the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. 
3 
briefly to the method adopted by the Centennial Commission 
with regard to awards and the work of the Judges, which differed 
in some important particulars from that pursued at any previous 
exhibition, and appears to me to possess valuable advantages. 
Hitherto the awards have been made by an international jury, 
which at Vienna amounted, I believe, to GOO members, chosen 
from the various countries generally, on the basis of the relative 
space occupied by each. This grand jury was divided into 
numerous small juries, who examined the products, prepared 
lists of such as were deemed worthy of award, and such were 
confirmed or rejected by higher juries. The awards consisted 
of medals of different values. Such an arrangement was con- 
sidered by the Centennial Commission defective for the following 
reasons : — Countries nearest to the Exhibition occupying large 
spaces had the larger proportion of jurors, whereas countries 
occupying less space were not so well represented, in many cases 
having no juror at all. Written reports were not usually made, 
and if made were not published, so that, save by the nature of the 
medal, no one outside the jury was informed for what particular 
merit the awards were made. To quote the words of a Report 
on the subject from the Hon. N. Beckwith, Commissioner from 
New York : — " Medals at best are enigmas. They express 
nothing exactly and definitely relative to the products exhibited ; 
their allegorical designs doubtless have a meaning in the mind 
of the artist who makes them, but allegorical designs are 
primitive and feeble language, and the medal of to-day is no 
more than its predecessor, a school-boy token. Verdicts upon 
products determined by majority of votes of juries in which 
the producing countries are often represented by useless mi- 
norities — awards based upon anonymous reports, or reports 
never published, and final decisions announced and recorded 
in the vague and mystic language of medals, have not proved 
satisfactory to producers or the public. As regards the diffusion 
of reliable and useful information, International Exhibitions 
have not come fully up to expectations and to the promise 
implied in the great labour and great expenses which they 
involve ; and the wide-spread dissatisfaction which has uni- 
formly followed the close of Jury-work, affords in itself strong 
evidence that the system is not well adapted to the purposes of 
International Exhibitions." 
At Philadelphia the work was entrusted to 250 Judges, half 
foreign. The latter were selected by their own Governments as 
specially qualified to deal with particular departments. The 
judges were not empowered to make awards, which was done by 
the Centennial Commission ; but they were required to report 
in writing on such exhibits as they deemed worthy, giving all 
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