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that a view of the skill of all nations will afford to you untold pleasure, as well as yield to you a valuable practical knowledge of many of the remarkable results of the wonderful skill existing in enlightened communities. One hundred years ago our country was new and but partially settled. Our necessities have compelled us to chiefly expend our means and time in felling forests, subduing prairies, and building dwellings, factories, ships, docks, warehouses, roads, canals, machinery, etc. Most of our schools, churches, libraries and asylums have been established within a hundred years. Burthened by these great primal works of necessity, which could not be delayed, we yet have done what this Exhibition will show in the direction of rivaling other and more advanced nations in law, medicine and theology, in science, literature, philosophy and the fine arts. Whilst proud of what we have done, we regret that we have not done more. Our achievements have been great enough, however, to make it easy for our people to acknowledge superior merit, wherever found.

And now, fellow-citizens, I hope a careful examination of what is about to be exhibited to you will not only inspire you with a profound respect for the skill and taste of our friends from other nations, but also satisfy you with the attainments made by our own people during the past one hundred years. I invoke your generous co-operation with the worthy Commissioners to secure a brilliant success to this International Exhibition, and to make the stay of our foreign visitors, to whom we extend a hearty welcome, both profitable and pleasant to them. I declare the International Exhibition open.

THE EXHIBITION FULLY OPEN.

The close of the President's brief address was followed by the raising of the flag on the Main Building, the signal that the Exhibition was open. Salutes were fired, bells commenced ringing, the chorus began singing the Hallelujah chorus, the chimes commenced ringing various airs, and the President and invited guests, amid cheers from the crowd, began the procession through the principal buildings. Machinery Hall and Memorial Hall were reserved for invited guests, and closed to the public until after their view by the official representatives, but this was brief and formal, and all restrictions being soon. removed, the great Exhibition was fully open to the public.

The opening exercises were celebrated in most of the principal cities throughout the country, by the display of flags and by public parades.

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II.—THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION, LOCALLY AND EXTERNALLY.

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ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIAL EXPOSITIONS.

10 properly understand the importance and magnitude of the American Centennial Exhibition-to avoid patriotic exaggeration on the one hand, and depreciatory comparison, based upon false data, on the other it is necessary to recall the principal facts connected with the various international exhibitions which have preceded our own. It may be well, also, to take a rapid glance at those noteworthy national fairs which led up, like so many successive steps, to the first union of modern nations in friendly industrial competition, at Hyde Park, in 1851.*

FAIRS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

The great fairs of the Middle Ages, though undoubtedly international in character, were merely the means of gathering the products of distant lands for sale, in days when commerce had less rapid and convenient methods than at present of bringing sellers and purchasers together. The fair of Leipzig, dating from the twelfth century, is still an annual event in Germany. That of Nijni Novgorod, in Russia, is almost as necessary to eastern Europe and the Orient for the exchange of commodities, to-day, as was that of Leipzig to central and western Europe five hundred years ago. The Russian fair is now held in an iron building comprising within itself no less than 2,500 shops or large trading booths. Another international fair of the same purely commercial character, and having an honorable antiquity of half a dozen centuries, is held between Alexandria and Cairo, in the delta of the Nile-the Egyptian fair of Tantah. Here, myriads of tents take the place of permanent buildings.

But fairs of this kind, whatever their magnitude or importance, lack the one essential element of the modern "exhibition," namely, competition in merit -the immediate sale of goods being a secondary consideration.

*Credit is given for many, indeed most, of the facts cited in this connection to Mr. Hugh Willoughby Sweny, whose valuable researches have left little to be desired, so far as concerns the brief review of the subject here needed. Mr. Sweny was a member of the staff of the British Executive Commissioners, and he wrote for them the article entitled "Exhibitions-their Origin and Progress," published in the special catalogue of the British section.

FAIRS OF MORE MODERN TIMES.

The first recorded modern collection of manufactures, showing the industrial condition of a country, occurred at Venice in the year 1268. The various artisans and dealers of the island city displayed their wares in apartments of the ducal palace assigned to the purpose. The next noteworthy "exhibition" was held at Leyden, more than four hundred years afterward, in 1699. This seems to have been a collection of oddities and curiosities, rather than a display of industrial products. In the middle of the following century, 1756, the Society of Arts, in England, began its long series of exhibitions, distributing prizes for tapestry, carpets and porcelain. There was also an exhibition in England, in 1761, of agricultural and other machinery, under the auspices of the same society.

EXHIBITIONS OF THE PAST CENTURY.

In the year 1798 occurred, in France, the first of that series of eleven national exhibitions, under official control, which leads us to the very threshold of the international exhibition of 1851. Now, for the first time, we have statistics showing a gradually accumulating interest among producers and visitors. These French displays may be taken as the natural and immediate progenitors of the great English World's Fair, and therefore of our own Centennial Exhibition. The dates of these eleven exhibitions, and the number of exhibitors in each, show a constant increase in popularity, the comparatively slight advance between 1806 and 1827 being readily accounted for by the disturbed political condition of France :—

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In the first of these French exhibitions, 1798, were displayed the magnificent art works of which Napoleon had despoiled Italy-the Laocoon, the Belvidere Apollo, the Dying Gladiator, and other celebrated marbles, with paintings by Titian, Paul Veronese, Raphael, and other masters. The great invention of Jacquard, from which the triumphs of modern loom-work have come, and on which they now depend, is said to have had its origin in a machine displayed at the third exhibition of the above series. Our own Exhibition of 1876 is thus directly associated with that of Paris in 1802 by the great Jacquard looms, weaving many patterns in silk and wool, seen in full operation in

Machinery Hall. Other nations of the continent evinced a deep interest in local displays of industrial products between the years 1820 and 1850. If, therefore, France began earlier, and presents in her history a more perfect scale of gradual progress, the interest of other countries was a very important factor in developing a general European sentiment which made the first experiment of a world's fair successful. From 1820 to 1835 there were many local displays in various parts of the Austrian empire, and in the latter year there were 594 exhibitors at a national exhibition in Vienna; at another in 1839 there were 732 exhibitors. Prussia held fairs in 1822 and 1827, with 176 and 208 exhibitors respectively; and in 1844 there was a general collection of goods from all parts of Germany and Austria, in Berlin, at which there were 3,040 competitors. National fairs in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden, prior to 1850, were of less magnitude, but sufficiently important to show the growing interest.

It is a curious fact that Great Britain, destined to the honor of leadership in the system of world's fairs now established, showed very little enterprise in this direction before Prince Albert stimulated the zeal of Englishmen to a grand special effort. The triennial fairs in Dublin, beginning in 1827, and ending in 1850, show, perhaps, an exception to the general lack of interest. The "National Repository," in London, opened in 1828, and closed for want of patronage in 1833, was a melancholy failure, though a praiseworthy undertaking on the part of its promoters. There were a few feeble local exhibitions in England, and one of some importance was held at Covent Garden in 1845; the Society of Arts, in 1846, 1847 and 1848, had successful displays, under the presidency of Prince Albert, there being 70,000 visitors in the last named year. In 1849 the Prince Consort announced his scheme "to form a new starting-point from which all nations were to direct their further exertions."

With the full fruition of his plan we enter upon the last stage of the subject; from this point we may follow the record of increasing magnitude and augmenting numbers of both visitors and exhibitors, to the culmination at Vienna, in 1873. From the 4,494 exhibitors, the greatest number previously known, of the French fair in 1849, we suddenly spring to the number of 13,937 at the first World's Fair, held in Hyde Park, London, only two years later, 1851. The building, of iron and glass, covered more than twenty acres of ground; the total number of visitors was 6,039,195; the total receipts from visitors, £423,792, or $2,041,153, gold. The greatest number of visitors on any one day was 109,915. The exhibition of 1855, in Paris, came next, with thirty acres under cover, and 20,839 exhibitors. The number of visitors was less than

those at Hyde Park, being only 5,162,330, and the receipts were less than $620,000. This small result is accounted for by the extreme lowness of the admission fee at times, only four cents being charged on some days, while on one day, May twenty-seventh, the entrance was entirely free. The greatest number of visitors on a single day was 123,017. This, curiously enough, was not on the day of free admission. The exhibition was open two hundred days, from May fifteenth to November thirtieth. The Sundays are included, being in France the most popular days of attendance. The World's Fair of 1862, in England, under roofs covering twenty-four acres, was visited by 6,211,103 people in 171 days, the greatest number on one day being 67,891. The receipts were £408,530, or $2,977,285; the number of exhibitors, 26,348. The Paris exhibition of 1867 was held upon the same spot, the Champs de Mars, on which the first French official exhibition was held. Between forty and fortyone acres were covered by the buildings. The increase from 110 to 42,217 exhibitors is a fair indication, perhaps, of the increase in popular interest in displays of industrial products during the first seventy years of this century. During the 117 days this exhibition was open, it received 6,805,969 visitors, paying $2,036,357. The largest number of visitors on one day, at this or any other exhibition, previous to our own, was 173,923. The Vienna exhibition of 1873 was open 186 days; the admissions, paid and otherwise, numbered 6,740,500; and the receipts amounted to $998,353. There were about four hundred buildings, all told, large and small, within the enclosure of the Prater, covering an area of about fifty acres. The only international exhibition in which the original outlay has been balanced by the receipts, was that of 1851, when there was a surplus of about £186,000, or $900,240. The excess of cost over receipts at the gates in 1855, at Paris, was about $3,380,000, and in 1867, $2,560,406. The cost of the Vienna exhibition exceeded the gate receipts by between eight and nine millions of dollars. If we subtract the total receipts from visitors to the five great world's fairs from 1851 to 1873 7,686,718) from the total cost ($22,210,763) we have a balance for the left of $14,524,045. Only a very small part of this could have been offset by the sale of privileges and old materials. The total number of admissions to the five exhibitions was 30,959,097.

Having thus given the general facts in connection with previous international exhibitions, all comparisons are left to the reader, to be worked out according to his own fancy, and we come more immediately to consider "The International Exhibition of 1876," as the popularly called "Centennial" is officially named in the by-laws of the United States Centennial Commission.

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