Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1893 — Distance at the Fair. [ARTICLE]

Distance at the Fair.

To see all that is to be seen and improve ail the Qpportnnrtes it offers will be no summer days’s task. One who goes to Chicago expecting to to take in these wonders in a day or two, or a week, will go away regretting that which he must of necessity leave unseen. A month would not exhaust its interest. Perhaps it may be thought this is an overstatement. A few facts and figures will show that it\is not. Jackson Park, in which the Exj>osition is held has a frontage on Lake Michigan of miles, and contains 533 acres, 77 o! which are water. The Midway Plaisance is a mile long and 600 feet wide, and contains eighty ceres more. There are thirty-nine Exposition buildings proper, with a floor space of 159 acres. Adding the galleries there 199.7 acres. Grouped around there are forty four State and Territorial buildings, eighteen buildings erected by foreign governments, and forty others for minor purposes of the management, restaurants and advertising wares and enterprises. In the Midway Plaisance are the foreign villages, shops, etc. The visitor who would merely take a passing look at each of the vast array of exhibits must prepare to walk along. 124 miles of aisles. Add to this the distance from one building to another, which must of necessity be traveled many times, and the distances to be covered will reach

fully 150 miles. During this little jaunt he will have seen exhibits valued at $100,000,000, and brought frem every corner of the globe. To bring them together, erect the buildings and run the exposition has already expended ’518,000,000, the States and Territories about $5,000,000 and fifty foreign nations, with thirty-seven colonies, about $7,000,000. The cost to individual exhibitors hail from every country of North, Central and South America and of Europe, while from India, Bunnah, Siam, China, Japan, Persia, tha Pacific islands, Australia, Tasmania, Egypt, Turkey, and even the strange lands of dark, if not “darkest” Africa, have come peoples, aliens to us in all that makes up our religion and civilization.