TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 229 



months I want to get together a history of the fairs of this country 

 and Canada. The support of Canada is already assured. I have 

 no selfish aims at all in this and I am even in doubt as to charging 

 in the price of the book the 6 per cent that the banks offer to loan 

 me the money for. 



After talking the matter over with my bank I decided to go over 

 to a publisher and guarantee the money, provided it wasn't too 

 great, and he gave me the figures on a 500-page volume, and it will 

 run somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand dollars, depending 

 upon what takes place. He wouldn't give me any assurance on 

 price — it would not be less than $10,000 for the first thousand vol- 

 umes. Out of that first thousand volumes I am going to send one 

 to every senator in Washington and to the secretary of agriculture, 

 one to the Library of Congress, one to every state library, one to 

 every provincial library in Canada, five volumes to England and 

 five volumes to France. Those are all to be given away so that if a 

 man wants to know something about fairs he can immediately go to 

 some volume that is an authority. While it will be a rather large 

 volume it will contain all the information required. He can find out 

 what the fair at Spencer, Iowa, or any other one of these fairs, 

 amounts to, and who its officers are, and it will give his picture. The 

 state fairs, of course, will be handled on a larger scale, more in pro- 

 portion to their size ; but the general history of fairs will be covered 

 in detail, giving practically every step that has been covered in the 

 development of the fairs for the past fifty or one hundred years, 

 so that anybody can go in a reference library at any state capitol 

 and secure the information desired. 



If there has been anybody that has been taken in and absolutely, 

 I might say, petted by the public, as I have been, I really feel that 

 no matter how much I do to hand down to posterity something that 

 will always be authentic with reference to fairs, I cannot do enough 

 to help the men who have helped me. When I talk about the price 

 of these books, and it was estimated that the first thousand copies 

 would cost somewhere around ten or fifteen dollars a copy, I want 

 to remind you that that will include a picture of the manager or 

 the president of the fair. I don't want any action taken on the 

 part of the fair; I don't want any action taken on the part of the 

 association other than an inquiry through your association. I am 

 well known to the Iowa State Fair Board and to a good many Iowa 

 fairs, and I propose to make this somewhat of a monument for my- 

 self. I am going to make it just as elaborate as I can, and I will 



