CHAPTER XLVIII.

ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATORY

CEREMONIES,

OCTOBER 21, 1892.

BY MRS. POTTER PALMER,

President of the Board of Lady Managers, World's Columbian Commission.

Mrs. Potter Palmer needs no introduction to the women of America. As President of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition; her efficient labors, executive ability and constant courtesy, have gained for her the admiration of all who have been so favored as to make either her personal or official acquaintance. It is very fitting that this Exposition Souvenir should include her felicitous address at the Dedicatory Ceremonies.-Ed.

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FFICIAL representation for women, upon so important an occasion as the present, is unprecedented. It seems peculiarly appropriate that this honor should have been accorded our sex when celebrating the great deeds of Columbus, who, inspired though his visions may have been, yet required the aid of an Isabella to transform them into realities.

The visible evidences of the progress made since the discovery of this great continent will be collected six months hence in these stately buildings now to be dedicated.

The magnificent material exhibit, the import of which will presently be eloquently described by our orators, will not, however, so vividly represent the great advance of modern thought as does the fact that man's "silent partner" has been invited by the Government to leave her retirement to assist in conducting a great national enterprise. The provision of the Act of Congress that the Board of Lady Managers appoint a jury of her peers to pass judgment upon woman's work, adds to the significance of the innovation, for never before was it thought necessary to apply this fundamental principle of justice to our sex.

Realizing the seriousness of the responsibilities devolving upon it, and inspired by a sense of the nobility of its mission, the Board has, from the time of its organization, attempted most thoroughly and most conscientiously to carry out the intentions of Congress.

It has been able to broaden the scope of its work and extend its influence through the co-operation and assistance so generously furnished by the Columbian Commission and the Board of Directors of the Exposition. The latter took the initiative in making an appropriation for the Woman's Building, and in allowing the Board to call attention to the recent work of women in new fields by selecting from their own sex the architect, decorators, sculptors and painters to create both the building and its adornments.

Rivalling the generosity of the Directors, the National Commission has honored the Board of Lady Managers by putting into its hands all of the interests of women in connection with the Exposition, as well as the entire control of the Woman's Building.

In order the more efficiently to perform the important functions assigned it, the Board hastened to secure necessary co-operation. At its request women were made members of the World's Fair Boards of almost every State and Territory of the Union. Inspired by this success at home, it had the courage to attempt to extend the benefits it had received to the women of other countries. It officially invited all foreign governments which had decided to participate in the Exposition to appoint committees of women to cooperate with it. The active help given by the Department of State was invaluable in promoting this plan, the success of which has been notable, for we now have under the patronage of royalty, or the heads of Government, committees composed of the most influential, intellectual and practical women in France, England, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Japan, Siam, Algeria, Cape Colony, Ceylon, Brazil, the Argentine Republic, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua, and although committees have not yet been announced, favorable responses have been received from Spain, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama and the Sandwich Islands.

No organization comparable to this has ever before existed among women. It is official, acting under Government authority and

sustained by Government funds. It is so far-reaching that it encircles the globe.

Without touching upon politics, suffrage or other irrelevant issues, this unique organization of women for women will devote itself to the promotion of their industrial interests. It will address itself to the formation of a public sentiment, which will favor woman's industrial equality, and her receiving just compensation for services rendered. It will try to secure for her work the consideration and respect which it deserves, and establish her importance as an economic factor. To this end, it will endeavor to obtain and install in these buildings exhibits, showing the value of her contributions to the industries, sciences and arts, as well as statistics giving the proportionate amount of her work in every country

Of all the changes that have resulted from the great ingenuity and inventiveness of the race, there is none that equals in importance to woman, the application of machinery to the performance of the neverending tasks that have previously been hers. The removal from the household to the various factories where such work is now done, of spinning, carding, dyeing, knitting, the weaving of textile fabrics, sewing, the cutting and making of garments, and many other laborious occupations, has enabled her to lift her eyes from the drudgery that has oppressed her since prehistoric days.

The result is that women as a sex have been liberated. They now have time to think, to be educated, to plan and pursue careers of their own choosing. Consider the value to the race of one-half of its members being enabled to throw aside the intolerable bondage of ignorance that has always weighed them down! See the innumerable technical, professional, and art schools, academies and colleges, that have been suddenly called into existence by the unwonted demand! It is only about 100 years since girls were first permitted to attend the free schools of Boston. They were then allowed to take, the places of boys for whom the schools were instituted, during the season when the latter were helping to gather in the harvest.

It is not strange that woman is drinking deeply of the long-denied fountain of knowledge. She had been told, until she almost believed it, by her physician, that she was of too delicate and nervous an organization to endure the application and mental strain of the school

room-by the scientist that the quality of the gray matter of her brain would not enable her to grasp the exact sciences, and that its peculiar convolutions made it impossible for her to follow a logical proposition from premise to conclusion-by her anxious parents that there was nothing that a man so abominated as a learned woman, nothing so unlovely as a blue-stocking, and yet she comes, smiling from her curriculum with her honors fresh upon her, healthy and wise, forcing us to acknowledge that she is more than ever attractive, companionable, and useful.

What is to be done with this strong, self-poised creature of glowing imagination and high ideals, who evidently intends, as a natural and inherent right, to pursue her self-development in her chosen line of work? Is the world ready to give her industrial and intellectual independence, and to open all doors before her? The human race is not so rich in talent, genius, and useful curative energy, that it can afford to allow any considerable proportion of these valuable attributes to be wasted or unproductive, even though they may be possessed by women.

The sex which numbers more than one-half the population of the world is forced to enter the keen competition of life with many disadvantages, both real and fictitious. Are the legitimate compensation and honors that should come as the result of ability and merit to be denied on the untenable ground of sex aristocracy?

We are told by scientists that the educated eye and ear of to-day are capable of detecting subtle harmonies and delicate gradations of sound and color that were imperceptible to our ancestors; that artists and musicians will consequently never reach the last possible combination of tones, or of tints, because their fields will widen before them, disclosing constantly new beauties and attractions. We cannot doubt that human intelligence will gain as much by development; that it will vibrate with new power because of the uplifting of onehalf of its members-and of that half, which is, perhaps, conceded to be the more moral, sympathetic, and imaginative-from darkness into light.

As a result of the freedom and training now granted them, we may confidently await, not a renaissance, but the first blooming of the perfect flower of womanhood. After centuries of careful pruning