It was, however, not an easy task to assemble exhibits that could fitly illustrate our diversified resources and manufactures.  Singularly enough, our national prosperity lessened the incentive to exhibit.  The dealer in raw materials knew that the user must come to him; the great factories were contented with the phenomenal demand for their output, not alone at home, but also abroad, where merit had already won a profitable trade.

Appeals had to be made to the patriotism of exhibitors to induce them to incur outlays promising no immediate return.  This was especially the case where it became needful to complete an industrial sequence or illustrate a class of processes.  One manufacturer after another had to be visited and importuned, and at times, after a promise to exhibit in a particular section had been obtained, it would be withdrawn, owing to pressure of trade orders, and a new quest would have to be made.

The installation of exhibits, too, encountered many obstacles and involved unexpected cost.  The exposition was far from ready at the date fixed for its opening.  The French transportation lines were congested with offered freight.  Belated goods had to be hastily installed in unfinished quarters with whatever labor could be obtained in the prevailing confusion.  Nor was the task of the Commission lightened by the fact that, owing to the scheme of classification adopted, it was impossible to have the entire exhibit of any one country in the same building or more than one group of exhibits in the same part of any building.  Our installations were scattered on both sides of the Seine and in widely remote suburbs of Paris, so that additional assistants were needed for the work of supervision and arrangement.

Despite all these drawbacks the contribution of the United States was not only the largest foreign display, but was among the earliest in place and the most orderly in arrangement.  Our exhibits were shown in one hundred and one out of one hundred and twenty-one classes, and more completely covered the entire classification than those of any other nation.  In total number they ranked next after those of France, and the attractive form in which they were presented secured general attention.

A criterion of the extent and success of our participation and of the thoroughness with which our exhibits were organized is seen in the awards granted to American exhibitors by the international jury, namely, grand prizes, 240; gold medals, 597; silver medals, 776; bronze medals, 541, and honorable mentions, 322—­2,476 in all, being the greatest total number given to the exhibit of any exhibiting nation, as well as the largest number in each grade.  This significant recognition of merit in competition with the chosen exhibits of all other nations and at the hands of juries almost wholly made up of representatives of France and other competing countries is not only most gratifying, but is especially valuable, since it sets us to the front in international questions of supply and demand, while the large proportion of awards in the classes of art and artistic manufactures afforded unexpected proof of the stimulation of national culture by the prosperity that flows from natural productiveness joined to industrial excellence.