ORIGIN OF EXHIBITIONS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 997, 27 May 1881, Page 3

ORIGIN OF EXHIBITIONS.

An exchange, speculating on this subject, says;— The discussion concerning the proper site for the coming World’s Fair would be greatly simpli tied were people to understand by whom and for what purposes exhi i tious of this kind are originated. It is popularly supposed that when England, France, or America hold a fair of the world, it is in response to a general demand from the people. That this impression has been so widely disseminated is a proof cf the wiliness of the men who inflict universal exhibitions upon deceived and suffering humanity. The people have never demanded either a world’s fair or the invasion of cholera. They have accepted these things as inevitable and borne them bravely, but they have never clamored tor them. There is a powerful organisation which, working by stealth and keeping itself out of sight, brings about a fair in some pari of the world every few years. We know the power of this organisation by the results which it achieves The human mind is so constituted that when it sees a given effect it demands a cause. Thus, the able logician knew when he saw anecdotes illustrative of Sara Bernhardt’s thinness that this actress was contemplating a visit to America. Anecdotes of thin actresses do not spring up spontaneously, but we can easily discover the cause. When we find fairs suddenly breaking out in Pans or Few York, or elsewhere, we ask ourselves who are interested in the promotion of such calamities, ana wuat cm; nature ot that intereat is. The answer can be found without much difficulty, so sure and luminous are the processes of reason. No !it is not the Jesuits who produce world’s fairs. ■ That manevoleut society of probable fiends has brought about most of the calamities from which the world has suffered, including the eerthquakes of Lisbon and the burning of Rome —which latter outrage

h's been erroneously ascribed to Nero T -but there is not the slightest proof 'tb .t the Jesuits are responsible for any of the great universal exhibitions The real offenders aredho cabmen and ha ;k-drivers of the world. These men working with an energy and secrecy which the Jesuits could hardly hope to rival, have repeatedly sacrificed at the shrine of their vehicles the inhabitants of Europe and America, and they are now determined to inflict upon us another World’s Fair. That it is really the cabmen and the hackdrivers who are the mover’s in this nefarious scheme will appear when we remember that they are (he men who secure 90 per cent, of the spoils. Let us recall for a moment the precise localities where the various world’s fairs have been held. In every instance they have been held in a large city, and in precisely that part of each city which could be reached by cabs and virtually no other. The result has been that the cabmen of London, Paris, and Vienna have made enormous sums. After the 1851 London Exhibition, two-thirds of the cabmen retired from business, and built magnificent country seats, where they afterwards lived in great luxury. Of the small number of cabmen who still remained in business, probably most of them were men with no ability to rise to the level of the occasion and charge foreigners 50s per mile, while we may assume that a few continued to drive cabs in the intervals of drawing dividends.