Volume 11 , Issue 17

1904 Oklahoma Exhibit At St. Louis Fair.

We found this article in The Oklahoman dated May 29, 1904, page 4, with the headlines that read: "Our Exhibit At St. Louis." So ... in May, 1904, it seems when John McClure was writing Constance Warwick and asking if she was going to St. Louis in August, it was because of the Fair going on in St. Louis. The front page of The Oklahoma carried other front page headlines that you can see in the image on the left.

The article on page 4, stated that the St. Louis fair had been characterized by many adverse comments on the showing Oklahoma made by its agricultural exhibit. Most papers had taken occasion to express surprise, not to say disgust, with the agricultural exhibit of Oklahoma.

While it was a good one as far as it goes, it did Oklahoma a great injustice because of the unattractive manner it was displayed.

The Chandler Tribune's comment on the matter reflected the sentiment of every Oklahoma visitor who saw the exhibit exclaimed, "With pleasant anticipation we approached the Oklahoma exhibit. We know our cotton is equal to that of Texas, our fruit equal to that of Missouri and our corn rivals that of Illinois, and our wheat as good as Dakota's, but with blushing face we beheld our exhibit, mostly corn, arranged in small piles, around a square enclosure the chief ornaments of which were a lot of cotton bags filled with some kind of invisible grain. compared with our matchless resources our exhibit is a disgrace. We do not at this time presume to fix the responsibility, whether it is the commissioners, an insufficient appropriation, or a neglectful people, we do not presume to say. We do say that Oklahoma should have a better exhibit and it is to be hoped that our resources will receive a better advertisement by a better display of our agricultural products in the near future."

Oklahoma's display looked much like a "two-spot." The principal reason reported was that the display was not up to expectation or in keeping with the displays of states all around it is that the scheme is not sufficiently elaborate. The scheme was reported as plain and common.
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