A glance over the classification-list assists us in recognizing the advantages of the system of awards framed by the Commission and adopted after patient study and discussion.  It discards the plan—­if plan it could be called—­of scattering diplomas and medals of gold, silver and bronze right and left, after the fashion of largesse at a mediaeval coronation, heretofore followed at international expositions.  These prizes were decided on and assigned by juries whose impartiality—­by reason of the imperfect representation upon them of the nations which exhibited little in mass or little in certain classes, and also of their failure to make written reports and thus secure their responsibility—­could not be assured, and whose action, therefore, was defective in real weight and value.  The juries were badly constituted:  they had too much to do of an illusory and useless description, and they had too little to do that was solid and instructive.  Special mentions, diplomas, half a dozen grades of medals and other honors, formed a programme too large and complicated to be discriminatingly carried out.  So it happened that to exhibit and to get a distinction of some kind came, at Vienna, to be almost convertible expressions; and who excelled in the competition in any of the classes, or who had contributed anything substantial to the stock of human knowledge or well-being, remained quite undetermined.  What instruction the display could impart was confined to spectators who studied its specialties for themselves and used their deductions for their individual advantage, and to those who read the sufficiently general and cursory reports made to their several governments by the national commissions.  The official awards and reports of the exposition authorities amounted to little or nothing.

[Illustration:  THE CORLISS ENGINE, FURNISHING MOTIVE-POWER FOR MACHINERY HALL.]

A sharp departure from this practice was decided on at the Centennial.  Two hundred judges, of undoubted character and intelligence and entire familiarity with the departments assigned to them, were chosen—­half by the foreign bureaus and half by the U.S.  Commission.  These were made officers of the exposition itself, and thus separated from external influences.  They were given a reasonable and fixed compensation of one thousand dollars each for their time and personal expenses.  An equal division of the number of judges between the domestic and foreign sides gives the latter an excess, measured by the comparative extent of the display from the two sources.  But this is favorable to us, as we shall be the better for an outside judgment on the merits of both our own and foreign exhibits.  Were it otherwise, the excess of private observers from this country would counterbalance our deficit in judges.  The foreign jurors have to see for the millions they represent.  Our own will have vast numbers of their constituents on the ground.