The World's Fair Commissioners, the city officials, the speakers of the day, and the Illinois State Commission were met at the Paxton Hotel and conveyed in carriages to the exposition grounds. The exercises of the day were held in the Auditorium, beginning at 11:30 o'clock A.M. The program was as follows:
Music . . . Omaha Concert Band
Invocation . . Rev. T.J. Mackay
Address . . . Chairman Wm. H. Harper
Address . . . President Clark E. Carr
Address . . . Mayor Frank E. Moores
Music . . Omaha Concert Band.
Address . . . President G.W. Wattles
Address . . . Mayor Carter H. Harrison
Oration . . . Chicago and Its Relation to
the West,
By Ex-Comptroller Charles G. Dawes.
Music . . Omaha Concert Band
Address . . . The Louisiana Purchase
By Hon. J.R. Mann of Chicago.
Music . . The Star-Spangled Banner,
By Omaha Concert Band.
A banquet was served to the prominent guests in the Markel Cafe immediately after the exercises, and a special sham battle was given in the afternoon for their entertainment, followed by a reception in the evening at the Illinois Building where many prominent citizens of Omaha gathered to pay their respects to the honored visitors. [SR]
"We are here to return the thanks of Chicago for the designation of this day in honor of their city. We represent all nationalities, all politics and all creeds. We sometimes differ at home but we are a unit in extending to Omaha our sympathy and encouragement and our congratulations on its magnificent achievement. This celebration comes at a time of glorious significance to this country. We have learned that the untried volunteers are of the stuff of which heroes are made and that Sampson, Dewey and Schley are worthy successors to Farragut and Perry. We are not only a peace-loving nation but we have found that we have the ability to make our enemies on the battlefield desire peace rather than war.
Referring more particularly to Chicago, Mayor Harrison said that a Chicagoan could not tell the truth about his city without being accused of exaggeration. The truth about Chicago seemed like an extravagant dream to the citizen of New York, or Boston or Philadelphia. But Omaha can understand Chicago. Her people have the same inherent spirit and the same pluck and enterprise had made each city what it is. In conclusion, he declared that not only on this occasion, but in every achievement of its future, Omaha commands all the sympathy and encouragement and inspiration that Chicago has to give."
Ex-Comptroller Dawes spoke in part as follows:
"Twenty-seven years ago fifty of the leading citizens of Chicago gathered themselves in a little meeting under most distressing circumstances. Around them, in smoking and somber ruins, lay what had been but a few days before the magnificent city of Chicago. Their own homes had been burned over their heads; their property of all kinds was in ashes; around them all was desolation and cheerlessness and the future seemed as dark as the present. Some of these men rose and spoke of the city as destroyed and lost forever. Its rebuilding seemed to them impossible. To their minds the great Chicago, the city of their prize and affection was numbered among the things of the past. But from among them rose a young man who amidst depressing surroundings lifted his voice in remonstrance and in prophecy of the future. "Chicago will live," said he, "and live to be so mighty and so vast that this great fire will be but an incident in its past. And Chicago will thus live because beyond her there lies the giant forces, the teaming millions and the imperial area of the mighty West, which having before created Chicago as the necessary gateway to the East, must recreate it under the same necessities." That speaker, now the secretary of the treasury of the United States, has lived to see Chicago recreated by the West, and his prophecies fulfilled to the uttermost.
I have thought of no better way than by the telling of this incident to indicate the relation of Chicago to the West.
Chicago is the child of the West, dependent upon her for her prosperity and progress--almost for her very existence--and far be it from her to belittle the debt she owes. Willingly, freely, she acknowledges and rejoices in it. Peopled largely by western men, sustained largely by western resources, she feels the keenest and most vital interest in the west, and I believe the Great West takes equal interest in this young giant among the cities of the world.
The details of the social and commercial relations between the west and Chicago, daily grow more intimate, daily grow more vast--relations which may well challenge the deepest attention of the student of economics and of American history--can receive from me today but a passing and superficial word. From this great section, 125 passenger trains carry over 12,000 people, rolling daily into the depots of the city of Chicago, and an equal number of trains depart daily from Chicago for the West. During the last year 20,000,000 bushels of western wheat, 116,000,000 bushels of western corn, 118,000,000 bushels of western oats, and 17,000,000 bushels of western rye went to or through the great commercial gateway of Chicago. Of the 46,000,000 pounds of second class printed matter entered for the year ending June 30, 1896, at the Chicago postoffice, the authorities of the office estimate that from 3/8 to 3/4 went to the west. Taking the postoffice average of five pieces to the pound, we find that the total annual circulation of Chicago periodical issues in the west must be between 130,000,000 and 172,000,000 copies--a circulation of most surprising and pretentious magnitude. The combined mileage of the railroads east and west of the Missouri River, binding and knitting together the west and Chicago in ties of common interest is 67,180 miles.
But no catalogue of the evidence of the intimacy and vastness of the commercial and psychological relations of the west, to Chicago, can add to our sense of their importance.
The degree of contentment and prosperity experienced by the western people under these relations of western cities, like Chicago and Omaha, to the western country, is so important as affecting our national life and progress that these relations now command the interest and attention of the entire people of the United States.
It is generally realized that when the social problems involved in them are solved, all the internal problems which confront our young republic, will be solved. These people--the people of Chicago, and the rest--are not waiting for other people or other nations to solve the great problems of today, but strong in the consciousness of their competency for the task, they eagerly seek after right solutions.
The rapidity of the development of the west has in less than two generations brought them face to face with the problem of existence, under all social conditions, from the most primitive to the most complex.
What has thus happened before the eyes of one generation in the west has consumed several hundred years even in other sections of our country and in continental Europe thousands of years. Crowded into the lives of the people of the west has been the sight of an empire builded from a wilderness. We stand today in the midst of this magnificent exposition, an exponent of the highest art of the world--located in this beautiful city of Omaha with its complex nineteenth century civilization and architecture, and are startled by the thought that the Indian and buffalo which have been brought here as objects of curiosity lived in their native state upon this very site, less than fifty years ago.
Little wonder is it that the people of the west are interested in these relations of the western city to the western community. The fingers of fate move in decades and not in centuries, in setting the problems for western humanity to conquer.
Little wonder is it that no solution seems to difficult of attainment for those who have seen such great transformations in the west through the successful solutions of earlier problems equally grave.
And now as the genius of America, at the close of a glorious war so bravely fought by a gallant army and navy under a great wise president, stands upon the threshold of a dawning century and a dawning destiny, with her face toward the fair islands of the Pacific west placed by God's hand under her guardianship, little wonder is it that these people of the west, themselves but a short time ago the adopted children of the wilderness, should not doubt that the path of national duty toward the new western possessions shall again be the path of national glory.
Congressman Mann spoke as follows:
"We celebrate today the victories of peace and peaceful pursuits. Where a magic city and a beautiful exposition now stand, the wild buffalo was chased by the savage Indian within the lifetime of many here. In the midst of this fitting celebration of the successes of our arts of peace, while enjoying the benefits of bounteous plenty and prosperity, it is proper to recall the history of those events which have made these western states an equal part of that nation which is today the embodiment of progressive civilization and which flies the most beautiful and beloved flag ever lighted up by the sunshine or kissed by the breeze.
"Large streams from little fountains flow; Tall oaks from little acorns grow."
The little narrow fringe of settlements along the Atlantic coast has grown into an empire which sweeps across the Continent and embraces the islands of the sea.
The Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the national territory. It gave to our country the exclusive control of the might Mississippi and its tributaries. It planted our possessions on the Gulf of Mexico it acquired for us the Columbia River and a coast line on the Pacific Ocean. It brought into our country a region having the most fertile farming and grazing lands, as well as varied mineral resources to be found in the world, and yet its acquirement was, as it were, only a chance shot.
Spain owned the entire western bank of the Mississippi River, and the eastern bank below the 31st parallel of latitude, the boundary line fixed by the treaty of 1795. After the war of the Revolution our country west of the Alleghenies had begun to fill up with a class of sturdy and independent pioneer settlers. These settlements depended for transportation of their products wholly upon river navigation, the only outlet for which was through the mouth of the Mississippi, owned and controlled by Spain.
In 1800, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain retroceded the province of Louisiana to France, but without delivering possession at that time. It became evident to the statesmen of that time that we could have no lasting peace until we should possess one bank entire of the Mississippi River, with a consequent right to its free navigation.
Jefferson was president, and did not believe that the constitution warranted the purchase of new territory, but overcoming his scruples he rose equal to the emergency and he commissioned James Monroe to act with Robert Livingston, then minister to France, in an effort to purchase that part of the Louisiana province east of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, and Congress appropriated the sum of $2,000,000 for that purpose.
"It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Fortunately, for our own interests, France and England were then on the verge of another war. They had just concluded a treaty of peace, but each country was looking with dread suspicion upon the other. England viewed with grave suspicion the re-transfer by Spain of the immense Louisiana Province to France; and Napoleon, who was then the first Consul of France and its ruler, quickly saw that in case of war the English, with their superiority at sea, would immediately seize New Orleans and the Mississippi River Valley. On Easter Sunday, April 10th, 1803, he called two of his counselors who were most familiar with the foreign possessions and asked their advice. He said to them: "I know the full value of Louisiana, and I have been desirous of repairing the fault of the French negotiator who abandoned it in 1763. A few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes me, it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it, than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successively taken from France Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the richest portions of Asia. They shall not have the Mississippi, which they covet."
After hearing from his advisors, one in favor of selling the province to the United States, the other in favor of retaining it, Napoleon said: "Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede; it is the whole colony without my reservation."
Monroe and Livingston had no authority to accept the offer which was made to them by Napoleon. They could not cable for instructions. They had no time to communicate with the home government by letter. Napoleon was not a Spanish diplomat; he wanted his offer promptly accepted or rejected.
Monroe and Livingston, however, proved equal to the occasion, and after negotiations, which lasted but a few days, the purchase was agreed upon, the United States to pay France a principal sum of $11,250,000 payable in stocks or bonds due in fifteen years, with interest, and the further sum of $3,750,000, to be paid by our government to American citizens having certain valid claims against France.
When the treaty became known in this country, some of the haters of President Jefferson raised a violent outcry against its confirmation, and dire predictions were made about the danger of extending the country in violation of the constitution, and burdening the people with an immense debt for the purpose of buying an uninhabitable wilderness.
The treaty of purchase was dated April 30, 1803, was ratified in October following, and on December 20th, 1803, the American flag was raised over New Orleans. No one can measure the future possibilities of these states embraced in the Louisiana purchase. The development since the purchase in 1803 has been more splendid than an alchemist's dream. The future will far out rival the present and the past.
The value of the Louisiana purchase cannot yet be appreciated. In 1854 Omaha was but a bare trading post. Its growth has been as rapid as the mushroom which springs up in the night, but as strong and certain as the steel beams which constitute the superstructures of its great buildings, and is but an example of the genius of the west.
The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory was the greatest prize ever gained by a nation at one time. By the stroke of a pen an empire changed hands. In a moment of doubt a construction was placed upon the constitution, which authorized the vast increase of territory.
The Louisiana Purchase will soon have a greater population than the country which sold it to us. A single false step might have lost us this possession. All the circumstances at the time of its purchase conspired to give us a single opportunity to gain an empire. The opportunity refused or neglected might never have come again.
The France, which today maintains an army of more than half a million men because she was compelled to cede Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, gave way to us a possession many times Alsace and Lorraine, and gave it in friendly peace.
Not one of us can look far into the future. The progress of a century has enabled us to utilize all our possessions. The lightning's fluid puts far distant territory in a moment's communication with the capital. The expansion of our domain and the increase of our possessions made more keen the genius and intellect of our people. It broadened the hearts and deepened the souls of our citizens. With the new wants, caused by long distance and varied interests, came new ideas with which to supply those wants. New discoveries in the fields of science, art, mechanics, follow closely the new discoveries regarding the surface of our territory."