What instruction the display could impart was confined to
spectators who studied its specialties for themselves and used their
deductions for their individual advantage, and to those who read the
sufficiently general and cursory reports made to their several
governments by the national commissions. The official awards and reports
of the exposition authorities amounted to little or nothing.
[Illustration: THE CORLISS ENGINE, FURNISHING MOTIVE-POWER FOR MACHINERY
HALL.]
A sharp departure from this practice was decided on at the Centennial.
Two hundred judges, of undoubted character and intelligence and entire
familiarity with the departments assigned to them, were chosen--half by
the foreign bureaus and half by the U.S. Commission. These were made
officers of the exposition itself, and thus separated from external
influences. They were given a reasonable and fixed compensation of one
thousand dollars each for their time and personal expenses. An equal
division of the number of judges between the domestic and foreign sides
gives the latter an excess, measured by the comparative extent of the
display from the two sources. But this is favorable to us, as we shall
be the better for an outside judgment on the merits of both our own and
foreign exhibits. Were it otherwise, the excess of private observers
from this country would counterbalance our deficit in judges. The
foreign jurors have to see for the millions they represent.
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