of the Exhibition, and to those others on the Executive who ceased not their labours till the great work was accomplished.