148 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



selves owned. When the secretary called a meeting of the board, how many 

 would be present? About two. And when some matter would be brought 

 up for consideration by the secretary, Bill would say "What do ypu think 

 about this, John?" and John would say thus and so, and Bill would say, 

 "Yes, that's nay idea," and that settled it. They didn't go out to visit 

 other fairs; they didn't attend these meetings here in Des Moines; they 

 didn't ask for or get other men's ideas; they didn't go into propositions 

 thoroughly or investigate; they didn't study matters presented; and my 

 remembrance is that when I asked Mr. Hoyt if they took a publication of 

 any note, he replied that they might have taken the Horse Review, be- 

 cause Bill had the fast horse. They didn't advertise; they didn't study 

 propositions, and they didn't do anything that business men should do 

 and as a consequence the fair went down and down until in 1914 the 

 business men were so disgusted that they quit. The fair was $5,000 in 

 debt, amphitheatre was poorly and cheaply constructed and inadequate, 

 the track was a track in name only, for the weeds had grown over it and 

 had so obstructed the space that three horses couldn't run abreast, and 

 the other buildings were in equally bad shape. 



The last year that the fair was run the management paid enough for 

 one act alone to have put on a good, well-balanced program. They didn't 

 know anything about the game, and that was one of their greatest faults. 

 My own inclination is for free acts and amusement, and under amuse- 

 ments I class bands, ball games, and free acts of all kinds. I believe in 

 selecting novelties that the fellow twelve miles away from you hasn't got. 

 These men would get together and put on the same old stuff time and 

 again, until the business men in 1914 threw up their hands and said, "Let 

 it die. If a bunch of men have hold of it and won't let go, we'll just give 

 it up." It wasn't because they were not interested, it was because they 

 were not posted that the management made such a failure of it. 



If you are a doctor or a lawyer and you are going to take a vacation 

 for thirty or sixty days, the thing farthest from your mind is to go out 

 and get a substitute who is not educated in your line of work. And the 

 same applies to fair work. When you choose a secretary for your fair, 

 you get a man that knows the business and takes an interest in it. To- 

 day I think a man's duty first is to be patriotic, and the fair secretary 

 as well as the board of directors must be patriotic; the next thing is, if 

 you have men on your board of directors that are small and cannot see 

 beyond the end of their nose, you cannot run a fair. That's all there is 

 to it. 



In 1915 the business men got together, under the leadership of the 

 Commercial Club, and began to talk fair. I say that the greatest thing 

 in any community or any city is a live commercial club. It has got 

 anything else you can think of backed off the map. And in running a 

 fair you have got to have men who take an interest in and work for it. 

 We had a commercial club which was organized in 1910, and they wanted 

 to take hold of the fair that year. They came to me and asked nie if I 

 would act as secretary, and I was foolish enough to get into it. I had 

 been interested in amusements all of my life and when they organized 

 the Commercial Club they asked me to take hold of the Amusement Com- 



