38 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II. 



that wants to. All he has to do is to buy a family ticket or mem- 

 bership ticket for $3.50. We go just as far as any fair in the state 

 of Iowa, big or little, because $3.50 admits a man and all his family 

 under twenty-one years of age, day and night, and his vehicle. It 

 has taken some time to get them to understand that proposition. He 

 can walk out on this ground and say, ''Boys, I own just as much of 

 this as anybody else, got just as much to say about the management 

 of this, my vote is as big as anybody else." 



We sell fifteen to eighteen hundred of these tickets, and every 

 fellow in the county is a booster. When you consider the population 

 of the county, less than 12,500, we believe we have the best county 

 fair in the state of Iowa because we have less people. 



Mr. C. E. Cameron : This is a question I am very much interested 

 in for I think every county fair in the state needs something of this 

 kind to help them along with their finances. In putting on a night 

 show it has been an important question to decide what you are going 

 to do with the people who pay admission at the outside gate in the 

 day time and stay on the ground for the evening show. I have no 

 doubt but that you have all been up against that proposition of how 

 you were going to handle that matter. I remember when we first 

 started the night show at Alta — of course that is a baby show up there, 

 but I think a great deal of it (it is where I got my start) — some of 

 our board of directors objected to having a canvas up around our 

 night show. The upshot of the business was we didn't take enough 

 money in to pay for the night show for the reason that people would 

 run their automobiles up along the fence. Everybody would take in 

 the night show and not pay a cent. We finally went to work and 

 made arrangements with the fireworks people to furnish us a can- 

 vas to enclose in the whole night show. 



I am a great believer in the night show for this reason; this is 

 the age of automobiles ; young people think nothing of driving 

 twenty or twenty-five miles to the night show. They can't come in 

 the day time but they can go at night, and that is where I think more 

 profit on the county fairs comes in. It does not cost very much. I 

 heard Mr. Clark say his night show cost $4,500 and took in $4,300 

 and he said that paid for all his amusements, and Mr. Price from 

 Waverly says that increased the concessions. I know at our fair 

 it increased our concessions almost double by that night show. An- 

 other thing, these young people like to go at night, like to go where 

 it is all lit up. 



