THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



It is passing strange that fair authorities and exhibitors 

 have allowed midway barkers and fakers to monopolize the 

 plan of having a living person to put over each and every 

 scheme, whether it be a freak, a roulette wheel, a weighing 

 machine, or a wild Senegambian. Educational people will 

 put fakers and frauds out of business, and thereby cut a lot 

 of rottenness out of fairs, as soon as they take their one edu- 

 cational idea away from them and use it in displaying the 

 products of the farm and factory. 



At a state fair one woman had the job of pulling threads 

 out of silk, cotton and woolen fabrics and burning the threads 

 one at a time. Multitudes of women, and men, also, learned 

 how to tell the composition and value of cloth. They got at 

 least one idea to take home. They will never forget the lesson 

 learned. No such lesson could have been impressed by an 

 array of bolts of silk, cotton and woolen fabrics gathered from 

 all the factories of the world and occupying a floor space of 

 thousands of square feet. 



At the same fair a simple ram was in operation showing 

 how easy and inexpensive it is to put running water into a 

 farm home where a little branch or a creek is available with 

 a few feet of fall. A man was present making calculations 

 showing how much water was necessary in the running stream 

 to give so many gallons an hour of running water to a certain 

 height in the house. In that particular state the altitude of 

 the valleys, hills and mountains varies from the sea level to 

 nearly 7,000 feet, so that in many homes the ram is a good 

 solution of water works at small expense. This idea of having 

 one person who has done a thing best, and who knows it 

 thoroughly, to be constantly showing multitudes of other peo- 

 ple how it ds done, can be applied to most of the things which 

 are put into fairs as still exhibits. It would be a good invest- 



[88] 



