with his mention of subscriptions to the fair fund the satirical comment that "the chromo business is impossible in a fair." He credits Chicago with four millions, instead of five, which is its actual bona-fide subscription, with reserves following that amount. And then he facetiously adds: "I believe they have assessed the population within the circle several hundred millions."

Mr. Chairman, no one objects to the pictures however highly colored, nor to monuments however colossal, in honor of New York. But I insist that Chicago is at least entitled to a simple shaft of truth upon a pedestal of facts.

To the imputation today, and often before, that whilst New York has moved forward with dignified. and majestic step, Chicago has been sedulously occupied in "brass-band and trumpet-blowing performances," allow me to say that the truth is precisely the reverse, as a comparison of the official circulars will show, and as further proven by this very matter of fund raising in the respective cities.

Chicago's press has been free from any urging of subscriptions, relying, as well it might, on the public spirit ever dominant in that young giant of enterprise. New York's press, on the contrary, well nigh exhausted its editorial ingenuity in oft-repeated and urgent appeals for subscriptions, and at last resorted to direct goading by name of the non-responding millionaires.

Even that harsh expedient failed, and the despairing committeemen applied in frantic appeals to their Chauncey to save them lest they perish. He went to the rescue, he went to a banquet, he went for the dillydallying and, amid sparkling wine and sparkling wit, he cried aloud: "Down with the dust, or we are gone!"

What is the truth? The farmers of this country overwhelmingly want Chicago, and I speak advisedly, for I have watched the agricultural journals of the country on that subject, and they want the fair at Chicago, and why? Simply because in the magnificence of New York's appropriation for the agricultural exhibit, as I had occasion lately to say, they devote to it ten acres, and any strong, spirited, high-mettled animal of the West would paw the earth and snort his contempt for such a pitiful appropriation.

Ten acres for this magnificent agricultural site! What for? New York? No! What for? For the vast domain of America? Oh, yes; South America and Mexico as well. Ten acres !!

Answering this suggestion for making ample provision for the most extensive farm and stock exhibits, the New York official circular of the world's fair committee attempts to turn it into ridicule. Chicago, whilst projecting an exposition on the grandest scale possible for this countay, embracing the fine arts and the most delicate products in every department of human skill, is not unmindful of the most ancient and the most useful of all the vocations of man. Nor does she propose to stint such rural exhibitors, as at the New York exhibition of 1851, and, indeed, at all expositions hitherto; but, on the contrary, offers hundreds of acres for those exhibits alone. Doubtless there may be some dainty souls who dread to encounter "country bumpkins and mammoth pumpkins," and yet who are partial only to live stock, such as snub-nosed pugs, with ribboned necks and heads pillowed in their masters' laps in frescoed chambers.

But the people prefer to see the live stock such as Webster loved, and Clay loved, and Grant loved: superb horses, with arched necks, flashing eyes, and faultless forms, sniffing the morning air, and neighing

as if in consciousness of nobility of blood, flying like the wind over broad fields under the canopy of heaven.

Why do the lumbermen, the ironmen, the miners, and manufacturers of mining machinery, and many other industries, join in the demand for this central and convenient location?

Why not accede to their united preference, offering the amplest space and the greatest facilities for their several exhibits, to enable them to show, as never before, the boundless natural resources of this country? For instance: our inestimable mineral wealth in the richest conceivable display of ores, and of machinery for their treatment, enlightening our people generally, as well as home and foreign metallurgists?

Why should not all Americans and attending foreigners have an opportunity of judging of the country as a whole, not by mere inspection of its outer edge, but by coming into its body, and witnessing its phenomenal success?

Why should they not all come to its greatest inland citya fair in itself, as a marvelous growth in a few years from a frontier camp to a metropolis of immeasurable destiny and see for themselves whether it is true or false that she is the focus of the greatest inland commerce of the world; has the most extensive park system, the longest and most beautiful drives, including that named after and worthy of Sheridan, to be found on this continent; and in the absence of an Eiffel Tower, another structure, the Auditorium, of several times its cost, and incomparably greater utility?

The argument against holding the fair in the interior based upon the supposed loss of both foreign visitors and exhibits, because not held at the seaport, has been completely exploded by the prompt and hearty responses from leading merchants and the ablest

journals of Europe in favor of Chicago. Mr. Jeffery can relate his personal experience in that matter, and I need not detain the committee beyond the briefest mention of a few reports from abroad indicative of the very general preference expressed in our favor.

As world's fairs and national celebrations have hitherto been held in the extreme East and South, is it not the West's turn now, by the rules of rotation, and by every consideration of comity and fairness?

Should I dwell, Mr. Chairman, for a few moments in the consideration of this final question, it will be because it suggests, to my mind, by far the most important reason for the location of the fair in the interior, its tendency to promote harmony between the East and the West.

The great body of the people of the West know that the first suggestion of the fair was in the West and for the West. Three years after the close of the Philadelphia Exposition the subject was first agitated in Chicago, articles published in the newspapers, correspondence instituted with people at home and abroad, and application duly made to the Illinois Secretary of State for articles of association. Ever since then the subject has been renewed in one form or another in Western cities until the present competition arose.

Not long after the New York world's fair commit. tee's first publications, Missourians issued a circular to a number of Western States for a convention at St. Joseph, Mo., to unify the sentiment of that section, and "setting forth why the Columbus Centennial should be held in some western city as against any eastern point."

The unanimous action of that convention, including an exceptionally large St. Louis delegation, was most emphatic in favor of the object of the call. Since

that time the conviction has been steadily growing throughout the entire West, and from Oregon to the Gulf, that, in view of the holding hitherto of all the national fairs and celebrations at the extremes of the country, the Columbus Fair is due to the West, and to Chicago, its chief representative city. In this matter Chicago is for the West in the interest of the entire country, and the West is for Chicago.

The press and the people of that section were never more nearly unanimous upon any subject than that the forthcoming fair belonged of right to the West.

A distinguished citizen of Nebraska, Mr. Thurston, in a recent speech declared that having during the past few months traversed every State and Territory of the West, and carefully noted the preferences of the people, he could unhesitatingly assert that there was scarcely any difference on the subject, nineteen-twentieths being united in desiring the fair to be so held. Outside of Missouri he heard of Chicago only as the appropriate place.

The strongest confirmatory evidence of this is the official action in that behalf of municipal, commercial and industrial bodies all over the land, and especially where most hotly contested by competing cities.

The mail of this morning brings me the formal announcement of like emphatic action of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, and also of the Common Council of Dallas, Tex., the last of the contested Western cities. The accompanying letter mentions that Dallas is "deeply impressed with the benefit to accrue to Texas by the location of the fair at Chicago, the great Western metropolis."

Does it never occur to our Eastern competitors that the foreign visitors, characterized by the New York committee as the "elite" from abroad, would in any event visit those cities as well as others of the