gS AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



AGRICLXTURAL FAIRS AND THEIR BENEFITS TO A 

 NEW ENGLAND COMMUNITY. 



By Prof. J. \V. Sanborn, Gilmanton, N. H. 



I picked up a Boston paper this morning and noticed in it an 

 editorial which stated that the Middlesex Fair was closing its 

 accounts and was about to sell its lands. This has been, I am 

 sorry to say, somewhat the drift of events in the history of fairs 

 in New England during the last few years, and something like 

 the old question in a new form has been asked over again. A 

 while ago we were discussing whether life was worth living, and 

 next whether marriage was a failure, and for the last few years 

 the papers have been discussing the appropriateness of the agri- 

 cultural fairs. The editor brushes the whole question aside and 

 says this marks the passing off from the stage of action of the 

 fair as one of the features in the organized rural life of New 

 England. I am inclined to dissent from this view. 



If venerable years and universality of place in which they have 

 been held is evidence of popularity and utility, fairs grow out of 

 an enduring public demand, and they are likely, under some 

 form, to remain a permanent part of the educational, commercial 

 and social forces of organized society. Under various guises 

 their existence parallels organized industrial society. Indeed 

 their very name is of Latin origin, signifyng a holiday or day of 

 rest. 



In earlier days they were centers of barter, and of social, relig- 

 ious, and political' festivities, or again they took the form of har- 

 vest homes. At some of them the annual gathering numbered 

 as high as two hundred thousand people, and they were often 

 attended during the evenings with great social hilarity. Modern 

 development has changed somewhat their character, those known 

 to us today being scarcely a century in age. 



The great Royal Agricultural Society of England, though 

 projected in the century previous, was not actually organized 

 until 1839. In 1784 one was organized in South Carolina and 

 one in Philadelphia. In 1791 one was organized in New York 

 and another in 1792 in Massachusetts. No doubt a restless and 



