Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-02-22
WHY HE FAYORs WASHINGTON.
Representative Wilson's Eloquent Ad-
dress on the Worlds Fair Bill.

| THE BROAD LINES on WHICH THE EXPOSITION Is
| PLANSED-r WILL BE AN EXPONENT OF
MODERN crvILrzArToN-TaE SPIRIT OF POLL
TICS AND PARTIsANsHrP EXERCISED.
When TIE Stars report Of the House closed
yesterday Mr.. Wilson of West Virginia was
speaking in favor Of holding the national cele-
bation of the discovery of America at the
| national capital
| He said: The choice of site for the expo
| sition of 1892 should be governed by the char
acter We propose to give to the exposition It
self. At intervals during the past fourteen
years we have had a series of centennials which
| have commemorated, each at its appropriate
place and each with its appropriate exercises,
the chief steps in the founding of the republic.
The past history of any people is largely the
strength and the true wealth Of that people,
and these successive celebrations have had an
| influence for good that it is scarcely possible to
overrate. Coming soon after the close OF
| gigantic civil war; when the feeling OF sec
tIonal hostility still ranked in the hearts OF the
combatants, they were especially timely and
wholesome. because they turned both sides
| from nursing their arrangement to the rever-
ent and enthusiastic celebration of deeds and
| of men whose glory and whose achievements
| were the common and the equal inheritance of
all. They restored as nothing else could have
restored, the just historic perspective, and.
happily recalling the immense contribution OF
| the yanqushed states to the fabric of our
freedom, they tempered and chastened the
pride Of the one section while they rcklndled
the national patriotism and exalted the sense
of citizenship Of the other.
IT is FOR MANKIND.
The event we now propose to celebrate is Of
! different order. 1t il in no sense our own
peculiar or national possession. We share the
glories that cluster about it and the beneficent
influences that flow from it with all the nations
OF the new world and with some of the nations
| of the old world. 1t is not an epoch in the his
tory of the United States, it is not an epoch in
the history of America, it is great and unsur-
passed epoch in the history of mankind. No
nation has as vet attempted to celebrate so cap
ital an event in human history as this. 1t de-
mands, therefore, either that We shall pass it
by III decent silence or that We shall observe it
In a manner and upon a scale commensurate
with Its historic dignity. -
We do not rise to that dignity, MIR. Speaker.
III we seek to give to the commercial idea the
sole or the chief prominence. The greatest
things which the new world offers to the old
are not the things that we see; not our teeming
population, swarming from sea to sea; not our
agriculture or commerce or manufactures or
arts or Inventions; not our chief city
on the eastern seaboard, whose crowded
streets l trod few months since,
returning from foreign land, with
almost the affection feel for the paths of my
village home; not the rival queens OF the
Mississippi valley: not our railroads any of
the items OF our material wealth, abundant as
1t may be and constantly gushing forth from
new and unsupported fountains. All these we
share with the other great nations of the earth,
though. perhaps, we outstrip them from our
happier environment.
To all these let us give ample and fitting
display: but greater fruits than these can the
new world offer to the old. We offer them,
Sir, for the first time in human history. the
spectacle of great nation, if not already, des-
tined soon to become the greatest of all
nations. built upon the corner stone of equal
citizenship. people of freemen; free speech
and free press; where property is safe and
order is preserved, not under the menace of
power and by standing armies, but by the
happy and indissoluble union of order with
liberty; land where religion and the blessed
charities 1t fosters flourish in unwonted vigor,
not buttressed by church establishment, but
founded in freedom of conscience; all these
are our own peculiar products and all these
things, not less than our material and visible
wealth, we must show forth if we are to make
the exposition of 1892 such as its historic dig
nifty requires it be.
IT REPRESENTS MODERN CIVILIZATION
In word, we must make 1t an exposition
not only of our agriculture, our manufactures,
our commerce, of the arts OF war and peace, of
science. invention and the liberal arts, but Of
education. of social economy, of national.
state and municipal government OF history
and literature. OF our freedom in all its mani
festations of the Astounding fruits of our I'M
cons trained philanthropy and of our free and
Untrammeled religion.
And such an exposition. Mr. Speaker, need
hardly argue. cannot be committed to any
municipality of this country, however great it
may be, or to the control Of any private cor
poratiOn, no matter how excellent the indi-
vlduals that compose il. 1t can be fttingly
carried on only under the auspices of the great
est and the freest nation of the western world
and by that national government which is the
lnstrumentallty by which we secure to our
selves these especial blessings. Applause
Amy other patronage would fall below the
historic dignity of the event. And, sir il the
exposition Is to have the patronage and the re-
sponsibiity before the world of the national
government. 1t can be successfully held only at
the seat and capital OF thai government. Jap
pause Ill the House and III the galleries.
MIR. Speaker, do not think 1t necessary in
closing this debate that should enumerate in
detail the reasons fo- this opinion. Ii seems
to me. upon deliberate survey OF the claims
OF The different cities, that the city of Washing
ton presents advantages that none of the rest
can present. In the first place, sir, no man
Will doubt that there are here ample facilities
OF every kind for the transportation, for the
entertainment and for the proper conduct of
magnihcence we may choose to establish it.
ADVANTAGES OF WASHINGTON.
Here the government itself owns the land
upon which the exposition can take place Here
the government itselfis today in sore need of
the buildings that would be required for the
exposition. Here Is city not given to trade and
commerce, with ample streets and avenues that
are never choked by business, but that were spe-
cially designed for great pageants and great
thrOngs of visitors from this and other lands
Here along the Potomac, whose waters will
add to the success they will to the enioy-
ment OF such an exposition, is the government
site for its location, easily accessible to ali the
nlultiudes of people that shall visit it, Here
the government has its stores of accumulated
historic, scientific material, without which any
exposition of tins character would not be what
it should be. And, sir, We present to the Amer
lean people and to their Representatives in
this House a financial scheme that is not OBJ
noxious to any of the constitutional objections
raised by my friend from Texas (lIr Mills; u
financial scheme that is clear and explicit that
does not impose upon any locality or individ-
ual burdens that might be unwillngly borne; a
financial scheme that will insure the SUCCESS of
this exposition upon the large and grand scale
appropriate to it and at the same time Will
cost the government: eventually no more thnn
it will cost TO have the exposition anywhere
else in this country. ..
And now il conclusion. MIR. Speaker. we have
in the project and III the bill proposed for the