Kansas was settled during the conflict over slavery but, on January 29, 1861, with a population of a little over 100,000, it was admitted into the Union as a free state. Three months later the Civil War officially began and fighting continued with a vengeance. At the end of the war settlers in covered wagons arrived to take up land. By 1890 the state’s largely rural population reached 1,428,108 but its towns were small. In that year the population of its capital, Topeka, was 31,000 and Wichita had only 24,000. The state was served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway companies. With uneven rainfall, particularly in the west, Kansas experienced an economic depression during the 1890s. Still, the legislature was determined to make a creditable showing at the World’s Fair and allocated $100,000 to build a pavilion and display its agricultural and mineral wealth. The pavilion was festooned with the grain, grasses, and fruits that grew in the state. These decorations covered the walls and much of the floor space. The Wyandotte Country Exhibit displayed deer, hogs, and turkeys, all fashioned from grain and grasses. Around a doorway was a message made from grain that said “Kansas has plenty of room for those seeking homes.” A model of the Santa Fe railroad was fashioned from corn and grass. In the center of a room stood a pagoda of grain, and in another stood a pyramid of grain and grasses. Even the ceiling showed a pastoral scene of a farmer plowing his fields as settlers in wagons passed nearby. The state university exhibit displayed the buffalo, deer, and wolves that once roamed the prairies. The Kansas exhibit in the Horticultural Building displayed a veritable mountain of bottled jellies, prepared by the ladies clubs of the state. In the Agricultural Building were still more corn, wheat, and oats grown in Kansas. In 1892, the corn crop exceeded 138 million bushels. Lumber, dairy products, livestock, cotton, and minerals completed the Kansas exhibit (Kansas at the World’s Fair 1893).
The young Pacific states were as eager as the old Eastern states to display their abundance and their potential. With industry far less developed than in the Northeast or the Midwest, the promise of California, Oregon, and Washington lay in their waters, forests, fertile lands, and minerals. The vast state of California, with nearly 156,000 square miles of land and a population in 1890 of only 1,213,398, displayed its fruits and wines. There were exhibits of olive oil, towers of marmalade jars, pyramids of raisins, oranges, dried fruits, and walnuts, and California redwoods. The Territory of Washington was established on March 2, 1853, and statehood was achieved on November 11, 1889. Known as “The Evergreen State,” Washington is larger than all the New England states combined. At the time of the Fair, the population of the state reached 400,000 and its largest city, Seattle, had grown to 50,000. The state of Washington was served by eight railroads, with the journey from Chicago to Seattle taking 80 hours. The state was blessed with snow-capped mountains including Mt. Ranier at 14,141 feet, Mt. Baker at 10,856 feet, and Mt. St. Helena at 9,750 feet. Puget Sound, with its numerous bays and inlets, could accommodate the largest ocean liners. The waters were teeming with salmon, halibut, cod, perch, and herring. Its temperate climate and fertile soil allowed pears, apples, cherries, berries of various sorts, vegetables, and grain to grow in abundance. Billed as a sportsman’s paradise, Washington had plentiful wild duck, elk, deer, mink, raccoons, weasels, grisly bear, and mountain sheep. Coal, iron ore, copper, lead, marble, and sandstone were dug from its mines and quarries. There were 470 saw mills employing 5,000 men. In 1892, furniture, casket making, ship building, farming, and fishing were Washington’s major industries (Hestwood 1893).
Company Pavilions
Chase & Sanborn was chosen as the principal purveyor of the coffee served in the restaurants and coffee shops at the Fair as well as in the company’s own pavilion. America’s love of the bean began after the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when the colonists refused to drink British tea and turned instead to coffee grown in Central and South America. One of the early American coffee roasting companies was started in Boston by Caleb Chase and James Sanborn. Chase & Sanborn coffees did well into the first half of the 20th century, helped by heavy advertising. From 1931 to 1933, the Chase & Sanborn Radio Hour featured the singer Eddie Cantor of “Making Whoopee” and “If You Knew Suzie” fame. Eddie Cantor was followed by Amateur Hour, and then the talking puppet Charlie McCarthy, extolling the virtues of Chase & Sanborn coffees.
The W. F. McLaughlin coffee company, on La Salle Street in Chicago, issued a series of colorful trade cards showing some of the exotically dressed “tribal” people along the Midway Plaisance. One card shows Busherin warriors brandishing their swords. Another shows a group of Javanese with head scarves, baggy pants, and sandals; and a third card shows South Sea tribesmen naked to the waist and spears in hand, standing outside their hut. In 1926, the son of the founder, Harvard-educated Frederic McLaughlin, used part of the family coffee fortune to buy an ice hockey franchise. Rather than build a team from scratch, he bought the Portland Rosebuds of the failing Western Hockey League and moved the team to Chicago. Frederic’s wife designed the uniforms for the team. Renamed the Black Hawks, his team won the Stanley Cup in 1934 and again in 1938. The Chicago Black Hawks played in the Chicago Coliseum until 1929 when the games were moved to the Chicago Stadium, which had over 14,000 seats and was the world’s largest indoor sports arena at the time. In the 1990s the Chicago Stadium was replaced and the Black Hawks became the Blackhawks. The team has outlasted the coffee company that brought it to Chicago.
Walter Baker & Company’s free-standing pavilion lay in the shadow of the U.S. Government Building. One of the most revered names in American foods, the Boston company had its start in 1764 when Dr. James Baker learned how to convert bitter cocoa into sweet-tasting chocolate. America’s first chocolate factory passed from father to son until it came under the leadership of Walter, who used his own name to identify the company. In 1881 the company acquired its chocolate girl trademark—La Belle Chocolatiere. She was Anna Baltauf, painted in 1760 by Jean-Étienne Liotard. The beautiful Anna worked in a chocolate shop where she was first seen by a dashing Austrian prince who asked to marry her. The original painting hangs in the Dresden Art Museum. Walter Baker was but one of several chocolate and cocoa companies selling their products at the Fair. The Dutch company Van Houten & Zoon, the French Chocolat Menier, and the German Stollwerck all had eye-catching exhibits. Jean Antione-Brutus Menier made medications but was troubled by the bitter taste of his mixtures and added chocolate for sweetness. Their success convinced Menier and his sons to shift from medicines to chocolate making. They bought a mill in Noisiel to grind the cocoa imported from their own plantations in South America. Menier-owned ships carried the raw cocoa and sugar to France for processing. In the United States the company had branch offices in New York and Chicago. In 1892—just in time for the World’s Fair—Menier launched its chocolate bar wrapped in foil. The Chocolat Menier Pavilion at the Fair sold specialty chocolates and bon-bons.
Mermod & Jaccard Jewelry Company showed the French heritage of St. Louis, Missouri.
Stollwerck erected a 38-foot temple, built in the renaissance style, made of 30,000 pounds of chocolate and supported by a wooden frame. At the center of the temple was a statue of Germania, 10 feet high and carved from 2,200 pounds of chocolate. The pedestal was decorated with reliefs of the German emperors William I, William II, and Frederick III, along with one of the paladins of Charlemagne, chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and field marshal Hellmuth von Moltke. The six columns of the chocolate temple were crowned by flying eagles and the dome was decorated with the imperial crown of Germany—all done in chocolate.
Venice & Murano brought 30 of its skilled workers from Italy to demonstrate glassmaking in its pavilion on the Midway Plaisance.
The Libbey Glass Company pavilion was cleverly sited on the busy Midway Plaisance, next door to the Electric Theater. The company, first known as The New England Glass Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was established in 1818. By the 1850s New England Glass employed over 500 workers and was
one of the largest glass works in the world. In the 1880s, the owner Edward D. Libbey reacted to worker unrest by closing his factory and moving the company from Massachusetts to Toledo, Ohio. In addition to cut-glass manufacture, Libbey made the light bulbs for General Electric. Libbey gambled $250,000 to build a model glass plant at the Fair. The imposing Libbey Glass Pavilion featured demonstrations by skilled craftsmen engaged in glass blowing and glass-cutting. Over two million people paid 10¢ apiece to view the demonstrations and buy souvenirs. The exhibition greatly increased the visibility and profitability of the Toledobased glass company.
Glassblowing in Venice, Italy, dates back to ancient times, but in the 13th century the work was moved to the island of Murano because of the danger of fire. The Venice & Murano Company was established in 1866 to carry forward the great tradition of Italian glass making. The company won prizes at the London fair of 1888 and at Paris in 1889 for its mosaics and glassware. The Venice & Murano Pavilion at Chicago was built in the Italo-Gothic style, across the street from Libbey Glass. The company brought 30 artisans to Chicago to demonstrate their skills and make objects for sale. It cost 25¢ per person to view a demonstration, but the money was refunded following the purchase of a vase, glass plate, paper weight, or figurine.
Cannons and Guns
Facing Lake Michigan and sited between the Agricultural Building and the Shoe & Leather Building was the Krupp Pavilion. The alabaster building, in the design of a feudal castle, housed 16 of Friedrich Alfred Krupp’s monster cannons. The largest, known as “The Thunderer,” was 87 feet long, 17 feet wide, and weighed 250,000 pounds. The big gun fired one-ton projectiles capable of hitting targets 15 miles away, while the smaller guns could fire 19 shots per minute. The Krupp family started in the steel business early in the 19th century, and Frederich’s father moved into armaments and became known as the Cannon King. In 1893 the company employed over 25,000 workers and had its own iron ore and coal mines. The Krupp cannons were carried by rail from Essen to Hamburg, where great cranes hoisted them on board steam ships. The cannons were shipped to Baltimore, where special flat railroad cars carried them to Chicago for installation in the Krupp Pavilion. Frederich Krupp spent $1 million to stage his gun exhibit, hoping to find customers in the New World. Major General John McAllister Schofield, who saw action in the Civil War and was later commander of the U.S. Army, declared that the Krupp cannons were “the greatest peacemakers in the world” and advised the U.S. army to buy them as a deterrent to war (Truman 1893).19
With no powerful enemies or any desire for a worldwide empire, the United States military was small in comparison to the bellicose Europeans. Still, American guns and rifles had pacified the Indians and decimated the vast herds of buffalo that once roamed the prairies. The ready availability of small firearms and public support for “the right to bear arms” encouraged lawlessness in the cities, provoking a powerful response from the police as well as Pinkerton’s detective agency. The Scottish-born Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) immigrated to the United States as a young man and in 1849 was appointed a detective in Chicago. Sensing the opportunities open to a private venture, he formed the Pinkerton National Detective Agency with the slogan “We Never Sleep.” Pinkerton specialized in tracking down outlaws and bank robbers, and provided security to prominent men, including President Abraham Lincoln. The Pinkerton agency evolved into a private militia hired by industrialists to break strikes, including the Homestead strike in 1892, in which three detectives and seven strikers were killed and many others wounded.
Numerous gun companies were established in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Eli Whitney, a graduate of Yale, is best known as the inventor of the cotton gin that revolutionized the Southern cotton industry. But in 1798 he returned to Connecticut and established a musket-making factory. In 1816 Eliphalet Remington built his first gun at his father’s forge at Ilion Gulch, New York. Twenty years later, he started making revolvers in a factory near the falls of the Passaic River at Paterson, New Jersey. Remington guns, decorated with elegant mother-ofpearl handles, were especially popular with frontiersmen. Massachusetts and Connecticut gun makers such as Oliver Winchester, John M. Marlin, Forearm & Wadsworth, Harrington & Richardson, Iver Johnson, and J. Stevens entered the market to satisfy America’s insatiable appetite for small arms. In Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1852, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson formed a partnership and soon police departments across the nation adopted the Smith & Wesson gun. Many of the American gun makers, as well as competitors from England and Germany, were represented at the Fair. Smith & Wesson teamed up with Tiffany to fashion expensive revolvers with elaborate niello work and encrusted with lapis lazuli and turquoise (Blades & Loring 2006). The great Chicago-based catalog companies Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward extensively advertised revolvers and shotguns made by the Northeast manufacturers. These catalog companies sold Harrington & Richardson and Iver Johnson revolvers for $4 to $8 each, Smith & Wesson military and police revolvers at $12 to $15 each, and Remington and Winchester repeating rifles at $12 to $17 each (Sears, Roebuck catalog 1900).
13. EXHIBITING NATIONS
Over 50 foreign countries and colonies were represented at the 1893 Fair. The European countries included Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Russia. Several of the British colonies, including Canada, New South Wales, Cape Province, British Guyana, and India were represented. Asian countries at the Fair included Japan, China, Korea, Java (now Indonesia), Siam (now Thailand), Malay (now Malaysia), and Persia (now Iran). South and Central American nations included the Argentine, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Among the Caribbean participants were Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and San Domingo. All these countries made a determined effort to display to the American public their goods, history, and culture. The foreign exhibits, some big and some small, were located in the various exhibition halls and in the freestanding national pavilions. Great sums of money were spent by various countries to bring to Chicago the best of their products. Great Britain and its colonies took the largest exhibition space (500,000 square feet), followed by Germany and France (each with 250,000 square feet), Austria (150,000 square feet), Belgium (120,000 square feet), and Russia (100,000 square feet). Hawaii, not yet an American protectorate, also was present at the Fair. The strength of America lay in standardization, mass-production, and high tariff barriers, making it difficult for outsiders to compete in the mass market. The foreign goods on display were characterized by high quality of craftsmanship, a dash of history, and association with royalty, to attract the interest of the American carriage trade. Advanced machinery from Germany, Britain, and France was also prominently displayed.
Great Britain and its Colonies
In March 1891, the American ambassador to Great Britain, Robert Todd Lincoln, met with the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, to formally invite the British to participate in the World’s Columbian Exposition. Ambassador Lincoln, born in 1843 in Springfield, Illinois, was the eldest child of Abraham Lincoln, the future president of the United States. Robert was educated at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire and at Harvard College. He left Harvard Law School following the assassination of his father to take care of his mother and siblings. After serving as the American ambassador to Great Britain, he moved to Chicago to become president of the Pullman Palace Car Company.
The British government established a Royal Commission under the leadership of Sir Richard Webster to organize a strong presence in Chicago, similar to the British section at the Paris exposition of 1889. Webster was educated at the Charterhouse school before entering Trinity College, Cambridge. Like his father he became a lawyer. At age 41 he was appointed attorney general and was later elected to the House of Commons. Sir Richard set up working committees in the fine arts, agriculture, mines, engineering, electricity, transportation, and general manufacturing. The membership of these committees reads like a who’s-who
of the British establishment. Sir Frederick Leighton, president of the Royal Academy, headed the Fine Arts committee. The Duke of Westminster was chairman of the agricultural committee, Sir Henry Doulton (of Royal Doulton Potteries) chairman of the general manufacturers committee, and Sir Douglas Galton was appointed chairman of the transportation committee. Sir Richard appointed a committee to plan the participation of the British colonies at the Fair. Canada was allocated 100,000 square feet of exhibition space and New South Wales 50,000 square feet. The Cape Colony, Ceylon, British Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad each hosted smaller exhibits. The British government filled 315,727 square feet at Jackson Park with British exhibits. The British section in the Manufactures Building occupied 100,000 square feet, Machinery 40,000 square feet, Transportation 54,000 square feet, and Fine Arts 20,000 square feet. For services to the crown, Sir Richard Webster was elevated to the office of lord chief justice with a seat in the House of Lords as the first Viscount Alverstone.
America at the Fair Page 21