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America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
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America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition

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At the time of the World s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the United States was fast becoming the world s leading economy. Chicago, the host city, had grown in less than half a century from a village to the country s second-largest metropolis. During this, the Gilded Age, the world s most extensive railroad and steamship networks poured ceaselessly through Chicago, carrying the raw goods and finished products of America s great age of invention and industrial expansion. The Fair was the largest ever at the time, with 65,000 exhibitors and millions of visitors. It has been called the Blueprint of the American Future and marked the beginning of the national economy and consumer culture.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 25, 2008
ISBN9781439614136
America at the Fair: Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition

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    America at the Fair - Chaim M. Rosenberg

    Museum

    INTRODUCTION

    The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was held at a pivotal time in the history of the United States. The country had expanded to the west and south to develop a nationwide economy. It was the Gilded Age of great power and wealth and extravagant spending of the few. Cities were growing rapidly, railroads criss-crossed the country, and countless thousands toiled in the factories, on the farms, and in the mines. Hundreds of smaller companies were merging into trusts and giant corporations. After the Civil War, the combination of America’s fertile soil, its mineral wealth, and the innovation of its people created spectacular growth. America had looked to England, France, and Germany for guidance in style, art, and science, but now the brash and confident young nation was leaping ahead of its European competitors. America would rightfully claim the 20th century as its own.

    The 1893 Chicago Fair, held from May 1 to October 30, generated a great deal of interest. Countless books were written between 1892 and 1900 describing its wonders. I purchased many of these books to better understand how commentators at the time viewed this event. Many books were 600 pages or more, describing aspects of the Fair in exquisite detail. The official publications of the various states described their advantages and achievements and listed their exhibiting companies and even the names of the people who made contributions. The books lavished praise on the city of Chicago and on the extravagant buildings on the fairgrounds facing Lake Michigan. One of my favorites among these books is the Guide to the World’s Columbian Exposition in a Nut-shell, printed in 1893. This pocket-sized, soft-covered book was prepared by the Merchants’ World’s Fair Bureau of the Information Company, 21 Quincy Street, Chicago. The book cost 25¢ and listed the Fair’s major events and attractions. It described the various buildings with recommendations about what to see during a busy seven-day visit. The book I have was originally owned by one Aaron T. Otageman, a resident of Chicago. During his visits to the Fair, Otageman checked off the various exhibits he had visited. He was interested in the power plant and the boiler house, and enjoyed the livestock exhibit and the log cabin. He spent a lot of time in the Agricultural, Machinery, and Transportation Buildings. He admired the American statuary and studied the exhibits in the Mines and Mining Building. He apparently did not have the time or inclination to see the state pavilions or visit the Midway Plaisance.

    The Fair was filled by some 65,000 exhibitors who displayed over 250,000 separate objects, ranging from huge steam locomotives and massive turbines to exquisite silk-weaving and hand-worked pottery. Each visitor could find his or her favorites. Standardized mass-produced objects were displayed alongside the works of craftsmen and artists. America’s intellectual and cultural ambitions were on show, as were the exotic crowd of acrobats, magicians, belly dancers, snake charmers, strongmen, and Wild West sharpshooters. The world’s first religious conference as well as the first congress for American socialists took place under the auspices of the World’s Columbian Exposition. The Fair was a source of great pride to the United States and to Chicago. Above patriotism, enlightenment, and fun, the Exposition was a commercial venture. Millions of dollars were borrowed and the nation’s foremost architects hired to build the greatest of all fairs. Not only was the money repaid but the Fair even made a profit. Thousands of American companies, most of the states, and many foreign countries participated in the hope of selling their merchandise.

    The 1893 Fair took place during a period of immense change in America and the world at large. The horse and buggy shared the streets with trolleys, and most towns of any size were linked by railroads. Few at the time, however, foresaw the coming of the automobile age. Water power and then steam power drove the industrial revolution, but electricity and the internal combustion engine would soon take their place. This was the first Fair in which electricity took so prominent a place. The telegraph that had dominated communication for most of the 19th century was giving way to the telephone. The Panic of 1893 and the depression that began soon after the Fair opened, cast doubt on American industrial might, but by 1897 America was again bold and expansive. At that time Britain became mired in the Anglo-Boer war and the European powers were blinded by nationalism, while America was emerging as the world’s leading economy. Regional economies were giving way to a nationwide consumer society, based on credit and extended payment schemes. This was the era of large business failures, consolidation, and the emergence of the giant corporations.

    The picture books published about the World’s Columbian Exposition show the great buildings, the Ferris Wheel, and the exotic sights of the Midway Plaisance, but say relatively little about the tens of thousands of industrial companies and the goods they displayed. This book will discuss what was exhibited in and out of the buildings rather than describe the vast exhibition halls, flamboyant and impressive though they were.

    The Fair took place at the end of the era of lithographic trade cards (1870–1900). Lithography was invented in Europe at the close of the 18th century and involved the use of acid to burn images on smooth, flat pieces of limestone. (Lithos is the Greek word for stone.) By the middle of the 19th century lithography was enhanced by the use of color, a process called chromo-lithography. These advances in color printing were brought to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In Boston, the brothers John and William Pendleton in 1824 set up a business making lithographic images of the first five American presidents. Lithography was applied to map making, portraits of stately homes, book illustrations, and then to advertising (Pierce & Slautterbuck 1991). Hundreds of lithographic companies, mainly in the large cities, were producing trade cards to advertise goods offered for sale. Staffed by artists of skill, these companies drew cards that displayed the product and gave information about the company—its location, the uniqueness of the product, address, price of the goods, and names of agents. I have chosen to illustrate this book using lithographic trade cards and artistic renderings. The trade cards, many of which were designed especially for the Fair, were given out to visitors in the hope that they would buy the product. Starting early in the 20th century lithographic companies steadily lost out to newspaper and magazine advertising, and the use of trade cards declined. In their time these colorful cards were assiduously collected as a hobby and pasted into albums. As the years rolled by these albums were forgotten and collected dust in attics and basements. At the close of the 20th century, the albums were rediscovered and became popular as collector’s items. The trade cards they contain tell us a good deal about what was made and what was sold in America during the last third of the 19th century.

    Millions of people traveled to Chicago to see for themselves the wonders of the 1893 Fair. The locals arrived by streetcar or on one of the steam ferries leaving from the port of Chicago. Others arrived by train to see the great new city of Chicago and its wondrous Fair that excited interest at many levels. The highbrow enjoyed the concerts and art exhibitions. The seriousminded attended the many conferences, and the scientifically-minded were dazzled by the electrical display, the steam engines, and the locomotives. Most people came to enjoy the gardens, eat at the restaurants, admire the buildings, walk along the Midway Plaisance, and ride the Ferris Wheel. At a time when few could afford leisure travel abroad, the Fair offered Americans a chance to gaze upon the wonders of South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa as displayed in the foreign pavilions.

    The World’s Columbian Exposition was a creation of its time. At the close of the 19th century infectious diseases still shortened lives. Women did not have the vote and, despite the lessons of the Civil War, blacks were still segregated. It was the age of imperialism and the domination of Europe, with the United States just emerging as a world power. Horses were extensively used in the fields and for local transport. Small tools were turned by hand and farm implements were powered by horses. Steam power drove the factories, the locomotives, and the ships. Electricity and fossil fuels were beginning to be used as sources of power. In this work I have chosen to view the Fair in the context of its time, rather than making comparisons with our lives today. By illustrating the book with the colorful trade cards actually given out at the Fair, I hope to capture the excitement of that distant time.

    In order to avoid the repeated use of The World’s Columbian Exposition in the text, I have mostly referred to it simply as the Fair.

    1. EIGHTEEN NINETY-THREE

    During the summer of 1893, Katharine Lee Bates, an instructor of English at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, journeyed from Boston to visit the Midwest and the Fair on her way to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. She was so moved by the prairies, the mountains, the new cities, and the optimism of the people, that she wrote her poem America the Beautiful. This universally loved hymn and America’s second anthem mentions the Fair in the line Thine alabaster cities gleam and begins with the following lines:

    O beautiful for spacious skies,

    For amber waves of grain,

    For purple mountain majesties

    Above the fruited plain!

    America! America!

    God shed His grace on thee

    And crown thy good with brotherhood

    From sea to shining sea!

    Grover Cleveland’s Two Terms

    On March 4, 1893, Stephen Grover Cleveland, standing before Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller, took the oath of office to serve as the 24th president of the United States. His vice president was Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. In the presidential election the year before, Cleveland beat his rival by receiving 46.1 percent of the popular vote against Benjamin Harrison’s 43 percent. (The People’s and Prohibition Parties took the remaining votes.) Cleveland received 277 electoral votes to Harrison’s 145.

    In his inaugural address Cleveland promised to dedicate himself to the service of the people. He spoke of the pride of Americans in the growth and expansion of our country and its robust health. He warned against corruption, excessive spending, and the waste of public funds. He spoke in favor of a strong and stable currency and against the powerful business interests that demanded protection, while stifling competition through secret price-fixing. The people are better served, Cleveland said, through tariff reform and the benefit of cheapness which usually results from wholesale competition.

    Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. He served separate terms from 1885–1889 and again from 1893–1897. Cleveland officially opened the World’s Columbian Exposition on May 1, 1893. The Panic of 1893 began soon after the Fair opened.

    Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18, 1837, the fifth of nine children born to a poor Presbyterian minister. Reverend Cleveland later took his family to Fayetteville and Clinton in central New York state, where he ministered until his death when Grover was 16 years old. Young Cleveland moved to New York City, where he worked briefly as a teacher at the Institute for the Blind. He traveled west to Buffalo in search of opportunity and found work as a clerk in a law office, earning $4 a week. He never attended college but was able and ambitious. Within two years he completed his clerkship and was admitted to the bar, with a salary of $1,000 a year. Cleveland quickly made a name for himself in Buffalo. At age 26 he was chosen assistant district attorney for Erie County and seven years later was elected sheriff. At age 44 he was elected mayor of Buffalo and showed a steely resolve against pork-barrel spending and corruption.

    From mayor of Buffalo, Big Steve Cleveland moved up to governor of New York. In the 1884 presidential election, the corpulent Cleveland was chosen to run as the Democratic Party presidential candidate against the Republican Party’s James G. Blaine. In a closely-fought election, involving the then 38 states in the Union, Cleveland won the popular vote by a mere 29,214 out of the 10,055,539 votes cast, but handily won the electoral college by 219 votes to 182. At age 47, Grover Cleveland became the 22nd president of the United States on a platform of tariff reduction and controlled spending.

    In the 1888 election he was up against the business interests backing the Republican nominee, Benjamin Harrison. High tariffs advocated by Republican administrations were aimed at protecting American industry against imports and had become the major source of revenue for the government (Morris 1979). Cleveland favored a reduction in tariff barriers, arguing that reliance on high duties reduced competition and kept prices high. Cleveland won the popular vote (48.6 percent against 47.9 percent) but, having lost the key states of New York and Indiana, he was defeated in the electoral college vote (Cleveland received 168 to Harrison’s 233). In the 1892 election the major parties again fielded Cleveland and Harrison. This time, the Republican Party’s advocacy of high tariffs and support for temperance alienated working people who turned back to the Democratic Party. Cleveland was the only president ever to serve two non-consecutive terms.

    Frances Clara Folsom was the daughter of Grover Cleveland’s law partner in Buffalo, New York. Cleveland watched over her after her father died. Despite an age difference of 27 years, the 48-year-old president married the 21-year-old Folsom in the White House. A popular First Lady, she bore him three children. Five years after Cleveland died, Frances married Thomas J. Preston Jr., a professor of archeology at Princeton. She survived Grover Cleveland by nearly 40 years.

    During 1893 America showed the world its great strengths and also its weaknesses. On May 1, 1893, within weeks of his inauguration, President Cleveland officially opened the World’s Columbian Exposition, where the United States displayed its economic prowess to the world. Almost simultaneously the nation entered its worst depression. During the financial Panic of 1893 and its aftermath, hundreds of banks and railroad companies and thousands of businesses failed. The New York Stock Exchange plunged and European investors began to withdraw their funds. Unemployment soon reached 18 percent and the national mood changed from optimism to despair. The depression would continue until 1897.

    What Caused the Panic of 1893?

    The seeds of the Panic of 1893 had been planted years before. Since the end of the Civil War the U.S. economy was growing at breakneck speed. The railroads crossed from east to west and were expanding to the south. Cotton, wheat, and grains were grown on thousands of farms and vast herds of cattle, sheep, and hogs were raised. The factories owned by Cyrus McCormick, John Deere, William Deering, and many others were making farm machinery, allowing the farmer and members of his family to do work that before mechanization had taken many more hands. The industries that started in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states were following the population flow to the center of the country. Only the South still remained largely rural and agricultural. Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born son of a hand loom worker, built his vast steel plants near Pittsburgh, and John D. Rockefeller, once a humble Cleveland bookkeeper, cornered the oil market with his Standard Oil Company. Most of this rapid growth was financed with borrowed money raised in Britain and Germany.

    At the start of the 19th century, nearly three quarters of the labor force was engaged in agriculture. As the cities grew, more and more people found work in the factories and by 1890 only 40 percent of all workers were still on the farm. By the 1890s the nation possessed 4.5 million farms and 350,000 industrial firms employing nearly five million workers. American factories were producing all kinds of goods as the nation became less dependent on imports. The Midwest was a vast field of corn and wheat, and further west, enormous herds of cattle roamed the plains. Machinery was bought with money borrowed at 8–9 percent interest. The widespread use of up-to-date machinery made farms and factories highly productive, leading to massive overproduction in the face of fierce competition. Between 1870 and 1890, the production of wheat and corn and manufactured goods doubled and far outstripped population growth. The factory owners reacted by cutting workers’ hours and wages, and the heavily indebted farmers were unable to meet their obligations.

    In the summer of 1892 the workers at the Homestead Steel Works, seven miles southeast of Pittsburgh, went on strike to protest a 20 percent reduction in wages. The Homestead Works were part of Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire. Carnegie was traveling in Europe at the time and left the plant in the hands of his general manager Henry C. Frick. Fiercely anti-union, Frick closed the plant on June 30, locked out the workers, and proceeded to hire non-union men in their place. The company employed 300 men from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (essentially a private militia), to protect the strikebreakers. In the ensuing fight several detectives and strikers were killed and many others injured. The Pennsylvania National Guard was mobilized to restore order, but emotions still ran high. The union was defeated in the Homestead Steel battle. Many of the workers were evicted from their homes and were permanently blacklisted. It took another 40 years before labor activism returned to the steel industry. Another source of worker dissatisfaction was the use of convict labor on farms and in mines. In August 1892, miners whose hours and wages had been cut attacked the convicts brought in to replace them. Several people were killed and again the national guard was called in to restrain the workers.

    With agriculture and business in decline, the railroads were carrying less freight. Farmers were caught between their debts and a glut in the market. Because of low prices, some farmers took to burning their corn for heat. On February 20, 1893, the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company, with debts exceeding $125 million, went into bankruptcy. On May 4, the National Cordage Company—a group of ropemakers and a darling of Wall Street—collapsed. The next day, the New York Stock Exchange went into a steep decline and panic gripped America. United States Rubber fell from 46 to 25, Western Union from 101 to 67, and General Electric from 36 1/2 to 12 1/8.

    The U.S. government adhered to the gold standard, whereby it pledged to redeem paper money for gold, on demand. With the federal government and many industries and individuals deep in debt, people lost confidence in paper currency and demanded gold. Government reserves of over $100 million worth of gold was deemed safe, but by 1893 the reserves fell below that amount, causing unease. Bad news fed on itself and led to a panic, with gold reserves falling below $60 million. Caught up in the general panic, the banks started to recall loans and refused to issue new credit. People rushed to the banks to withdraw their savings and investors from abroad abruptly withdrew their gold and silver holdings from the United States. All this occurred at a time when the government did not guarantee bank deposits. The ensuing bankruptcies of many banks, businesses, and railroad companies put a brake on the economy and left millions of people without work.

    Murders and Trials in the News

    The Massachusetts town of Fall River was named for its short river, which plunges 132 feet over the course of half a mile. This fall generated the water power to run the town’s early textile mills and iron works. With the coming of steam, the town’s large mills were built fronting the harbor and the river lost its importance as a source of power. In the annals of the textile industry, the story of Fall River is less well known than Lowell and Lawrence along the Merrimack River. After the Civil War, Fall River outproduced other Massachusetts towns in textile manufacture and was known as Spindle City. By the close of the 19th century its population reached 100,000. Members of the Borden and Durfee families, who had lived in Fall River for generations, became mill owners and were among the town’s leading citizens.

    One such man was Andrew Jackson Borden, who owned property and was on the board of several of the town’s banks. He lived with his second wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, in a comfortable house at 92 Second Street. Also living in the household were Andrew Borden’s spinster daughters Lizzie and Emma, and the family’s maid Bridget (Maggie) Sullivan. The 26-year-old Maggie had emigrated from Ireland in 1886 and worked for the Borden family for four years.

    Thursday, August 4, 1892, was a stiflingly hot day and the 70-year-old Andrew Borden was lying down on the living room sofa, still wearing his heavy morning coat. His wife Abby was in the upstairs guest room. Maggie, the maid, was in her attic room, resting from the heat. At about 11:00 in the morning Lizzie Borden screamed out: Maggie, come down. Father’s dead. Somebody’s come in and killed him. Andrew Borden, still lying on the sofa, had been killed by 11 strokes from a sharp hatchet that left him with a crushed skull. Upstairs, the same hatchet was used to kill his wife Abby, with 19 blows to her head.

    The axe murders of the elderly Bordens of Fall River received immense media attention across the nation. Suspicion fell on 32-year-old Lizzie, a quiet and reserved Sunday school teacher. From then on Lizzie was immortalized in the ditty:

    Lizzie Borden took an axe,

    And gave her mother forty whacks,

    And when she saw what she had done,

    She gave her father forty-one.

    The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murders of her father and stepmother was set for June 5, 1893, and lasted 14 days. Andrew Jennings, one of Fall River’s leading lawyers, ably represented Lizzie. The jury deliberated for just over one hour and returned with a verdict of not guilty. Despite this, the citizens of Fall River ostracized Lizzie. She remained in town and died there in 1927 at age 67. She left her estate to various charities, especially for animal care. Songs, books, plays, and even operas have been written about Lizzie Borden and the hatchet murders in Fall River. The identity of the murderer still remains a mystery. The city of Fall River has long since lost a textile industry that once employed 30,000 workers, but the cruel ditty about Lizzie Borden passes on from one generation to the next.

    There was little in the early life of Herman Webster Mudgett to suggest that he would go down in history as a man of cunning and evil and America’s first serial killer. His ancestor Samuel Mudgett was born in England and settled in Salisbury, Massachusetts, around 1640. Other Mudgetts settled in New Hampshire and New York. In 1761 Benjamin Mudgett and his wife moved to Gilmanton, New Hampshire to take possession of a land grant. His brother John soon followed him. Mrs. Benjamin Mudgett was the first white woman to settle in the town and her son Samuel, born in 1764, was the first white male child born in Gilmanton. Most of the settlers developed farms nearby and Gilmanton soon acquired a charming New England feel with its village green surrounded by several churches. In the year 1794, the Gilmanton Academy was chartered, with Peter Folsom, a graduate of Dartmouth College, as its first principal. Here the boys of the community were educated. The presence of iron ore and good water power gave rise to the Gilmanton Iron Works. In 1868, a shoe factory opened in the town.

    It was in this historic community that Herman Webster Mudgett was born on May 16, 1860. He was a quiet boy who spent much time reading in his room. He attended the Gilmanton Academy and after graduation worked locally as a teacher. He set his sights on becoming a physician and, at age 22, enrolled in the University of Michigan. After graduating and moving from city to city looking for a place to establish a medical practice, he arrived in Chicago in 1886. Here he took on a new name and presented himself as Dr. H. H. Holmes. Using his charm and cunning, he took over a pharmacy store in Englewood, Illinois close to the site of the planned World’s Columbian Exposition. Across the street he designed and built what seemed to be an ordinary three-story apartment building, telling people that he expected to make his fortune renting rooms to visitors attending the Fair. The ominous building had a number of rooms with windows that could not be opened from the inside. These rooms were soundproofed and fitted with gas-pipes, with the controls in Dr. Holmes’s own quarters. Also in these rooms, trap doors and chutes led to the basement, where Mudgett installed a dissecting table and a tank containing acid. Mudgett fired workmen after a week or two on the job, so no one but him knew the full story about the secret rooms, trap doors, and the basement.

    Over the course of several years, and in particular during the time of the Fair, people known to Dr. Holmes disappeared. They included the owner of the drug store, various

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