hip, fitness for the purpose intended, adaptation to public
wants, economy and cost." Each report, upon its completion, is delivered
to the Centennial Commission for award and publication. The award comes
in the shape of a diploma with a bronze medal and a special report of
the judges upon its subject. This report may be published by the
exhibitor if he choose. It will also be used by the Commission in such
manner as may best promote the objects of the exposition. These
documents, well edited and put in popular form, will constitute the most
valuable publication that has been produced by any international
exhibition. To this we may add the special reports to be made by the
State and foreign commissions. These ought, with the light gained by
time, to be at least not inferior to the similar papers scattered
through the bulky records of previous exhibitions. Let us hope that
brevity will rule in the style of all the reports, regular and
irregular. There is a core to every subject, every group of subjects and
every group of groups, however numerous and complex: let all the scribes
labor to find it for us. When we recall the disposition of all
committees to select the member most fecund of words to prepare their
report, we are seized with misgivings--a feeling that becomes oppressive
as we further reflect that the local committee which deliberately
collected and sent for exhibition eighty thousand manuscripts written by
the school-children of a Western city is at large on the exposition
grounds.

The passion for independent effort characteristic of the American people
led to the supplementing of the official list by sundry volunteer
prizes. These are offered by associations, and in some cases
individuals. They are not all, like the regular awards, purely honorary.
They lean to the pecuniary form, those particularly which are offered in
different branches of agriculture. Competition among poultry-growers,
manufacturers of butter, reaping-and threshing-machines,
cotton-planters, etc. is stimulated by money-prizes reaching in all some
six or eight thousand dollars. Agricultural machinery needs the open
field for its proper testing, and cannot operate satisfactorily in
Machinery Hall. Without a sight of our harvest-fields and
threshing-floors foreigners would carry away an incomplete impression of
our industrial methods, the farm being our great factory. The oar, the
rifle and the racer are as impatient of walls as the plough an