on]
The Electricity Building.

The United States Government Building was most interesting. New
inventions made its exhibits live. In place of reading reports and
statistics, you saw scenes and heard sounds. Class-room songs and
recitations were reproduced by the graphophone. The biograph showed
naval cadets marching while at the same time you heard the band music.
Labor-saving machines were represented in full operation. Pictures by
wire, the mutoscope, and type-setting by electricity were among the
wonders shown. Every day a crew of the life-saving service gave a
demonstration, launching a life-boat and rescuing a sailor. Near by was
a field hospital, where wounded soldiers were cared for. Many of the
newest uses for electricity were displayed. Never before had lighting
been so brilliant or covered such large areas, or such speed in
telegraphy been attained, or telephoning reached such distances. The
akouphone, a blessing to the deaf, was exhibited, as were also the
powerful search-lights now a necessity at sea.

CHAPTER XIX.

MR. MCKINLEY'S END

[1901]

Upon invitation President and Mrs. McKinley visited the Pan-American
Exposition at Buffalo. September 5, 1901, the first day of his presence,
the Chief Magistrate delivered an address, memorable both as a sagacious
survey of public affairs and as indicating a modification of his
well-known tariff opinions in the direction of freer commercial
intercourse with foreign nations.

"We must not," he said, "repose in fancied security that we can forever
sell everything and buy little or nothing." ... "The period of
exclusiveness is past." "Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the
spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not." ... "If perchance
some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and
protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to
extend and promote our markets abroad?" In connection with this thought
the President expressed his conviction that we must encourage our
merchant marine and, in the same commercial interest, construct a
Pacific cable and an Isthmian canal.

The projects of Mr. McKinley's statesmanship thus announced were
approved by nearly the entire public, but they were destined to be
carried out by other hands. On his second day at Buffalo, Friday,
September 6th, about four in the afternoon, the President stood in the
beautiful Temple of Music receiving the hundreds who filed past to