Repoet of Boaed of General Managers. 145 



Chicago has surpassed herself. But that, fellow-citizens, is precisely what 

 has not been done. This fair is simply Chicago's energy and daring, 

 transferring into beauty the strength of the great republic. Os jar Wilde 

 is reported to have said that the most beautiful constructions in this 

 country are our bridges, suggesting the thought that the lines of the 

 greatest strength are the lines of the greatest beauty. What can be more 

 beautiful, for instance, than the outlines of the everlasting hills, whether 

 one sees them in the dreamy mists of a nummer morning, or sharp cut 

 like a cameo, against the sunset sky of autumn ? Can anything be more 

 graceful than every leap of Niagara ? Go into the Transportation Build- 

 ing and study the development of the locomotive. At first the effort was 

 to secure power only; but power being attained, grace and beauty went 

 with its increase hand in hand, until at last the most modern locomotive, 

 like the most modern ocean steamer, is a thing of beauty as a prodigy as 

 well as a prodigy of power. It is Chicago's glory that she perceived the 

 truth, so that without yielding the impresfivenes of size as an evidence of 

 power, she has yet succeeded in showing her power best by expressing it 

 in beauty. 



There has always seemed to me to be a peculiar fitness in having this 

 Columbian fair held in an inland city. No one who knows New Y< rk 

 will doubt for a moment that New York would have shown herself 

 splendidly equal to the emergency had the country's honor in this matter 

 been intrusted to her keeping. But it means more to have the demon- 

 stration given that such a fair as this can be successfully held a thousand 

 miles from the sea. I venture little in saying that such a thing would not 

 have been possible in any other stage of the world's history. The sea is 

 but the highway of the nations, and rivers have been their thoroughfares 

 until within a period hardly longer than fifty years. It is a curious fact 

 that while man's natural habitation is the land and not the water, it has 

 always, until our own day, been easier for him to move long distances and 

 to transport heavy weights by water than upon the land. The city of 

 New York, indeed, through one of its conspicuous citizens, De Witt Clin- 

 ton, by urging to completion the Erie canal, gave the first great impulse 

 to the westward movement of population that resulted in the founding of 

 Chicago. I pause a moment to point out how natural a gift that was from 

 a city that had been New Amsterdam, the daughter of Holland, the land 

 of canals. But another day was soon to dawn. When Commodore Van- 

 derbilt acquired control of the New York Central and the Hudson River 

 railroads, he was asked what he meant to do with them. His reply was 

 that he meant to dry up the Erie canal and drive every vessel off the 

 Hudson river. He did not literally mean that, of course, but in those words 

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