The story is told with outward completeness in the “Report of the President to the Board of Directors of the World’s Columbian Exposition,” a volume of 323 octavo pages (exclusive of appendices) written in that clear, concise and vivid narrative style which was always at Mr. Higinbotham’s command. Outward completeness only, for one must read between the lines of any formal report to discover the heart-story involved; and in this case, as in all Mr. Higinbotham’s activities, the heart-story was the central motive. He undertook this public service from the purest instinct of civic pride and loyalty—love of his city and state, pride in the great festival and delight in the ideal involved—its consummation of democracy in beauty representing the union of many creative wills. The Exposition was the first effort of our American democracy to achieve, in any large sense, such a consummation. Thus, to any man of vision, it was prophetic of a new era, and worthy of all that the individual could give. Mr. Higinbotham’s gift was an indomitable will and a mind trained to finance, knowledge of men, quick decision of difficult problems, and unfailing resource in initiative. One cannot tell the whole long story here, but a few characteristic incidents may be referred to. The electric light contest, for example, illustrates Mr. Higinbotham’s skill and patience in handling would-be profiteers—for public spirit among contractors was not the universal rule. At this time, the spring of 1892, he was vice-president of the Board of Directors, but acting as president in Mr. Baker’s absence. Powerful companies in collusion presented bids averaging $18.00 per incandescent lamp for the six months the Fair was to endure; but by playing other companies against them, and refusing to be stampeded into immediate action, he gradually reduced this bid to $5.95 per lamp, and finally gave the contract to another company at a still lower figure. In the end the sum paid for the entire service was $399,000, as against the $1,675,720, originally demanded. Indeed the financial history of the Fair was one long series of contests and anxieties for its president. Again and again the enterprise would have failed for lack of funds if the situation had been less skilfully handled; and although failure would have meant national dishonor, the Congress at Washington did not show any proper sense of partnership in a great national festival which was to cost over twenty-eight millions. Instead of the five millions which had been listed for eight months in the appropriation bill and counted upon with reasonable assurance, the government at last, during the hot summer of 1892, compromised on two millions and a half in souvenir coins of uncertain sale; and afterwards, at a moment of imminent financial crisis, it withheld more than a fifth of that sum ($570,880) to pay the expenses of its own department of awards, a department over which the Directory had no jurisdiction whatever.