1502 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
your indorsement of March 1, requesting me to furnish an estimate of the cost of 
placing, caring for, and return of such an exhibit as should, in my judgment, be made 
by the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum at the World’s Fair at Chicago 
in 1892. 
I wish to preface what I have to say with the remark that the estimates for space 
and cost have been carefully made by experts who have participated in all of the 
great expositions of the past sixteen years. The Smithsonian Museum is the one 
bureau of the Government whose special function is that of exhibition, and its officers 
are prepared to say with great exactness what can be done with any specified sum. 
The estimates have not been made with a view to possible reduction, but represent 
the minimum sum with which a display suitable for the place and occasion can be 
prepared within the time of opening. 
I wish also to call attention to the fact that in the fourteen years which have 
elapsed since the Philadelphia Exhibition the standards of exhibition work have 
completely changed, and the display of the Government Departments at Philadel- 
phia, which was admirable for the time and thoroughly satisfactory to all visitors, 
would fall far below the expectations of the present. 
As amore specific illustration of my meaning, I will cite the Fisheries Exposition 
in 1880, which excited so much admiration abroad as to form a kind of epoch in the 
history of such undertakings. I am assured by the gentlemen in charge of that dis- 
play—and to whom its exceptional success was mainly due—that in the London 
Exhibition of 1883, after a lapse of only three years, the standard of what was 
expected to be reached had been so raised that had the United States repeated the 
display (which was so unrivaled in Berlin) it would not have stood higher than 
tenth among the competing national exhibits on that occasion. 
The standard of excellence has recently been still further advanced by the Paris 
Exposition of 1889, for which the resources of the French Government and the 
ingenuity and talent of the people were severely taxed during a five years’ period of 
preparation. 
Past experience seems therefore inapplicable to present circumstances, and I can 
only say that in view of the limited time and the great expectations which are enter- 
tained in connection with the Chicago Exhibition, the expense must of necessity be 
greater than on similar occasions in the past. 
In 1876 there was practically no National Museum, and the display made at that 
time by the Smithsonian Institution, covering about 25,000 square feet of floor space, 
was of a kind which most of the visitors had never seen. In 1892, when the national 
collections in Washington cover about 125,000 square feet, and are sufficiently exten- 
sive to require the immediate addition of at least 105,000 additional square feet, it 
would seem that the area required in a great international exhibition should be at 
least three times as much as in 1876, and that the cost of preparation would be pro- 
portionately greater in relation to the floor space occupied. 
That this must necessarily be so is indicated by our experience at the Cincinnati 
Exhibition, where the proportionate cost was $6.25 per foot, while at Philadelphia it 
was approximately $3.75. 
Keeping these things in mind, and also the undoubted fact that the time for prepa- 
ration will be, at most, inadequately brief, I feel that I must name a sum out of pro- 
portion to previous expenditures in earlier and smaller Government expositions. The 
insuring of a successful exhibit on the part of the Smithsonian Institution has not 
been considered in making our estimates so much as the desire for a reasonable guar- 
anty against failure. 
I note with much satisfaction that the resolution of the House committee does not 
by its wording indicate a disposition to prevent the acquisition of new specimens by 
purchase and otherwise. In 1876 a large amount of material was obtained, which, 
after exhibition in Philadelphia, was returned to Washington, becoming the perma- 
ee 
