The New York herald., 1875-12-20
spain at tha Centennial.


The journals from Madrid announce that
Francisco Lopez Fabra has been appointed
Royal Commissioner to the Centennial Ex-
hibition in Philadelphia, and would sail from
Liverpool for New York early in the present
month
To the newspaper press Of the United
States his selection has especial interest, for
he was the founder and is the manager of
the Fabra Agency in Madrid for the collec-
tiop and distribution of news. Since his
royal appointment the number of those pro-
posing to exhibit Spanish products in Phila-
delphia has suddenly and enormously in
creased. His popularity among the rich
manufacturers and farmers of Catalonia and
Valencia rests largely upon the intelligence
and activity with which at the Vienna Exhi-
bition he assisted the Commissioner Emilio
de Santos.
There are facts in the official report of the
awards made at Vienna to different nations
for excellence in agriculture which are cal
culated to arrest the attention of those who
associate the Spanish peasant with an ignor-
ant worker in exhausted fields, untaught in
the use of modern machinery, uninstructed
in the application of steam to the cultivation
of the soil, trudging stupidity behind plough
made after the pattern of the primitive agri-
culture of Rome.
1t will be remembered that the year of the
Vienna Exhibition was one of the darkest
and most distressing in the annals of the
unrelenting civil strife of Spain. There was
insurrection in far-off Cuba; the Carlists
occupied the best portions of Northern and
Northeastern Spain; Communism and Can
tonalism in Malaga Cartagena and Cadiz
kept the then republican government at
bay, and the capital had little communica-
ton with the outside world, excepting by
the short strip of the Mediterranean from
Castellon to Alicante. One wonders how,
out of such trials of war, she sent to Vienna
either exhibits or exhibitors of peace. In
deed, her exhibitors in some departments
were so few in the number actually present
in Vienna that she was not, under
the rules, entitled to q juryman, and
this may at least. be taken as evil
dence that there was not intrigue or un-
due 1nuuenc0 III Qer DenalI. anu yeJ OuJ
of this blood and fire in the Peninsula 800
exhibitors attested by their exhibits the Vi
tality of the Spanish race under long years
of most calamitous adversely, of which /, ,149
were rewarded by prizes, and Of these 8
were of the highest grade, 113 were medals
for progress, 365 were medals for merit,
p were medals for fine arts, for good
taste, 43 for co-operators and Sc diplomas
of merit. The United States, on the other
hand had but 643 exhibitors, and received
only $40 prizes.
The awards at Vienna placed Spain in the
fourth national rank rs to agriculture, and
this, in comparison with the seventh rank,
which she held at Paris in 1867, makes ap-
parent her real progress in that which, no
doubt, is the secret of the vitality and endur-
ance during the foreign or civil wars from
which she has scarcely had interruption
since the beginning of the present century.
As matter of interest at this moment, in re-
lation to the coming Centennial we give the
following tabular statement of the awards
at Vienna to each nation in the agricultural
department.