THE PRESIDENT DAILY PROGRAMMES - SPECIAL DAYS Official Entertainment Under the original organization of the Exposition, the president performed the duties which, under the reorganization, we assigned to the several members of the executive committee. During the period of exploitation, he visited with delegations of prominent citizens many of the Trans-Mississippi states, promoting appropriations from legislatures and arousing pubic interest. This work was continued after the re-organization an until the gates were opened. The most notable of these journeys was taken in February 1897, with a delegation composed of President Wattles, G.M. Hitchcock, John L. Webster, W.S. Poppleton, Clement Chase and H.E. Palmer, who, with their wives, were tendered a private car by the Pullman Company, and transported without cost by the Union Pacific and other railroads to the capitals of nine different western states. In nearly every one of these states, this delegation was given a hearing before a joint session of the legislature, and while on account of the hard times then prevailing some of these states did not make appropriations, there is no doubt but the interest aroused did much to advertise the Exposition and later on to increase its attendance. In addition to this work numerous delegations were invited to Omaha and entertained during the period of building the Exposition. In the winter of 1897-1898 these visitors came thick and fast. In January the entire Iowa legislature were invited and transported from Des Moines free of expense. After a visit to the Exposition grounds they were entertained at a dinner at the Millard Hotel at which many toasts were given and much good will prevailed. On July 28, 1897, the executive committee defined the duties of the president as follows: The president of the Exposition with such assistants as he may deem necessary shall have charge of the official entertainment of distinguished visitors, the reception and welcoming of visiting commissions and delegations, the arrangements in connection with special days and arrangement and publicity of the daily programme of events and features of the Exposition. LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE of the ARCH OF STATES - ARBOR DAY April 22, 1897. The first occasion for a ceremonial was the laying of the corner-stone of the Arch of States Entrance, which was at that time planned to be a permanent structure built of stone from each of the Trans-Mississippi states and territories. The corner-stone was laid on Arbor Day, the tree-planting state holiday in Nebraska, with appropriate Masonic ceremonies. The day was fine and warm, a bright sun following the rain of the previous night, regarded as a good omen. A parade was formed on Farnam Street, and moved shortly after one o'clock p.m. in the following order: FIRST DIVISION. Platoon of Police. Grand Marshal - R.S. Wilcox. Board of Governors, Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben as Aides. Seventh Ward Military Band. Transmissippi Directory. Mayor and City Council. Board of Fire & Police Commissioners. Continental Drum Corps. Patriotic Sons of America. Elks. SECOND DIVISION. R.M. Stone, Marshal. Omaha Military Band. Omaha Guards. Commercial Club. Board of Education. Board of Park Commissioners. Board of Trade. A.O.U.W. Band. High School Cadets. Gate City Lodge, Ancient Order of United Workmen. Letter Carriers. THIRD DIVISION. W.R. Bennett, Marshal. Y.M.C.A. Band. Thurston Rifles. Advertising Men's Club. Builders' and Traders' Exchange. Woodmen of the World. Oakleaf Circle, Woodmen of the World. Gate City Band. Council Bluffs Cadets. Council Bluffs Knights of Pythias. Knights of St. George. Ancient order of Hibernians. FOURTH DIVISION. H.E. Wheelock, Marshal. Steinhauser's Band. Dodge Light Guards. Ak-Sar-Ben Lodge, Ancient Order of United Workmen. Union Pacific Lodge, Ancient Order of United Workmen. Maple Camp, Modern Woodmen of America. FIFTH DIVISION. Twenty Second Infantry Band. Freemasons. SIXTH DIVISION. Private Citizens in Carriages. Reaching the site of the Arch of States at 20th & Pinckney streets at 2:30 P.M. the Masonic Grand Lodge of Nebraska marched between the long lines of the paraders to the platform where the exercises were to take place. A great concourse of people had assembled, it was a city holiday. Masonic Grand master Chas. J. Phelps conducted the ceremonies, assisted by Deputy Grand master J.B. Dinsmore, Grand Secretary W. R. Bowen, Grand Treasurer Christian Hartman, Grand Senior Warden F. H. Young, Acting Grand Junior Warden, George W. Lininger. The wine and oil used for the ceremony was brought personally from Jerusalem by past Grand Master G. W. Lininger of Omaha. The stone was inscribed "Laid by the Masonic Fraternity, April 22, 1897, N.W. Charles J. Phelps, G.M." At the conclusion of the services the Grand Master delivered the implement of the profession of builders to Architect in-chief, Thomas R. Kimball, exhorting him to supervise well the construction of the buildings, and then announced that the cornerstone had been well laid and in all due form. The president of the Exposition then formally introduced the various speakers of the day. Addresses were delivered by Hon. William J. Broatch, Mayor of the City of Omaha, Lieut. Governor __ __ __ Harris of Nebraska, and the Honorable J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City, Nebraska, ex-Secretary of Agriculture of the United States. Mr. Morton's address was as follows: In the wisdom of His creative majesty the great Mysteriarch of the universe surrounded man with mysteries. Without such environment there would have been no incentive to thought, no inducement to investigation. The life and growth of a blade of grass, the development of a rose, or the evolution of a great oak from an acorn alike suggests the unknown, the miraculous and the unsolved. In 1854 the pioneers of Nebraska made the first lodgment of modern civilization upon the vast, undulating ocean of fertile lands which stretched in solitude from the west bank of the Missouri River toward the Rocky Mountains. At the point of the plow they have compelled the prairies of Nebraska to deliver up, during the last forty-one years, thirty-six abundant crops, some of them almost miraculous in yield. During that period of time, in remote frontier portions of the commonwealth, there have been some failures or partial failures, of crops from drouth and from grasshoppers. But in the eastern portion of Nebraska, there may be found hundreds of farms which, since 1855 have never once failed to remunerate intelligent tillage with substantial rewards. The men who legitimately, steadfastly and discreetly have trusted to the plow and intelligent farming in the first settled sections of Nebraska since 1885 are, as a rule, successful men, not mortgaged nor in financial straits. There is no part of the United States which can exhibit from its first cultivation a crop record equal in annual yield to that which eastern Nebraska is proud to exhibit from the day when agriculture first put its autograph upon the prairie with the point of the plow, down to the autumn of 1896 when the sun shone and the winds played among the cornfields in this commonwealth, which produced more than 200,000,000 of bushels. Nebraska is prepared with statistics, figures and facts to prove that during the last forty years no state in the union has surpassed it in the regularity and abundance of its crops. Thus far, however, we have only demonstrated that the elements of plant life and growth, which were primarily absorbed by the wild grasses and flowers, are not appropriated and utilized by corn, oats, barley, rye, wheat and a variety of root and other food crops. The summer and autumn sunlight which formerly only bronzed prairie grass now gilds the grain fields, burnishes ripening fruit and matures ample rewards in varied products for intelligent toil. HISTORY OF ARBOR DAY. But after the demonstration of the plow as to the fertility of Nebraska another problem demanded solution. The home builders in this new country desired the embellishment of the plains by woodlands and forests, and the question as to how it should be accomplished and as to whether forests would thrive in these soils compelled earnest and analytical investigation. Consequently, after much experimentation, much of individual exhortation and effort, there was evolved out of the shadeless plains and from the utter desolation of treelessness, a plan for unanimous tree planting on a given day by all the people in all the counties of all the commonwealth. And the plan took root like a strong and valuable tree. Its growth today reaches out into all the states of the American republic. It has been grafted upon the school system of the entire country. It has been transported to European countries which are carefully cherishing it. In Mexico, Australia, and in some of the far-a-way islands of the oceans and seas it is permanently established as an anniversary and everywhere it is recognized and welcomed as a child of Nebraska. In all the timbered states of the east, and in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, in fact in each of the heavily wooded sections of the United States, vast areas of trees were unneccesarily cut down and the logs even of valuable oaks, walnuts and other cabinet woods, thoughtlessly, uselessly transmitted to smoke and ashes. How few of the axmen, the tree-slayers, who kindled those disastrous conflagrations realized that the flames which they evolved were merely stolen sunlight set free, enfranchised. the mystery of the life of a great and aged tree is a majesty compared to which that of human royalty is tame, puerile and insignificant. From our earliest childhood we are taught that fire and water will not mix, but in the tree they mingle as friends and co-laborers. With its foliage, which are its lungs, the tree breathes in the rain and the light. Every sunbeam which it inhales is imprisoned only to be freed by combustion. The water and the fire are married and dwell inter-dependently in all the vegetable kingdom. DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. Like vast, disciplined armies the forests of the American continent stood guard over the fertility of the lands and the health and lives of all the animal creation which they protected. With their foliage of emerald and the whispering winds, those great stretches of wooded land lured the light of the sun, the moisture of the clouds to their hearts and made them hostages, pledges against flood, drouth and the disease which those calamities create. But man's wanton wastefulness of the superb woods of the United States has dried up thousands of springs of delicious drinking water, parched out beautiful brooks and useful mill streams, destroyed the pliant and absorbing leaf-mould of the forest, which was the arrester and custodian of torrential rain-falls and the mother of rills and streams. Is it possible that each stratum of rocks and minerals is a grave a great tomb, wherein myriads of centuries ago were buried the remnants of animal and vegetable kind? When woodlands, forest trees shall have all been destroyed, together with subsidiary vegetation, every living thing will have perished from the face of the earth. Has this globe at some time in the unknowable, pre-historic past subsisted a race which destroyed its forests, and then, as a penalty perished? Is the present tenantry of this earth destined to destroy all its forests and trees and thus commit universal suicide? The intermission of the foliage, flower and fruit of a single summer would bring upon every human being, upon all animal, organisms, an overwhelming avalanche of death. This is a stupendous truth. It admonishes mankind that their physical sanitary protection is in the trees and forests, which conserve the rainfall, mitigate the heat of the sun and make it possible the continuation of animal life and the perpetuation of that civilization which exalts and ennobles the human race. A truth and a tree outlive generations of men. That this admirably planned Trans-Mississippi Exposition may plant truths as to the economic and materials resources of its vast and opulent empire in the minds of the tens of thousands of intelligent visitors and sojourners who may attend it, with as cheerful a certainty and as serene a satisfaction as we experience in planting these trees in the never-deceiving, never-disappointing soil of the fertile Nebraska, is my earnest hope and my sincere and intense desire.