PROCEEDINGS IOWA FAIR MANAGERS ASSN. 161 



ill the locality and they might possibly have a race horse once 

 in a while, but bye and bye as it is nobody will have any horses. 



President Holtman : Next on the program is "Novelty and 

 Xew Features for Fairs," by Louis Latta of Indianola. 



Mr. Latta: The subject of my few words this afternoon is in regard 

 to the home talent circus that we put on at the Indianola county fair. 

 This circus was organized by myself under the rules and regulations of 

 the fair board with a hope of putting on something that would entertain 

 and draw a crowd of people to our fair and also make up for the money 

 we had lost the previous year. We had been rained out, we had no money 

 to do anything with. Several years ago I put on a small town circus 

 of home talent at the little town of Glidden, Iowa. We had nothing but 

 two or three clowns, a couple of horses, an animal or two, home talent, 

 and the outcome was we had such a large crowd we could not take care 

 of them, and our circus only amounted to about twenty minutes, we were 

 just part of another program, but it was a big hit. So this last year I put 

 the proposition up to our board, and they thought if we could put it on 

 inside of so much money we could go ahead and organize it. Of course 

 we were all after results — we wanted to make money. We advertised in 

 the home papers we wanted talent, which we got. We got abundance of 

 talent, we got too much. We picked the best that came to us. We put 

 on an entertainment lasting two evenings which took in about $1,900. 

 The last night it rained or I think we would have taken in more than a 

 thousand dollars more. The circus itself was two rings with a stage in 

 between the same as you see in our big circuses, as I said before of home 

 talent and organized the same way. We first had a manager; we had our 

 property boss, our boss hostler, our costume and wardrobe boss, ring 

 manager, stage manager, electrician, every part of the circus was organized 

 under one department. Each one was subject to me. We had a parade 

 that consisted of seven animal wagons each drawn by four or more horses, 

 in which were the boys and girls and different ones in these costumes 

 representing different animals. Our girl bareback riders were girls 14, 

 15 and 16 years old. One girl particularly had never been to a circus in 

 her life. She started in rehearsals about the first of June, and I can leave 

 it to people who witnessed the show that on the 17tli of August, that 

 night this girl actually turned back somersaults upon one of our own 

 horses backs. Just such things as that talent can be worked up. The 

 idea of this circus, or it does not need to be a circus, to my mind, is to 

 create something new to draw your crowds. All of you gentlemen won't 

 haVe in your home territory the amount of talent we happen to have at 

 Indianola. We have a large school there, Simpson College, in which 

 they have been teaching music for a great many years and nearly all the 

 town people had children going to this school for musical training. We 

 picked a chorus of forty girls, each and every one of them good looking, 

 all could sing and all could dance. We gave this musical review. It was 

 one of the big particular features of the circus. The reason we ran the 

 musical review was this, I believe that at the night show county fairs, if 

 you will get clear away from your afternoon performance and put on 

 n 



