The Man Who Sold Seattle's World's Fair

It is conceded by experts who have made the matter of expositions their life work that the A.-Y.-P. Exposition has been as well and as wisely advertised as any great fair ever held in this country or Europe. The success of an exposition is to a great extent judged by its attendance. According to present estimates about four million people will have attended the A.-Y.-P. up to the time of closing, October 16. The man largely responsible for this great attendance is James A. Wood, who has filled the position of director of exploitation. Mr. Wood is a Seattle newspaper man, who for many years prior to his present work occupied positions of responsibility with leading newspapers in Seattle and other cities of the Northwest.

When he took over the publicity work of the exposition seven months prior to the opening—June 1—the complaint was widespread that the fair had not been well advertised. Hundreds of prominent Seattle people returned from trips throughout the United States with the complaint that they had heard nothing of the coming exposition during their travels. They had made inquiry everywhere, had visited railroad offices and other public places of information seeking literature about the fair, but no information was to be obtained, no literature to be had. The exposition people at home admitted the truth of the charge.

Within one week after Mr. Wood succeeded to the position of director of exploitation the wheels of publicity were moving. Mr. Wood was not experienced in the matter of bringing to the attention of the world a new exposition. But he adopted common sense methods, induced every resident of Seattle to become a publicity agent for the Exposition, and immediately every letter, every pamphlet which went out of Seattle bore the A.-Y.-P. seal, and tucked inside the letters was interesting literature concerning the coming fair. Then he introduced throughout the Northwest the slogan 'What helps Seattle helps the Northwest'; commercial clubs and other public bodies as well as individual citizens took up the cry; all became boosters and in a short time hundreds of thousands of advertising pamphlets were going into every nook and corner of the United States as well as Canada, Europe and the Orient.

Returns soon showed that Wood's campaign had been effective. Eastern passenger agents wrote and wired that they had all the people they could possibly care for; they were no longer concerned about the number of westbound passengers; what they needed was equipment to haul them. Then came June 1 opening day—with close to one hundred thousand people in attendance. Since that time the average attendance has been close to 30,000. That put the stamp of success on the exposition, also on the work of James A. Wood.