PROCEEDINGS IOWA FAIR MANAGERS ASSN. 205 



Mr. Bacon: Another matter I mentioned in my report tliis morning, yon 

 remember, up until the past year we have always been holding a spring 

 meeting in Iowa. Some of these meetings have not been attended as they 

 should have been. It has been suggested by other people to me to put it in 

 the report I made today and bring this matter to your attention. 



President Estell : Let's have some discussion on this. It seems 

 to me that this stiggestion is a mighty good one, one that should be 

 carried out. 



A ]\Iember : The proposition presented by Mr. Bacon is one that 

 every secretary of a fair in Iowa should give heed to. It is getting 

 in our fair organizations so we must pay more attention to these 

 attractions. Some of these exhibit people that are here perhaps will 

 want to take me out and shoot me, but I am going to talk real plain. 

 Some of the attractions being put over at these fairs in Iowa ought 

 to be canned. The fair managers of Iowa should get together with 

 the board of directors and stai'vdardize some of the attractions ; in 

 other words should get together and make a blue book of attractions 

 and promoters of attractions that are responsible. This fair man- 

 agers association should draw up a form of contract and do away 

 with a whole lot of this substitution that is put over by irresponsible 

 agencies. They are peddled around and every one of you have got 

 on your desk right now, you have had a thousand announcements. 

 They are growing up like weeds. Our fair last year paid good money 

 to what we considered a reputable agency ; when we got the line-up 

 we got a bunch of junk. It was rotten. Let's pay fair prices for 

 attractions. Let's analyse these attractions, let's see whether they 

 will fit our communities, and let's btiy attractions from attraction 

 companies that are reputable and are in a legitimate business, and 

 let's get some of the others weeded out. I would like to add that the 

 state fair board of Iowa can give to the county fairs and district fairs 

 of Iowa a whole lot of help by lending their experience in securing 

 attractions to this organization. And we should ask their co-opera- 

 tion and what is not good enough for the state fair should not be 

 good enough for the county or district fair. 



President Estell : Are there any other remarks ? 

 Mr. Barber: I vote against the spring meeting for this reason. 

 There are three or four or five different groups of fairs that have 

 their meetings in the spring, and you would have about twenty-five 

 or thirty this year. Ofif in the northwest part we have a meeting in 

 Sioux City every year. Fifteen or twenty meet there at headquarters. 

 We have one in northern Iowa and so on over the state, and a great 



