TWELFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 32 5 



lorn and forgotten. As lie sat musing as to what that old cabin had 

 probably meant to some hopeful soul, a blue jay came gliding along and 

 lit on the roof of the old cabin. The blue-jay held an acorn in his mouth. 

 He peered about and his bright eye observed a knot hole in the roof of the 

 cabin and looking about first this way and then that a moment as if in 

 meditation, he finally deposited the acorn in the knot hole. It was to be 

 his winter storehouse. He flew away — presently he came back in com- 

 pany with a few others, each bearing an acorn and each in turn deposited 

 the acorn in the knot hole, and were gone. They returned with still 

 more birds with still more acorns. They kept that up for a long time until 

 it seemed that all the blue-jays in northern Oregon were engaged in car- 

 rying acorns and depositing them in that knot hole. A wise old jay bird 

 as if wondering when there task would be completed and the cabin filled 

 with winter food cast about, only to discover that there was no floor in 

 the cabin and the little stream was carrying those acorns away to obli- 

 vion as fast as they were deposited. 



So it seems to me is the case of the fair secretaries and managers of 

 the United States. Annually they learn various lessons, have various ex- 

 periences — they are usually communicative and join willingly with any 

 bunch of their kind for the good of the order, but so far, they have been 

 depositing acorns through the knot hole only to be carried to oblivion. 

 It would be invaluable to fair managers if some method were devised 

 whereby the information relative to fairs could be gotten in some con- 

 crete form and the business thus reduced to more of a science. Science is 

 classified knowledge. The market for a book containing classified knowl- 

 edge relating to fairs could not be sold in suflBcient numbers probably to 

 pay the author. Therefore, the probability is, that it will have to remain 

 in this scattered shape until the agricultural department at Washington 

 takes it up, collates and publishes its history, experience, observations, 

 faults, failures, successors and all and then issues an annual thereafter. 



Although so many people are interested in their agricultural fairs it 

 requires a large amount of tactful advertising to bring them hitherward. 

 The advertisement must be so written as to attract their attention and con- 

 vince them that the fair is worth while. A fair is a business proposition 

 pure and simple. It cannot be regarded in any other light. A prominent 

 manager of a big advertising firm recently remarked that "to do business 

 without advertising was like winking at a girl in the dark. You know 

 Tvhat you are doing but she doesn't." You cannot conduct a fair without 

 judicious advertising any more than any other business. But there is no 

 concentrated literature on this subject. This like every other feature of 

 a fair is left to the management. The ability of many of the secretaries 

 of fairs is judged largely from the character of his advertising. 



A secretary may be a success in every way but if a failure as an ad- 

 ' vertiser he is consigned to the junk pile. There is no settled rule as to 

 how much one should spend in advertising — every association must 

 advertise according to its prospects. Every other department must be 

 conducted along similar lines. In the contemplation of the total expense 

 in the way of premiums, advertising and other items of expense, there 



