People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1894 — PLOT TO BURN THE FAIR. [ARTICLE]

PLOT TO BURN THE FAIR.

The Illinois Building at Jackson Park Partly Destroyed. Chicago, Feb. 20. —Another of the too frequent world’s fair fires broke out Sunday afternoon in the east wing of the Illinois state building. It was undoubtedly of incendiary origin but prompt response on the part of the fire department prevented its doing damage to any great extent The loss on the building is nominal, the structure having been sold to contractors for -$1,650. Joseph liallak, a fireman, fell 80 feet from the northwest corner of the building, but escaped with slight injuries. No one could say definitely how the fire was started, but all of the officials of the fire department and the guard were satisfied that it was incendiary, and that it was part of an organized plan to bum all the fair buildings. CoL Edmund Rice, commandant of the Columbian guard, said the incendiary business had gone to far. “It isn’t a haphazard tramp outbreak,” he said, “as some people seem to thu(ik. These fires are all planned and carried out systematically If we get an alarm from one part of the ground we are almost sure to have Alarms from different places at a distance from each other. If I was guessing, though, J should say it is some man or men with a malicious determination to destroy property just for the sake of destruction, just as these people throw bombs f*.r the sake of injuring somebody.” It is the belief of many that the peristyle, collonnade and Agricultural building were fired by malicious men.