Thursday, April 29, 2010

ROAR #4: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 245- 320
Despite of all the due dates of the big fair, the day was finally here, and people from all over the world came to visit the most exordinary event in the United States. In the beginning of the fair Burnham made the opening statements and the event started. It was everything that people expected, a job well done. More than 25 million people attended this event. The fair wasnt all good news peopele were scared to go becuase after the first day their stock went down and that made economic problems for people to participate. A lot of people wanted to attend to look at the exhibits but couldnt because they knowingly didnt want to out themselves through money crisis. In a result the fair didnt make a lot of money. Holmes was a very suspicious man, he only let women stay in the hotel and his waitress had disapeered, but he didnt really pay any mind to it. Holmes wondered if the fair was even going to make a good profit but it was to far to tell. On July 4 people came to come and see the exhibit but they still they didnt make a good profit, this dispointed Holmes. They were several problems hitting the fair, econmic problems, technical diffilculties, and weather made it extremely hard for them to run the fair because on a rainy day the ferris wheel had an accident and ended up coming up in flames and Mr. Burnhams was arrested becuase he was responsible for the fair. SOme people can to fix some of the problems at the fair. The same day of the incident which was July 6, Infanta Eulalia, the youngest sister of spains dead king Alfonso XII and daughter of exiled Queen Isabel II. Newspapers called her the Queen of the fair becuase she was a famous person who came to the fair. The Queen of the fair had such a good time at the fair that in the end she didnt want to leave due to the great attention and treatment she was gettin she was going to leave on wednesday with regret.

"Royalty at best is a troublesome customer for republicans to deal with and royalty of th spanish sort is the most troublesome of all. . . It was their custom to come late and go away early, leaving behind general regret that they had not come still later and gone away still earlier, or, better still perhaps, thst they had not come at all" (Larson 263).

It seems to me that this fair was a bad idea is some ways but it brought some possitivity to Chicago as the same time. Some of the problems that the Fair brought to chicago were the economic problems because the fair didnt really bring a lot of money because the stock was going down for some people so they had to be careful. Secondly, people kept coming up missing and since this big event was going on they didnt pay attention to them. As chicago was in the beginin of the book findin out that someone is missing wasnt a big surprise to those people at the time. Some positive feedbacks were famous poeple came to the Fair which made chicago look really good and they trete them so well that the famous individuals did not want to leave they wanted to leave with regret. This was good because they were giving a good name to Chicago apposed to what other people said about Chicago and scary murderest place.




1 comment:

  1. the city of Shanghai is facing similar pressures with a world's fair being held their this month

    ReplyDelete