FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 269 



we must have amusement features. "We can not have a successful 

 fair without the auuisement side of it. I am a littU^ different from 

 some of our secretaries. I have never been in favor of having the 

 amusement feature in the morning. We invite our exhibitors, our 

 cattle men, hog men, grain men, to make their exhibits in the dif- 

 ferent departments, and we should not turn around and put on a 

 ball game or some other amusement on the other side of the fair 

 ground and draw them away. Now, I think we ought to have the 

 happy medium in that proposition, the forenoon for the educational 

 features, and the afternoon largely for the amusement side of it. 

 Just the same as we gentlemen do over in the Iowa State fair. 

 You see no amusement feature in the Iowa State fair in the 

 morning. That is carried on from an educational standpoint. I 

 think our county fairs ought to be along the same lines. There 

 never was a time in the history of this country when the farmers, 

 the people who make up the patrons of our county fairs, should 

 be encouraged to bring the products of their farms to the county 

 fairs and show what our communities produce. Those people are 

 just as much interested in what they produce, whether a hog or 

 a steer or a sheep, as the man who brings his horse to the fair. 

 And we should encourage those things. That amusement feature 

 we have got to have. My long experience in fair work has taught 

 me you must have that amusement feature ; but that amusement 

 feature must be quite largely according to your gate receipts, and 

 what you can afford to put up for an amusement feature. In this 

 county work some fairs can go to work and put up $400.00, and 

 some $300.00, and some $500.00. Another locality v/ill support a 

 $500.00 proposition and make it pay. But you must be sure to 

 have a balance on your books at the end or there is nothing suc- 

 ceeds, and you might have the fair come out a thousand dollars 

 in the hole. That throws a damper on it. But let the secretary 

 make the report that there is $1,500.00 balance on the fair books 

 at the end, and everybody Avants to get in and boost for the fair. 

 Now, in regard to the entry features. I will agree with a great 

 many gentlemen here that you are probably asking a little bit too 

 much of horsemen to furnish all that amusement and charge them 

 5 per cent. Five per cent taken from their receipts, as a gentle- 

 man has quoted here, a man who has come to the races and has 

 come in fourth has had the pleasure of racing his horse for 

 nothing. And he gets nothing for it. I think the happy medium 

 in" this proposition would be, if it is possible to do so, to bring the 



