Show THE WORLDS FAIR FINANCES august 22 1 I walked under statue CHICAGO victory into the adminis of the hta statue tue eatn building ot of the words fair to see the director general this today tay contains the offices of the men building managing the great show it who S covered are by a great gold dome and is the dome is very big and a ai mortgage bossy costly the mortgage by which very the in indebtedness debt edness of the fair is is I 1 amean millions the and it represents also big amp nearly half an acre and dome ft it shines jhones covers out under the sun above the the arst city ot of chicago mortgage loveis great all the seven hundred odd acres covets here and it can be seen of shows chicago all the way from vew B lazin 1 york over ork to san francisco the be wiped out at the end of will dolne amp asir fair when the administration bu building it d the wili be sold to the highest bidder 09 whether hether the mortgage will be wiped rem remains ains to be seen the not out or nr general thinks it will it wa was s nr general director 8 this that I 1 called to ask as to WITH DIRECTOR GENERAL A CHAT DAVIS walking over the marble floor of the rotunda past the pretty girl in the antor peddles eddles out for or i each center who P sva souvenir columbian half dollars silver contain less tl than ian h in reality they fifteen nee cents cenS W worth orth of metal I 1 reached dozen steel elevators half the of f one which cary carry you to the upper floors the second stop I 1 was landed and a at through the introduction moment later handy in the bi big P was of 0 major M talf talf A sario of the director general haired bearded man robust gray eray gray eye and a brunette com eagle with an presented as the manager nage r alexion Pl exion was meen of Sw the worlds fair director general ra t Davi da vi sand he in response to my ques wn aion said 1 the worlds world Ps fair is doing better it w will ill pay all its debts day wry and we will come out ev even en we are down expenses in every everyday I 1 way utti ng from the music under the e S saving ving be followed by other thomas as is S to reductions professor thomas and his orchestra cost us just now laoo 1800 a day and the people who beard him hag had to pay a dollar a piece his concerts it took me to 44 so go rid of him several months to get of itt eighteen hundred dollars a dayl why it costs only 1200 a day to lo run the great buildings of the exposition we are reducing right along 71 our next cut will be as to the gates winch which cost us 1800 1800 a day 1 and we will nit cut also in other quarters quarte rs what does it now cost to run the exposition said I 1 it costi cost just about xa a day now but an average in the past past has been tar far above that when we were building we spent and more a day for weeks and money had to flow like water we have labored under great disadvantages all the work has been done under the eight hour law and that gist law has increased the expenditures of the fair over a million dollars the beades unions have regulated our prices and we paid double wages for the work we had bad to have done on sun i day in order to get ready in time some soine of our contracts were made for 1 the entire period of the fair when they should have been made for a short itee and the expenses of the whole has been materially mate riall increased through the haste we had to make POLICE AND DETECTIVE FORCE where does this a day that it requires to run the exposition go I 1 11 asked it is spent in all sorts of ways was the reply A large amount has to be paid out bior for guards police and detectives we have about two hundred detectives and sixteen hundred guards the number of guards has been bee n criticized as being two large but we need them to provide against fire the statue fire controlled above this building is is typical of our work we have here one of the most inflammable cities of the world and one of the most dangerous as regards loss of life suppose a fire should break out in the manufacturers building machinery machiner hall or the electricity building and should gain headway think of the electric wires charged with hundreds upon hundreds of volts of electricity that might fly about as wild wires if we were not prepared for them they would deal death at every touch why some of those wires are charged up to one thousand voltage one of them broke the other day and fell into a pond covering nearly an acre of ground A man was standing in the water in this pond a good distance from the wire he is now laid up with a sore leg coming from that electric shock he got at that time I 1 have it now arranged so these wires can all be deadened at once it if it were not so and a fire should break out the result would be more terrible than any conflagration of history we have already had fifty fires but they have been put out so promptly that the people have never heard of them As it is our fatalities have been very lew few we haar had in round numbers seven million people on these grounds we have built these great buildings with the men clinching the bolts on some of these great iron structures as ar they were put together hanging onto the beams while they were moving and all told only fifty men have been killed and not more than wounded in other words including visitors only one man in every ten thousand so far connected with the fair has met with an accident the only building burned has been the storage building and for this we were not responsible you must also remember that these great buildings are not like ordinary ordin aa structures they are fragile and solid as they look you could kick a lole hole into them at almost any point THE FUTURE OF THE FAIR BUILDINGS what is to become of these buildings I 1 asked will there be a fair next year no replied director general davis A fair next year with these buildings is s an impossibility they would not last the winter through the glass roofs are so constructed that they would be ie broken by the ice and the buildings would fall to pieces I 1 know there is some talk of an exposition next year but ut it is out of the question how about the extending of the exposition on n into november 1 I cant say whether it will be extended or not I 1 think it might be a good thing for us if we could have ten lays two weeks or even more in november r and it would help us out whether congress will be asked for this and whether it will be granted I 1 cannot now say but it is very probable that some such movement will be undertaken der taken HOW HARD TIMES HAVE AFFECTED THE FAIR has the panic hurt the fair I 1 asked yes replied general davis it has reduced reduced our attendance at least 25 1000 a jay day and our receipts proportionally far more the rich trien of the country are not c oming coming to the fair capitalists ta lists bankers merchants and the men who usually spend a great deal of money at such places as this are stay ing at home to watch their business the financial condition is such that they are afraid to go away the banks are against us senator manderson was here a day or so ago he told me that one of the chief enen aies the fair had was the banks said he the banks dont want the people to go to the fair they are hard up all over the country and it hurts them to have their money taken off to chicago hy by their heir depositors they have been boink doin all they can with the railroads to keep their rate of tare up and they discourage the worlds fair in every way I 1 believe this to be true director Geri general eral davis went on A good deal of noney comes here from every point in the united states a and nd at times this loss is being seriously felt CHICAGO AND THE FAIR has the fair helped helpern chicago yes replied mr davis it has practically saved the th chicago banks there has been less trouble here than at any other point in the country the merchants are doina doin a big business and some of the larger firms are having more custom than they can attend to I 1 dont think the hotels are making much as yet and thee theare the e is by no means the extortion practiced that has been charged the probability Y is th that a t september I 1 and october will see bigger crowds than ever ever and the tb richer people will probably corr cone ie at that time now many of them are at the sea shore and we could see se tile the falling off 09 of this class as soon as 5 the hot weather began it is this class that patronized tho the best hotels and that spends the money which comes come into us largely through the concessions THE concessions THE EXPENSES does the lair fair nana management gement make much from the conces concessions i on I 1 asked yes replied mn general eral davis our rece receipts 6 from the concessions we have gaj granted at n ed to the different shows in the M midway I 1 dwa y plaisance and ancl to others doing business in the grounds now more than pay the running expenses of the fair we get a percentage of the gross receipts of all the shows and a percentage of the receipts from nearly everything sold these percentages range all the wa way Y from twenty per cent to seventy per cent and every girl who chews gum in in the grounds gives seven tv per cent of the amount she pays for the gum to the worlds pair fair in other words the fenati chewing gum company pays us seventy per cent of its receipts of the shoves in midway I 1 think the cairo street pays best though we get a good round sum from all the big fenis fen is wheel has paid us nothing as yet it not to give percentage until it hai had received enough to pay ay the expenses e anses of putting it up this thi s has been a about out accomplished and we will get a good income from it some concessions have not paid nearly as well as it was expected the roller chair man has not been doing as much as he thought he would and popcorn pop corn which was considered a very good concession at philadelphia is not worth much here there is not a great demand for guides 9 aides and the waukesha water company though it does a big big business is is not turning out as muc much as was expected HOW THE foreigners FOB SIGNERS KICK are the foreigners satisfied with the fair not very well replied director general davis they do not like the concessions and they say that the allowing them to peddle out things from the different countries materially affects their business many of them have so decidedly objected that we have changed the rule and allow them to sell things in the various buildings we expect them to pay a percentage to the fair they a e not doing however the business they expected to do this is largely from the fact that the richer class of our people are not here the crowd you see on the grounds today is hs not made up of men who buy thousand dollar vases fine carriages or order beautiful china and pictures if the times let up we will have some ot of these people in september but not now As to keeping the fair open after november it would be an impossibility from the fact that the exhibitors would not stay if it were not so from the buildings 11 HOW THE OFFICERS HAVE LOST MONEY I 1 who are making money out of the fair I 1 asked the chicago merchants a few of thi the hotels the railroads and some of the concessionaires was the reply As to anyone connected with the fair making money I 1 do not know of a cent that has been gotten by the officers As for me as large as my salary is I 1 have spent more than it right along in the duties I 1 have had to perform in keeping keepin up with the position I 1 think ehg the e same is true of the other officials MAJOR HANDY ON THE SITUATION after leaving director general davis I 1 talked for some time with major M P handy who had charge of the bureau of publicity and promotion and who has been as theatrical people would say the advance agent of the fair one question I 1 asked him was in regard to the large free list there is you know a turnstile for passes connected with every gate at which paid tickets are taken tak enand and the number of passes given div en out amount to about daily sa said i d major handy thirty thousand is not a large number of free admissions jor for a fair like this it is generally supposed that these are all given to the press the truth is most of the passes belong to the employed emp loyes of the fair there are exhibitors here each has the right to a ticket for himself and his attendant then think of the army of men connected with the concessions of the cleaners and sweepers and of the people who have to come in to th the fair fai to bring food and other things and yon yo will see that this number is very small it is true that a number of newspaper passes have been given out but tle the newspapers have made the fair and it seems to me that the pushing of the fair with the newspapers ought to be kept up today as strongly as ever I 1 think this fair ought to be run as a great show and that is the only way to make it pay Is it going to pay I 1 asked basked we will pay our debts was maj candys reply had the times not been so hard we would have given a big dividend to our stockholders THE LAST BIG FAIR when will the next worlds fair come there will never be another bi big I 1 worlds fair replied maj handy this has capped the climax chicago has set the pace too rapid for any other city or any other nation to compete with it think of it the fair has cost the thought of such an attempt would send the cold chills down the back of any nation in europe new york could never have hav done what chicago has done and I 1 doubt whether chicago will ever do as much again A BOOM FOR CHICAGO maj handy comes from philadelphia when I 1 knew him same some years ago I 1 was associated with him in the new york world bureau in washington and I 1 found that his views on most subjects were conservative like all men who have been connected for any time with chicago however he has ha S now become convinced that it is the center of the earth and when I 1 broached bro the idea that the worlds fair might on the whole be rather an injury than a good to this city he scouted the insinuation and said the worlds fair has already helped chicago and it will laterally mate rally increase it in size and wealth chicago grows right along it now has people and is is bound to be the biggest bigge st city in the united states new york will wil 1 perhaps hold her commercial supremacy but the worlds fair has brought chicago into close touch with the great markets and the great merchants of europe and her business will now be done with them direct already gold is being shipped from europe directly to chicago one of our firms brought in roo oooo last week and phil armour received in gold fold not long ago the biggest cities of odthe the world are not at the sea shore london paris and berlin are a I 1 in the interior and the same is to be the fate of the united states chicago has the best location in the counley tor for a great city and it will steadily grow CHICAGO BRING BEING EDUCATED another thing that the fair is do doing ing for chicago continued maj handy is in the way of education it is is making the city a cosmopolitan one it is provincial no longer it has grown in art taste and it will have as a result of the fair a magnificent art palace chicago is in a better financial condition toda today y as a result of this exposition its people are now making money and the hotels are I 1 think doing well it is a curious thing about this fair that there was more money spent during the first two months than there has been since then the hotel richelieu made in june and all of the good hotels did well during may and june the richer people came at that time they will be back in september and they will spend a great deal here before the fair closes FRANK G CARPENTER |