The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-11-17
WHATLL CHICAGO SAY!
AsTOR's CAUsTIC RETORT TO FAR
WELLS WORLDS FAIR LITTER.

Cheap "Morsgaged Palaces" the Ref
| u9e of Outcests, Anarchists, Default
ers, and the Only Place Where the
American Flag Could be Kissed
With Impunity-It's a Big Country
air That Chicago Wants - Why
New York Should be Preferred for
the Site.
.(Copyriohted)
NEW YORK, Nov. lG.-The apex of the
worlds fair controversy seems to be
reached in the rejoinder by Hon. William
Waldorf Astor of New York TO the recent
letter of Senator Charles B. Farwell Of
Illinois, claiming Chicago as the proper
site for the fair Mr.. Astor's reply, which
will appear in the December issue Of the
Cosmopolitan Magazine, and which our
correspondent has secured exclusively in
advance by the special permission of the
editor, is exceedingly caustic, and is cal
culated to attract widespread attention.
| He says:
TIE pages occupied by Senator Farwell
ar more than half taken uP with illustra-
tions of streets and parks and monuments,
and, Of the text, the greater portion is
culled from the note books of travellers and
writer's, for which, since he adopts them,
he is responsible equally with any part of
his argument Less than one-quarter is
covered by his own words-as though he
had found difficulty in employing his pen
to divert momentous and historic celebra-
ton from the metropolis of America to a
provincial city. Those of his sentences
which are not borrowed embody three
propositions in support OF the claims Of
| Chicago:
First, that it is easy of access to farm
ers.
Second, that it is the choice Of lumber
men, iron men and machinists.
Third. that several previous exhibitions
having been held in the east and south, it is
now the turn of the west.
His argument reveals the scope of the
celebration he has in view. and marks it as
a national, and not an international, exhi-
bition. He thinks the first and last consid-
GRAFTON should be the convenience of our
western population.
he proceeds to fasten upon his concep-
ton of the Columbus fair a distinctively
| agricultural character. 1t is the interest of
the stock-breeders that chiefly appeals to
him. The solemnity of the senator's dis
course is relieved by the incidental face
tiousness Of the declaration that an eastern
man should visit Chicago annually, to be
| iasm.n
If the senator will turn from the map of
| Illinois to the map OF the United States, he
will observe that New York is the point
from which all lines radiate. New York is
the point of contact between America and
the nations of the earth. 1t stands in the
| gateway between the new world and the
| old. 1t Is the place to which three-fourthS
| of cur commerce is drawn, to which the
traveller visiting this hemisphere directs his
! course, and which in the thoughts and
writings Of foreign communties be they
| high or low degree, stands as the type and
center and head of everything pre-
emineltly American.
| The senator from Illinois differs, how
ever, with the majority, and quotes a state
| ment that Chicago is the one purely and
distinctively American city on this CONT
nent." In what, then, does it differ from
otherss How is Chicago more distinctively
American than st. Louis? SeVentY-five
years ago the site of Chicago was q wilder
ness as silent as Manhattan Island when
Hudson first beheld it, Like San Francisco,
It's wealth came in few years of sudden
| prosperity. Like Boston, it rose superbly
from its ashes. Like all the rest of us, its
| splendor is Of recent growth--more recent,
indeed, than that of any other.
The senator further advances the archi-
tectural magnificence of Chicago's private
residences as a logical reason for placing
| the great exhibition within their aureole
| Chicago is "the London OF America DOS
sessing metropolitan imperialism" and
worthy of the designation of "the young
| giant of the prairies." Its houses, he de-
clares, are palaces We know them
well, those palaces, all of which were built
with borrowed money, and most OF which,
| to-day, are mortgaged from cornerstone to
skylight. We know them we'll, those
palaces, where every sign of wealth
abounds, and where the front door is
opened by housemaid. We know them
we'll, those palaces, whose occupants are
"all out on the doorsteps," as they used to
sit in New York, seventy years ago, when
our 'palaces" were built on 25-foot-front-
lots, and when social life was primitive in
| the extreme.
| We, in New York, conceive the signifi-
canoe of this exhibition to be something
| higher than lumber, iron and live stock.
We aim to make it an historic examplar of
the last four centuries-to illustrate what
has been achieved in civilization since the
! discovery of America. And as that dis
covery led on to still vaster explorations, to
| the Horn and TO the Cape route. and
throug all Chinese walls of Asatic intoler-
ance, and northward toward the frozen
pole, and southwark across the forests of
Africa, so would we bring to this exhibit
| tlOH, ny all TOuCeS ana from The remOteSr
barbarisn as from the most accomplished
civilization, the distinctive and character
istic feature of each.
If the Columbus exhibition be merely an
ordinary display of products and manufact-
ures, it will fail of that suggestive mean
ing from which 1t should derive its pro-
foundest import. Its grandest purpose, and
one far beyond mere material prosperity.
should be to mark the progress made in the
civilization of all mankind since the discoy-
cry of this continent to the present day. In
that year, 1899, we should gauge the human
intellect by its achievements of the last four
hundred years. This exhibition
should display the advance made by
every country in the chief spheres
of thought and labor that have
liberated and instructed and ennobled the
human race. 1t should compare the
fifteenth with the nineteenth CO fury. 1t
should contrast the impotent mechanisms
of the past with the marvels of beauty and
power and delicacy of the present. 1t
should station, in view of the mighty
steamships that cross and recross the ocean,
the caravel Of medieval Italy, the galleon
of ancient Spain, the pinnace of Raleigh,
the half moon yacht of Hendrick Hudson.
1t should place beside the pictured mssals
of monkish cloisters the printing press, that
distributes each days news from every part
of the world. Beside the postchaise OF
Franklin's day, which carried the mails in
SIX weeks from Boston to Philadelphia