SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 477 



tributed among 1,930 exhibitors, the largest number at any fair in the 

 state outside the state fair. 



The Marshall County Fair boasted the second largest number of ex- 

 hibitors, following Cerro Gordo with 1,066. They had an attendance of 

 32,492, and paid out $6,406 in cash premiums. The Burlington Fair 

 entertained 36,414 visitors and distributed $18,358 among exhibitors. The 

 attendance at Cedar Falls was 32,429; at Waverly 35,940; at Atlantic, in 

 Cass county, 40,000; Wayne county held a new fair at Corydon and pleased 

 30,000 visitors; Kossuth, Henry and Shelby counties had more than 25,000 

 each. 



A total of $56,870.67 in the way of state aid was paid out to the ninety- 

 nine county and district fairs, thirteen of them, those in Blackhawk (2), 

 Bremer, Cerro Gordo, Clinton, Des Moines, Henry, Johnson, Lyons, Ma- 

 haska, Marshall, Muscatine and Woodbury counties receiving the maxi- 

 mum amount, $800. The amount of state aid rendered this year is greater 

 ty $8,784.69 than was paid in 1915. 



There are two unfailing factors for determining whether interest in 

 agricultural fairs is growing or waning, the attendance and the exhibitors. 

 When both are increasing from year to year the inference is plain. In 



1914 the total number of exhibitors at the county and district fairs in 

 Iowa — this doej not include the state fair — was 16,717; in 1915, notwith- 

 standing the inclement weather conditions, it climbed to 20,687; while 

 this year the figures reached 23,955, an increase of 7,238 in two years. The 

 attendance figures show the same encouraging growth. In 1914 the total 

 number of visitors attending the county and district fairs in the state 

 was 1,003,271; in 1915 it was 1,115,605; in 1916 it reached 1,272,479, an 

 increase of 269,208 in the two years, which is a showing little short of 

 extraordinary and indicates anything but a waning interest in county 

 fairs. 



The total amount of money distributed in premiums in 1914 was $232,- 

 719.51; in 1915 $245,951.32; in 1916 $293,988.67, an increase of premium 

 money to the extent of $61,269.16 in two years. These sums include the 

 purses in the speed department, but the increase has been mainly in 

 other departments than the speed programs. 



Agricultural fairs are not promoted and conducted for money-making 

 purposes. Most associations are satisfied if they can manage to break 

 even from year to year and more than pleased if they find an occasional 

 nest egg in the way of profits in the strong box, to be used in equipment 

 and maintaining the plants. In 1914 the total amount of money ex- 

 pended by the county fairs of the state in the way of premiums, money 

 paid for attractions, for help and various other incidental expenses was 

 the tidy sum of $466,000, to make use of round numbers. But the cost 

 of living is Increasing, likewise the expense of promoting fairs, and in 



1915 it cost $521,599 to put them on; while in 1916 the total amount of 

 such expenditures was $626,870. 



