Cost of the Chicago Exhibition

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 128, 29 November 1893, Page 2

Cost of the Chicago Exhibition

The Engineer says : — The Chicago Exhibition has cost 23,867,752d015. to August 7 for construction and administration. The gate receipts to the same date were 3,447,037d015. The daily receipts from all sources were about 80,000d015., and the average daily expenses 15,000d015., leaving a net daily revenue of 65,000d015. Auditor Ackerman, in his condensed balance-sheet of July 31, charges to construction account a total of 18,819,198d015. ; to general and operating expenses, 4,957,879d015. ; and to preliminary organisation 90,674d015. Assuming that the Exhibition will remain open for 60 days from the 7th August, this leaves a profit of about 4,000,000 dob. ; adding 4,600,000d01s previously received, we have a total net profit of B,Goo,ooodols. ; deducting this from the cost, we see that a balance of about 16,000,000 dols., or nearly £3,000,000, remains to be met. The Chicago Exhibition represents the largest money loss ever incurred by an exhibition. The greater number of the Chicago hotels have gone into liquidation or been closed. The insurance companies have withdrawn their policies on several of the caravanseries, specially constructed to accommodate a countless crowd of visitors who have never arrived. The insurance companies assert that in the interests of morality it is wrong to tempt the hotel keepers to commit arson, the average of visitors to these hotels being from 7 to 10 per cent, only of that expected and provided for. The visitors are indeed, mostly country folks, coming from a radius of about 300 to 500 miles. Probably no other scheme introduced to the world with such a blowing of trumpets has ever falleu so flat.