The assistance extended in another and indirect form by the States collectively and individually was valuable.  Congress appropriated $505,000 for the erection of a building and the collection therein of whatever the different Federal departments could command of the curious and instructive.  Massachusetts gave for a building of her own, and for aiding the contribution of objects by her citizens, $50,000; New York for a like purpose, $25,000; New Hampshire, Nevada and West Virginia, $20,000 each; Ohio, $13,000; Illinois, $10,000; and other States less sums.  The States in all, and in both forms of contribution, have given over four hundred thousand dollars—­not a fourth, strange to say, of the sums appropriated by foreign governments in securing an adequate display of the resources, energy and ingenuity of their peoples.  It does not approach the donation of Japan, and little more than doubles that of Spain.  In explanation, it may be alleged that our exhibitors, being less remote, will encounter less expense, and a larger proportion of them will be able to face their own expenses.

Great as is the value to a country of a free and facile interchange of commodities and ideas between its different parts, of not less—­under many circumstances far greater—­importance is its wide and complete intercourse with foreign lands.  Provincial differences are never so marked as national.  The latter are those of distinct idiosyncrasies—­the former, but modifications of one and the same.  To study members of our own family is only somewhat to vary the study of ourselves.  Really to learn we must go outside of that circle.  Hence the tremendous effect of the world-searching commerce of modern times in the enlightenment and enrichment of the race.

For the best fruits of the exposition its projectors and all concerned in its success looked abroad.  In this estimate of highest results they had the example of Europe.  It was remembered that British exports rose from one hundred and thirty-one millions sterling in 1850 to two hundred and fourteen in 1853—­an increase equal to our average annual export at present, and double what it was at that time.  The declared satisfaction of Austria with her apparent net loss of seven millions of dollars by the exhibition of 1873, in view of the offset she claimed in the stimulus it gave to her domestic industry and the extended market it earned for her foreign trade, was also eloquent.  We must therefore address the world in the way most likely to ensure its attention and attendance.  The chief essential to that end was that it should be official.  Government must address government.

[Illustration:  Machinery hall.]