The Chicago World's Fair 1893

The Chicago World’s Fair 1893

A poster advertising the fair

Background

The World’s Columbian Exposition, better known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was a 6 month long event held in 1893, in honor of the 400^th anniversary of Columbus arriving in the New World. It was also a way to show unity and triumph over the disaster of the Chicago Fire in 1871. To show this unity, the “theme” of the architecture and look of the fair was to be all white, giving it the nickname “White City”. Overall, the fair attracted over 26 million people (the entire US population being about 63 million), and it cannot be ignored that almost all of the financing came from big corporate men such as J.P. Morgan (the very men that during the time period, were fought against bitterly by their laborers).

The exhibits represented at the fair showed a great amount of ingenuity for the time period, and showed off much of the new technology and forms of entertainment that were available. 46 countries were represented in around 65,000 exhibits and forms of entertainment, but the large draws were typically related to what was being pursued in the United States, the most prominent being that of electricity. The fair also introduced many consumer products to the public, such as Cracker Jacks, Aunt Jemima syrup, Juicy Fruit Gum, Cream of Wheat, as well as the most popular items that are still around today, sodas and hamburgers. The fair took out all the stops to show the power of what people could create, and put together the best possible assortment of items to impress the public, from agriculture to technology and everything in between. In short, the Fair was “a kind of tract, an argument for the superiority of our civilization…the fair measured American progress and found it highly satisfactory, as well as inevitable; it saw itself as American destiny made manifest”.

The legacy that the fair left behind was much more than it had probably hoped for; it showed how successful America can be, and that our corporate power and culture were far superior to others at the time. Many of the things we have in our society today also would not exist had progression not been made by America and shown to the public. We are still a leader in technology and are strong consumers, which can be viewed as a positive or negative thing. Perhaps if the fair had not occurred, the world would be a less materialistic place, but then who knows where we might have ended up otherwise.

Relevance in Against the Day

The Chicago World’s Fair is present in the novel from the very beginning, as it is the place where the Chums of Chance are headed; they were excited for “the fabled ‘White City’, its great Ferris Wheel, alabaster temples of commerce and industry, sparkling lagoons, and the thousand more such wonders, of both a scientific and artistic nature, which awaited them there” (3). While it offered some of the boys a chance to wander through the city once they arrived, being tempted by the various products and types of entertainment, it was a business opportunity for others. The Chums of Chance were hired on by the White City Detective Agency to overhead antiterrorist security for the fair, and assumed that if people noticed their work in the skies, they would simply view it as another miracle of technology presented by the fair itself.

Another person who was able to use the fair as a business opportunity was Scarsdale Vibe. Given that were so many people around, business transactions could be done in secret even in the public, and many of the technology exhibits were scoped out by him, in hopes of further investments. As in the real life period of the fair, the rich corporate types were the ones spending money at the fair, just on the chance that they could invest and make even more money back. The fair gave businessmen plenty of options to consider for their corporate and personal gain, as America was advancing in so many ways that were profitable at the time.

Other characters also made appearances at the fair, such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but the parts of the story about them regarding the fair are small enough to not fully find relevance. It is also unknown to me at this time whether or not the fair will have significance later on in the book, or if it will ever come up again.

Links

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/science-technology/technology/world-columbian-exposition-(1893)-EVHST000087.topic

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/legacy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition#Architecture

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/fairs/colum.htm