Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 5. (Győr, 1963)

P. Balázs: The First Industrial Exhibition at Győr in 1846

The committee organizing the Győr exhibition decided to establish a local show in every year, when there will be a national one at Pest in the future. The paper also presents the correspondence between Ferenc Csanády, secretary of the National Industrial Society, and Sándor Lukács, the organizer of the Győr exhibition, on the design and execution of the commemorative medals of the show. (These were distributed, however, in 1848 only.) Though the exhibition has proved the existence of a developed handicraft industry at Győr, significant in national relation as well, the paper concludes with the statement that this corporative industry possessed very limited chances of further development in the mentioned period, nay it shew the signs of a crisis in more than one respect. A closed patrician stratum of masters came to being inside the guilds, transferring the workshop from father to son; the number of masters remained practically the same in a span of several decades. The increased demand of the market, caused by economic prosperity, was met by the masters through the appointment of more journeymen and apprentices; the dwindling of purchasing power involved the dismissal of the same. At the same time the decrease in the number of artisans helped >by a single journeyman jumps to the eye, followed by the increase in the number of well-to-do masters, giving jobs to 2, 3 or more journeymen. This process is borne out by statistical data, quoted in this paper. In some branches of industry (e. g. joiners, textile manufacturers) even workshops with 10—15 journeymen and machinery came into being, assuming the character of manufactures. The paper enumerates data illustrating how craftsmen, members of the corporations, defended themselves against the rivalry of those outside the guilds, attempting even an action against the development of factories. The industry of Győr, capable of producing magnificent results, came to a deadlock in the middle of the nineteenth century; its only way out of it was opened by the decline of the Danubian corn trade. With the beginning of railway transport Győr lost its leading role in the Hungarian corn trade; thus the town, famous of its handicraft of old, became a significant city of factories. P. Balázs 278