ADDRESS DELIVERED BY MRS. POTTER PALMER

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS,

ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE WOMAN’S BUILDING, MAY 1st, 1893.

PUBLISHED BY PERMISSION.

Members of the Board of Laöy Managers and Friends: —The moment of fruition has, arrived. Hopes which for more than two years have gradually been gaining strength and definiteness now become realities. Today the Exposition opens its gates. On this occasion of the formal opening of the Woman’s Building, the Board of Lady Managers is singularly fortunate in having the honor to welcome distinguished official representatives of many of the able foreign committees and of the state boards, which have so effectively co-operated with it in accomplishing the results now to be disclosed to the world.

We have traveled together a hitherto untrodden path, have been subjected to tedious delays and overshadowed by dark clouds, which threatened disaster to our enterprise. We have been obliged to march with peace offerings in our hands, lest hostile motives be ascribed to us. Our burdens have been greatly lightened, how­ever, by the spontaneous sympathy and aid which have reached us from women in every part of the world, and which have proved an added incentive and inspiration. Experience has brought many surprises, not the least of which is an impressive realiza­tion of the unity of human interests, notwithstanding differences of race, government, language, temperament and external conditions. The people of all civilized lands are studying the same problems. Each success and each failure in testing and develop­ing new theories is valuable to the whole world. Social and industrial questions are paramount, and are receiving the thoughtful consideration of statesmen, students, political economists, humanitarians, employers and employed.

The few forward steps which have been taken during our boasted nineteenth cent­ury_the so-called age of invention—have promoted the general use of machinery

and economic motive powers with the result of cheapening manufactured articles, but have not afforded the relief to the masses, which was expected. The struggle for bread is as fierce as of old. We find, everywhere, the same picture presented—over­crowded industrial centers, factories surrounded by dense populations of operatives, keen competition, many individuals forced to use such strenuous effort that vitality is drained, in the struggle to maintain life under conditions so uninviting and discour­aging that it scarcely seems worth living. It is a grave reproach to modern enlighten­ment that we seem no nearer the solution of many of these problems than during feudal days.

It is not our province, however, to discuss these weighty questions, except in so far as they affect the compensation paid to wage earners, and more especially that paid to women and children. Of all existing forms of injustice, there is none so cruel and inconsistent as is the position in which women are placed with regard to self-main­tenance_the calm ignoring of their rights and responsibilities, which has gone on

for centuries. If the economic conditions are hard for men to meet, subjected as they