LACE

Now that the foundations of the Palace are fairly laid, and the walls
of the Great Hall are rapidly rising, and the future existence of this
institution for good or for evil seems assured, it may be permitted to
one who has watched day by day, with the keenest interest, the result
of Sir Edmund Currie's appeals, to offer a few remarks on the manner
in which these appeals have been received, and on the mental attitude
of the public towards the class whom it is desired to befriend.

I. It is, to begin with, highly significant that the recreative side
of the Palace has not been so strongly insisted upon as its
educational side. Is this because the working man, for whom the Palace
is building, has suddenly developed an extraordinary ardour for
education, and a previously unexpected desire for the acquisition of
knowledge in all its branches? Not at all. It is because the
recreative part of the scheme has few attractions for the general
public, and because the educational part, once it began to assume a
practical shape, was seen to possess possibilities which could be
grasped by everyone. Whatever be the future of the Palace as regards
the recreation of the people, one thing is quite clear--that its
educational capacities are almost boundless, and that there will be
founded here a University for the People of a kind hitherto unknown
and undreamed of.

The recreation of the people, in fact, has proved a stumbling-block
rather than an attraction. It is a new idea suddenly presented to
people who have never considered the subject of recreation at all,
save in connection with skittles, so to speak. Now it seems hardly
necessary to erect a splendid palace for the better convenience of the
skittle alley. The objections, in fact, to supporting the scheme on
the ground of its recreative aims show a mixture of prejudice and
ignorance which ought to astonish us were we not daily, in every
business transaction and in every talk with friend or stranger,
encountering, and very likely revealing, the most wonderful prejudice
and ignorance. One should never be surprised at finding great black
patches in every mind.

The black patch which concerns us, in the minds of those who have been
asked to support the People's Palace, is the subject of recreation.
'There are enough music-halls. What have the working classes to do
with recreation? If we give anything for the people it will be for
their improvement, not for their amusement