of important countries represented by exhibits, the characteristics and comprehensive nature of these exhibits, or the excellence in quality according to the standards of the countries from which they come.  That an exposition affords the greatest opportunity that manufacturers and producers of a nation have to increase their export trade by displaying their samples and products before the eyes of foreign people whose markets they seek.  Exhibitors are commercial and noncommercial.”  The commercial exhibitor has as his chief object the advertisement of his business and consequent increase in the sale of his goods by means of his display and the possible receipt of an award which may prove valuable in future exploitation of his products.  The noncommercial exhibitor has but the moral satisfaction of receiving the tangible assurance of the excellence of his work as represented by the award.

Though woman’s work enters into almost all manufactured articles, its proportion in some is very small, and at the Columbian Exposition, where it was estimated that women had a share in nearly 350 industries, it was finally agreed between the board of control and the board of lady managers that the best method upon which to base the proportion of women on the juries would be to give them representation according to the amount of work done by women on articles to be judged in each department of the classification.  This was a very satisfactory arrangement to that board, inasmuch as the manufacturers exhibiting were asked on the application blanks furnished them when they applied for space:  “Was the work upon this exhibit done wholly or in part by women?” An affirmative answer entitled the board of lady managers to membership on the jury of awards, giving them a majority in any department where women were especially active, and a minority, or total exclusion, where she had contributed little or nothing to the department, which would seem a most equitable method.

The impossibility of ascertaining these facts greatly affected the right of representation of the board of lady managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition on the juries of awards.

President Francis, in his address to the board on March 2, 1904, spoke on this subject as follows: 

I wish to say again—­I think I have made this statement to you before—­that when we started the organization of the exposition the question of separate fields of exhibit of competition was suggested and advanced, but the stronger view was presented as we believed by the stronger women, that there should be no contest between individual members of the different sexes, but that the work of each should be shown—­that if women had not arrived at that stage and made that advancement which permitted them to compete with men’s work, they had advanced but little.  Therefore we did not think of making any separate classification for the exhibitions of women’s work—­they came in under the same classification as men.