World's Columbian Exposition

“ And in the name of the Government, and of the people of the United States, I do hereby invite all the Nations of the earth to take part in the commemoration of an event that is preeminent in human history and of lasting interest to mankind by appointing representatives thereto, and sending such exhibits to the World’s Columbian Exposition as will most fitly and fully illustrate their resources, their industries and their progress in civilization. ”

“ Many minds have essayed already to reproduce what they have witnessed there; many pens have attempted to record exactly the incomparable impression the exposition effected upon its visitors, but, it is safe to say, without even faintly describing it; for, can language convey to a blind man what "color" means, or to a deaf person the meaning of music?—No more can the pen of the most gifted author adequately portray the World's Columbian Exposition. If one would give to each building a volume; a shelf to the Midway Plaisance ”

“ THE visitor who wishes to learn what the World's Columbian Exposition has to teach in regard to the domestic arts will not find the exhibits in this field gathered in a separate building, as are those relating to Transportation or Agriculture. ”

“ The artistic jewel of the Exposition was the "Court of Honor." Down the
Grand Basin you saw the noble statue of the Republic, in dazzling gold,
with the peristyle beyond, a forest of columns surmounted by the
Columbus quadriga. On the right hand stood the Agricultural Building,
upon whose summit the "Diana" of Augustus St. Gaudens had alighted. To
the left To the left stood the enormous Hall of Manufactures. Looking
from the peristyle the eye met the Administration Building, a rare
exemplification of the French school, the dome resembling that of the
Hotel des lnvalides in Paris. ”

“ Democrats, one hundred and twenty-five Republicans, and eleven
Populists.
Early on the opening day of the Exposition, May 1, 1893, the Chief
Magistrate of the nation sat beside Columbus's descendant, the Duke of
Veragua. Patient multitudes were waiting for the gates of Jackson Park
to swing. "It only remains for you, Mr. President," said the
Director-General, concluding his address, "if in your opinion the
Exposition here presented is commensurate in dignity with what the world
should expect of our great country, to direct that it shall be opened to
the public. ”

“ The Columbian Exposition should be an exhibition worthy of the fame of Columbus and of the great republic that has taken root in the New World, which the Genoese discoverer not only "to Castille and to Aragon gave," but to the struggling, the oppressed, the aspiring, and the resolute of all humanity in all its conditions.
AMERICAN NATIONALITY.
Rufus Choate,, the most eminent advocate of New England. ”

“ It early became evident that the Columbian Exposition was to be the most comprehensive and brilliant display of man's material progress which the ages have known. More than fifty nations were soon actively enlisted in the preparations for the great Festival of Peace. ”

“ The thought of celebrating by a world's fair the third centennial of
Columbus's immortal deed anticipated the anniversary by several years.
Congress organized the exposition so early as 1890, fixing Chicago as
its seat. That city was commodious, central, typically American. ”

“ The nineteen foreign buildings, each of which illustrated some classic style of architecture—peculiar to the nation represented—constituted an additional great feature of the Columbian Exposition. They gave the visitor an adequate conception of the construction and luxurious equipment of edifices abroad. In fact, on entering the buildings of Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, New South Wales, Ceylon, Canada, Sweden, Costa Rica, Hayti, Guatemala, Japan, etc., we fancied ourselves to be suddenly conveyed to these foreign countries. ”

“ Americans are to do honor at the Columbian Exhibition to the name of him who, though not the first white man to land on the shores of the New World, was the first to colonize its fertile islands. Not only America, but the whole world, [Pg 149] may emulate his virtues with advantage; for, even now, justice and mercy, courage and meekness, do not always abide together. ”

“ Suffice it now to say that it manifests itself in countless forms: in municipal improvements of the kind of which the Cleveland center is, perhaps, the best example in the country; in architecture of all classes; in household furniture and decoration; in the tendency of art museums to realize that modern American paintings are the finest modern paintings obtainable in the world to-day; in the tendency of private art collectors not to buy quite so much rubbish as they have bought in the past; in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which will be the most beautiful exposition anybody ever saw ”

“ The silent grandeur of the Columbia is to be made busy and vocal with the stir of human labor, and the shriek of "resonant steam eagles" that speed from ocean to ocean, bearing the good-will of the nations of the world in bales of merchandise. ”

“ A leading journal of San Francisco, advocating the desire that the Californian exhibit should be made a permanent one, proceeded to point the moral and adorn the tale by pointing to the Canadian exhibition. The editorial argument thus ran:
"Canada, with her complete exhibit, has won much praise from Exposition sightseers and has set the precedent for a permanent exhibit. ”

“ To the Commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the republics of Mexico and Central and South America and the commissioners of Cuba and Puerto Rico, who share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century. Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. ”

“ The Exposition is being held to celebrate the building of the Panama Canal, and to exhibit to the world evidences of the progress of civilization in the decade since the last great exposition-a period among the richest in the history of civilization. So the ideas of victory, achievement, progress and aspiration are expressed again and again: in the architecture with its triumphal arches and aspiring towers; in the sculpture that brings East and West face to face, and that shows youth rising with the morning sun, eager and unafraid ”

“ British Columbia is the only portion of North America that retains the name of the discoverer of the New World; but originally the whole of the territory now comprised in the United States bore the designation of Columbia in honour of Christopher Columbus. ”

“ It is a common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior civilization over North America; that our absorption in gain and outward interests mark us out as fated to fall behind the Old World in the higher improvements of human nature—in the philosophy, the refinements, the enthusiasm of literature and the arts, which throw a luster round other countries. I am not prophet enough to read our fate. [Pg 341]
THE GRAND SCOPE OF THE COLUMBIAN CELEBRATION.
The Chicago Inter Ocean. ”

“ It must be remembered, too, that the early Indians did not know how to write in any form but that of carving and colour, so that the men who at different times carved these totems were not only artists of a kind, but historians, limning history—valuable Canadian history—upon the heart of the giant British Columbia cedar, to the end that all ages may read what happened in these parts when the world was young. ”

“ There is still much of the popular conception abroad that the West has only very recently emerged from a state of semi-civilization inimical to the finer things of life, and to art in particular. But we may rest assured that the fortunate outsider who allows himself the luxury of travel will proclaim that the gospel of beauty has been preached most eloquently through the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. ”

“ The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with its World Congress of the Arts and Sciences, and all of its exhibits arranged to promote the development of invention and the application of scientific methods to industry, has a great mission; and yet the peculiar field which belongs to the Lewis and Clark Exposition gives it, if not a greater mission, at least one more advanced—if you please a twentieth century mission. Man in the Pacific Northwest has a peculiar problem. All the science and art of the past are his legacy. ”

“ As a part of the people of this great country, we may feel ourselves included. We represent the class which has enriched our soil with its blood, watered it with its tears, and defended it with its strong arms, but have hitherto been excluded from all part in our national glory. Now, however, all is changed. We may look forward with pleasure to the promised National Centennial Exposition, and take some credit to ourselves for helping to make the District of Columbia a suitable place for such a display. ”

“ The Columbian Exposition did not give the Negro a chance to demonstrate to the nations what he could do, but at the Cotton States Exposition he was given a trial, and so well did he succeed that he comes in for another showing at the Tennessee Exposition. Let the Negroes feel that it is important and necessary to make a fine display, and, imbued with this hope, let them press forward to eclipse all former efforts. (The Enterprise, Omaha, Neb.) ”

“ He considered his projected establishment at the mouth of the Columbia as the emporium to an immense commerce; as a colony that would form the germ of a wide civilization; that would, in fact, carry the American population across the Rocky Mountains and spread it along the shores of the Pacific, as it already animated the shores of the Atlantic. ”

“ The one enchants the imagination; the other relates itself to the great social order of human life. The latter reveals the vast resources of British Columbia; the almost infinite possibilities for the transcendent future of a new and still higher civilisation; the regions of the homes, the development, the nobler and still nobler culture of life in its evolutionary progress. ”

“ The first explorer of the Columbia, even if he was a very commonplace mortal, must have passed days of the most singular exhilaration, especially if he ascended the stream in that season when the skies are bright and blue, for it seems to me one of the most magnificent sights in the world. ”

“ There are exhibits, to be sure, from most of the South American countries, but the United States occupies industrially foreground, background, and middle distance. The other countries fill in the odd corners. The ardent patriot will see no lack of proportion in this; and as there is a hint of Mexico and the Argentine, and very creditable exhibits by Chile and Honduras, we have enough of the sister continent to justify the name. Most of the southern republics are represented in one way or another. It is hard, however, to explain the insufficiency of Canada’s exhibit. ”

“ The genius of civilization, bearing gifts, is carried in a chariot drawn by prancing horses. The Admiral, at the horses' heads, with one hand points the way for her to follow, while with the other he hands the reins to Columbia, the impersonation of the New World. An Indian at the chariot wheels stoops to gather the gifts of civilization as they fall from the cornucopia borne by the goddess. And thus is told in enduring bronze, by the genius of the artist, the symbolic story of the introduction of civilization to the New World. ”

“ But out of the struggles of that century, French, English, and American, out of the final distribution of territory, by which England retained Canada and with it a large French and Indian population, mingled with English and Scotch,—out of these curious comminglings, economic, commercial, political, religious, and ethnic, grew the great English fur companies, whose history was largely wrought out on the shores of the Columbia, and from whose juxtaposition with the American State-builder the romance and epic grandeur of the history of the River largely comes. ”

“ The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world. Here, in spite of northern latitudes, the warm airs coming up from the Pacific Ocean act somewhat in the same way as the Gulf Stream on north-west Europe, and favour the growth of magnificent forests. ”

“ The delightful variety of arrangement in a panorama of two hundred miles of grandeur, the cunning with which nature has interspersed imposing ruggedness with enticing beauty, is a strong feature of Columbia scenery, and suggests the still more charming effect of the whole when is added the attraction of refined human habitations perched every here and there, especially along the highlands from Astoria to The Dalles, and from Cape Disappointment to Wallula. ”

“ As a Figure, the Indian is a Synopsis.
The land embraced by British Columbia is elemental—big. Every form of it, rivers, peaks, lakes and valley, is grand in the sense of bigness. It is a land of big trees, big mines, big ranches, big outlook. And the big outlook not only glances Eastward across a Continent, but wings its way outward across the Pacific with its ships touching the shores of Asia and Australia. ”