University of Virginia Library

THIS Exposition, the grandest achievement of its kind ever attempted, is under the auspices of the United States Government. The World's Columbian Exposition Company, an Illinois corporation, prepares ground and buildings, pays the runn! charge of the finances. The participants in the display include not only the forty-four states and five territories of the American nation, but also nearly every foreign government making it a wonderfully complete international affair.

The city of Chicago, the chosen location, is the commercial capital of the great West, and is the second city in size on the Western Hemisphere. The growth of the city is phenomenol, and its position, at the foot of the Great Lakes, and half way between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi— making it the transportation center of the United States—assures it a still greater future. Its public and private buildings are the most heroically planned, elaborately finished and extensive of any in America, while the energy and spirit of its citizens is attested to by the fact of their securing the Exposition site from her older eastern rivals.