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.
What this cost the company’s president during the following months of enormous expenditure, when construction bills for material and labor had to be met if the work was to go on, can hardly be estimated. The year from August, 1892, to August, 1893, was a time of incredible strain for the man at the helm. The writer vividly remembers a chance meeting with Mr. Higinbotham in July, 1893. Although she had felt that the attendance thus far was slight, she had not realized the financial issue involved. One glance at the familiar face, however, informed her of the danger; gave her an emotion of anxiety which she will never forget. The face, usually smiling and even tender with friends, was white and stern and drawn; incredibly strong and firm, but cold and hard; the face of a ship captain through a tornado, of a general when the battle seems going wrong; recording a moment when individual emotion was swallowed up in the tragic passion of leadership through imminent disaster.
Fortunately this long and ever increasing strain began to diminish soon after. In August the gate receipts began to creep up, so that the bondholders became less clamorous and the Board of Directors less apprehensive; and the phenomenal “Chicago Day” attendance of October ninth—the twenty-second anniversary of the Fire which a young employe had fought for Field, Leiter & Co.—a day when 761,942 persons went through the turn-stiles, enabled the Treasurer of the Exposition to pay the bondholders in full.