ENORMOUS EXPENSES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10163, 18 July 1924, Page 5

ENORMOUS EXPENSES.

COST OF EXHIBITIONS. Will it pay? is of course the first question before the promoters of any exhibition, great or small, and, considering the enormous expenses involved in such a show as at Wembley, the question is a most difficult one to answer, states T.C.B. in the "Daily Mail." The first of London's big exhibitions, that of 1851, was a great success from a financial point of view. Over six million people visited the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, and the surplus, after paying all expenses, was nearly £150,000; yet when, 'four years later, the French attempted to follow Britain's example, the result was reversed, and the loss was no less than £872,000. The success of the next big London exhibition, held in 1862, was much impaired by the death of the Prince Consort in the winter of that year and by the breaking out of the American Civil War; so although the receipts totalled about £450,000, there was a deficit of £IO,OOO when the accounts were cast up. The Paris Exhibition of 1867 paid well, showing a profit of £108,000; yet when in 1873 Vienna attempted a show on an even larger- scale the result was simply disastrous, the deficit amounting to yeiy nearly two millions sterling. All through the 'seventies one exhibition after another showed a dead loss. Although more than ten million people visited the Philadelphia Exhibition the balance-sheet showed a loss of something like £250,000, while at the International Exhibition in Paris, in spite of sixteen million visitors, the deficit was £1,250,000. . . In the 'eighties a distinct improvement is noticed. The Fisheries at South Kensington netted a profit of £ls,yuu, the "Colinderies" and "Healtheries also paid well. The "Inventories" was the only one of the four to show a loss, and that but a very small one. The Chicago World's Fair paid well, bo did the Great. Exhibition at St Louis, while the Franco-British ot 1908 at the White. City achieved a record attendance of 26,000,000, and m spite of a wages bill of £BOO,OOO, showed a fair profit. , . With regard, however, to gieat international or Imperial exhibitions, the organisers must always bear in mind that the real profits are indirect Take the case of the Pans Exhibition of 1900. It «. calculated that French railways profited to the extent of £3,000,0UU, the Post Office by £320,000; the Octroi duties by £400,000; the theatres by £500,000; and that the visitors to Pans who numbered actually left behind them £50,000,000, Under such circumstances, the granting of a substantial subsidy is no extravagance. It is simply common-serace.