Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/25

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The Lewis and Clark Centennial.
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istic, it is intended, shall be life and motion, and the installation of products and processes in juxtaposition. The classification is based upon this plan, and its effects upon the proportions of the buildings is noticeable in that Machinery Hall is relatively so small in area. The machines through whose operation raw material is converted into use and the processes employed in utilizing natural products will be exhibited, so that not only will the fund of human information be greatly increased, but suggestion will be made to students, scientists, and inventors that will give still greater development to genius in the following than in the preceding decade."

The World's Fair, in this carefully planned purpose, affords a fine model for the Lewis and Clark Exposition. But Portland is not simply to do for the Pacific Northwest and the other peoples in close economic and commercial relations with it what Saint Louis aspires to do for the world. Saint Louis undertakes what was distinctively the nineteenth century problem—that of mastery by man of the physical forces of the world and of more nearly perfect adjustment to his natural environment. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with its World Congress of the Arts and Sciences, and all of its exhibits arranged to promote the development of invention and the application of scientific methods to industry, has a great mission; and yet the peculiar field which belongs to the Lewis and Clark Exposition gives it, if not a greater mission, at least one more advanced—if you please a twentieth century mission. Man in the Pacific Northwest has a peculiar problem. All the science and art of the past are his legacy. They fairly press in upon him in their appeal to him for utilization here. Man here has a physical environment so rich and so diversified as not only to invite the largest application of science and art, but also one that demands the highest organiza-