W. B. McKinley, the United States Congressman from Champaign, Illinois, remarked after visiting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition that, "like all good expositions, (the Exposition) has been a great means of instruction. The lasting impression it has left with me is that, taken as a whole, it is the most beautiful creation the hand of man ever put together" (Legacy, 110). San Francisco's Exposition followed in a long line of world's fairs that had each been bestowed with equally superlative praise; but the intention of San Francisco's Expositon was on how it differed from its predecessors.

The previous fairs possessed specific commonalties. Each fair celebrated some historical achievement or event worthy of a world's fair. Chicago's World Columbian Exposition of 1893 was a commemoration of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World and acceleration of all that the New World had accomplished since. The 1904 Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in St. Louis marked the 100th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's landmark purchase. The architecture of each fair was intended to introduce a novel form of design to the world. These generally weren't attempts to reproduce an already existing form, but an attempt to introduce a new aspect of structural art to the world.

The Columbian Exposition introduced the Parisian "Beaux-Arts" style covered with a white, stucco exterior that generated the fair's nickname, "The White City" (Rose, "Columbian"). Lastly, the exhibits at each fair were an attempt to show a "comprehensive view of the progress of civilization" and technology up to the time of the fair. Philadelphia's Centennial International Exhibition introduced the Corliss steam engine, which provided the power to run the innumerable exhibits in the fair's Machinery Hall (Schlereth, 1).

In contrast to previous world's fair's celebration of the anniversary of an event, the San Francisco's Expositon commemorated a contemporaneous event, the opening of the Panama Canal. The many symbolisms that sprang from the "watershed" linking of two great oceans had an impact on the Exposition: the linking of the East and West, the triumph of man over nature and the collective opportunity for all nations of the globe to benefit economically from the commerce that would result. The architecture also deviated from the course taken by previous expositions. Instead of trying to create a new, unique form of architecture specifically for the event, the Exposition's designers created a unified group of buildings, courts and gardens that represented forms from the Orient, America's west and San Francisco. But the spiritualized "historical modern" architecture was the only representation that "history" had in the Exposition. "With their feet planted on the past, the designers of the Exposition… looked towards the future" (Macdonald, par. 5).

Novelty abounded at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. New machines, new methods of production as well as new forms of thought all found a home in the various cavernous exhibit halls. By focusing on the contemporary, the Exposition intended to hightlight the emergence of the United States onto the international scene with the Panama Canal along with celebrating San Francisco's rising from the ashes of their "Great Earthquake" in 1906.

Multiculturalist ambitions made themeselves clear from the start. With the rebirth of San Francisco along the Golden Gate, the organizers of the Panama-Pacific sought to unite the world with commerce as its lynchpin. The fair in San Francisco intended to bridge cultural gaps amongst nations, hoping they would exchange ideas and customs with one another to ensure peace through familiarity.

Unfortunately, some of the methods Americans dealt with the United State's 'new internationalism' defied the multicultural intentions of the Exposition. The cultural tendencies of many Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century leaned towards an Anglo-Saxon mono-culturalism that, even a grand international event such as San Francisco staged, could not hope to fragment them. Nativist attitudes had permeated many aspects of American society, from the northern "Know Nothing" movement of the mid-nineteenth century that tried to limit the voting rights of immigrants to the Ku Klux Klan that terrorized former slaves and their families in the South. Footprints of such racism remained in the political and social heritage of some participants in San Francisco's Exposition.

As the curtain rose on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition early in 1915, the stage had been set for a great international exposition that had hoped to be a landmark confluence of cultures and nations. The creators of the Exposition had developed a cosmopolitan, "historically modern" form of architecture in a worldly city to celebrate the joining of the two halves of the globe for their event to amaze the world. Unfortunately, the Exposition displayed elements of xenophobia and provincialism which vividly conflicted with the radiant cosmopolitanism that the Exposition's founders had planned.

The Panama Canal struck a chord throughout the world.

People variously referred to the Canal as "the eighth wonder of the world," with an impact akin to "shifting the nations on a map," and "one of the few achievements which may properly be called epoch-making" (Todd, I: 30; Macomber, 11). The endeavor, which removed enough dirt to fill a tunnel, 14 feet in diameter, through the heart of the earth, lived in the public's imagination unlike any other event of recent memory (Barrett, 47). Yet the significance of the Canal lay primarily in its worldwide commercial value to merchants.

Many historians of the time considered trade the primary reasons for the creation of the Panama Canal. The Canal's necessity arose out of the industrialization of the Gilded Age, highlighted by the exponential growth of manufacturing. With the explosion in manufactured goods, the demand for exporting them expanded proportionally. In the pre-Canal years between 1870 and 1910, gross shipping tonnage in the United States nearly doubled. Emerging markets in the Pacific Rim and the rapid growth of the western United States were untapped resources for trade with this growth in retail goods. Contemporary shipping around South America's Cape Horn had become a liability. European ships, using the Suez Canal, could reach the Pacific Rim, including the western United States, before United States ships steaming from New York, prior to the Panama Canal. The emergence of the United States onto the global commercial scene begged for a maritime short-cut through the Panamanian Isthmus if it were to be truly competitive (Johnson, 10-11).

The Canal shortened the distances between the East Coast of the United States and these markets to the west. Through the Canal, a vessel sailing from New York to San Francisco could cut its journey from more than 13,000 miles around South America and Cape Horn, to just over 5,000. A voyage that previously took over sixty days was halved to about thirty. What this meant to all maritime merchants was that they could take on more cargo; virtually making two trips in one.

The unrestricted, international usage of the Panama Canal was a precept from its creation. The nations of Europe and elsewhere, it was hoped, would take a part in the economic development of the countries that lay on the other side of the Canal.

Some speculated that global cooperation in trade would strengthen political partnerships and fortify acquaintances between leaders. With bonds of international brotherhood built through trade the danger of war between two commercial competitors would be diminished. The Canal would so strongly fortify th bonds between nations in the East and those in the West that many thought it could lead to world peace (Barrett, 103).

The Panama-Pacific International Exposition used the Panama Canal as a metaphor for the great inter-mingling of nations and sharing of ideas. As the Director of Domestic Exploitation (their publicity department) wrote to Michigan's Governor Woodbridge Ferris on 15 January 1913:

The Exposition will mark the beginning of a closer fellowship and a better understanding with all Nations and all peoples and, what is equally desirable, the east will come to know the truth about the west and the west will exchange realities for fiction concerning the east. A representation of all states will surely lead to the elimination of old prejudices based on misinformation and be the beginning of a new and better understanding among (them).

The importantance of this letter lies in the intention of the Exposition as a collection of "all peoples and all nations," that every nation would meet on a field of equality and learn one another's cultures, and unlearn their preconceived notions. It's no mistake, then, that this great multicultural event was to take place in San Francisco, America's gateway to the Pacific.

In 1852, William Seward prophetically stated that even though European culture, politics and thought were gaining in force, they would eventually shrink in importance while the Pacific Ocean and its shores would "become the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter" (Todd, I: 32). The Panama Canal furthered the shift of the world's interest into the waters of the Pacific and its shores. With this new connection, the people of the Orient had a closer tie to people of the Occident, and the growing city of San Francisco would serve as a primary port of call (Todd, I: 32).

San Francisco and its bay, one of the world's greatest natural harbors, served as a port of call for boats steaming from New York to Asia. The Port of San Francisco lay less than 100 miles off of the direct voyage between New York and Yokohama, one of Japan's largest ports, through the Canal. Such a distinction offered an opportunity for expansion in all types of maritime trade and growth of businesses that cater to the shipping industry. It's no understatement to say that the presence of the Panama Canal gave San Francisco a new importance on the planet (Todd, I: 31).

People conceived of San Francisco as a "new Constantinople" on the crossroads between the East and West. However, the opening of the Panama Canal did not draw the original inspiration for the comparison with the ancient gateway city between Europe and Asia. US Army Captain John C. Frémont, upon seeing the great seaway in 1846, named it "Chrysopylae," or Golden Gate, in clear reference to ancient Constantinople's "Chrysoceras," or Golden Horn. From the time Captain Frémont saw San Francisco and its gateway to the Pacific many people believed that the city would eventually assume the role as a great cosmopolitan city uniting East and West. With the construction of the Panama Canal and the plans for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition underway, this assumption would soon become a reality. Yet far before the arrival of Captain Frémont or the construction of the Panama Canal, San Francisco's history already had a unique multicultural sensibility all its own (Brechin in Benedict, 104).

San Francisco had acquired a place through a history unlike any other city in the United States. Whereas many East Coast cities had their beginnings with a largely homogenous, Anglo-Saxon population and found a greater ethnic mix later in their history, "the City by the Bay" had a unique history. Born in Spain, raised in Mexico, and coming of age in the manic rush for gold, San Francisco embraced cosmopolitanism from its very origins. Even before the Gold Rush of 1848 inundated the city with a broad array of people, the city thrived as an American locale made up of foreigners, not aliens. The wide variety of nationalities and cultures mixed into a "social pudding" gave the city a unique flavor and atmosphere (Rosskam, 78).

All these varied cultures never lost touch with the culture of their native country. In his "Bay Window Bohemia," Oscar Lewis summarizes this communal social spirit thus:

There was scarcely a time, such was its cosmopolitanism, when the members of one or another racial group were not congregating to observe either some religious festival or national holiday of their homeland. Such festive gatherings, frequent throughout the year, were especially numerous during the summer and fall when rarely a day passed without one or more being held somewhere in town (34).

The residents of the city, even though they may have had no personal cultural connection to the festival or event, never showed a reluctance to join in the celebrations, like Chinese New Year, St. Patrick's Day, Oktoberfest or a host of others. Any opportunity for them to enjoy themselves they capitalized on (Lewis, 35).

In the nineteenth century, when asked to name the city most prone to enjoying itself, San Francisco and New Orleans came up most frequently. Many of the centers of American culture on the East Coast saw the general zest for life in San Francisco as a moral weakness. But what Easterners saw as "moral relaxation," San Franciscans considered nothing more than a demonstration of their orphan background. As a part of the distant Spanish empire, or on the far reaches of Mexico's Alta California, or even as the terminus of the United States' frontier, San Francisco showed little respect for the orthodoxies of other major American metropolises. Because of the distance from "authority" and the conventional restraints of society, the inhabitants of San Francisco lived their lives as they pleased. From this greater sense of freedom sprang their own type of amusements and diversions (Lewis, 25-26).

Cut off by thousands of miles from older centers of culture, "forty-niners" and other San Francisco inhabitants had to create their own entertainment, or do without. Along with the natural beauty provided by the bay and the diverse backgrounds of its many inhabitants, San Francisco saw the emergence of an original artistic, musical, literary and social culture. More than that, their culture showed an uncanny tolerance and sophistication. It had an intellectual climate that engendered a love for the arts, good food, and good drink (Lewis, 25).

San Francisco's culture depended on its artists for their spirit just as they depended on the city for an atmosphere that encouraged free expression. William MacDonald looked at the artists of San Francisco with pride.

The men and women who best typify the spirit of San Francisco have consciously sought, not simply orientation in world culture, but an adequate self-expression… That the pursuit of self-expression has often been highly self-conscious, that the lines of effort have not always been successfully concealed and that the result has sometimes been bizarre, San Francisco itself would be the first to admit (par. 3).

MacDonald believed that the artists of San Francisco exemplified the cosmopolitan worldliness of San Francisco and that their art lived more vividly because of it. Many of San Francisco's supporters boasted of it as "An American Paris" (Lewis, 28).

"Life was lived in Frisco." William Reedy wrote in his St. Louis weekly Reedy's Mirror, "It was a little of Paris, of Rome, of Perkin... A town of a temperament in which lightness blent with a native beauty sense" (Lewis, 30). There were, of course, detractors who pointed to the seediness of the notorious "Barbary Coast," a waterfront district that many vagrants, prostitutes and criminals frequented. However city leaders, interested in putting an end to the more maligned distinction, sought help in developing their town in the image of the great European cities. In 1904, they enlisted the help of Daniel Burnham, the famed architect and director of Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition to design a "City Beautiful" plan for San Francisco "worthy of an ocean as big as the Pacific" (Brechin, 151).

The City Beautiful movement, which had seen its finest exemplification in the 1901-1902 renovation of Washington, D.C., believed that in reforming the landscape and look of a city, other reforms would spring forth and inspire its inhabitants to moral and civic virtue. Burnham, in particular, believed that American cities could rise to cultural parity with classic European centers of culture through the use of the European Beaux-Arts style (Rose, "City Beautiful").

His plan for San Francisco envisioned a "hilly Paris by the Golden Gate" (Brechin in Benedict, 95). Great boulevards cutting through the city's existing grid would converge "spider-web like" on central axes throughout the city. To give the city a focal point for civic and cultural activities, much like the Mall in the nation's capital, the plan called for a magnificent city center. Monumental buildings of stone would replace many of the wooden shacks built along the existing grid. Burnham and his firm also proposed that the city devote one-third of its area to parks and greensward to serve an estimated population of over two million. Finally, grand structures would sit atop the apices of the city's most prominent hills as memorials to the pioneers and monuments to the city's future in the Pacific. (Brechin, 151-153). Unfortunately the plan, submitted in 1904, did not receive immediate attention, and on the morning of April 18, 1906, the "Great Earthquake" struck causing a massive fire that burned for the next four days and devestated much of the city.

Taking more than 3,000 lives and causing damage in excess of an estimated $500,000,000 (in 1906 dollars), the "Great Earthquake" left the city in ruins. Yet in the wake of this great calamity arose an even mightier call for the City Beautiful plan. The belief remained that a plan like Burnham had devised would bring physical and social order to a city in chaos. But San Francisco's inhabitants thought the rights of the owners of private property more important than that of the civic government. So, due to the commercial necessity of the city's merchants, residents and shop owners, the decision was made to rebuild on old property lines rather than follow Burnham's City Beautiful plan. By rebuilding in record time in its former appearance, San Franciscans made certain that the City Beautiful plan Daniel Burnham and his firm created would never materialize (Lee, 80). Yet the spirit of the City Beautiful lived within San Francisco, and it eventually rose from the ashes of the quake in the form of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

As the City Beautiful idea died in the wake of the "Great Earthquake," it was reborn in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The Exposition's chief architect enlisted Edward Bennett, Daniel Burnham's assistant for the failed City Beautiful plan, to create a design for the Exposition. Bennett began his architectural study in San Francisco and worked with many of the Exposition's future designers on Burnham's plan for the city. He spent years strolling the streets and soaking up the cultural atmosphere and became very familiar with indigenous building traditions (lee, 6).

California had developed its own unique building style that emphasized its topography, climate, local building materials and open plans that united the interior and exterior environments. San Francisco, in turn, was a hub for trade between Asia and the West and hosted a significant immigrant Asian population that brought features of Far Eastern architecture to the region (Lee, 9). Along with its setting that resembled the French port of Marseilles, it's no mistake that this great International Exposition on the sloping shores of the Golden Gate suggested to the architects an atmosphere that many described as "Mediterranean" (Macomber, 15). Edward Bennet devised a plan that took into consideration all of these influences and incorporated them into a compact arrangement of buildings around central courts and behind giant walls.

Bennet's design of a "walled city" found its historical precedent throughout the Mediterranean. As an architectural feature, it had developed on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean as a buttress against the frequent sieges of the Crusades and other foreign invasions. From there the Moors carried the walled city tradition to Spain. Many years later it became a significant part of the civic architecture of Latin America when the Spanish Conquistadors came to the New World.

From Latin America the outer wall as an architectural motif moved north with the Spanish missionaries and became incorporated into the design of the California Missions; such as the one in San Francisco, named in honor of its own Mission Dolores, San Francisco de Asís (Macomber, 28).

The walls surrounding the Exposition also had practical advantages.

When Edward Bennett and the other designers of the Exposition devised their plan, they did not overlook the climactic conditions of the Harbor View location chosen for the Exposition. Sitting on the water close to the Golden Gate Strait, they knew the wind that swept through the channel, as well as the fog and rain. The large external wall, in conjunction with the tight collection of large buildings would provide the Exposition's visitors with a refuge from the weather. Furthermore, grouping all of the buildings together around central courts would ease the difficulties posed in handling large crowds and would lessen the walking distances each visitor would have to make from one exhibit to another (Lee, 103). These issues had been troublesome at the previous World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 where a large tract of land, occupied by widely spaced buildings, tired many visitors and created attendance problems for the more distant exhibition halls. The walled city of buildings and courts blending into the natural landscape that resulted from this plan created a unified sense of the Exposition as "an Oriental city set in the midst of a vast amphitheater of hills and bay, arched by the fathomless blue of the California sky" (Macomber, 15-16).

The men who devised the architectural scheme for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition focused on the combination of art and nature as one of their primary design goals. Chief Architect of the Exposition, George Kelham, wrote in Pacific Coast Architect:

If we have succeeded in combining art and nature so that each seems a part of the other, in bringing the wonderful Bay of San Francisco into our picture, in making our great group of buildings nestle into their surroundings both in form and color, then the real meaning of what we have tried for is made clear (59).

As Kelham intended, the palette of colors used in the Exposition reflected the landscape of San Francisco and remained as one of the prominent legacies of the entire event.

Jules Guerin, the colorist of the Exposition, focused on the harmony of color between the grounds and the buildings of the PPIE and the hues Nature gave the surrounding landscape. All of the previous fairs in the United States all but lacked color. Chicago acquired the name "The White City" for the coloring of its buildings and its broad use of "staff," a temporary, marble-looking plaster coating on each of the exhibit halls. A pure marble white produced a vicious glare, something Guerin found particularly harsh to the eye in the California sunlight as well as interrupting the harmony of the walled city. Guerin further believed that pure white had a certain "new effect" which he considered deadly to art (Macomber, 39). Instead, Guerin looked to Ancient Roman architecture and the travertine marble that composed many of their buildings and columns. He had first used this imitation travertine marble on the exterior of New York City's Penn Station and it provided a unique texture to a building that needed color (Barry, 10). Ivory-pink in color, the travertine became the color of all the buildings and served as the basic canvas upon which Guerin would apply his "warm, but quiet Oriental hues" (Macomber, 38).

The choice of colors with which to decorate the fair derived from the decision to develop the theme of an Oriental walled city and the natural Mediterranean setting. Guerin wrote:

I saw the vibrant tints of the native wild flowers, the soft brown of the surrounding hills, the gold of the orangeries, the blue of the sea; and I determined that, just as a musician builds his symphony around a motif or chord, so must I strike a chord of color and build my symphony on this (Brechin in Benedict, 101).

Guerin worked closely with the architects, artists, sculptors and gardeners of the Exposition to assure that they followed his color guidelines to the letter. Everything from statues, glass, light standards, the flowers and even the color of the gravel on the footpaths lay within his predetermined spectrum (Macomber, 39). His strict limitation of colors to a palette of nine colors meant that no hues would clash with one another, and the walled city of the Orient would appear as harmonized in color as it was in shape.

Charles Moore and the other influences behind the Exposition created this great cosmopolitan event to commemorate the linking of the East and West through the Panama Canal, hosting it in an international city, and staging it on an architectural plan that unifies forms from across the globe. San Francisco opened its Golden Gate with a forum where the people of the world could exchange cultural, social and commercial interests. Unfortunately, as the Panama-Pacific International Exposition got underway, current attitudes and events impeded this process and undermined this remarkable confluence of the world's cultures.

The rapid industrialization and growth of a world economy in the Gilded Age gave birth to a reform movement in the last decade of the nineteenth-century that hoped to solve the many problems encountered in this swiftly changing era, the Progressive movement. Though not unified into a specific political party, Progressives believed that people united behind a common cause could erase the social ills that plagued society. But instead of being particularly concerned with the problems, they "swam in an abundance of solutions" (Gilmore, 8). Average men and women believed that they held the solution to reform social ills such as mass immigration, overcrowding, child labor and sanitation. Often, however, their position in society defined their stance on how to attack these social ills. The Progressive's ranks filled with native-born, white middle-class urbanites. In some cases, the Progressive's attempts to enact social reform depended on them controlling another group's actions and behavior (Gilmore, 3-4). Distressed about the many newcomers into their cities, Progressives concerned themselves with the proper way to incorporate the "great unwashed" into civic life.

They feared that the future of Democracy itself was at stake. The hordes of people flowing into the cities, both from overseas and the "Great Migration" of African-Americans from the South, threatened to subvert the "American experiment" and corrupt the civil order. The Progressives thought newcomers must "forsake their language and obliterate their cultural differences" (Gilmore, 8). With all traces of foreign culture removed, these immigrants would then reflect the "traditional American ideal." Though a few Progressives believed in the possibility of a multicultural melting pot by generally educating the population in proper social mores, most believed that a true American democracy, if it had to contain these immigrants, must assimilate them through a "purifying" Americanization (Gilmore, 8).

Many Progressives tried to enact legislation that curbed immigrants' rights or put quotas on certain nationalities' admission into the United States. At one point, this attempt at exclusion came into direct conflict with the organizers of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. In California there was already significant resentment of Japanese ownership of farmland and many politicians campaigned for the prohibition of their rights to own property. The President of the Exposition made a plea to the state legislature that such restrictions on Asians would result in the withdrawal of Chinese and Japanese participation which would destroy the opportunity to trade with these giants from the Far East. He suggested the legislature wait until the Exposition was over. The Progressive former mayor of San Francisco and its then current US Senator, James Phelan, countered by saying:

The future of California is of far greater importance than the success of this Exposition. And in saying this I do not believe for a moment that in enacting this land legislation you will jeopardize the success of the Exposition (Dobkin, 76).

Despite the efforts of Moore and the directors of the Exposition, the Alien Land Law passed in 1913 and remained a law until the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1952. Regardless, the Chinese and Japanese contingents participated in the Exposition despite their opposition to the bill (ibid.).

Other Progressive measures to ensure the future of democracy in America revolved around the "scientific" doctrine of race betterment through the practice of eugenics. Eugenics is the belief that the human race would be improved by enhancing the inherited characteristics, physical and mental. As the anthropologist Aleš Hrdlicka of the United States National Museum stated it, eugenics is "the science of improving the human stock" (Rydell, All the World, 223). Building on the fundamental Darwinist philosophy of "survival of the fittest," eugenicists believed that only through such selective breeding and same-race marriages would the more desirable traits of humans prevail and assure the general health of the population. Eugenicist Henry Smith Williams wrote that the massive immigration of people in the early twentieth century was,

Probably the greatest problem that has been presented since civilization began… [but it] would have no great significance from the standpoint of the eugenist if the immigrants who have come to us in such numbers in the recent years were of the same stock as the original colonists, and thus represented the same national strains (Migration).

Williams' xenophobic views may not have had such a large audience or attracted any attention had he written in a daily newspaper on an ordinary day, but this was printed in the San Francisco's leading newspaper, the Chronicle, on the closing day of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition's hosting of the Race Betterment Congress.

The Exposition hosted many conference to display current trends in thought, economics and politics. At the Race Betterment Congress attendees listened to leading eugenicists espouse their beliefs about the best methods for a greater racial purity. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, cereal magnate and founder of the Race Betterment Foundation, suggested the establishment of a eugenic registry that would create a pedigree of proper breeding pairs. The registry would contain prospective parents who met their strict standards of racial hygiene and their children would have pedigrees based on the physical characteristic they inherited from the parents. He proposed contests for the offspring and awards for each pedigree (SF Chronicle, 8 Aug 1915). Others, such as Paul C. Popenoe from the Journal of Heredity, agreed and spoke of how only proper parentage could improve the race, that "good stock could not come from bad stock."

The only way to improve the race is to exercise care in selection and to permit only healthy people to marry. No science of sanitation or hygiene will raise the standard of the race one inch (ibid.).

In addition to their meeting in the beginning of August, the Race Betterment Foundation also had one of the most prominent booths in the Palace of Education. With large plaster casts of mythological Greek figures Atlas, Venus and Apollo, the Race Betterment Foundation advertised eugenics and reminded passers-by of the race's glorious past and possible future. The official historian of the Exposition, Frank Morton Todd noted one could not pass the exhibit without being impressed, that all you had to do was look and see "the necessity for its work" (IV: 38).

The decidedly racist attitudes behind eugenics and the Race Betterment movement found a home in other parts of the Exposition as well. The Joy Zone, the entertainment alternative to the general solemnity of the official Exposition, lay just beyond the walls and provided visitors with a different perspective on foreign cultures.

Many concessions along the mile long stretch of the Joy Zone housed re-created villages of natives in a stereotypical depiction of life in far-away lands. The Tehuantepec Village was a reconstruction of a Mexican village with "pretty Mexican maidens, garbed in bright colored dresses, and courtly senors with close fitting trousers and broad sombreros" (SF Chronicle, 23 Feb 1915). The Samoan Island concession showed the "primitive ways" of semi-naked women in their South Sea costumes with their dances where "one gets a glimpse of the life of a race thousands of years behind civilization" (SF Examiner, 21 Feb 1915). And, according to the Exposition supplement in the San Francisco Examiner, "if you are Irish and have not lost that special vein of humor which is characteristic of Erin, Shamrock Isle with the Irish village, is sure to get you." (ibid.). Also the Zone had an African village conveying a similar image of a primitive culture with a "community of thin, black and hollow-cheeked wanderers from Somali land" (ibid.). But, as Robert Rydell explains, even with one villager holding a spear and doing a war dance, many visitors found the "savages too tame." Because of this disintrest in "tame savages", within a few weeks Charles Moore had the Africans deported by United States immigration officials (Rydell, All the World's, 228). The Chinese concession, however, drew the biggest reaction from the Exposition's directors.

One part of the Chinese Village on the Zone, "Underground Chinatown," drew the ire of local Chinese businessmen and the Chinese consul. This portion of the Chinese Village depicted a "chamber of horrors" including, among other things, an opium den. Due to pressure from the community and beyond, the Underground was closed; though Rydell suggests there were ulterior motives. The nationalist revolution of 1911 and the subsequent creation of the Republic of China created a willingness of the Chinese to woo American capital; little surprise that the Chinese government, even in the face of California's anti-alien legislation, decided to participate in the Exposition (All the World's, 228-229). Nevertheless, after they closed the Underground, and while the larger Chinese concession still existed, a the Zone created new exhibition in its place called "Underground Slumming." Even though no Chinese people participated in this new presentation, it still reeked of the stereotypical xenophobia of the Zone. Rydell concludes that the Chinese Village still stood as "a village that stood out as just one more nonwhite ghetto among many others on the outskirts of the utopia planned by the exposition directors" (All the World's, 229).

This tendency towards regional chauvinism existed entirely as a part of the "entertainment" of the many ethnographic caricatures of the many concessions in the Joy Zone. The official Exposition was supposed to exhibit the refinement expected of a host country opening its doors to the people and cultures of the world. Unfortunately the depiction of American Indians in the "serious" part of the fair appeared only in some statuary. For instance, the statue of "The End of the Trail" (at left) represented an Indian from the white man's perspective. "The drooping, storm-beaten figure of the Indian on the spent pony symbolizes the end of the race which was once a mighty people," according to a souvenir view book of the exposition (Blue Book, 48). Offset by another statue, "The Ameircan Pioneer," (at right) the noble conqueror of the American Frontier and subjugator of the American Indian only furthered the parochial ideology of the Exposition. "This erect, energetic, powerful man… is very typical of the white man and the victorious march of his civilization," wrote Eugen Neuhaus in his The Art of the Exposition (44). The Darwinian idea of the "Survival of the Fittest" seemed exemplified in the juxtaposition of "The American Pioneer," with "The End of the Trail" (Armstrong, 120). These many ideas of "progress" at the Exposition; the Progressives, the many proposals for race betterment and the depiction of "primitive" civilizations all paled in comparison to the one cold, hard fact that overshadowed the events in San Francisco; a world at war.

Though the United States would not enter World War I for another two years, the war had been raging in Europe almost 10 months before the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The pall the war cast over the Exposition was noticeable from even before the last building was completed. The outbreak of hostilities in Europe forced Great Britain and Germany to withdraw their national exhibits and a groundswell of support arose to pressure the directors of the Exposition to terminate the event; Charles Moore steadfastly refused. The Office of Exploitation tried to use the fact of war in Europe in their favor. They began an advertising campaign promoting the idea that, if travelling to Europe over the summer was no longer an option, how about taking "the grand tour" of the United States and visiting San Francisco and its Exposition (Benedict, Catalogue, 15). War became a tool for advertising; a reason for Americans and their families to take a vacation.

The precarious international situation also forced President Woodrow Wilson to stay in the East instead of making the trek to San Francisco to assume the traditional responsibilities of the sitting head of state in cutting the opening day ribbon. Instead he committed himself to keeping the United States out of war, and stayed in Washington while Congress was in session (Lee, 19). This did, however, offer the organizers of the Exposition an opportunity to show off some new technology. They created a telephone line, linked to the top of the Tower of Jewels, so that, by pressing a button from his vacation home in Maine, President Wilson could open the Exposition electrically. But the events of the late spring eventually moved the United States closer to war, and made people question the meaning of the Exposition even more.

On May 8th a German U-Boat torpedoed the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania. The liner sank, taking 1195 lives, including 123 Americans. In the wake of this disaster it became apparent that the United States could not stay out of armed conflict for long. Though shaken, the firm believers in the power of commerce at the fair thought that the war would help San Francisco assume its proper role as "Queen of the Pacific." "Never before in history," wrote Herman Whitaker in Sunset Magazine, "has a young and virile nation been confronted by a two-fold opportunity such as offered by the Orient and the European War." Whitaker further likened the Exposition grounds to the great monuments that victors of war build to themselves in commemoration of their conquests (Brechin, 275). Bryan stood in opposition to Whitaker. Bryan, the former United States Secretary of State, came to the Exposition over the Fourth of July holiday to spread his notion of peace.

Amid the pomp of a full military parade, swords shimmering in the sun and rifles held tightly, William Jennings Bryan spoke to a throng of nearly 100,000 people about peace. "Across the seas," his voice resonated, "our brothers' hands are stained in brothers' blood. The world has run mad. They need a flag that speaks the sentiment of the human heart, a flag that looks toward better things than war" (Todd, III: 55). He found open dialogue much more favorable than armed combat. Though he knew that he spoke from a position that had little support, Bryan emphasized that the side proposing peaceful dialogue would grow as rapidly as the side promoting war withered. "Force begets force," he said, "love begets love" (SF Examiner, 6 July 1915). After his speech ended, and the people had time to digest his words that promoted peaceful compromise over the violence of war, the Exposition treated them to another spectacle. As 50,000 people amassed on the Marina, an imitation torpedo boat destroyer lingered out in the middle of the bay, miming a dash from the Golden Gate Strait to attack the "Oregon" which sat moored in the harbor. The boat's cannon's boomed, as if it were attacking the Exposition, and, the boat was "blown to bits" by a submerged mine – much to the audience's delight. "High into the air went the boat, shattered to smithereens," the Examiner detailed the following day (ibid). The claim of the Exposition as an international event meant to join people of different backgrounds and cultures seems wholly subverted when the hosting country has one of its most renowned statesmen deliver a speech concerning peace and brotherhood sandwiched in between a display of arms and munitions of tremendous patriotic vigor.

This concept of the Exposition as a cosmopolitan event was further tarnished when, a mere two weeks after Bryan's speech, Theodore Roosevelt demanded that the United States prepare for war.

If the Exposition had truly intended for a multi-national congress to promote the peaceful international intercourse that the Panama-Pacific International Exposition's organizers had hoped for, they probably should not have extended an invitation to Theodore Roosevelt. The "chief apostle of militarism and navalism in America," spoke to a crowd as impressive as Bryan's what the threat of war posed to an unprepared nation (SF Chronicle, 23 July 1915). Speaking a mere two weeks after Bryan, his address, which the San Francisco Examiner described as "assertive Americanism," demanded a nation prepared for war, even suggesting the United States enact compulsory military service as a means to assure peace ("Prepare," 23 July 1915). Roosevelt's warning invoked the specter of involvement in a war on the European continent.

We have been culpably, well-nigh criminally, amiss as a nation in not preparing ourselves, and if with the lessons taught the world by the dreadful tragedies of the last twelve months, we continue with soft complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world, we shall excite only contempt and derision when disaster ultimately overwhelms us ("Pacifists," ibid.).

His call to arms, though not unexpected from the creator of "Big Stick" Diplomacy during his presidency, also conflicted with the cosmopolitan stage provided by the city of San Francisco. Yet it was with the Panama Canal that he had the closest connection.

"He did not build these palaces or fashion these courts," Charles Moore said of Theodore Roosevelt, "but he is the man that made them possible, for he it was who decided that the Canal should be built" (Todd, III: 94). Though when he called for the Canal's creation in 1902 he had the dual purpose of developing world trade and expanding the might of the US Navy, he spoke of the Canal's military advantages to the United States as a part of his speech to this international gathering. He said that as long as the Canal was fortified and in "our" hands, it nearly doubled the efficiency of the Navy. With the United States completion of the Canal, he called for the build-up of the military to assure that it and the United states would stay out of future wars (ibid). He further went on to rail against pacifists and quietists who sought to "Chinafy" America.

The "Chinification" of America, he believed, would bring the United States to their knees because its people would be "too proud to fight." He thought that the theory "the worst peace was better than the best war" would subject the country to the same centuries of suffering China had endured. "For generations (China has) been trained to regard peace as the most desirable of all aims and to look down upon war and soldiers," he warned. With this warning, he further berated "mollycoddles, peace-at-any-price, non-resistance, universal arbitration people" that "men who are not ready to fight for the right are not fit to live in a free democracy" (Todd, III: 96). Using such racially loaded language, Theodore Roosevelt, the progenitor of the Panama Canal erased the cosmopolitan, international intent of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and further helped "Americanify" the event.

Created on a grand multicultural stage intended to promote peace and trade between nations, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 became largely a vehicle for the current trends of racism and aggressive nationalism running through the United States. As they became a part of the larger world, San Francisco, California and the United States had a grand opportunity with the Exposition to express to foreign nations that they had disabused themselves of the provincial attitudes that had pervaded much of their history.

Though opening in a charged political climate with hostilities in Europe increasing in intensity, the Exposition had an opportunity to broadcast a message of peace through commerce to the world. The Panama Canal brought the nations closer together such that a mixture of cultures and economies, as many believed, could do nothing but help build the bonds of international brotherhood. No city in the United States, many thought, would understand the wide variety of people, and have a demeanor inclined towards their acceptance than the city by the Golden Gate. Unfortunately, the hopes and intentions of so many people seemed to disappear under a cloud of cultural myopia and militaristic jingoism.

The Panama Canal brought a great deal of the world's focus to the Pacific and brought a grand international exposition to San Francisco. However, despite the multiculturalism of the regional influences and the attempts of the Exposition's designers to demonstrate their sophistication through architecture, the Panama Pacific International Exposition failed to broadcast the same message of cosmopolitanism to the world.