Effect of the World's Fair on the Human Race
On the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1893)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 12.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/effect-of-worlds-fair/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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THE Great Fair should be for the intellectual, mechanical, artistic,
political and social advancement of the world. Nations, like small
communities, are in danger of becoming provincial, and must become
so, unless they exchange commodities, theories, thoughts, and ideals.
Isolation is the soil of ignorance, and ignorance is the soil of
egotism; and nations, like individuals who live apart, mistake
provincialism for perfection, and hatred of all other nations for
patriotism. With most people, strangers are not only enemies, but
inferiors. They imagine that they are progressive because they know
little of others, and compare their present, not with the present of
other nations, but with their own past.

Few people have imagination enough to sympathize with those of a
different complexion, with those professing another religion or speaking
another language, or even wearing garments unlike their own. Most people
regard every difference between themselves and others as an evidence of
the inferiority of the others. They have not intelligence enough to put
themselves in the place of another if that other happens to be outwardly
unlike themselves.

Countless agencies have been at work for many years destroying the
hedges of thorn that have so long divided nations, and we at last are
beginning to see that other people do not differ from us, except in the
same particulars that we differ from them. At last, nations are becoming
acquainted with each other, and they now know that people everywhere are
substantially the same. We now know that while nations differ outwardly
in form and feature, somewhat in theory, philosophy and creed,
still, inwardly—that is to say, so far as hopes and passions are
concerned—they are much the same, having the same fears, experiencing
the same joys and sorrows. So we are beginning to find that the virtues
belong exclusively to no race, to no creed, and to no religion; that the
humanities dwell in the hearts of men, whomever and whatever they
may happen to worship. We have at last found that every creed is of
necessity a provincialism, destined to be lost in the universal.

At last, Science extends an invitation to all nations, and places at
their disposal its ships and its cars; and when these people meet—or
rather, the representatives of these people—they will find that, in
spite of the accidents of birth, they are, after all, about the same;
that their sympathies, their ideas' of right and wrong, of virtue and
vice, of heroism and honor, are substantially alike. They will find that
in every land honesty is honored, truth respected and admired, and that
generosity and charity touch all hearts.

So it is of the greatest importance that the inventions of the world
should be brought beneath one roof. These inventions, in my judgment,
are destined to be the liberators of mankind. They enslave forces and
compel the energies of nature to work for man. These forces have no
backs to feel the lash, no tears to shed, no hearts to break.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes What we call
civilized by increasing his wants. As his necessities increase, he
becomes industrious and energetic. If his heart does not keep pace with
his brain, he is cruel, and the physically or mentally strong enslave
the physically or mentally weak. At present these inventions, while they
have greatly increased the countless articles needed by man, have to
a certain extent enslaved mankind. In a savage state there are few
failures. Almost any one succeeds in hunting and fishing. The wants are
few, and easily supplied. As man becomes civilized, wants increase; or
rather as wants increase, man becomes civilized. Then the struggle for
existence becomes complex; failures increase.

The first result of the invention of machinery has been to increase the
wealth of the few. The hope of the world is that through invention man
can finally take such advantage of these forces of nature, of the weight
of water, of the force of wind, of steam, of electricity, that they will
do the work of the world; and it is the hope of the really civilized
that these inventions will finally cease to be the property of the few,
to the end that they may do the work of all for all.

When those who do the work own the machines, when those who toil control
the invention, then, and not till then, can the world be civilized or
free. When these forces shall do the bidding of the individual, when
they become the property of the mechanic instead of the monopoly, when
they belong to labor instead of what is called capital, when these great
powers are as free to the individual laborer as the air and light
are now free to all, then, and not until then, the individual will be
restored and all forms of slavery will disappear.

Another great benefit will come from the Fair. Other nations in some
directions are more artistic than we, but no other nation has made
the common as beautiful as we have. We have given beauty of form to
machines, to common utensils, to the things of every day, and have thus
laid the foundation for producing the artistic in its highest possible
forms. It will be of great benefit to us to look upon the paintings and
marbles of the Old World. To see them is an education.

The great Republic has lived a greater poem than the brain and heart of
man have as yet produced, and we have supplied material for artists and
poets yet unborn; material for form and color and song. The Republic is
to-day Art's greatest market.

Nothing else is so well calculated to make friends of all nations as
really to become acquainted with the best that each has produced.

The nation that has produced a great poet, a great artist, a great
statesman, a great thinker, takes its place on an equality with other
nations of the world, and transfers to all of its citizens some of the
genius of its most illustrious men.

This great Fair will be an object lesson to other nations. They will see
the result of a government, republican in form, where the people are the
source of authority, where governors and presidents are servants—not
rulers. We want all nations to see the great Republic as it is, to study
and understand its growth, development and destiny. We want them to know
that here, under our flag, are sixty-five millions of people and that
they are the best fed, the best clothed and the best housed in the
world. We want them to know that we are solving the great social
problems, and that we are going to demonstrate the right and power of
man to govern himself. We want the subjects of other nations to see
aland filled with citizens—not subjects; aland in which the pew is
above the pulpit; where the people are superior to the state; where
legislators are representatives and where authority means simply the
duty to enforce the people's will.

Let us hope above all things that this Fair will bind the nations
together closer and stronger; and let us hope that this will result in
the settlement of all national difficulties by arbitration instead of
war. In a savage state, individuals settle their own difficulties by
an appeal to force. After a time these individuals agree that their
difficulties shall be settled by others. This is the first great step
toward civilization. The result is the establishment of courts. Nations
at present sustain to each other the same relation that savage does
to savage. Each nation is left to decide for itself, and it generally
decides according to its strength—not the strength of its side of the
case, but the strength of its army. The consequence is that what is
called "the Law of Nations" is a savage code. The world will never be
civilized until there is an international court. Savages begin to be
civilized when they submit their difficulties to their peers. Nations
will become civilized when they submit their difficulties to a great
court, the judgments of which can be carried out, all nations pledging
the co-operation of their armies and their navies for that purpose.

If the holding of the great Fair shall result in hastening the coming of
that time it will be a blessing to the whole world.

And here let me prophesy: The Fair will be worthy of Chicago, the
most wonderful city of the world—of Illinois, the best State in the
Union—of the United States, the best country on the earth. It will
eclipse all predecessors in every department. It will represent the
progressive spirit of the nineteenth century. Beneath its ample roofs
will be gathered the treasures of Art, and the accomplishments of
Science. At the feet of the Republic will be laid the triumphs of our
race, the best of every land.—The illustrated World's Fair, Chicago,
November, 1891.
