ANNUAL MEETING. 75 



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These conditions obtain as much today as at any time in the past. The 

 fair is just as much an educational institution now as ever before, espe- 

 cially since all lines of industi-y have been reduced to a science, and the 

 exhibitors are the most potent factors in creating and maintaining them. 

 And when a company of these advanced thinkers assemble, with their 

 products, within the confines of the fair grounds, they attract more at- 

 tention and create more enthusiasm than all other features combined. 



Proper amusements of all kinds and brass bands are all right in their 

 places, but without the exhibitor they are "as sounding brass or a tink- 

 ling cymbal." No exhibitor, no fair, has become a trueism. 



Many people attend the fairs for the purpose of being amused and 

 entertained; and since there have been so many amusements and attrac- 

 tions of modern character provided for the people, at least for their 

 money, and since it seems that we have reached the limit of everything 

 new, it is not surprising that, now and then, some croaker tells us that 

 the day of the fair and its exhibitor has gone by. 



My experience of twenty-five years in connection with fair manage- 

 ment convinces me that as to the fair run solely for the amusement 

 of the people, or after the manner of our fathers, the statement is true, 

 and an attempt to so conduct it would be the merest folly; as much so 

 as to attempt to harvest a crop with the reaping-hook. But it is not 

 true of the fair demanding and maintaining a high standard of excel- 

 lence in every department, that keeps abreast of the progress of the age. 

 There is a demand for such fairs and they are now and will continue to 

 be liberally patronized and maintained. 



Exhibitors understand that the old order of things has passed away 

 and are fully in accord with the progressive idea, for which they claim 

 they are responsible. Formerly each person in the neighborhood of a 

 fair having a good specimen of flock or field took it to the exhibition. If 

 of vegetable, fruit or grain it was placed upon an improvised table iu an 

 open shedj. 



If from dairy or the kitchen, it was wrapped in a cloth and placed 

 alongside the cabbage. If a horse or a cow it was tied to the fence; 

 or a pig or lamb it was placed in a rail pen with some leafy branches of 

 trees placed above to protect it from the rays of the autumnal sun. These 

 conditions exhibitors endured because it was the best the management 

 could afford and oftentimes the products were in keeping with the accom- 

 modations. 



Since the various products have been brought to such a high degree 

 of development, instead of the people, generally, taking their products to 

 the fair, they go to see what others have accomplished and profit by their 

 experience and investigation, and the exhibitors in all classes have become 

 less in number and more or less professional. This necessarily must be 

 so, since, on every farm and in every home, the latest and best can be 

 found, and the people who have the courage to compete in the exhibition 



