“We arrive, therefore, at the unexpected result that the enforcement of definite minimum conditions of employment positively stimulates the invention and adoption of new processes of manufacture. This has been repeatedly remarked by the opponents of Trade Unionism. Thus Babbage, in 1832, described in detail how the invention and adoption of new methods of forging and welding gun-barrels was directly caused by the combined insistence on better conditions of employment by all the workmen engaged in the old process. ‘In this difficulty,’ he says, ‘the contractors resorted to a mode of welding the gun-barrel according to a plan for which a patent had been taken out by them some years before the event. It had not then succeeded so well as to come into general use, _in consequence of the cheapness of the usual mode of welding by hand labour_, combined with some other difficulties with which the patentee had had to contend. But _the stimulus produced by the combination of the workmen for this advance of wages_ induced him to make a few trials, and he was enabled to introduce such a facility in welding gun-barrels by roller, and such perfection in the work itself, that in all probability very few will in future be welded by hand-labour.’” The profound impression made by the Exhibition found expression in a universal desire for action. The question one heard again and again was “What can we do? What can we do?” It was the question which the Princess of Wales asked as she passed round the stalls where the workers were engaged at their various forms of slavery. It was the question which continued like a hopeless refrain throughout the six weeks of the Exhibition. Most people came with vague ideas of the evil and went away with vaguer ideas of the remedy. Many of them were doubtless glad to forget this contact with that other forlorn world which seemed such a disquieting challenge to the splendour and luxury of the world of society. It was a painful interlude between a visit to the shops in the morning and a visit to the theatre in the evening. The general feeling however was not one of idle curiosity, but of grave concern, and when the Exhibition closed it was felt that the public conscience once awakened must not be allowed to go to sleep again. The Exhibition had been an appeal to the individual; but all experience showed that voluntary action on the part of the individual, while worthy and desirable, would not touch the evil. Consumers’ leagues had been at work in this country and still more in America; but they had done little to reduce the vast sum of misery. If the Exhibition was to bear fruit it must be in the direction of legislative action.