FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 247 



said, "Pardon me, is this a picnic or arc all these your children?" 

 Said she, " Yes, those are my children, and I tell you it's no picnic." 



Mr. Corey: For the information of the delegates I have had 

 pu])lished a little pamphlet here in the state department compiled 

 from the reports of each of the county and district fairs. There 

 is some information on page 12 on admission of vehicles, children, 

 etc., at the outside gates, and by referring to that you will see the 

 different admissions. There were eleven fairs charged fifty cents, 

 sixty-seven, thirty-five and eleven, twenty-five cents. And it gives 

 the admission fee to each one of the fairs. 



Delegate from ]\Iarshalltown : I was in hopes when Mr. Corey 

 rose with that pamphlet in his hand he was going to show the at- 

 tendance at the different fairs. I would like to call attention to 

 the fact that the Anamosa fair with their free and open way had 

 an atendance of 15,000 this year. Probably fifteen fairs in the 

 state that had a real fair went away ahead of that — some of them 

 three times that number. 



Mr. Palm : I am always surprised at one thing, and that is that 

 a fair of such apparent and various excellencies like the Anamosa 

 fair should still bum along with that family ticket. I don 't see why 

 they attach that dead weight on their system. Of coui*se the family 

 ticket, as the gentleman here said, is a handicap. I had supposed 

 all fairs had gotten rid of that long before now. 



The President: The next topic for discussion is a very im- 

 portant one. It is "Free Attractions" and will be handled by H. 

 C. Leach of Bloomfield. 



FREE ATTRACTIONS. 



BY H. C. LEACH OF BLOOMFIELD, 



Mr. Chairman and Secretary: I have no big paper to pull on you. I 

 am not going to keep you very long; but what I have to say will have 

 to be largely from our own experience in our own fair. We are one of 

 the fairs that still issue the family tickets. Possibly we are old-fashioned, 

 but we have been running five years, always paid the premiums in full 

 and never discounted a man. We own the ground, thirty acres, and the 

 buildings, and they are all painted with white lead. They are not white- 

 washed. And they are all on stone foundations. When the Davis County 

 Agricultural Society organized it was along this line, and we sold the 

 family tickets. It admits the parents, that is, the man and his wife and 

 unmarried children under twenty-one. If there are any of his children 

 who are under twenty-one and married we do not admit them. It gives 

 you a good crowd every day. We have pretty nearly as good a crowd on 

 Friday as Thursday, and all the way through our fair. Now our admit- 

 tance is $1.50 for our family ticket. We generally sell in the neighbor- 



