PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 71 



occasion — being called on immediately after hearing read that resolution 

 in my behalf in connection with a movement which was started without 

 any effort on my part, among my fellow commissioners at Buffalo, in 

 favor of my selection in St. Louis for the position of Chief of the Horti- 

 cultural Department. I was given to understand in St. Louis last week 

 that there is no reason why I shouldn't have that position if the people 

 at home wanted me. They recognized California as the leading horti- 

 cultural State, and that our horticulturists are advanced in their pur- 

 suit, and they believed that some advantage might accrue to their 

 great enterprise by distributing their executive officers to the different 

 parts of the country. I will say that they are planning to make the 

 St. Louis Exposition one of the largest ever held in the world. To give 

 you an idea, there was about $10,000,000 expended at the last exposi- 

 tion in Paris in construction, and nearly $9,000,000 for the same pur- 

 pose at Buffalo, and at the Columbian Exposition in 1893 $18,000,000 

 was spent in construction, and St. Louis contemplates an expenditure 

 of $30,000,000 in construction. The World's Fair at Chicago occupied 

 between six and seven hundred acres, and St. Louis has set aside about 

 twelve hundred acres. They believe confidently that California will be 

 there in some shape, and they feel that we are awake to the fact that 

 we are handicapped for the reason that our Legislature does not meet 

 until the January before the openiDg of their exposition in April. 

 They depend upon the ingenuity of the Californian to overcome this 

 difficulty. You will be surprised when I tell you that our work at 

 Buffalo was accomplished, good or bad, as you may judge it, for con- 

 siderably less than $10,000. Missouri, with its exhibit right opposite 

 us, and with $75,000 behind them, looked over at our show and said, 

 " Well, you Californians always have lots of money." But we never 

 told them how little we had. There were a great many things that 

 worked to the deteriment of the Exposition at Buffalo; if I should 

 undertake to give you even a synopsis of them it would be tedious. 

 There was one instance of exceeding sadness: It was the assassination of 

 our noble President at the hands of a cowardly villain. It did seem to 

 some of us people on the ground that to some extent the Buffalo Expo- 

 sition, in spite of all its grandeur and magnificence of structure, was for 

 some reason hoodooed. 



I was the first exhibitor to begin work in the Horticultural Building, 

 and worked almost day and night in order to be ready to open on the 1st 

 of May, and yet, on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of April it snowed con- 

 tinuously. Eighteen inches of snow lay on our roof, and when it began 

 to thaw and slide off to the dome of our beautiful building it hit on the 

 glass, and when I went out on Sunday morning, the day before we were 

 to open, I found ice and fruit and glass and snow all tumbled into a 

 pile twenty-five feet high. That was discouraging. But believing, as 



