Centennial Exhibition

a celebrated World's Fair held in Fairmont Park, Philadelphia, May to November, in 1876. It was held during the one hundredth or centennial year of American Independence. Citizens of the city of Philadelphia gave over $4,000,000 toward expenses to which the national government added $1,500,000, and expended $500,000 on a government building. Twenty-six states erected building. In all over 200 separate buildings were arranged on the grounds. Over 50,000 awards were made for excellence of exhibits. Forty-nine foreign countries made exhibits. Though surpassed by subsequent efforts, the exhibition was the greatest affair of the sort, in fact, it was the first great exhibition held in America. The skilled manufacturers of the Old World were well represented, and this country ransacked field, forest, mine, and factory to make a good showing. The exhibit made by Japan was a surprise.

Americans learned a great deal from the articles on exhibition. Makers of pottery, glassware, furniture, calico, ribbons, mirrors, wall paper, and a thousand other articles of household use began to improve their patterns under the influence of European models. Printers, engravers, and wood finishers and makers of fine cabinet work were stirred up to equal or surpass the work seen at Philadelphia. The American bicycle was suggested by English wheels. About 8,000,000 fifty cent tickets were taken up at the gates. Although the cost of the exhibition was not recovered directly, nor even the half of it, the wonderful influence exerted on the manufacturers, decorators, designers, artists, schools, and the people at large--the awakening to the fact that America had so much to learn--is considered worth many times what the exhibition cost.

Many eminent Europeans visited and participated in scientific and other conferences. The Bell telephone was on exhibition for the first time. Machinery Hall, filled with inventions, together with the minerals and agricultural productions, woods, and fruits, gave European visitors respect for American inventive ability and for the future of the nation. The standing of the United States abroad was improved noticeably.

Center of Population in the United States. The center of population would be the geographical center if the country were peopled uniformly. When the first census was taken in 1790 the center of population was a point near the Atlantic coast twenty-three miles east of Baltimore. By 1800 it had moved forty-one miles, to a point eighteen miles west of Baltimore. Ten years later it had traveled thirty-six miles farther westward, to a point northwest of Washington, D. C. During the next thirty years it traveled westward through West Virginia. In 1860 it was twenty miles south of Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1870 it was forty-eight miles east of Cincinnati, and in 1880 eight miles west of that city. In 1890 it was twenty miles east of Columbus, Indiana, and in 1900, the center was located six miles southeast of the same city. A line joining these centers runs nearly due east and west. The western gain varies from fourteen to eighty-one miles per decade. The greatest gain was made between 1850 and 1860; the least, between 1890 and 1900. At the present time the rapid settlement of the Pacific northwestward is doubtless carrying the center in that direction. The center of the negro population, calculated separately, is near Rome, Georgia. It appears to be traveling toward the Gulf of Mexico. See Census