Today we mark the birthday of Harlow Niles Higinbotham (October 10, 1838 – April 18, 1919), who served as the third President of the World’s Columbian Exposition Company, following terms of Lyman J. Gage and William T. Baker.

The quote below, reprinted in Harriet Monroe’s Harlow Niles Higinbotham: A Memoir with Brief Autobiography and Extracts from Speeches and Letters (R.F. Seymour, 1920) came from a speech that Higinbotham made years after the 1893 World’s Fair, at a banquet for a group of Japanese commissioners promoting a proposed exposition in Tokyo.

“In the years preceding our Columbian festival, peace reigned throughout the world. It was an opportune time for the assembling of the animate and inanimate parliaments, a time for the world to pause, take account of stock, to note progress in all the things that make for peace and humanity’s good; a time for the exchange of greetings between the peoples and the nations of the earth. You will all remember with what zeal Chicago entered into competition for the honor of being the host on that occasion. You will also remember the satisfaction and pride that filled our hearts when we had won the distinguished honor, and the heroic efforts we put forth to fulfil our pledge. To the older civilizations of the world it seemed presumptuous that a new city in a far country should appear in such a role. Our nearer neighbors predicted failure, and this stimulated us to greater effort; with a result that it is not even necessary to refer to, except in so far as to show its beneficent influence and substantial value to the world.”

Harlow N. Higinbotham (Image from World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, Aug. 1892.]