Pan-American Exposition - LINKS ..... Wm. McKinley - LINKS
Pan American Exposition: World's Fair as Historical Metaphor
An excerpt from
High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York
Pub. by State University of New York at Buffalo, 1983
by Mark Goldman
Goldman's book, High Hopes,
does not have illustrations. |
Ida McKinley |
Theodore Roosevelt |
John Milburn |
Pan Am Propylaea |
Electric Tower |
Pan-American Exposition by night
/ Thomas A. Edison, Inc. |
Electric Tower Model |
Court of Fountains,. |
Machinery and Transportation
Building |
The Court. Machinery and Transportation
Building |
Triumphal Bridge. |
Ethnology Building |
A Corner of the Stadium |
Sham battle at the Pan-American
Exposition. |
New York State Building . |
New York State Building. |
Pan Am buildings. |
"Buffalo Bill" Cody
and Native American chiefs. |
Cleveland Gazette article: "Pan-American
Exposition Color Line" |
Tiffany Glass Co. memorial window
at Pan Am. |
Transverse flute purchased at
Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, 12 Sept. 1901. |
Temple of Music - Postcard |
Sept.. 5 President McKinley visits the Pan Am on President's Day |
President McKinley's speech at
the Pan-American Exposition / Thomas A. Edison, Inc. |
The assassination - Photograph
of wash drawing by T. Dart Walker. |
Leon Czolgosz |
Dr. Mann. |
Electric Exposition Ambulance
that transported McKinley manned by UB Medical students. |
The hospital. |
Operating room - Exposition Hospital. |
Crowds around the Hospital while
McKinley was undergoing surgery. |
Dr. Roswell Park. |
Sketch of the path of the assassin's
bullet |
President McKinley's funeral
cortege at Buffalo, N.Y. / Thomas A. Edison, Inc. |
Ansley
Wilcox |
Wilcox mansion. |
September 5
On September 5, the crowd at the exposition -- over
116,000 peoples -- broke all records. The great rush came after supper. "Every
street-car was loaded and passengers clung to the steps. The whole city, it seemed,
was traveling to the Exposition. After 6:00 about thirty thousand people were admitted
through the various gates. The grounds had never looked so crowded. Buildings were
visited by throngs. The shows were packed at every performance. The restaurants were
overwhelmed. From every quarter a flood of humanity bore down upon the esplanade
until it was difficult even to worm one's way through the crowd."
First came a concert by John Philip Sousa. Sousa had played at the Bicentennial Exposition
at Philadelphia in 1876, the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, the mid-winter California
Fair in 1894, the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition in 1895, and the Paris Exposition
in 1900, and had been brought in specifically from the Boston Food Fair to play for
the president. Then came Henry J. Pain, the "Fire Works King," whose name
was synonymous with pyrotechnics. At the Paris Exposition, Pain had launched a three-figured
display symbolizing the ideals of the French Revolution. At the St. Louis Fair he
used fireworks to create an embodiment of the Louis and Clark Expedition. For Buffalo,
he promised the "largest pyrotechnical display ever seen."
At sunset the exposition grounds were illuminated by very powerful fires in five
different colors. A large number of lighted balloons were next, followed by the discharge
of a hundred three-pound rockets fired simultaneously from different sections of
the fairgrounds. Ten batteries of mines were then put in motion. Next came five hundred
colored lights discharging electric comets in a continuous stream and a salvo of
ten thirty-inch bombs with five colors each. Next came a series of ten national streamers,
and ten huge shells which each detached one hundred parachutes and fifty silver umbrellas.
Then came a display called "The American Empire." At one thousand feet,
four large bombs exploded together. The first formed the outline of the United States,
the second and third the outlines of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the fourth splattered
into a series of small shells representing the Philippine Islands. But the best was
saved for last. For the finale, thousands of tiny fire balls exploded at once, creating
a gigantic, sparking likeness of William McKinley. The sky filled with shining letters:
"Welcome President McKinley, Chief of our Nation and our Empire."
The president, his aides noted happily, seemed to have enjoyed every minute of Pain's
display, and after personally thanking the master of pyrotechnics, the president
returned to the Milburn home. Meanwhile, there was violence on the city's East Side.
A black woman shot her husband, and a Polish railroad employee stabbed his neighbor
seven times in the face and forehead in a place called Pasczek's saloon on Broadway.
Leon Czolgosz, who was staying at Walter Nowak's Hotel on Broadway, had seen the
stabbing and was, according to later testimony, sickened by it.
September 6 - The Assassination
On September 6, President McKinley awoke early as
was his custom. At 7:15 A.M., fully dressed for the day in his habitual black frock
coat and black silk hat, he eluded the small Secret Service entourage that surrounded
the Milburn house and took a solitary walk down Delaware Avenue. Later that morning,
accompanied by a host of city and exposition officials, the McKinleys boarded a train
for Niagara Falls. They visited the falls, walked along the gorge, and toured the
Niagara Falls Power Project, which the President referred to as "the marvel
of the Electrical Age." After lunch the presidential party returned to Buffalo.
Mrs. McKinley went to the Milburn house to rest, and the president to the exposition,
where he was scheduled to meet the thousands of people who, in spite of the oppressive
heat, were waiting at the Temple of
Music, a large, vaguely Byzantine structure on the north side of the fairgrounds.
No one had waited longer than "Giant"
Jim Parker, a six-foot six inch Negro waiter from Atlanta who had been standing
outside the temple since mid-morning. Finally, at 4:00 P.M. the doors of the Temple
of Music opened and hundreds of people made an orderly, single-file procession to
the front of the auditorium where President McKinley, flanked by John Milburn and
his personal secretary, George Cortelyou, stood waiting. It was extremely hot in
the room -- over ninety degrees -- and everybody was carrying handkerchiefs, either
wiping their brows or waving them at the president. Leon Czolgosz, however,
used his handkerchief to conceal a tiny handgun, and as the fast-moving line brought
him directly in front of the president, Czolgosz shot him two times in the stomach.
Parker, who was standing directly behind the assassin, smashed him to the floor.
While Czolgosz was pounced on and beaten by the attending soldiers and guards, McKinley,
amid the screeching pandemonium in the room, was carried out and several minutes
later was being rushed in an electrical ambulance to the exposition hospital.
Medical Treatment
John Milburn took command immediately. When he learned
that Roswell Park, the medical director of the exposition, was in Niagara Falls performing
a Lymphoma operation that Presly Richey, McKinley's personal physician, was touring
the exposition grounds, Milburn pointed to Dr. Matthew Mann, one of the several
physicians who had gathered at the hospital, and told him to take charge of
the case. Mann examined the president and determined that unless his wounds were
immediately sutured they would prove fatal. Thus, at 5:30 P.M. Dr. Mann, the city's
leading gynecologist, but a man with limited experience in abdominal surgery, began
to operate on the president of the United States. Meanwhile, Dr. Park, who
had been brought back to Buffalo on a special train, entered the hospital after the
operation had begun but soon enough to notice that Mann was working under the most
difficult of conditions.
Like all the buildings at the exposition, the hospital was a temporary structure,
ill-equipped and able to handle only the most routine medical emergencies. Most serious
of all was that the lighting was totally inadequate. Indeed, there were no electric
lights at all in the operating room and one of the attending physicians was forced
to improvise by using a looking glass to reflect the rays of the setting sun. Only
toward the end of the operation did they succeed in rigging up an electric light.
The operation itself was fairly simple. When Dr. Mann could not find the second bullet
(the first one had merely grazed the skin and had caused no damage), he assumed that
it was safely lodged in the lumbar muscles. Noting that it had caused no damage to
the intestine or to other abdominal organs, all that remained for him to do was to
close the wounds in the front and back walls of the president's stomach. This done,
the operation was completed.
Meanwhile, crowds were forming everywhere. As the news spread throughout the fairgrounds
that Czolgosz was being held in one of the rooms in the Temple of Music, hundreds
of people tried to break through the cordon of guards surrounding the building. When
this failed they tore up the rope and stanchions that supported it. Crowds blocked
the electrical paddy wagon that transported Czolgosz from the Temple of Music to
police headquarters downtown and the crowd that waited for him there was so large
that the wagon was forced to wait while mounted policemen broke it up. As the crowds
downtown grew throughout the evening, two National Guard regiments were called out
to prevent the anticipated storming of headquarters. Crowds had also formed outside
of the exposition hospital and along the route that the electrical ambulance took
as it brought President McKinley to the Milburn house following his operation. This
crowd, however, was quiet and stunned. Roswell Park wrote about it in his
diary: "The passage through the crowd and down Delaware Avenue was one of the
most dramatic incidents I have ever witnessed. The fair grounds were crowded that
day and it seemed as though the entire crowd had gathered to witness this event.
Every man's hat was in his hand and there were handkerchiefs at many eyes. I never
saw so large a crowd so quiet."
The Milburn house, so recently renovated, was now converted into a virtual military
camp. On the outside it was surrounded by armed guards. Inside special telegraph
machines had been installed as the house became the center of an international communications
network. Across the street press tents were set up for the more than 250 newsmen
covering the story, the most that had ever covered a public event. All of them rejoiced
when Dr. Mann issued the first of many medical bulletins. The doctors were "gratified,"
Mann reported, by the president's condition. "The results," he said, cannot
yet be foretold [but] hopes for recovery are justified."
As the president and the people of Buffalo settled in for what appeared to be a long
period of recuperation (John Milburn engaged rooms for his family at a downtown hotel),
the rest of the world reacted to the news. Europeans, recently shocked by the murder
of King Umberto of Italy and the attempted assassination of Kaiser Wilhelm, were
particularly concerned. Czar Nicholas II and the Russian royal family, cruising off
the Danish coast on their yacht, arranged to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm on his royal
yacht, The Hohenzollern, in the North Sea. There they agreed to double their security
measures and to avoid, at least for a while, all public appearances.
In New York City people were more concerned about the whereabouts of J. P. Morgan
than they were with the medical bulletins emanating from the Milburn house in Buffalo.
The shooting of the president had triggered dire predictions of a stock market collapse
and many people, by now accustomed to the fiscal heroics of Morgan, wondered desperately
where he was. Some reports had him closeted with advisors on his private yacht, The
Corsair. Others said that he was in conference in his private room at Delmonico's.
Still others said that he was busy on the telephone in the library of his Murray
Hill mansion. As people throughout the country wondered if, how, and when the great
financier would come to their rescue, Morgan, who in fact had never left his office,
hired three private detectives to protect himself.
Reaction of the Police
Meanwhile, in a basement room of police headquarters,
Leon Czolgosz made a confession. "Not until Tuesday did the resolution to shoot
the President take hold of me. It was in my heart - there was no escape for
me. I could not have conquered it had my life depended on it." The deed, he
swore, was his own doing. He had no accomplice and no connection with the notorious
anarchist cell in Paterson, New Jersey which had nurtured Gaetano Bresci, the murderer
of King Umberto. Over and over he swore that he had no confidants, that he was absolutely
alone. But nobody -- not the police, or the press, or the politicians all over the
country clamoring for anti-anarchist laws -- wanted to believe him and they sought
desperately for any clue that hinted at conspiracy. Unwittingly, Czolgosz gave them
the lead they were looking for. To the police he confessed: "I am an Anarchistña
disciple of Emma Goldman. Her words set me on fire."
The word went out from Buffalo and immediately a national dragnet tightened around
the anarchist leader. When a dozen of her colleagues in Chicago were arrested for
complicity in the shooting of McKinley, Goldman secretly set out from St. Louis to
join them. In spite of her best efforts to disguise herself, she was arrested in
Chicago the next day at the request of the Buffalo police.
Convinced that the tentacles of the anarchist conspiracy reached Buffalo, the police
began a relentless scouring of the East Side for suspects. Anyone who had had any
contact with Czolgosz was arrested: Nowak, whose hotel he had stayed in; Pasczek,
whose tavern he had drunk in; and Paul Redlinski, a barber who had cut Czolgosz's
hair a week earlier. On a tip from two Polish priests on the East Side, the police
arrested Helen Petrowski, a twenty-five-year-old school teacher. The priests said
that she had been teaching anarchism and free love. Her dead husband, they said,
had also been an anarchist -- a man who died because his "constant brooding
on the subject of the ideal social fabric fatally affected his brain." Along
with Mrs. Petrowski, the police arrested "a dark curly-headed man with a decidedly
Polish appearance" and a Russian Jewish physician who in 1894 had led a march
of the poor on Buffalo's City Hall.
But the press and the police were far more intrigued with the Goldman connection.
Everything, it seemed, pointed in her direction. Not only had Czolgosz mentioned
her as a source of inspiration, but also the police said he had talked about her
in his sleep several times. Czolgosz's ruminations were given further substance when
a local psychiatrist told the police that certain details of the assassination attempt
particularly Czolgosz's use of a white handkerchief -- suggested a feminine touch.
The district attorney in Buffalo immediately initiated extradition proceedings, but
the Chicago police stalled. Under intensive questioning, Goldman, whose family lived
in Rochester, admitted to having visited Buffalo and the Pan American Exposition
twice during the summer, but denied ever having met with Czolgosz. She was, she said,
opposed to the use of violence and even volunteered to nurse the wounded president
back to health (She had studied midwifery and nursing in Vienna). Although they were
convinced of her innocence and refused to comply with the district attorney's extradition
request, the Chicago police detained Goldman for fifteen days, long after Mrs. Petrowski,
Nowak, Pasczek, and the others had been released for lack of evidence. When finally
allowed to go, she was denied the right to lecture in Chicago and her magazine Free
Society was denied the use of the mails. Her family suffered, too. Her father was
excommunicated from his synagogue in Rochester and his furniture store was boycotted
for months.
Progress of the President
Meanwhile, the optimistic medical bulletins about President McKinley continued, and
as they did the shuck of the assassination attempt wore off and the city began to
enjoy the attention it was getting as the accidental capital of the nation. The comings
and goings of the nation's political celebrities who had convened in Buffalo following
the shooting were discussed in minute detail. Vice-President Roosevelt was dining
at the home of Ansley Wilcox, about a half a mile south of the Milburn house
on Delaware Avenue. Attorney General Philander Knox and Secretary of State John Hay
were staying at the Buffalo Club, the prestigious men's club founded by Millard Fillmore,
and Secretary of War Elihu Root was addressing the Buffalo branch of the Grand Army
of the Republic on how the government was coping with the emergency.
Continued progress in the president's condition was reported. On September 9, the
press was told that "if the President continued to improve we may safely say
that he is convalescent." Senator Mark Hanna, a close personal friend of the
president, said that "any day now he will be smoking cigars again." On
September 10, following a conference with the president's physicians, Roosevelt summarized
the situation. "I am absolutely certain," he said, "that everything
is coming out all right." Two days later, in spite of reports that McKinley
had spent a restless night, Roosevelt, brimming with confidence, announced that he
was leaving for his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. That same day, William Buchanan,
the director of the Pan American, announced plans for "President McKinley Day"
at the exposition, a special day to celebrate the recovery of the president. The
celebration was necessary, Buchanan said, to dissipate any possible odium that might
have been cast upon the exposition, "to raise it from a landmark of doom to
a symbol of happiness."
At 6:00 PM. on September 12, McKinley's physicians reported that the president was
"not so good." McKinley had just taken his first oral meal since the shooting
(he had previously been fed intravenously) and was not able to digest his food. However,
he was given calomel and oils and by midnight had moved his bowels, and the trouble
was reported to have passed. However, by 2:00 A.M. on September 13, it became clear
that the president was suffering something far more serious than indigestion. His
pulse, which had been abnormally high ever since his operation, quickened still more
and his heart weakened considerably. Dr. Park arrived at the Milburn house at 3:00
A.M. and at 6:00 A.M. Senator Hanna, who had just gone back home to Cleveland, once
again set out for Buffalo on a special train. Stunned by the sudden activity at the
Milburn house, crowds began to congregate along Delaware Avenue in front of the house.
Fearing the worst, Chief of Police William Bull activated three hundred police reserves,
as a threatening crowd of close to two thousand people marched down Main Street in
the direction of police headquarters, where Czolgosz was being held.
However, nothing that had happened -- not the summoning of McKinley's friends, family,
and cabinet members; not the desperate effort to contact the vice-president, who
was mountain climbing in the Adirondacks; not even the increasingly pessimistic report
of the medical team could convince some people that the end was near. Congressman
Alexander of Buffalo told a crowd of still gullible reporters that "It is not
true that the physicians are without hope or that those gathered in the house are
despondent. Everybody about the house is hopeful. The two men who know him best,
Cortelyou and Hanna, are cheerful and confident."
The President Dies
But Alexander could not wish away the truth, and McKinley
weakened steadily throughout the day. At 4:00 P.M. on September 13, his pulsations
increased again and at 5:00 P.M. he suffered a heart attack. Aware himself of the
futility of further efforts to save him, at 8:00 that night McKinley asked to have
a last word with his wife. At 9:00 he lost consciousness, and at 2:10 the following
morning he died. That morning the Pan American Exposition was closed for the first
time and Theodore Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth president of the United States
at a hasty swearing-in ceremony in Wilcox's house on Delaware Avenue.
What was most upsetting about the president's death was that it was so totally unexpected.
Coming after days of nothing but optimistic reports about the his health, the news
of McKinley's death confused and angered the public more than it saddened them. For
it soon became apparent that from the beginning there had been little grounds for
optimism, and while nobody was accusing the medical team of lying outright, there
was no question but that the public had not been told the truth. In the hours following
McKinley's death, some of the truth began to emerge. Dr. Park said that once he bullet
had penetrated the abdomen, the president became a doomed man. He was, he said, amazed
that McKinley had lived as long as he had. Another said that there was no case record
of a person the age of the president surviving a serious stomach wound. Citing the
recent case of the Princeton quarterback who had been shot in the stomach by a Negro
spectator, another doctor said that regardless of age or physical condition, a stomach
wound was fatal more often than not.
Most stocking of all was the fact that ever since Tuesday, September 12, the president's
physicians had been aware that gangrene had set in, and while they believed that
they had removed the poisoned areas, there was every reason to suspect that the disease
would spread. Cortelyou had urged that the doctors again search for the bullet and
even had Thomas Alva Edison send his most sophisticated x-ray machine to Buffalo
for that purpose. But, satisfied that the bullet could cause no harm, the doctors
refused to reexamine the wound. The autopsy confirmed Cortelyou's suspicions and
what the doctors must certainly have guessed on Tuesday: that the spread of gangrene
along the path of the unfound bullet into the stomach, kidney, and pancreas had killed
the president.
The Czolgosz Trial
Two days after McKinley died, a grand jury, meeting
for the first and only time, indicted Leon Czolgosz for murder. His trial proceeded
expeditiously. It opened on September 23, and by the end of the first day, a jury
had been selected. On the second day both prosecution and defense attorneys completed
their cases, the judge charged the jury, and in less than half an hour a guilty verdict
was returned. The case was closed twenty-four hours after it opened.
Czolgosz's trial was a sham from the very beginning -- a kangaroo court. Most disturbing
was the conduct of the defense. Czolgosz was defended by two court-appointed lawyers,
Loran L. Lewis and Robert G. Titus, aging former judges who had not argued in court
in years. On the opening day of the trial, Lewis requested of the judge that the
court be in session only four hours a day: "Neither Judge Titus nor myself is
a young man and neither of us is in perfect health. We have had little opportunity
to consult with each other. We believe that the trial will not be injured by having
short hours. We have concluded to ask Your Honor during this trial to sit from ten
to noon in the morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon. I mention four P.M. because
my home -- my summer home is in Lewiston and the train leaves at 4:40."
Their laziness extended into the courtroom, too. Titus and Lewis made only the most
perfunctory challenges of the jury. The result was a shocking miscarriage of justice.
All of the jurors admitted that they were inclined to find Czolgosz guilty and that
they would consider acquittal only if presented with reasonable evidence to the contrary.
Czolgosz's lawyers made no effort to communicate with their client, called no defense
witnesses, and constantly apologized to the court for their client's "dastardly
act," while through it all tearfully referring to the greatness of "our
martyred President." But their most serious shortcoming was their failure to
raise the issue of Czolgosz' sanity. While they did instruct the jury that Czolgosz
must be considered sane before he could be found guilty, the lawyers made no attempt
to offer any testimony or evidence dealing with their client's mental state at the
time of the shooting.
There was nothing to prevent Titus and Lewis from raising the question. Indeed, the
presiding judge had already done it. In his charge to the jury, Judge Truman White
had said that if Czolgosz was "laboring under a defect of reasoning" at
the time of the crime, he should be acquitted. The Erie County Bar Association, too,
had been concerned about the sanity question; in order to be absolutely certain that
they would be able to bring Czolgosz to trial, the bar had at least gone through
the motions of deliberating the defendant's mental condition. On September 8, two
days after the shooting, Czolgosz was examined by a team of local psychiatrists and
an expert in forensics from Bellevue Hospital in New York. Their decision was that
Czolgosz was indeed sane and thereby fit to stand trial. They enumerated their findings.
He was, they said, not a victim of paranoia because "he has not systematized
delusions reverting to self and because he is in exceptionally good condition and
has an unbroken record of good health." Nor was he a "degenerate."
The phrenologically oriented physicians stated that their examinations revealed none
of the stigmata of degeneration: "His skull is symmetrical; his ears do not
protrude, nor are they of abnormal size and his palate is not arched." Dr. MacDonald
from Bellevue concurred in a separate report. "Czolgosz is," he said, "the
product of anarchism. He is sane and responsible."
Yet these hastily written reports could not still the many questions that began to
surface in the months after Czolgosz's execution. A growing number of psychiatrists
were becoming convinced that a closer scrutiny of Czolgosz's personal history --
the death of his mother when he was twelve, his father's subsequent remarriage to
a woman he detested, his constant brooding and dreamy behavior -- combined with an
attempt on the part of his attorneys to introduce testimony dealing with the question
of his sanity, would have raised serious doubts in the minds of the jury about the
defendant's sanity at the time of the crime. But these were questions that the legal
fraternity in a city desperately bent on revenge were unwilling to ask. Had McKinley
lived, Czolgosz would have received a maximum of only ten years' imprisonment. But
the president had died, and the law entitled the people to their revenge.
Ever since he had shot the president on September 9, Czolgosz had been hounded by
crowds. First the bloodthirsty mob at the Temple of Music. Then the mass of people
who had waited, not certain for what, for days outside his jail in police headquarters
in Buffalo. And now, on September 26, as he arrived at Auburn Prison, a mob of over
three thousand converged at the Auburn railroad station in an effort to get their
hands on the man who had assassinated the president. Under heavy guard, Czolgosz
walked amidst the screaming, clawing crowd, making his way slowly into the prison.
Once inside, he succumbed to the stress, becoming hysterical, falling to the ground,
and shrieking and writhing on the floor. He was immediately strapped into a chair
and given a hypodermic. Again, as at the trial, little time was wasted in dispatching
the jury's verdict of execution by electricity. Afraid that Czolgosz, like Gaetano
Bresci before him, would kill himself in his cell, the execution was scheduled a
month hence. On October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz died in the electric chair. Local
newspapers reported the details:
Warden Mead of Auburn raised his hands and at 7:12:30, electrician Davis turned the switch that threw twenty-seven hundred volts of electricity into the living body. The rush of immense current threw the body so hard against the straps that they creaked perceptibly. The hands clinched up suddenly and the whole attitude was one of extreme tenseness. For forty-five seconds the full current was kept on and then slowly the electrician threw the switch back reducing the current volt by volt until it was cut off entirely. Then, just as it had reached that point, he threw the lever back again for a brief two or three seconds. The body, which had collapsed as the current reduced, stiffened up again against the straps. When it was turned off again, Dr. McCauley stepped up to the chair and put his hand over the heart. He said he felt no pulsation but suggested that the current be turned on for a few seconds again. At 7:18 the current was turned off for a third and final time. At 7:20 the warden announced: "Gentlemen, the prisoner is dead."
Cornell University had already been promised Czolgosz' skull
and Syracuse University his body.
The Effect on the Exposition
Meanwhile William Buchanan was trying to rescue the
Pan American Exposition from the wreck of McKinley's assassination. All during the
summer, every nation in the hemisphere and every state in the Union had been honored
with a "Day" at the exposition. But after the shooting of the president,
the country had lost its taste for the exposition and as the weather turned colder,
the tourists stopped coming. Director Buchanan, declaring that November 1 was "Buffalo
Day," had no choice but to turn to the city in a last desperate effort to at
least making closing day a success. However, it didn't work. Mayor Diehl would not
even consider proclaiming another civic holiday, and all but a few businessmen ignored
the request of the exposition's board of directors to grant half-day holidays to
their employees. Even President Ely of the International Street Railroad Company,
a director of the exposition, refused to lower streetcar fares for the day.
Buffalo Day began in failure and ended in mayhem. That night the exposition was completely
wrecked. People could not believe what had happened. The newspapers were aghast:
"People went mad. They were seized with the desire to destroy. Depredation and destruction were carried on in the boldest manner all along the Midway. Electric light bulbs were jerked from their posts and thousands of them were smashed on the ground. Some of the Midway restaurants were crushed into fragments under the pressure of the mob as if they were so much pasteboard. Windows were shattered and doors were kicked down. Policemen were pushed aside as if they were stuffed ornaments. The National Glass Exhibit was completely destroyed. Pabst's Cafe was demolished and Cleopatra's needle was torn to the ground."
Frank C. Bostock, "The Animal King," reported trouble, too. Earlier in
the summer, Regal, one of his largest African lions, had died of heat prostration.
Now, on the last day of the exposition, Jumbo the elephant, his star attraction,
became unmanageable. For several days Jumbo had refused to eat. Then, on the morning
of Buffalo Day, he attacked Bostock. That afternoon he knocked his keeper unconscious.
Bostock decided to destroy his prized animal. He told the press that he was going
to hold a public execution at the stadium on the exposition grounds. Tickets, at
fifty cents a person, would be available at the gate. He said: "It is likely
that Jumbo will be hanged, or choked to death with chains, in which case other elephants
will be used."
There was immediate opposition. Mayor Diehl, John Milburn, and William Buchanan issued
a joint statement condemning Bostock's plan. The method of execution, they said,
was simply not in accord with the ideals of the Pan American and therefore must not
be permitted to occur on the fairground. They had, however, no objection to electrocution.
On Saturday afternoon, November 3, over seven thousand people filled the Pan American
stadium to witness the electrocution of Jumbo. The mammoth elephant was chained to
two large wooden blocks in the center of the stadium. Long electric wires connected
him to a transformer several hundred yards away. Bostock stood in front of him and
made a short speech. He told the crowd about Jumbo's military career. He recalled
the long voyage from the kingdoms of Africa to the Niagara Frontier and how hard
it had been for Jumbo to adjust to life along the Midway. These events, Bostock said,
had completely altered Jumbo's sanity. He had become a killer and death by electrocution
was the only solution. With no further delay, Bostock gave a signal and Lewis Mills,
the electrician, pulled a lever and eleven thousand volts of electricity were shot
into the elephant.
Yet nothing happened. The electricity didn't work and Jumbo was still alive. The
crowd, almost spontaneously, started to laugh and Bostock, himself incredulous, promised
over the din of the laughter that he would refund the tickets. Only later did he
realize that Jumbo's hide had the effect of rubber and was impossible to penetrate.
Jumbo's execution was stayed.
A week later John Milburn announced that the exposition had lost over $6 million
and that the Company would have to default on over $3.5 million in bonds. Milburn
told the board of directors that he was going to Washington, where he would meet
with New York's congressional delegation in an effort to convince Congress to pass
a Pan American relief bill. He hoped, also to meet with President Roosevelt, who
was reportedly sympathetic.
Yet Milburn's spirit was unbroken. He denied that the money lost on the exposition
was "a foolish expenditure," as some had charged. The Pan American was,
he said, a "masterpiece," and the city its "chosen showcase."
Milburn asked the board to think of the millions of dollars that had poured into
the city and to believe that the exposition had made Buffalo known all over the world,
a city destined to rank with New York and Chicago.
Yet somehow Milburn wasn't convincing. His words didn't ring true. Nothing had turned
out as Milburn had hoped it would. The exposition for which he had worked so devotedly
had ended in a nightmare of violence and destruction. Once again Milburn looked ahead
and, not liking what he saw, left. He was going to New York, where he had accepted
a partnership in a law firm.
Jim Lee, who owned and operated a Chinese restaurant on the East Side, left Buffalo
earlier, immediately after the exposition closed. Buffalo, he said, had been good
to him. He was proud that his restaurant was one of the only establishments on the
East Side that was frequented by the finest Delaware Avenue families. But he could
no longer tolerate the rumors circulating about him. Lee was accused in the press
of being the leader of a smuggling ring. From Vancouver to Buffalo, via Winnipeg,
Toronto, and a midnight passage across the Niagara River, Lee, it was charged, was
smuggling hundreds of Chinese into the country. Lee vehemently denied the allegations,
maintaining that since his arrival in Buffalo in 1891 he had made his money honestly,
and that he had never done anything illegal in his life. But now, he said, he was
forced to leave and on November 2, 1901, Jim Lee left Buffalo for his brother's farm
south of Canton in China.
In early December, 1901, it was reported that the exposition buildings had been sold
to the Harris Wrecking Company of Chicago. A local committee was formed to buy and
preserve the Electric Tower as a lasting monument to the exposition, but failed to
raise the necessary funds. On January 20, 1902, the statue of the Goddess of Light
was sold to the Humphrey Popcorn Company of Cleveland and the tower was finally torn
down. That same day eighteen canal boats were withdrawn from services on the Erie
Canal. They had been sold to the Philippines Islands where, the newspapers felt,
greater opportunities for profit existed.
The Pan American Exposition and the assassination of William McKinley are best understood
as a metaphor for the rise and decline of Buffalo, New York. And while it may be
obvious what caused the failure of the Exposition, the causes of the cataclysm in
the contemporary city are less well understood. In order to come to terms with the
historical forces that led first to the rise and then to the decline of Buffalo it
is necessary to go back to the beginning.
See Mark Goldman -Table of Contents
Page by Chuck LaChiusa
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