to yield the largest, most practical, and
most beneficial return. The American exhibit at Paris should, and I am
confident will, be an open volume, whose lessons of skillfully directed
endeavor, unfaltering energy, and consummate performance may be read by
all on every page, thus spreading abroad a clearer knowledge of the
worth of our productions and the justice of our claim to an important
place in the marts of the world. To accomplish this by judicious
selection, by recognition of paramount merit in whatever walk of trade
or manufacture it may appear, and by orderly classification and
attractive installation is the task of our Commission.

The United States Government building is approaching completion, and no
effort will be spared to make it worthy, in beauty of architectural plan
and in completeness of display, to represent our nation. It has been
suggested that a permanent building of similar or appropriate design be
erected on a convenient site, already given by the municipality, near
the exposition grounds, to serve in commemoration of the part taken by
this country in this great enterprise, as an American National
Institute, for our countrymen resorting to Paris for study.

I am informed by our Commissioner-General that we shall have in the
American sections at Paris over 7,000 exhibitors, from every State in
our country, a number ten times as great as those which were represented
at Vienna in 1873, six times as many as those in Paris in 1878, and four
times as many as those who exhibited in Paris in 1889. This statement
does not include the exhibits from either Cuba, Puerto Rico, or Hawaii,
for which arrangements have been made.

A number of important international congresses on special topics
affecting public interests are proposed to be held in Paris next summer
in connection with the exposition. Effort will be made to have the
several technical branches of our administration efficiently represented
at those conferences, each in its special line, and to procure the
largest possible concourse of State representatives, particularly at the
Congresses of Public Charity and Medicine.

Our relations with Germany continue to be most cordial. The increasing
intimacy of direct association has been marked during the year by the
granting permission in April for the landing on our shores of a cable
from Borkum Eniden, on the North Sea, by way of the Azores, and also
by the conclusion on September 2 of a Parcels Post