Codman has sent me a copy of a letter addressed to you by Charles P. Willard (“Steam Engines and Boilers, Steam Launches, Steam Yachts and Tug Boats,” more especially tug-boats, I should think). Codman adds a note that the writer appears to have your confidence.

The letter is written altogether on lines parallel with those I have heard you lay down, but which I do not believe you have ever deliberately had in view.

I suspect that even Codman is inclined to think that I make too much of a hobby of this boat question and give an amount of worry, if not thought, to it that would be better expended on other and more critical matters, and I fear that you may think me a crank upon it. I do not believe there is the least ground for such a view. I believe the matter to be one which should be placed high among the critical matters of the Exposition, and that a course is very likely to be taken upon it which will be absolutely disastrous. If I am peculiar in thinking so, I believe that it is simply because I have had a long special [429]experience leading me to a clearer point of view in this respect than you and others are taking. Having this conviction, I must be persevering and strenuous in pressing it upon you.

There is not a line in this letter of the tug-builder to suggest that its writer has ever thought of the problem of the boating service as being anything else than this: How to provide for the transportation by water between different points of the Exposition of the greatest number of passengers, with the least loss of time to them, at the least expense.

Now with a degree of respect for your judgment which does not allow me to believe that when you have stated the problem somewhat in this way, you have meant more than that you did not wish the value of the boats as means of transportation to be entirely overlooked, I hold that such a statement of the object of the boating service is really absurd.

Why was the Great Basin, why were the Lagoons and the Canals, brought into the plan to cut up and complicate the site of the Fair, make direct communication between some of its most important buildings impossible, and in a thousand ways add to the expense and difficulty of the scheme? Why were they laid out on such eccentric courses as they are, with shores sometimes formal and rectilinear, sometimes picturesque or gracefully meandering? Was this element of the design a preliminary step to a mere transportation service? Was it to save time and expense to visitors in moving from one point to another? Was it to add another means of enjoyment to such of the visitors as should use boats upon the waters? You perfectly well know that the main object to be accomplished was nothing of this sort. I need not try to make a statement of what it was. You are as alive to it as I am. You know that it was a poetic object, and you know that if boats are to be introduced on these waters, it would be perfect nonsense to have them of a kind that would antagonize this poetic object. It would be a wicked waste to have a boating service that was not designed in all particulars with a view to sustain and advance this poetic object. No man should be allowed to have a voice in the matter who is by nature or training inept, or slow and cumbrous in moving toward that object. It is not impossible, but it is very unlikely, that a man who has been giving his mind to tug-boats and other means of transportation on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, has, by his training, been fitted for the duty of providing boats on still waters as a means of poetic delectation in the general landscape of the World’s Fair. Far better take a house-builder or a shoe-maker, whose mind will not have been molded by his training to a pernicious habit in this respect.

If you aim at the best means of transportation simply, and look for your guidance to the most successful operations in that respect to which our American commercial enterprise, aided by the actual use of the best science it can command, has arrived, you will have either floating cable cars, or floating overhead trolly cars. Why are you looking for anything else? There are plenty of engineers who are a great deal better qualified to take up the problem in this respect than Mr. Nixon or Mr. Willard. It could be perfectly solved, without [430]trouble to any of us, in a week, and in another week you could have the whole affair under contract. Why was not something of this kind done, as a matter of course? Can you state one objection to it that would not apply in essence to Mr. Willard’s objection to what he calls a “launch construction”? Can you state one objection to it that does not knock out all that he says in argument for deck boats of greater beam than we have had in view? Why stop at his figure? Why not have twin boats with a platform between? Why not, by various means that could be contrived, double, and double again, the capacity of your boats? Are you not conscious that at the bottom you have another reason than one of economy, or one of expediency with reference merely to the freighting of the largest number of passengers in a given time?

Suppose that, at any expense in respect to prosaic qualities, to clumsiness, gracelessness and barbarity and childishness of design, such as has been exhibited in published pictures alleged to represent boats that were to be used on the Exposition waters, you should add twenty or thirty per cent to the number of passengers that a becoming boating service would provide for; suppose this, what proportion of the whole number of visitors to the Fair would this additional number be? Certainly it would be of no vital consequence. The boats, if artistically becoming to the circumstances, will be of ten times the value to people on shore that they will to people who embark in them. Put in the waters unbecoming boats, even much better than such as have been proposed and advocated by very intelligent men, and the effect would be utterly disgusting, destroying the value of what would otherwise be the most valuable, original feature of this Exposition. I say destroy, deliberately. A thousand times better have no boats. I most earnestly advise that if you cannot be satisfied with boats of moderate length and moderate clumsiness in respect to breadth, and if you cannot seat your passengers low and keep everything about the boats low, you recommend that all attempt to carry the public upon the waters of the Exposition be abandoned. I wish you to seriously consider this. I beg that you will do so. Just think how much beauty there would be in the waters if left undisturbed except by water-fowl, the numbers of which, in that case, we would greatly increase, and perhaps by a few gondolas and other small craft, selected solely, and managed solely, with regard to picturesqueness. I am sure that the Exposition would be a much greater success if this course were adopted.

If boats are to be used on the waters of the Exposition simply as a means for the transportation of passengers, and if they are to be planned and managed simply with that purpose in view, or with that purpose leading, I cannot, in justice to my own convictions, refrain from most strenuously protesting against it. I am sure as I am of anything that it would greatly lessen the attractiveness and the instructiveness of the Exposition.

Yours Faithfully

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