REPORT OF MR. ARCHER.
91
Director-General to attempt to do too much personally. Instead of being only the administrator, he tried to manage the executive also, and it was too much for him, as it ever must be for a single individual upon such occasions. The consequence was, that much was ill done, and much not done at all. The proper plan would have been to have allotted distinct duties to each of his executive staff, and to have seen that those duties were honestly and faithfully performed.
The executive staff should be divided into sections, and each should report daily to the Director-General the work it has transacted, calling attention to all points of difficulty which may have arisen, and stating how such difficulties have been surmounted. This would enable the Director-General to correct mistakes before too late, or to approve, and thus guide his officers in their future operations.
Assuming the building to be complete or ready for the allotment of space, the following committees, besides others suggested by local circumstances, should be organized :—
First. The Committee of Installation, with whom the distribution of space rests,—a difficult and arduous duty, requiring great tact and management in order that conflicting interests may be harmonized and the amenities of the Exhibition preserved. A well organized Installation Committee would never have ^consented to that huge and ugly trophy of stone bottles, supposed to have contained Curacoa, which disfigured the grand gallery of the Vienna Exhibition in the Dutch department, and many other not much less obnoxious things. The Installation Committee, besides distributing space to foreign commissions and to home exhibitors, have a still more arduous duty in seeing that such space is not occupied so as to injure the general effects.
Second. A Railway Committee, whose duty it is to see ‘that the goods delivered into the Exhibition are in good order and are instantly passed on to their proper department. The absence of such a committee in the Vienna arrangements, ought to act as a caution on all future occasions, for nothing niore imperilled the success of that Exhibition. A Railway Committee requires a large staff of attendants, some of whom should be practically acquainted with the management of depots for goods, and all should be active, well-chosen men.