Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1893 — HOW THE FAIR GROWS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOW THE FAIR GROWS.

EVERY DAY ADDS TO ITS SCOPE AND INTEREST. Compared with This, All Previous International Exhibitions Will Seem but Puny, Including the Recent One In Paris— Scenes In Jackson Park. The “White City.” Chicago correspondence: “All Bonds Lead to the World’s Fair" is the striking headline In a Chicago newspaper, .and while the statement may appear rather sweeping at first, the careful observer will admit, upon reflection, that it is not such an exaggeration as it may seem, for it is certain that there never was an international exposition in which such widespread interest was manifested. This winter has been a severe one at the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition, and the intense cold has at times seriously impeded the progress of the work. However, everything is being provided with all possible haste, and to those who haven’t visited Jackson Park since the winter of ’9l the present scene of bustle and activity will be found to differ strangely from the panorama to be witnessed at that time. The Fair was younger then. There were then $12,000,00(1 still to be expended. Contractors smiled and workmen saw before them a long season of rewarded labor. Then the great floors were laid or laying, with here and there a joist standing in thet:wiad. To-day the snowclad domes sit as,client about the island as sat the Indians at council on these prairies a century ago. For six months , the contours of the thirteen large houses have been visible. But only lately has the hamlet of villas for the States come upon the scene. How do they look? Like any residence part of a smart town, saving the awe

you may feel in hearing that New York is to live here instead of John Doe. If we were to enter this village in the north end of Jackson Park not knowing it to be “the United States,” we would say the art palace in the center must be the Court House, and we would say New York must be the banker of the town, Massachusetts the leading merchant and California the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. It is very pleasant and proper to stop at every doorstep and ask who lives there—Wisconsin or Indiana? And the workmen seem as glad to tellus. Now, in what other town would it be dignified to do a thing like that? The houses of the States are of all forms and colors, but none are more than stopping places —meeting places for friends. California, New York and Massachusetts, as has been intimated, have the best sites and make a good appearance. We have not included Illinois in these remarks because the Illinois building must be reckoned as one of the main buildings of the great Fair, and not the least commanding.' Six of the halls have domes —the Administration, the Agricultural, the Horticultural, the Government, the Art and the Illinois. The Art Palace is praised highly, because it is an lonic temple, with a dome on it, and it looks uncommonly well from the south; but the Fisheries, into whose tanks the water was recently let, has won everybody’s praise for its originality and fitness. Whether we should liken it to three

Chinese pagodas, with the central one twice as large as the lateral ones, and the three fixed in a curving line of beauty—whether or not that gives to the reader any near idea of the composite structure of the Fisheries —he must decide when he comes; but certainly a pagoda is not so graceful in Its lines and ornaments as is each of the Fishery pavilions. Midway Plaisance is a very wide lane, now stockaded, which leads from Washington Park to the Fair grounds. This Midway plaisance is to be filled with all the allurements of this wicked world. Woe to the spiritual young man who shall (take his sweetheart on his arm and, starting at Washington Park for , Gie fair, shall attempt to go on past the Dahomey, the Indian, Chinese, Moorish, Turkish villages, the great street in Cairo, the captive balloon, the cyclorama ot the Alps and the volcano of Hawaii, the Roman house, the Dutch settlement, the Japanese bazaar, the menagerie, all the glass blowers, and the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral! Indeed, had he not better mount the sliding railway and shoot past this whole mile of costly, incomparable temptation? A source of great wonderment to persons visiting the World’s Fair grounds during this cold weather is the elaborate heating apparatus employed to maintain a uniform temperature of 60 degrees in the inammoth Horticultural Building. The transition from cold and snow and icicles to genial warmth and tropical plants exotics never fails to give

rise to a novel sensation on the part of the visitor. The steam for preserving the lives of the valuable plants in the Horticultural Building is furnished by three boilers of 150 horse-power each, which consume twenty tons of coal per day, and are in charge of six firemen and three engineers, divided into three shifts of eight hours each. The pressure maintained is uniformly fifty pounds to the square inch. There is an elaborate arrangement of engines and fans, by means of which the heat is distributed throughout every portion of the building night and day. Machinery Hall, the slowest of the main structures, has lately donned its exterior finish and becomes a vast and striking spectacle. But for the nearness of the colossal Manufactures Building, Machinery Hall would pass for a marvel among capacious buildings. It has three parallel rows of steel arches, and this, with its towers and portals, presents perhaps a more complex interior than any other of the great halls, for they usually have but one room—there is but one room in the Mines, the Transportation, the Electricity, the Manufactures and the Government. The Agricultural has a most agreeable interior, broken with a cross-like upper hall of skylights. We may fancy the joy with which our farmers, shutting away the sights of the north —the music, soda water, swans, gondolas and jinrikshas of city life —will plunge into the joys of fat vegetables, heroic grains and sleek beasts that will await all comers south of the Agricultural. Spread over this floor, nearly 800 leet wealth. The stock pavilions arc pretty and far away. The city will praise diem vociferously—at a distance. The farmer will praise the art gallery at the same range. A farmer visited Chicago last week. He was taken past all of the 128 structures that go to make the Exposition. He was led to the Masonic Temple and

told that 72,000 persons rode in the elesquare, or 640,000 square feet, and southward outside for half a mile will be such an agricultural fair as the world has never before seen, for the world has never before asked the Mississippi Valley to make a presentation of its native

vators October 20, 1892. He was shown where, fifteen stories up the botanist fell out of the elevator. The farmer was lifted the full twenty-one stories, until Ossa became like a wart. He then viewed the glory of Chicago—but he said never a word. As he mounted the train to return home he was asked. “Did you see anything wonderful in Chicago?" and then he admitted that one thing had startled him, and what, readers, was it? The size of a pumpkin he had passed in front of a restaurant on Madisoa street! Certainly we may believe it was a Masonic temple among pumpkins! These agriculturists, “the great plain people of the West, ” will all hurry to see Chief Buchanan and Chief Cottrell, of the Live Stock. The space allotted them is ample, and hundreds of thousands of spectators can there pass the day without being even seen north of the great screen which runs from Machinery Hall east to the Agricultural, screfening Venice from the mud lagoons. It will be the largest fair of history. Compared with it the Paris Exposition of K-89 could not be put in midway plaisance. The large building at Philadelphia was as long as our "big one, but only half as wide, and out of our 128 structures two others are to be measured only by the acre, machinery hall alone having 780,000 square feet of lower floor. From the forestry to the Eskimos is one mile and three-fifths; from the forestry to the Dahomey village is two miles and a fifth—these figures by th«

map. The island itself is two-fifths of a mile long. Suppose you have only a day and tarry ten minutes to see thii phonograph or this Jacquard loom, you Will see comparatively nothing. Linen was first made in England by Flemish weavers in 1368.

MAIN ENTRANCE, MANUFACTURES BUILDING.

DOME OF THE MISSOURI BUILDING.

INDUSTRIAL COURT, MINES AND MINING BUILDING.

STRANGE PLANTS FROM AUSTRALIA