To the counties and other subdivisions of the State that through organized effort and at their own expense collected valuable exhibition material, prepared descriptive literature and sent representatives to Seattle, thereby strengthening the exhibit and adding to the force of California workers, we are under obligations. To their efforts and to the efficiency of the people they sent much of California’s success at the Seattle Exposition is due, and we want them to know and feel that their efforts and co-operation are fully appreciated.
To producers, manufacturers and packers, to lumbermen and miners, who responded to our request for samples of their output we owe a debt which we tried to pay in part by caring for their goods as they would have cared for them, and by looking out for their interests in the matter of awards as carefully as they could have done had they been there.
In this connection we wish to express our obligation to the Niles-Pease Furniture Company for the generous loan of the finest art mission furniture for our reception room, to Byron Mauzy of San Francisco, the Star Piano Company and Salyer-Baumeister of Los Angeles, for the loan of pianos for the use of our guests, and to the Eilers Piano Company for the free use of a pianola for our lecture room. To Arthur Harris, designer, and to C. L. Wilson, Superintendent of Installation, both experts in their line, is due largely the attractive character of California’s exhibit, admitted to be the most beautiful in arrangement and display, as well as the most comprehensive ever put up by this or any other State, at Seattle or any other Exposition.
CONCLUSION.
We do not hesitate to affirm that California’s participation at the Seattle Exposition was a success from every point of view, and knowing our trust was conscientiously performed, and that our best efforts were exerted in the interest of our State, we dare to hope that you who trusted us are not disappointed, and that the people of California who generously advanced the money for the work are satisfied with the showing made, and that they will reap substantial and lasting benefit as the result of their enterprise and liberality. We want to thank you sincerely for the confidence reposed in us, for your kindly co-operation and advise, and particularly for the generous rein given to us in carrying out a work for which you, in the eyes of the law, were primarily responsible. Our studied efforts were continually directed toward trying to get the greatest results at the least cost, for, though handling a generous appropriation, we never lost sight of the fact that it was the people’s money, and consequently we consented to the expenditure of a dollar only where in our judgement a dollar’s worth or more benefit would accrue to California; neither did we lose sight of the high standard which has characterized your course in the handling of public affairs. We acted on the principle that public office is a public trust, and that public money should be handled with greater care than one would handle his own.
The following pages contain a complete list of the awards made to California exhibitors and a statement of all moneys received and expended, and accompanying this report we hand you the vouchers showing all our transactions and just how the money was expended. We have settled every honorable claim, we have concluded the work in full, even to the distribution of the awards, and if there is a dollar left to go back into the Treasury it is because that dollar was not needed for the full satisfaction of the duties imposed.
Respectfully,
J. A. FILCHER,
FRANK WIGGINS,
Governor’s Representatives.