EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART HI 147 



practically the only bunting displayed or flags flying over our fairs are 

 those put up by the concession men. I do not say that all fairs are that 

 way, but -a great many of them are indifferent on that score, and I tell 

 you that "with the trying conditions under which we have been working, 

 it has been my observation that the concession men have* been a darn 

 sight more loyal than the directors. It has been said with reference to 

 the fair that the more the war, the more the work for the secretary to do, 

 the more that he works, the more that the ground will put forth; and 

 yet the secretaries are putting forth more effort and getting less results 

 than any other class of men living. 



Take the matter of an old worn-out fair like we had/ in Delaware 

 county, my home town. I don't want to go into statistics, but if you cau 

 picture in your minds a fine, prosperous county with a population of 

 some 19,000, you will say that there is no excuse for not having a good 

 county fair. If we haven't a good county fair in every county in the state, 

 it's our own fault, for we ought to have one. I will give you a little 

 history of what the fair was. For years the Delaware County Fair pros- 

 pered in a mild way; for years there v/as a meeting place for the people 

 of the county, a home-coming event, and that is all it was. Bill brought 

 his largest pumpkin and Tom brought his tallest stalk of corn, and John 

 brought his best heifer; and each year when I was a kid one certain gen- 

 tleman brought his black horse that, I thought, had won more money than 

 any other horse that ever ran. And so it went, year after year. The 

 buildings had not been repaired for fi^fteen years; it was run-down-at-the- 

 heel, and the whole thing was at the end of its string, both physically 

 and morally. "What was the excuse for it? Poor management. What 

 caused the poor management? The secretary was a man who worked 

 without salary. It was the same old thing, as in running for political 

 office, the honor ceased the minute he got the badge of secretary. 



During the last fifteen years, and up to the year 1914, there were just 

 two men that made a success of that fair. One of them was Senator Hoyt, 

 now our state treasurer. He put his heart and soul into it; he went out 

 and visited farmers and put his money in it. He made the thing a suc- 

 cess, but only after great effort. But .the success was short-lived. And 

 what was the cause? The board of directors. Simply because the board 

 of directors was composed of men who were not educated to amusement 

 or'the productive world. And I say if you have a fair that is running 

 down, and if you have a board of directors that cannot get together and 

 talk things over in a business-like way, they are doing an injury to the 

 state of Iowa and to the United States. It is up to us to pull things 

 through vvith the help of organizations of this kind. 



But going back to the old fair: They didn't make money enough to 

 even keep up expenses, and towards the last few years the better class of 

 men got tired of it. The business men had been asked to contribute in 

 order to make ends meet, and they did; they deemed it a necessity and a 

 matter of civic pride, and they were willing to go to the farthest limit to 

 help, but even they became disgusted. What was the board of directors 

 composed of? Men who Avere interested in agriculture, it is true, but they 

 were mostly interested in the production of the land that they them- 



