The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-08
THB TROUBLE WITH ST. LOUIS

THE TROUBLE WITH ST. LOUIS.
 There is talk that the government may have to take over the St. Louis ex-
 position and run it to get back the $4,-
 600,000 which the treasury has advanced
 on mortgage. Secretary Shaw has tele-
 graphed Governor Francis urging that
 something be done to stimulate the at tendance at the fair. That is good ad-
 vice, and it should impress upon the
 managers the weakest point of their exposition. It may be too late now to remedy the defect, but the defect has been apparent to newspaper men for a year. It is that the fair has lacked a competent bureau of publicity, and that its merits, which ought to have been spread to the four corners of the globe for six months before it opened, are
 now known chiefly to the few people who have actually visited it. The fair | is really bigger and handsomer than those at Chicago and Buffalo put to- gether, but the knowledge of that fact is confined to a hundred thousand or so of people who have found it out for themselves, without any help from the fair management.
 People are too busy nowadays to go hunting about for merit which is not thrust under their noses. Newspaper editors are very much like the rest of the world in that respect. That is the most obvious reason why the newspa- | pers of the country are giving this fair almost no attention, when most large newspapers had bureaus of their own in Chicago, in addition to the service of the press associations. Just how 1t has come about the Eagle doesnct know, but it is fact that if you want to find | a headline about the St. Louis fair you | have to search out your St. Louis ex- changes. Now, the newspapers are l just as hungry for news as they ever ! were But they are accustomed to have news of great enterprises brought to their attention in ways that show it's news value at a glance. Those of them which, like the Eagle, gave their read CTS an adequate idea of what this fair l was going to be in advance had to send out men who dug out the vital facts for I themselves from the great massof un- l interesting detail with which so vast an enterprise S always encumbered. That process is laborious, and a newspaper man does not go through any more of | it than duty to his readers requires. | The newspapers of the entire country seem to have given up this St. Louis l fair. One or two newspapers might neglect it for personal reasons, but where the neglect is so nearly universal l the fault must lie with the managers of the fair themselves. Newspaper men who visited the work in it's preparatory stages saw what the trouble was and predicted exactly the result which is now coming about. The managers were unable to see it then. Perhaps Secreta- l ry Shaw may force them to recognize it now, but it is doubtful if at this late l day interest enough can be stimulated | to save the fair as a financial under l taking. Peoplewill have their summer vacations all planned before they learn 1 that the St. Louis fair is worth seeing. That is a misfortune to the people as we'll as to the managers of the fair, be- cause there has never been anything on so grand a scale as this exposition, either in this country or Europe Brooklyn Eagle