[Illustration: HON. GEORGE R. DAVIS, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.]
The President of the Directory of the World’s Columbian Exhibition is W. T. Baker, a prominent commission merchant of Chicago, who was born in New York State in 1841. He has been elected and re-elected President of the Chicago Board of Trade.
Benjamin Butterworth, of Ohio, was chosen Secretary of the World’s Columbian Exposition. He has for years been known as one of the most brilliant men in the National House of Representatives at Washington. During the debate in Congress on the question of an appropriation for the National Fair Commission he spoke strongly in favor of such an appropriation, and it was owing chiefly to his efforts that it was finally passed.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT W. T. BAKER, OF THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.]
The Hon. John T. Dickinson, Secretary of the World’s Columbian Commission, was born in 1858, at Houston, Texas, and has for some years been a conspicuous lawyer, editor, and politician in that State.
The head of the Department of Publicity and Promotion of the Exhibition is Major Moses T. Handy, one of the best known newspaper men in the United States. He was born in Missouri in 1847, and was educated in Virginia, and has had a brilliant career as a journalist on the staffs of the _Richmond Dispatch_, _Richmond Inquirer_, _New York Tribune_, _Philadelphia Times_, _Philadelphia Press_, _and Philadelphia News_.
The Exhibition is to be formally dedicated with appropriate ceremonies on October 12th, 1892, being the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus. It will not be opened to the public, however, for the general purposes of the Exhibition until May 1st, 1893, and it will continue open from that day until October 30th, 1893. During its progress there will be held on its grounds and in its buildings innumerable conventions and festivals of national and international interest, and it will doubtless be a more truly universal exhibition than any that has yet been held in the world. The spirit animating the projectors of the enterprise cannot perhaps be better expressed than they were by President Palmer in his eloquent address before the Columbian Commission in Chicago, on June 26th, 1890. “Education,” he said, “is the chief safeguard for the future; not education through books alone, but through the commingling of our people from East, West, North, and South, from farm and factory. Such great convocations as that of our projected fair are the schools wherein our people shall touch elbows, and the men and women from Maine and Texas, from Washington and South Carolina learn to realize that all are of one blood, speak the same language, worship one God, and salute the same flag.