It was the only high point in an otherwise inauspicious start. People who had traveled to Paris expecting an extravaganza were bitterly disappointed. “Imagine if you will an exhibition which exhibits absolutely nothing, an exposition which exposes naught but the incompetency of its management,” the Los Angeles Times’s George Grantham Bain reported. “Conceive a lot of buildings magnificently planned and in part finely executed, solemnly, and formally opened to the public, which enters them to the number of 180,000 in one day, to find only scaffolding, rubbish, plaster, dirt, dust, and half-finished showcases.” And it was not a cheap place to be. “The French people have reduced the business of squeezing the last penny from a pleasure seeker to a science.”8
The Exposition Universelle eventually hit full stride and became a massive affair. It was so large, in fact, that few realized that Paris was simultaneously hosting the second modern Olympic Games, most of which were conducted in front of empty stands. The Exposition ultimately drew some 30,000 exhibitors from France, followed by 6,600 from the United States, 2,500 from Belgium, 2,000 each from Germany and Italy, and another 1,500 from Russia. That the United States, though separated from the expo by an ocean, sent the second-highest number of exhibitors indicated how much significance American industrialists and businessmen put on the event, much to Porter’s satisfaction. While there would be food and music and exotica, the Exposition Universelle was, at heart, an international trade show, and the Americans were there to try to crack open European markets. The US Congress had budgeted nearly $1.4 million to help underwrite the nation’s exhibits. The feckless Ferdinand W. Peck of Chicago, son of a wealthy real estate developer and a philanthropist in his own right, was named head of the American delegation, largely based on his role as a vice president and fundraiser of the Chicago World’s Fair. His hubris and lack of tact (he was a no-show when Loubet, the French president, made a scheduled tour of the American pavilion) became a source of continual embarrassment to Porter and other Paris-based Americans.
The American footprint spread across the exposition grounds. A building to house the forest-products exhibition was created in Chicago and shipped in pieces for final construction. Individual exhibits, including one to display different methods of cooking corn, were designed and created and shipped over to take their places in the various halls. The main US pavilion, a domed octagon on the riverfront, dismissed by one critic as looking like “a bleached interpretation of a Roman pantheon,” went up on the Left Bank just west of the Invalides bridge, between pavilions for the declining empires of Austria and Turkey. The American pavilion was set up as something like a hospitality suite for businessmen, with stenographers on standby and supplies of typewriters, American newspapers (the New York Times published a special Paris edition for the duration of the exposition), and daily stock updates. At night, the space was given over to lavish receptions and parties, all designed to facilitate business deals.
In an era of jingoism, there was nationalist pride to display as well. Over the previous decades, fine arts had played increasingly important roles in the world’s fairs, with medals and other honors making or breaking artistic careers. In an effort to push American artists, the American jury selecting the US entries was based in New York City instead of Paris (which had selected mostly Paris-based American artists for the 1889 exposition). This time the cream of domestic artists—many of whom had studied in Paris at some point—were selected to exhibit, including James Whistler, Winslow Homer, and John Sargent.
Ambassador Porter was the face of America in Paris, and the embassy played host to a revolving door of American dignitaries and business leaders, many of whom knew Porter from his role at Pullman, his work within the Republican Party, and his years moving among New York City’s moneyed circles. Some demands were a bit odd: one woman asked embassy officials to store her sealskin coat, and another asked for space for her trunks. The embassy also served as the safety net for unfortunate tourists who ran out of money, were robbed, or faced other crises while in the country. “Shortage of money was, of course, a very common reason to appeal to the Ambassador,” Elsie Porter wrote in her biography of her father. “Some of these unfortunates confessed to a night on Montmartre and in consequence the disappearance of all their worldly goods.” Others were simple scam artists, including non-Americans who showed up with “the stars and stripes in their buttonholes and who spoke broken English.” Some were young Americans who had budgeted too little or spent all their cash to get to Paris, planning to find temporary jobs to finance their stays and eventual trips home—jobs that didn’t materialize.9
Elsie, for one, was unimpressed with the exposition. “My impression is that, for the people who had never travelled, or for engineers and manufacturers, the Exposition filled its special function. For a person who had travelled and seen all the exhibits in their own country and surroundings and who was not interested in manufacture or engineering or boats, it was not a very interesting show. The buildings on the whole were in wretched taste and many of the exhibits very cheap. Everything was over-crowded and rather poorly done.” She was particularly displeased with the “disgrace” of the American pavilion, which she said paled in comparison with “the beautiful English Tudor house and the Belgian Gothic building, a copy of the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp…. But ours—oh dear, how it made my blood boil. The inside was a large rotunda with galleries all around and draped in American flags. On the ground floor was a Post Office, at the back was a large sitting room with some plain oak furniture.”
The dedication of the US pavilion was put off until early May, when the building was ready. Peck and other leaders of the American delegation decided to invite the entire diplomatic corps—and, it seems, anyone else who was interested—to the ceremony. It was so crowded that many key guests, including speakers such as Porter, couldn’t get to the main door, which remained closed and locked as the throng grew. Porter extricated himself from the mess out front and went around to the rear where a guard, not recognizing the ambassador, refused to let him in. Another official already inside spotted Porter arguing with the guard and intervened. The plan had been for the speakers to be in place before the doors opened, and there was a lengthy delay before everyone was ready. “The doors were opened and every straggling American climbed in,” Elsie wrote. “They got all around us, so that I was nearly stifled. They stood on seats and chairs, so that there was no chance of getting out, and it was a very warm day. The only refreshing thing was Sousa’s band.”
John Philip Sousa, in fact, was one of the highlights of the exposition. His band performed at a wide range of pavilions and evening concerts, filling the expo grounds with his driving marches. American artists also grabbed attention, with awards going to works by Whistler, Homer, Sargent, and others. In some ways, the Exposition Universelle marked a transition in the art world. Among the attendees was nineteen-year-old Pablo Picasso, who finagled a press pass through the Spanish journal Catalunya Artistica and arrived in Paris in late October, just before it closed, to write about the extravaganza (though he apparently never published any articles). He also had his first painting to be exhibited outside Spain hanging in the Spanish section of the Grand Palais exhibit, a piece called Last Moments that was singled out by reviewer Charles Ponsonailhe as representative of the new wave of painters coming out of Barcelona.10
A Parisian crowd overwhelms the American pavilion at the Exposition Universelle 1900.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Horace Porter Collection, Manuscript Division
Overall the Exposition Universelle was light on innovations; there was no new Eiffel Tower or Ferris wheel. It was the first world’s fair in which automobiles were featured prominently, on the eve of their transformation of the world. An elevated, wooden, three-speed moving walkway carried attendees around the interior edge of the Left Bank exhibition areas. The entire grounds were illuminated by electric lights, also a first. (Chicago had been only partially lit.) So the displays were mostly innovations on pre-
existing ideas, a focus on doing what was already known faster, larger, and better. American industrial and commercial products fared well. Of nearly 2,000 medals awarded to American products and exhibitors, 220 were grand prizes in their categories, 486 were gold, 583 were silver, and 422 were bronze. Each award carried with it marketing potential and bragging rights; some Campbell’s soup varieties still bear a copy of the medal its three-year-old product won that year.11
In the end, the Exposition Universelle didn’t live up to French expectations. Some fifty million people attended, setting a record that still stands, but this was a full ten million people fewer than anticipated and budgeted for. Private businesses and vendors lost money, particularly restaurants that had paid high fees and endured high overhead costs in their temporary locations. They badgered the French government for rebates based on the unmet attendance promises, and eventually received partial settlements. For months after the fair closed, the shells of abandoned or bankrupt exhibits dotted the grounds; these were slowly eviscerated by scavengers before finally being razed. Still, the Exposition Universelle did what the organizers had hoped: it buffed up the French image internationally, spurred the economy in the short term, and was viewed as a success, even if it didn’t meet expectations.
Porter, though, must have been happy to see the last of the Americans leave.
In the fall of 1898, Garret Hobart, a friend of Porter’s and a well-known and well-liked New Jersey politician, began having trouble catching his breath. Then he developed a steady and tight pain across his chest. He talked with his doctors, who diagnosed myocarditis—an infection and inflammation of the heart tissue. While the exact treatments the doctors prescribed are unknown, they apparently had some effect, and Hobart began feeling better. But only for a time. He was, in fact, gravely ill, and despite several rallies, his condition deteriorated over the ensuing months, exacerbated by a bout of influenza that winter, work stress in the spring, and an ill-advised strenuous travel schedule in the summer of 1899.
By fall, a year after he first began feeling poorly, Hobart was effectively confined to his house and bed in Paterson, New Jersey. He had a large public following, and periodic updates about his health showed up in the nation’s press. The articles offered few details, but Hobart’s wife noticed that every time he read about his own illness he seemed to get worse. So she limited public updates to trends—that he’d had a good night or a bad night, he was feeling strong, or was resting quietly. But Hobart was, without a doubt and despite the best hopes of his family and friends, dying.
And that posed a problem, for Hobart was also the vice president of the United States. And his boss, President McKinley, was expected to run for reelection in the fall of 1900. Discussions began about what the Republicans should do. At first, it was quiet talk framed in general terms of having a backup plan in case Hobart’s health precluded him from running again.
In late October, the vice president’s health failed rapidly, and he nearly died on Halloween night. The next day his family announced that while he was not resigning, Hobart had, in effect, retired from duty and would not return to Washington. Three weeks later, Hobart, surrounded by his family, died. “The saddest news I have received since I left home was the announcement of this death,” Porter wrote in a private letter to Secretary of State Hay. “Hobart and I for many years were personal, club, and political friends, and the news came to me with a touch of sadness that was akin to the sorrow of a personal bereavement.”12
By the time Hobart died, the jockeying to succeed him was already in full fury. To balance out the national ticket and mollify powerful political bosses, the expectation was that whoever replaced Hobart would be a New Yorker and would have the support of McKinley’s political enemy, Thomas Platt, the New York political boss.
Ambassador Porter’s name came up in several places as a potential candidate. And his candidacy made sense. As a New Yorker, he would bring balance to the ticket. He had a decorated military record in the Civil War and was a living connection to President Grant, still a revered figure despite his scandal-scarred years in the White House. A tactful and polished orator, Porter also had significant connections with New York’s financial powers, which he had tapped with such efficiency for McKinley’s first presidential campaign. And he had developed a good reputation for his diplomatic work in France.
But Porter was not a Platt man. And, even more significantly, Porter wasn’t interested, which he told any reporter who raised the question. While such denials are often more show than substance, it seems likely Porter was sincere. If the political battles that would have come with a cabinet position had dissuaded him from going to Washington in McKinley’s first term, it seems unlikely that the stresses and pressures of a national campaign would have appealed to him the second time around.
Regardless, an offer never came. McKinley contemplated a few other men, such as war secretary Elihu Root and treasury secretary Cornelius Bliss, both friends of Porter, but McKinley either changed his mind or was turned down. (Bliss backed out after failing to get support from Platt, now a senator from New York.) After months of dithering, and fearing he’d be tarnished by an intramural Republican squabble if he made a selection, McKinley ultimately left the call to the attendees of the 1900 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. And the rank-and-file of the party already had their man: Theodore Roosevelt, who had won a two-year term as New York’s governor in November 1898, just weeks after returning to civilian life from the war in Cuba.
Born on the cusp of the Civil War, in October 1858, Roosevelt was not even forty-two years old, but he was one of the best-known political figures in the country and something of a leader in a generational shift in politics. McKinley and most of his contemporaries—including Porter—had fought in the Civil War. Roosevelt was at the vanguard of the generation that came after, men for whom the Civil War was at most a childhood memory. An author and historian of some note, he had entered politics as a New York State assemblyman in 1881, quickly earning a reputation as a reformer and an enemy of Tammany Hall and other political machines, including that of fellow Republican Platt. Roosevelt quit politics for a while after he was on the losing side of a floor fight during the 1884 Republican convention that made former Maine senator James G. Blaine the party’s presidential candidate. (Blaine lost the November election to Democrat Grover Cleveland.) Roosevelt fled to the Dakota Badlands to be a rancher for a couple of years before returning to the East. He lost a bid for mayor of New York City but was later appointed police commissioner and began cementing his reputation as a reformer by ferreting out corruption, adding to the bad blood with Platt and his cronies. Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy under McKinley, a job he quit to go to war in Cuba. Back in New York, he won the governor’s office and by the summer of 1900 was a respected author, celebrated war hero, and political reformer, which made him something of a populist political celebrity and a natural addition to the list of potential McKinley running mates.13
Yet McKinley—and Mark Hanna, McKinley’s political guru—didn’t like Roosevelt, either personally or politically. McKinley was at heart a conservative man; by contrast, Roosevelt was propelled by an overpowering personality. And at first, Roosevelt didn’t want the post. He had his eyes set on the White House in 1904 and feared that serving as McKinley’s understudy would put him out of the public eye and force him to defer to McKinley’s policies rather than stake out his own public positions. Roosevelt figured he would have a better chance in 1904 if he stayed in Albany as governor, giving him a high-profile platform from which he could reach a national audience. But Platt’s friends, who feared Roosevelt’s reform agenda, wanted the former Rough Rider out of Albany. Thus, so did Platt. “I want to get rid of the bastard,” Platt confided to a political friend. “I don’t want him raising hell in my state any longer. I want to bury him.” Ultimately, Roosevelt came around to the idea of the vice presidency and allowed himself to be drafted on the floor of the convention.14
Given the distance and his role as ambassador, Porter stayed out of the race, though he was champing at the bit in Paris amid the hustle and bustle of the exposition. “One of the greatest disappointments that I ever experienced was not being able to leave my post here at such an important period and go home to take part in the electoral campaign, the first one in which I have not participated in thirty years,” he wrote to McKinley in a private post-election letter. “I felt like a hound struggling in the leash, and the homesickness from which we all suffer over here was largely increased every time I read of the activity that was taking place at ‘the front.’”16
The Admiral and the Ambassador Page 20