mbitious and our hopes high, but we are energetic
and untiring, and with your recognition and assistance we expect
to carry to a successful consummation an enterprise which will
not only assemble the natural resources of the earth and bring
together the best products of human skill, but will be the
occasion for eliciting the expression of the best thought and
for classifying and systematizing all human knowledge.

We hope this exposition will be an epitome of the progress of
the world from the beginning of history. The nineteenth century
was characterized by unprecedented and almost incomprehensible
industrial advancement. The earth was made to reveal its hidden
treasures. The unknown forces of nature were harnessed and
utilized. Lines of commerce were established which encircle the
earth.

Sections of the globe remote and almost unknown to each other
were brought into close communication and friendly relation. It
would seem that there is little to be done in the field of
scientific effort. But every discovery and every advance opens a
broader plane for the exercise of human ingenuity.

The problems, however, that seem to confront us most prominently
to-day, and that require for their solution not only experience
and intelligence, but fraternal sentiment as well, are those of
a social character. The aggregation that we call society is
bound together by ties of sympathy, strengthened it may be by
culture, but often strained by selfishness and pride. The
relation of man to nature and her physical forces commands the
highest functions of the mind, but the relation of man to his
fellows not only enlists the highest intellectual effort, but
requires that it be tempered by impulses of human kindness.
Those who have as the mainspring of their actions the elevation
of their fellows live and move upon a higher plane and are
better members of society than those who subordinate sentiment
and sympathy to gain and power.

The earth in its fertility and resourcefulness furnishes
material sufficient to maintain in comfort all of its sons. If
their genius and energy could be devoted to the utilization of
that material instead of to a continuous struggle between
themselves for occupation and possession, the destiny of the
human race would be higher and nobler and nearer in accord wi