The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness in the Fair That Changed America | Themes

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness in the Fair That Changed America Themes

Good and Evil

Where there is good there is also evil. The two stories of Burnham and Holmes show this dichotomy. The World's Exposition did many good things for the country. It proved that the United States was as cultured as Paris. It showed New York that Chicago was not a pig-slaughtering country town. It created the ideal that people would come to expect from their own cities, clean and safe. The World's Exposition also created jobs in a time when the economy was failing. Unions used this to get time and a half for overtime and the acceptance of an eight-hour workday. They actually went a long way to ensure the rights of laborers and it would never revert.

However, within all this goodness there were bad things happening too. Thieves and pickpockets preyed on the visitors of the Exposition. However, this was minor compared to the evil that lived a short...
(read more)