The woman's pavilion upon the centennial grounds was an after-thought, as theologians claim woman herself to have been.[1] The women of the country after having contributed nearly $100,000 to the centennial stock, found there had been no provision made for the separate exhibition of their work. The centennial board, Mrs. Gillespie, president, then decided to raise funds for the erection of a separate building to be known as the Woman's Pavilion. It covered an acre of ground and was erected at an expense of $30,000, a small sum in comparison with the money which had been raised by women and expended on the other buildings, not to speak of State and national appropriations which the taxes levied on them had largely helped to swell.
The pavilion was no true exhibit of woman's work. First, few women are as yet owners of business which their industry largely makes remunerative. Cotton factories in which thousands of women work, are owned by men. The shoe business, in some branches of which women are doing more than half, is under the ownership of men. Rich embroideries from India, rugs of downy softness from Turkey, the muslin of Dacca, anciently known as "The Woven Wind," the pottery and majolica ware of P. Pipsen's widow, the cartridges and envelopes of Uncle Sam, Waltham watches whose finest mechanical work is done by women, and ten thousand other industries found no place in the pavilion. Said United States Commissioner Meeker,[2] of Colorado, "Woman's work comprises three-fourths of the exposition; it is scattered through every building; take it away and there would be no exposition."
But this pavilion rendered one good service to woman in showing her capabilities as an engineer. The boiler which furnished the force for running its work was under the management of a young Canadian girl, Miss Alison, who from a child loved machinery, spending much time in the large saw and grist mills of her father, run by engines of two- and three-hundred horse-power, which she sometimes managed for amusement. When her name was proposed for running the pavilion machinery it brought much opposition. It was said the committee would some day find the pavilion blown to atoms; that the woman engineer would spend her time reading novels, instead of watching the steam gauge;
