judge to make his decision. Some judges took a high standard,
and refused to make awards except to a small proportion of
selected exhibits; others took a low one, and gave awards
indiscriminately. About 1183 awards were made to British
exhibitors. The French refused to accept any awards. The
value of the British goods exhibited was estimated, exclusive
of Fine Arts, at £430,000, and the expenses of showing them at
£200,000. A large expenditure was incurred in the erection of
buildings, which were more remarkable for their beauty and
grandeur than for their suitableness to the purposes for which
they were intended. Considerable areas were devoted to “side-shows,”
and the Midway Plaisance, as it was termed, resembled
a gigantic fair. Every country in the world contributed something.
There were sights and shows of every sort from everywhere.
The foreign countries represented were Argentina,
Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçoa, Denmark, Danish West Indies,
Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras,
Hayti, Japan, Johore, Korea, Liberia, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands,
Norway, Orange Free State, Paraguay, Persia, Portugal,
Russia, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom and
Colonies, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Exhibitions were held at Antwerp, Madrid and Bucharest in 1894; Hobart in 1894–1895; Bordeaux, 1895; Nizhni Novgorod, Berlin and Buda-Pest in 1896; Brussels and Brisbane in 1897. A series of exhibitions, under the management of the London Exhibitions Company, commenced at Earl’s Court in 1895 and continued in successive years.
The Paris Exhibition of 1900 was larger than any which had been previously held in Europe. The buildings did not cover so much ground as those at Chicago, but many of those at Paris had two or more floors. In addition to the localities occupied in 1889, additional space was obtained at the Champs Elysées, the park of Vincennes, on the north bank of the Seine between the Place de la Concorde, and at the Trocadero. The total superficial area occupied was as follows: Champ de Mars, 124 acres; Esplanade des Invalides, 30 acres; Trocadero Gardens, 40 acres; Champs Elysées, 37 acres; quays on left bank of Seine, 23 acres; quays on right bank of Seine, 23 acres; park at Vincennes, 270 acres: total, 549 acres. The space occupied by buildings and covered in amounted to 4,865,328 sq. ft., 11112 acres. The French section covered 2,691,000 sq. ft., the foreign 1,829,880, and those at the park of Vincennes 344,448 sq. ft. About one hundred French and seventy-five foreign pavilions and detached buildings were erected in the grounds in addition to the thirty-six official pavilions, which were for the most part along the Quai d’Orsay. Funds were raised upon the same system as that adopted in 1889. The French government granted £800,000, and a similar sum was contributed by the municipality of Paris. £2,400,000 was raised by the issue of 3,250,000 “bons,” each of the value of 20 francs, and containing 20 tickets of admission to the exhibition of the face value of one franc each, and a document which gave its holder a right either to a reduced rate for admission to the different “side-shows” or else to a diminution in the railway fare to and from Paris, together with a participation in the prizes, amounting to six million francs, drawn at a series of lotteries. Permission to erect restaurants, and to open places of amusement in buildings erected for that purpose, were sold at high prices, and for these privileges, which only realised 2,307,999 francs in 1889, the concessionaires agreed to pay 8,864,442 francs in 1900. The results did not justify the expectations which had been formed, and the administration finally consented to receive a much smaller sum. The administration calculated that they would have 65,000,000 paying visitors, though there were only 13,000,000 in 1878 and 25,398,609 in 1889. A very few weeks after the opening day, April 15th, it became evident that the estimated figures would not be reached, since a large number of holders of “bons” threw them on the market, and the selling price of an admission ticket declined from the par value of one franc to less than half that amount, or from 30 to 50 centimes. The proprietors of the restaurants and “side-shows” discovered that they had paid too much for their concessions, that the buildings they had erected were far too handsome and costly to be profitable, and that the public preferred the exhibition itself to the so-called attractions. The exhibition was largely visited by foreigners, but various causes kept away many persons of wealth and position. Although many speculators were ruined, the exhibition itself was successful. The attendance was unprecedentedly large, and during the seven months the exhibition was open, 39,000,000 persons paid for admission with 47,000,000 tickets, since from two to five tickets were demanded at certain times of the day and on certain occasions. The entries of exhibitors, attendants and officials totalled 9,000,000. The receipts were 114,456,213 francs (£4,578,249), and the expenditure 116,500,000 (£4,660,000), leaving a deficiency of rather more than two millions of francs (£80,000). It was calculated that the expenditure of the foreign nations which took part in the exhibition was six millions sterling, and of the French exhibitors and concessionaires three millions sterling.
A new plan of classifying exhibits was adopted at Paris, all being displayed according to their nature, and not according to their country of origin, as had been the system at previous exhibitions. One-half the space in each group was allotted to France, so that the exhibitors of that nation were enabled to overwhelm their rivals by the number and magnitude of the objects displayed by them. All the agricultural implements, whatever their nationality, were in one place, all the ceramics in another, so that there was no exclusively British and no exclusively German court. The only exception to this rule was in the Trocadero, where the French, British, Dutch, and Portuguese Colonies, Algeria, Tunis, Siberia, the South African Republic, China and Japan were allowed to erect at their own cost separate pavilions. The greater number of the nationalities represented had palaces of their own in the rue des Nations along the Quai d’Orsay, in which thoroughfare were to be seen the buildings erected by Italy, Turkey, the United States, Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Peru, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Persia, Belgium, Norway, Luxemburg, Finland, Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, Monaco, Sweden, Rumania, Greece, Servia and Mexico. Scattered about the grounds, in addition to those in the Trocadero, were the buildings of San Marino, Morocco, Ecuador and Korea. Nearly every civilized country in the world was represented at the exhibition, the most conspicuous absentees being Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and some other South and Central American Republics, and a number of the British colonies. The most noteworthy attractions of the exhibition were the magnificent effects produced by electricity in the palace devoted to it in the Château d’Eau and in the Hall of Illusions, the two palaces of the Fine Arts in the Champs Elysées, and the Bridge over the Seine dedicated to the memory of Alexander II. These permanent Fine Art palaces were devoted, the one to modern painting and sculpture, the other to the works of French artists and art workmen who flourished from the dawn of French art up to the end of the 18th century.
The United Kingdom was well but not largely represented both in Fine Arts and Manufactures, the administration of the section being in the hands of a royal commission, presided over by the prince of Wales. The British pavilion contained an important collection of paintings of the British school, chiefly by Reynolds, Gainsborough and their contemporaries, and by Turner and Burne-Jones. Special buildings had been erected by the British colonies and by British India. Canada, West Australia and Mauritius occupied the former, India and Ceylon the latter. For the first time since the war of 1870 Germany took part in a French International Exhibition, and the exhibits showed the great industrial progress which had been made since the foundation of the empire in 1870. The United States made a fine display, and fairly divided the honours with Germany. Remarkable progress was manifested in the exhibits of Canada and Hungary. France maintained her superiority in all the objects in which good taste was the first consideration, but the more utilitarian exhibits were more remarkable for their number than
