THE FRANCO-BRITISH EXHIBITION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 129, 30 May 1908, Page 15

THE FRANCO-BRITISH EXHIBITION.

ESTIMATES OF COST. FROM THE "DATLT MAIL." What is the Franco-British Exhibition going to eoet before the gates are opened on May" 11? The exact figures it is impossible to ascertain. Every day the exhibition enlarges its scope and stretches its space to admit more attractions. When the reckoning day comes the figure will be certainly more than a million and a half sterling, possibly more than two millions. Popular conceptions as to the cost of the exhibition are ludicrous. Said one business man to an exhibition manager the other day: "I hear yon are cori%ected with the Shepherd's Bush Exhibition. I suppose it is going to cost a good deal? Will it be as much as £80.000?" The manager laughed and told him that Canada alone is spending £100.000 on its building, ground, and getting the exhibits together. Australia is spending more. India and New Zealand are spending each £25,000. One English newspaper is spending £15,000, another £5000—and so on. Pew people have any idea how much it costs to erect twenty great fire-proof palaces under the strict supervision of the London County Council, light them, drain them, police them. Even less do they realise what it means to dig lagoons and canals out of land which was once a farm, then a -brickfield, and afterwards a dumping ground for the tenacious London blue clay dug out of the tube of the Central London Railway. To the cost of these buijdings add .that of the Colonies, French and English, who have put up their own palaces, and the scores of attractions erected by enterprising speculators, from the giant "flip-flap" to the completely equipped glass works and the model bakery. COLONIAL PALACES. Inquiries on the ground suggest the following approximate figures of cost for the buildings additional to the main cost of twenty palaces of art, science, machinery, and industry:— Sew Zealand £20.000 Crown Colonies 20,000 India i 5.000 French Colonies 50.000 Canada 100.000 Australia 110,000 Total £325,000 To these must be added a still longer list of buildings erected at the expense of private individuals, of which the following are the most important:— Glass-works £2,000 Newspapers £20.000 Mineral water Flip-flap .. £20.-000 factory .. £3,000 Irish village £25,00 v Cinematograph ' Locomotion £25,00! hall £5.000 Railways £55,000 Old London £5.000 Fifty smaller Bakery .. £10,000 shows .. £T5,000 Senegal Vil- India & Ccv- . lage ... £10.000 lon villages £75,000 Scenic rail- Restaurants £100,000 way £20.000 ■ Total £450,000 Locomotion in this list includes the privi. lege of operating boats on the lakes, and a Renard road train. The amounts may be taken to include also the cost of renting space, which has been as high as £10,000 in some cases, and the cost of bringing natives for the villages. It only remains to add the probable cost of the twenty main buildings, with the lighting, draining, road-making of the grounds, representing an outlay of abont £1,000.000. which, with the figures already given, makes a total of £1,775,000. j How is this immense sum to be met? In part by the payment for the above concessions; in part by the payment for space in the buildings: in part by the percentages which the exhibition as a whole will draw on all receipts for articles sold, food and drink consumed, and gate-money for side-shows To these sources of revenue will be added the money taken at the gates and the sea-son-tiefeet money. ■ — At the Glasgow Exhibition 100.000 seasontickets at £1 1/0 were sold. Donble the number may be sold for the Franco-British. How many will, pay. one shilling at the gates? Mr. Imre Kiralfy hopes for 30,000.----000, which booH mean £1,500,000 in receipts. A pessimistic estimate is 100,000 a day for 100. days, or 10,000.000 persons whose shillings would total £500,000. The exliibits themselves will probably be worth £3,000.000.