The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-01-30
THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.
Chicago Expects Twenty Millions of Peo
pie VIII See the Worlds Fair.

Especial Correspondence
CHICAGO, Jan. LIT is one thing to talk
glibly of twenty millions" to let the two
words roll off ones tongue with as much
nonchalance as though speaking OF hun
dred or thousand, but it is altogether an
other thing to concentrate ones ideas and
mind for a moment and try to imagine
such an immense total of anything.
Fancy newspaper with circulation of
20,000,000, a publisher with CONTRACT to
get 20,000,O00 of pamphlets or books out of
his establishment; fancy, if you can, the
20,0O0,O00 books piled atop of one another
ten deep, and then, if you are mathema-
tician, figure out what distance they would
stretch in a straight line. Try to imagine
900 of wild cattle rounded up on
plain, or an army Of 100000 men march
ing through your city, calculate how long
1t would take them ia days and nights to
round the corner of your principal thor
oughfare at regulation military step
without halt or interruption, and then try
and conceive, if you can, what 10000, eco
really represent. You can't do it. The
figure is too overwhelming. too appalling
for the average imagination to concentrate
upon
And yet 10000, 900 of people are expected
to pass through the gates of the great
Worlds fair in six months of 1893, first
having deposited the silver half dollar that
will prove the open sesame to enable them
to view the wonders prepared by the ma
tions of the earth for their inspection.
Twenty millions OF people!-a total equal
to the populations of New York, Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio and Illinois combined, with
the principal towns of Massachusetts
thrown in by way of bonusl Who is it that
prognosticates this tremendous inflow Of
humanity with faces set toward Jack
son park? Not some wildly enthusiastic
Chicagoan or chimerist whose magma
ton has run riot, but the grave, dignified,
cool, calculating men of The world upon
whose present and future work, energy
and Judgment the success of the enter
prise in large measure depends.
One little line in the bulky pamphlet
Just issued, and which reviews the work
accomplished up to New Years day, tells
the story. 1t is under the head of RE
sources''-from the United States COVER
ment, from the municipality, from the
stockholders, from concessions, and finally
from prospective gate receipts, S10,000,-
000p' Ten million dollarsl Twenty mil
lion visitors at half dollar headl And
they will be here. They must be here
The estimates are pared close. There is
little room for margin. Ten million dol
lars must come from that item, more if
possible, but not thousand dollars less.
Twenty million strangersl What posi-
bilities the figures conjure upl Twenty
millions of dollars to the bonifaces and
room renters, even if each visitor tarries
but a day and pays but dollar for room
Twenty millions to the restaurant keepers,
even if each one eats but dollars worth
of provender between daylight and dusk
of one day. Forty million nickels for the
street car companies. Twenty million-but
enough. The vaults of the Chicago banks
are large enough to hold all the cash that
the 100000 will leave behind them when
they say goodby to the Worlds fair.
HENRY NJ HUNT,