express our deep gratitude.  Your coming enables us to show you the scope of the undertaking we have launched.  Our plans are ambitious and our hopes high, but we are energetic and untiring, and with your recognition and assistance we expect to carry to a successful consummation an enterprise which will not only assemble the natural resources of the earth and bring together the best products of human skill, but will be the occasion for eliciting the expression of the best thought and for classifying and systematizing all human knowledge.

We hope this exposition will be an epitome of the progress of the world from the beginning of history.  The nineteenth century was characterized by unprecedented and almost incomprehensible industrial advancement.  The earth was made to reveal its hidden treasures.  The unknown forces of nature were harnessed and utilized.  Lines of commerce were established which encircle the earth.

Sections of the globe remote and almost unknown to each other were brought into close communication and friendly relation.  It would seem that there is little to be done in the field of scientific effort.  But every discovery and every advance opens a broader plane for the exercise of human ingenuity.

The problems, however, that seem to confront us most prominently to-day, and that require for their solution not only experience and intelligence, but fraternal sentiment as well, are those of a social character.  The aggregation that we call society is bound together by ties of sympathy, strengthened it may be by culture, but often strained by selfishness and pride.  The relation of man to nature and her physical forces commands the highest functions of the mind, but the relation of man to his fellows not only enlists the highest intellectual effort, but requires that it be tempered by impulses of human kindness.  Those who have as the mainspring of their actions the elevation of their fellows live and move upon a higher plane and are better members of society than those who subordinate sentiment and sympathy to gain and power.

The earth in its fertility and resourcefulness furnishes material sufficient to maintain in comfort all of its sons.  If their genius and energy could be devoted to the utilization of that material instead of to a continuous struggle between themselves for occupation and possession, the destiny of the human race would be higher and nobler and nearer in accord with the immortal principles enunciated by Him whose life and teachings have for nearly two thousand years been a rule of conduct for man, while broadening his usefulness and enhancing his happiness.

That this exposition may be a powerful aid in the elevation and advancement of the human race is the prayer of those who organized and have brought it to its present stage of progress.  That the countries for which you stand may unite