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THE NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 28, 1934.

FAIR'S AFTERMATH WORRYING CHICAGO

What to Do With Horde of Those Made Jobless by Its Closing is a Puzzle

BUILDINGS ALSO PROBLEM

Three Plans Suggested in Regard to Them, but None is Wholly Satisfactory

By WILLLIAM F. McDERMOTT

CHICAGO, october 25.--With the closing date of A Century of Progress Exposition at hand, Chicago is beginning to take stock of its world's fair as to permanent values and after-effects. A great fanfare on Halloween will bring it to a roistering, rollicking close, but it looks like a real headache the morning after.

Old-time Chicagoans have painful remembrances of the slump that hit the city after the closing of the Columbian Expoosition in 1893. While there was a going depression at the time to help matters downward, the removal of the bolstering element of the fair all but caused a collapse. With a similar depression having the same general effect now, Chicago is is suddenly face to face with the fact that within a week or ten days between 25,000 and 30,000 more unemployed are going to be dumped upon it.

Many Will be Jobless

Perhaps 5,000 will continue to have jobs, including those who will be engaged in tearing down buildings and those who have permanent employment with the exhibitors and concessionaires. But to the ranks of the workless will be added multitudes of waitresses, entertainers, guides, salesmen, barkers, mechanics, clerks, accountants and private policemen. Just who will take care of them no one knows, and only a few minor moves have been made to provide jobs for them.

                     As Chicago already has 500,000 unemployed, the sudden discharge of many thousands who have had steady employment for two years or more will swell their ranks to serious proportions. Relief expenditures, already approximating $6,500,000 a month, for the city, are expected to take a jump.

Junking of the exposition buildings will start at the moment of closing. Buildings which cost millions are expected to go for thousands of dollars. One million dollars has been set apart for the restoration of the grounds before March 1. To its credit is the fact that the fair has paid about 95 percent on itself and probably will in full. Although the attendance has reached 15,000,000 this year, the drop from 23,000,000 of last year stifled plans to continue it as it is into a third season.

Three Plans Discussed

Heated debate is raging, however, as to whether any of it can be or should be preserved. A three-way view is generally taken by the public. One proposal is to retain the principal buildings, such as the halls of science, transportation, electricity and agriculture, and develop a permanent industrial exposition. The edge is taken off this, however, by the building of the Museum of Science and Industry at a cost of many millions of dollars in Jackson Park, site of the 1893 exposition.

                     Another plan is to remove all the buildings but the band shell and horticulture building and turn the grounds into a lake-front park, adjoining the famous Grant Park. Bathing beaches, tennis courts, lagoons, walks, drives, flower beds and lanscaping would make it another unit in the city's great park system. This plan has much popular support but is clouded by the proposal to fill in the lake further out and make an aviation landing field close to the Loop. A vigourous fight is being made against this.

A third plan is to keep the midway, invite concessions, beer gardens and resorts to centre there and turn it into a Coney Island. A two-mile beach is available to complete the likeness. Chicago has always battled for its lake front, and these proponents have lttle chance. It appears now that the exposition will be demolished and the city will decide at a later date what to do with the site, a delay which probably will be costly because many valuable assets could be preserved by prompt, intelligent action.

                     Accomplishment Questioned

Just what the exposition has accomplished in a permanent way is a subject of much discussion here. It has brought millions of visitors who have spent scores of millions of dollars in Chicago, but that is transitory. Whether the causes of science and industry have really been aided is a matter of debate.

                     Most of the visitors have taken it much as they would a motion-picture show. Carnival features have been exploited out of all proportion, and the fair is held responsible for the epidemic of naked dancers who have captured even the smallest of country roadhouses. Scientific and industrial exhibits, except in transportation, have not had either the magnitude or originality of the 1893 exposition, and while curiosity has been satisfied and something added to the general knowledge of the millions of visitors, it is doubtful if invention has been stimulated or business efficiency enhanced to any important degree.

The fair has been a great show, with all that the name implies, and has given the city a reputation for putting over something big in the midst of a depression. But in its major emphasis it has been more of a splash than anything else, and the planetarium, aquarium and Field Museum probably will contribute more to human progress than the two years world's fairs combined.

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