PROCEEDINGS IOWA STATE FAIR MANAGERS ASSN. 63 



from three to seven or eight thousand dollars in your treasury before 

 you open the fair. 



I think a season ticket should be a ticket that you can sell for $2.00, 

 assuming that your fair charges fifty cents gate admission. I would put 

 in that book, which has been the most successful book we have had, four 

 fifty cent tickets, and four twenty-five cent tickets. In that way you 

 give the fellow who buys a ticket before the fair $3.00 worth of tickets 

 for $2.00. You have the $2.00 in your treasury and you give them 

 the $1.00 for buying the ticket. 



The question may be asked why the four twenty-five cent tickets. I 

 notice a number of you have a twenty-five cent rate after four o'clock 

 or five o'clock. People desiring to come in can use the twenty-five cent 

 ticket. Our tickets are transferable. You may buy a ticket and if 

 you want to bring your family in with it and you have five in the family, 

 and a car, you use four of these fifty cent tickets and two of the twenty- 

 five cent tickets for the other adult, and one twenty-five cent ticket for 

 the car. They can use them any time during the fair and the family 

 can use them. 



Before I started away I just had received a copy of this program and 

 I hastily picked up three reports I had made as treasurer the past 

 three years, to note the amount of season tickets sold before the fair 

 and I will give you the result in dollars. In 1920 we had a five-day fair 

 and we sold $7,190 worth of season tickets. In 1921 a four-day fair and 

 $4,994. In 1922 a four-day fair, and $5,227. This last year we dropped 

 back to a ticket for $1.50, three full tickets and three twenty-five cent 

 tickets. 



The ticket this year will be the $2.00 ticket and any of you people who, 

 after hearing this, decide to try a season ticket, and you charge fifty 

 cents, I will advise you to use the ticket I have illustrated. Make it 

 fully transferable, four fifty-cent tickets and four twenty-five cent tickets. 

 There will be some questions asked, perhaps, as to pass-out checks. I 

 don't know what your custom is about that but we don't give pass-out 

 checks. Of course we do extend favors. You have to extend favors to 

 be a good fair man, but you have to extend them with reason and judg- 

 ment. The first year I was treasurer people would come to the gates 

 and want in just to see a man for ten minutes and come right back, and 

 these fellows rarely ever came back. So I say to the men who are sell- 

 ing tickets, take his name, take his fifty cents, and tell him if he is 

 back in thirty minutes the fifty cents is his, if not, it is ours. That 

 is a matter of accommodation and some men who buy season tickets will 

 ask you the question whether or not they can go out. Of course you 

 have the season ticket, they have the book and you know the man. We 

 grant that, but we don't grant pass-out checks with season tickets. As 

 before stated to you, a twenty-five cent ticket pays for the automobile, 

 pays for entry to the ground after 4:30, and the fact you give him an 

 extra dollar of tickets gets them to purchase it. I put tickets in the 

 banks, dry goods stores, drug stores, and we work the sale of them, but I 

 want to say to you that if I would work them in a real way I could 

 sell a good many more tickets than I do, and we always start our fair 



