Massachusetts of Today: A Memorial of the State, Historical and Biographical, Issued for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Massachusetts of Today: A Memorial of the State, Historical and Biographical, Issued for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago

It would, of course, be idle to deny that personal gain and a desire to open up new markets for articles of merchandise, serve in a very large degree as stimulants to the individual exhibitor. This admission, while, perhaps, ' a seeming contradiction of the preceding statement, is, in fact, but a confirmation of its very truth; for, mingled with the business aspect of what might be called the commercial side of these exhibits will be found that pride of national or State prosperity which in very many cases is the sole inducement to the exhibitor to expend his money and take upon himself additional burdens.

Again, were it not either for this commercial desire to extend one's business or for local pride, there could never be such gatherings of the product of men's brains and hands, and these great opportunities of studying the story of the earth's progress would be lost to mankind. For it is on such occasions that the careful student is enabled, through an intelligent comparison of each exposition with its predecessor, to clearly mark every milestone in the advance which the world as a whole is making, and to acquaint himself with the development of any especial com munity or given industry. To a degree, this bringing together of the handiwork and brainwork of the nations of the globe serves the same purposes as do the statistics of our census bureau, which, while enabling us to look back and study the nature of our development, also serve to give us a new point of departure from which we must still earnestly strive to advance. Hence, it is the bounden duty of each nation as well as of those many individual parts which go to make up the whole, to aid in every possible way in making an international exposition a pro nounced success.

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