Excerpt from International Exhibition, 1876: Reports of the President, Secretary, and Executive Committee, Together With the Journal of the Final Session of the Commission I have received from the United States Centennial Commission their final report, presenting a full exhibit of the result of the United States Centennial Celebration and Exhibition of 1876, as required by the Act of June 1, 1873. In transmitting this report for the consider ation of Congress, I express, I believe, the general judgment of the country, as well as my own, in assigning to this Exhibition a measure of success gratifying the pride and patriotism of our people, and full of promise to the great industrial and commercial interests of the country. The very ample and generous contributions which the foreign nations made to the splendor and usefulness of the Exhibition, and the cordiality with which their representatives took part in our national commemoration, deserve our profound acknowledgments. At this close of the great services rendered by the United States Centennial Commission and the Centennial Board of Finance, it gives me great pleasure to commend to your attention, and that of the people of the whole country, the laborious, faithful, and prosperous performance of their duties which have marked the administration of their respective trusts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Robert W. Rydell contends that America's early world's fairs actually served to legitimate racial exploitation at home and the creation of an empire abroad. He looks in particular to the "ethnological" displays of nonwhites—set up by showmen but endorsed by prominent anthropologists—which lent scientific credibility to popular racial attitudes and helped build public support for domestic and foreign policies. Rydell's lively and thought-provoking study draws on archival records, newspaper and magazine articles, guidebooks, popular novels, and oral histories.