Memories of the World's Fair. 



Standing in the middle of this great building, surrounded 

 by over sixteen acres of transportation exhibits, dating from 

 the age of oxen, donkeys, camels, and canoes, up to the palatial 

 trains and vessels of today, the contrast is so great that one 

 stands awed and cannot help but speculate on what will be the 

 result of this onward march in another hundred years. 



Some very sharp contrasts can be drawn if we go back 

 no further than the "World's Fair" at Chicago. At that time 

 there was not an automobile on exhibit. At St. Louis there is 

 a first-class automobile service all over the city and on the 

 grounds. In one of the aisles of the transportation building 

 there is an auto for family touring, fitted up as luxuriously 

 as a Pullman car. It carries a forty-horsepower engine and can 

 make a speed of forty miles an hour on good roads. The loco- 

 motive that was the pride of the transportation building at 

 Chicago, and the fastest in America at that time, is now pulling 

 a suburban milk train. As I stood admiring the "Big Four" 

 engine in the center of the building at St. Louis, I could not 

 help but wonder if the same fate would befall it in the next 

 ten years. Who can tell? 



Perhaps in another decade the steam engine will be super- 

 ceded by the electric locomotive. Ten years ago they were 

 hardly known. Today the Baltimore & Ohio are using several 

 electric locomotives weighing 165 tons each. Nearly all the 

 big railroads are using them for hauling passenger trains 

 through long tunnels. 



Another noticeable development at St. Louis, in contrast 

 with Chicago, is the introduction of steel in the manufacture of 

 cars. If there was a steel car at Chicago, I failed to see it. 

 At St. Louis the only wood freight cars on exhibition are the 

 refrigerator cars. 



These are only a few of the lessons of advancement taught 

 in this one exhibit. 



Not only is this true in the matter of transportation, but 

 in every walk of life the same lesson is taught, as we proceed 

 from building to building. 



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