Secretary's Budget. 409 



Four years ago my sister asked what kind of flowers I would 

 ■ select for a summer hat. I said if I were to wear flowers, I would 

 have the genuine or none at all. That with Mahonia leaves and 

 roses and a few other flowers of the season, a hat could be trimmed 

 much nicer than any I had ever seen with artificial flowers, and I 

 would like to have her try. She at once agreed to try the experi- 

 ment. That hat was a success all through the season, judging from 

 the many remarks made about it and the frequent question, 

 " Where did you get your hat, I like that trimming ?" No one 

 suspected that the flowers were not counterfeit like all the rest. 



KEFORM THE FAIRS. 



Mr. J. S. Woodward, in the way of journalistic duty, visited 

 many of the leading -'agricultural" fairs during the last year or 

 two, and found a deplorable condition at most of them which he 

 dared to denounce through The Tribune and Bural Xew Yorker, 

 in terms severe, but mainly just. In return he has been sharply- 

 arraigned by some of the directors and officers whose sliameful 

 doings were thus exposed. This was to be expected, and indicates 

 that the criticism is happily not without hopeful effect. 



In a recent summing up of the investigations he does not, as 

 we believe, put the case too strongly when he declares that while 

 none of these exhibitions are free from objectionable features, they 

 have, with three or four exceptions, been so conducted as to be a 

 disgrace to the managers and a n/rse to the coninninities in which 

 they were held. Money-making has seemed to be the controlling 

 idea; '"no matter how fraudulent, demoralizing, degrading or 

 corrupting " their side-shows, traveling scamps could always obtain 

 the best positions on the grounds if willing to pay well for the 

 privilege of plying their nefarious arts. 



In view of the drinking and gambling thus directly fostered, is 

 it too much to say that the fairs as now conducted are "the most 

 pernicious of all influences at work to corrupt the morals of our 

 sons, our daughters, indeed of the nation ? Remembering that the 

 country's hope is in its boys and girls ; remembering also the sus- 

 ceptibility of the young, we feel inclined to accept the statement as 

 founded on fact. Certainly there is truth enough in it to warrant 

 right-thinking people — who always control when they will — in de- 

 termining that agricultural fairs shall be either "reformed or 

 abandoned. " — Tribii ue. 



