City's Ingratitude

Having closed its doors without losing its backers' shirts, Chicago's two-year (1933-34) $48,000,000 Century of Progress Exposition further astonished wise-acres few months ago by closing its books with a $241,000 surplus. As any profits were by terms of the charter to be divided among certain worthy institutions,* the Exposition then filed a friendly suit in Superior Court to flush out any forgotten creditors and obtain clear title to the funds.

Quick to respond was none other than the ever zealous City of Chicago itself which, broke as usual, submitted a bill for not part but all of the $241,000, plus an extra $27,000 for good measure. This bill, Chicago's Corporation Counsel urbanely explained, was for 3,351,655,000 gal. of water from Lake Michigan which the city claimed it had sold, not given, to the Exposition. The Exposition's answer: In 1932 the city had passed an order "that there shall be no charge against the Exposition for water"; the Exposition had paid all equipment & pumping costs. But last week, grumbling of "holdups," "ransom" and "bloodmoney," The Century of Progress offered City Council $25,000 for its $268,132 claim.

*Among them the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Science & Industry ("Rosenwald Industrial Museum"), Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum, Washington's Smithsonian Institution.

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