AGRICULTURAL OROxANIZATIONS AND INDUSTRIAL FAIRS. 9 



But, says one, you have forgotten the principal feature. Oh ! 

 my good friend, what is that ? Why, it is a horse trot. No, Mr. 

 President, I have not forgotten it, for it has been the great " bug- 

 bear "in niy way ever since I first contemplated writing this 

 essay, and at first I decided to ignore it entirely, leaving it for 

 wiser heads and more influential minds than mine to assail or de- 

 fend ; but I find it so intimately connected with a successful fair, 

 at least so far as financial success is concerned, that I have been 

 unable to get by it without a few moments consideration. 



There was a time when there was but one agricultural society 

 in a county, and the State allowed them three hundred dollars, 

 when competition was limited in comparison to what it now is, 

 when all members of the society paid a dollar annually, and the 

 show and fair was hoklen on some public grounds, so that an 

 exhibition could be successfully conducted on its own merits. 

 Now we must have an exhibition hall, a track for our own private 

 society's exhibition of horses, enclosed with a suitable fence, 

 must pay a much larger amount in premiums, a much larger sum 

 for printing, must have a board of officers whose services are 

 worth paying for, and at the same time the counties are so divided 

 by the increased number of societies, that few of them get more 

 than one hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars. Under these 

 circumstances the trustees of the societies had either to abandon 

 the enterprise and confess themselves euchered, or at once, like 

 McCIellan on the Potomac, change their base and devise some 

 untried means by which to raise the wind, and in selecting a 

 hoi'se-race as the means by which to accomplish that result they 

 not only raised the wind financially, but they raised at the same 

 time a huge breeze about their own ears, which they now find it 

 difficult to allay. It is not my purpose to discuss the question 

 whether it is desirable to get along without a trot, for I consider 

 it a fixed and permanent feature of agricultural exhibitions, and 

 with this admission it becomes our duty to control and direct it 

 in such a manner as to get the desired benefit from it, with the 

 least possible harm either to ourselves, the societies, the cause of 

 agriculture, or the morals of the community. 



To do this it is necessary that we give the public distinctly to 

 understand that the primary, and indeed, the only reason for offer- 

 ing premiums on speed horses, as such, is to obtain funds with 

 which to pay other premiums. There is a large class in the com- 

 munity who certainly pay their money as freely, if not more freely. 



