REPORT OF MR. ADAMS.
13
and, accordingly, they went elsewhere. Day by day after the Exposition was opened, it thus became more and more apparent that it was a world’s fair held at a point which was not a world’s centre. On the contrary, the world had to go out of its way to get to it. Something more attractive than a universal exposition, no matter how wonderful, was required to keep people away from their familiar haunts. Notwithstanding every conceivable effort to afford amusement in large things and in small,—from endless concerts and beer-gardens to the regularly arranged arrival and departure of every considerable sovereign or eminent public character in Europe,—there were, during the very months that the Exposition lasted, more travellers and strangers in either London or Paris than in Vienna, and they also remained in those cities for a longer time. The whole undertaking had, however, been planned upon the assumption that all previous efforts in the same line were to be wholly eclipsed. As respects magnitude of apparatus they were eclipsed, and the financial failure was in perfect correspondence. The necessary preparation to outdo everything which had gone before was made. Unfortunately, those for whose benefit it was made failed to respond.
The consequent financial experience was very suggestive. The appropriation originally made by the government on account of the Exposition was $3,000,000, which it was further provided was in no case to be exceeded. The total cost will probably be found to amount to over $12,000,000, as the receipts from visitors were scarcely sufficient to meet the current expenses ; leaving a deficit of some $9,000,000 to be met by the Austrian government. And yet, even from this lamentable showing, it would not be safe to draw any inferences in disparagement of the Vienna Exposition as affecting the people of Austria, or of the Centennial as affecting the people of this country. The influence of such an experience cannet easily be measured in dollars and cents. On the contrary, there can scarcely remain a doubt in the mind of any careful observer, at all familiar with the progress of recent Austrian development, that the Exposition, even had it resulted in a deficit twice as large as that stated, would have been worth far more than it cost. Its educational effects can