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98 4 Grand Opening The World’s Columbian Exposition officially opened on May 1. The morning brought a driving rainstorm, but by noon the skies held only dark clouds. Almost 200,000 people—most dressed in their Sunday best—crowded onto the grounds. Dignitaries arrived by carriage. Bertha Palmer rode with the Duchess of Veragua, whose family were descendants of Columbus himself. Opening ceremonies took place in front of the Administration Building,where President Grover Cleveland and other VIPs followed an agenda carefully laid out for them.1 After Cleveland gave a brief address, he pressed the key to a 2,000-horsepower engine, and as a large choir sang Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” in the background, fountains gushed and flags unfurled all over the grounds. “Amid the enthusiastic cheers of the vast multitude, the shrill whistling of the lake craft, and the deep diapason of booming guns, the formalities were complete,”the exposition’s president reported.2 After a luncheon in the Manufactures Building for visiting dignitaries, Palmer led her fellow Lady Managers to the Woman’s Building for its own formal opening. BLM officials had issued invitations to five thousand people for the ceremony,which took place inside the main hall.“The main court of the building was packed with men and women long before the hour announced for the commencement of the program,” the Daily Columbian reported. “Fully 3,000 found seats on the main floor and 4,000 more lined the long galleries in three tiers around three sides of the court.”3 On the dais Palmer sat regally amidst scores of luminaries as the World’s Fair chorus sang pieces written by female composers. Palmer had good reason to celebrate that day. Despite the fact that the suffrage debate charged the political atmosphere, Palmer and her BLM colleagues had managed to sidestep the issue by assembling an extensive array of exhibits profiling women’s achievements in science, art, and service. T U 99 Grand Opening When she was called on to speak, the crowd “found vent in cheers, applause and a fluttering of white handkerchiefs.”With carefully worded comments she recounted the political history of the building in which they sat.“We have traveled together a hitherto untrodden path, have been subjected to tedious delays and overshadowed by dark clouds which threatened disaster to our enterprise. We have been obliged to march with peace offerings in our hands lest hostile motives be ascribed to us” she said.4 Yet despite these difficulties, “our burdens have been greatly lightened . . . by the spontaneous sympathy and aid which have reached us from women in every part of the world,and which have proved an added incentive and inspiration.” She said she would not focus her remarks on the benefits of industrialization that were everywhere evident on the fairgrounds , but at the same time she wanted to bring attention to the impact of industrialization on women and children. “Of all existing forms of injustice,” she pronounced, “there is none so cruel and inconsistent as is the position in which women are placed with regard to self-maintenance—the calm ignoring of their rights and responsibilities which has gone on for centuries.” Even the notion that women ought to stay at home was suspect: “The theory which exists among conservative people, that the sphere of woman is her home . . . tells heavily against her, for manufacturers and producers take advantage of it to disparage her work and obtain her services for a nominal price, thus profiting largely by the . . . helplessness of their victim.” Many,she recognized,romanticized the sanctity of a home where women and children were protected from the evils of an industrialized world run by men. But such views were out of touch with the reality of life for the vast majority of women. “Would that the eyes of these idealists could be thoroughly opened that they might see, not the fortunate few of a favored class, with whom they possibly are in daily contact,” she pressed, “but the general status of the labor market throughout the world and the relation to it, of women.” Palmer then indicated that the statistics gathered in the Records Rooms would demonstrate that many women had no “natural protectors” and that hundreds of thousands of women were “forced to work shoulder to shoulder with their husbands in order to maintain the family.”Applause regularly interrupted her speech. Represented within the walls of the Woman’s Building, Palmer noted, “are the real heroines of...

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