56 'Nww YoEK AT THE "World's Columbian Exposition. 



West in the great food staples, by adapting themselves to the demands of 

 domestic markets that the State has within its own borders. There was 

 a time, which some of us may live to see again, when the wheat and corn- 

 fields of New York yielded a good living to those who cultivated them. 

 But for the last quarter of a century it has been up-hill work for grain 

 farms in New York to make both ends meet. Among the lessons which 

 the department of agriculture at this grelit exposition can yield to those 

 who bring any intelligence to the study ot what it will have to show, not 

 the least valuable will be that which demonstrates in how many ways 

 much of the soil of New York can be made to give a better return for the 

 labor bestowed on it than it does now. 



The rock formation of the State is a complete epitome of that of the 

 whole country below the coal measures, and its geological exhibit will be, 

 perhaps, the most striking of any which will be seen in the Hall of Mines. 

 New York has the only fluid saline deposit in America, and the salt 

 crystals of Herkimer county will make an appropriate centerpiece for the 

 mineral exhibit of the State. We have iron and lead, granite and marble, 

 slate, gypsum and marl, to place in the commercial category of our 

 mineral resources, and one of the best equipped State museums in the 

 country, from which to draw specimens of scientific interest. The forest 

 prodv^cts of the State will be shown as they have never been before. 

 Short as has been the time available for the preparation of these char- 

 acteristic exhibits of the material greatness of the State, they will be 

 found to show no marks of haste and to be above the reproach of 

 scantiness. 



Representing ten per cent of the population of the United States, six- 

 teen per cent of the assessed valuation of their property, and probably 

 twenty per cent of their actual wealth. New York may be fairly expected 

 to have in the great buildings before us, commercial exhibits worthy of 

 her place in the Union. When the doors of the World's Columbian 

 Exposition are thrown open next May, this expectation will be found to 

 be fully verified. The number of her individual exhibitors is likely to 

 exceed 2,000, and the range of the products which they will show is as 

 broad as the industries of the United States. In New York city we have 

 the greatest manufacturing community in the country ; and if the circle 

 be enlarged so as to include the wide area of the metropolitan district, we 

 have, within a radius of twelve miles from the City Hall of New York, an 

 aggregation of productive effort which for variety and value can hardly 

 be matched in the world. This will have its due representation in the 

 appropriate departments here, and though the contributions of this great 

 hive of industry cannot be grouped together according to their place of 



