The success of the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress Fair was found in its high attendance
and increased department store sales. Over nine million visitors attended the
fair from out of town and over twenty-three million admissions came from
Chicagoans frequenting the fairgrounds (Findling 1994, 133). The high number of
Chicago attendees to the fair spoke to the element of escape the Century of
Progress provided from the depression. As one attendee said, “It seemed as if
one could flee the Depression simply by plunking down 50 cents and walking thru
(sic) the gate”(Findling 1994, 150). The success of the committee’s mandate to
stimulate consumption and the movement of capital was apparent in Chicago
department stores’ sales statistics. By the end of 1933 department store sales
increased nineteen percent, turning around a decrease of nearly twenty-five
percent for the same period in 1932 (Findling 1994, 134). Robert Rydell in
writing about the Chicago world fairs discussed how The Century of Progress was,
“an exercise in cultural and ideological repair and renewal that encouraged
Americans to share in highly controlled fantasies about modernizing the present
in order to attain tomorrow’s greater prosperity” (Rydell 1993, 10). The
Century of Progress marketed modernity as the vehicle to this hope of a
brighter future thus establishing the democratization of desire that would
stimulate consumption. In order to bring people back into their stores,
Freiman’s had to market not only an experience, as they had in the past, but
their ability to offer progress and transcendence from everyday life. They were
able to do this by adopting the 1933 Century of Progress’s ideology and
practice and essentially brought modernity to Ottawa.