Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-05-08


Chicago found some way to do the very
thing which Mr.. Thompson, with his
quick eye and artists enthusiasm, sug-
gested. Suppose she were to reproduce
these palaces in marble and offer them to
Uncle Sam for a capitol?
As have said the crowds are greatest
before the beautiful things-the fountains,
the statues, the flowers, the pottery, the
paintings. Next to beauty it seems the
people love power. a curious test of this
is found in that part of Machinery hall
where the mighty energies of steam are
converted into the magic current OF cleo
tricity. Go any hour you will, and in the
huge boiler house may be seen as many
people as the narrow gallery VIII hold. y
boiler house is not usually considered
much of a show place. 1t is rather dull,
somewhat grimy, damp, odorsome. Prob
ably this explains why the projectors of
the building made far too little provision
for visitors here. But while one lesler is a
tame and uninteresting thing & hundred
boilers set all in a row, and extending in "A
true perspective to the vanishing point,
become at once majestic and inspiring
They form an aggregate of power which
awe and OverWhelm and at the same time
fascinate, just as the man who has been
accustomed all his life to handling one
dollar bills viii gasp for breath when con-
fronted by million dollars tied UP in one
package.
1t is not surprising that the mighty en-
CineS, which are a mere manifestation of
the power which the one-fifth of 4 mile of
boilers generate, should fasciGate their
tens of thousands hour after hour. They
have motion, action, grace, ostentation.
while the boilers are seemingly dead and
lifeless. The neighborhood of the fifty en-
gincs, therefore, is one spot where room is
always at Il premium. y spectacle worth
fTpValTr,g miles behold and
power" is the one word that affords a
key TO the fascination. The engines charm
with their motion, and with the amazing
ightness and almost nOiselessness of their
movement. But the huge dynamOs fas-
climate with the double force of power and
mystery. The crowds are always thick
where the dynamos are. Electricity is to
the masses an industrial occult, mechan-
zeal spiritualism. They eagerly follow the
mysterious current through all its mani
festations, and admire though they under
stand not.
One will always find a large crowd
around the printing presses, too. These
machines are used in the actual printing
of real newspapers, and though the art
which helps preserve all other arts is no
longer a species of necromancy, it is the
hight of the useful and the beautiful in
mechanics, and exercises a strange fascina-
ton over the multitude. Then the crowds,
still loving power, go to see the mighty
krupp gun, which to most people is lit
tie Disappointing. 1t is not as large as ex-
pectatiou has painted it. No beauty com
mends it, either, for il is as ugly as war
itself
y locomotive, though commonplace, is |
always interesting, and when n hundred
thousand people get a chance to see the
first locomotive used in America, progeni-
tor of 200 0e0 more worthy sons YOU NAV
how
Hence John Bull No. u is always sur
rounded by admiring thousands. So is the
English locomotive with its lines which to
us seem so ugly. This is a real locomotive,
and the steamships which are shown near
by in the same building are mere models;
but the latter have beauty in their lines,
and they attract more visitors than the
land travellers.
If l We're to persist in telling you of the
things which attract crowds of unusual
thickness-f l attempted to penetrate
every ring of humanity and show YOU
what was in their center in one letter ! |
should be called on to describe thousand
matters each one of which is worth a col
umn- But in closing j must say, as proof
of my theory, that beauty is the strongest
attraction for the masses, that the Japa-
nese temple on the wooded island, conced-
edly one of the most beautiful structures
IN the eXpoSition-not only temple but a
picture, framed IN sandal wood and bam-
boo and warmed with touches of exquisite
colcr-ls one of the Columbian attractions
which nine visitors out of ten think they
must see during their first visit.
There are plenty of people who spend
half of their time amid the glories of the
statuary with which the grounds and
buildings are replete, or with the flowers
and plants of Horticultural hall and its
surrounding greeneries. Others never tire
of filling the eye with the things which
are simply vast and therefore typical of the
great power which created them. Since
beauty and power are the magicians
wands, the feminine and masculine of
things inanimate, it is pleasant to know
that the prestidigitators who created this
exposition have set in their park here in
Vulnerable things which speak one or the
other, and many which breathe both
WALTER WELLMAN.