Financial liettdtt; of 1889. 
XXIX 
the iii to the members at large, the 
financial results of that eventful year 
in the Society's history. 
The Council will remember that 
at the commencement of the year we 
had issued our prize-sheet for the 
great Windsor Meeting ; and, confi- 
dent of the generous support of the 
inhabitants of the Metropolis and of 
the approval of our own members, 
had pledged ourselves to an expendi- 
ture of 12,000/. for prizes alone, 
besides an outlay for works and 
administrative expenses which, with 
the experience of past years before 
us, could not be estimated at less than 
as much again. W c all of us expected 
a big Meeting ; but no one could have 
forecast the enormous, and one may 
truly say colossal, dimensions which 
the Show ultimately assumed. 
With the prizes all open for general 
competition, the Society obviously 
could not pick and choose the entries, 
but had to find room for all comers ; 
and, as is well known, the expenses to 
the Society of the shedding, food, and 
general supervision of the stock ex- 
hibited are very far in excess of the 
small charge imposed as the entry 
fee. 
As the Council said in their report 
to the General Meeting of December 
12 last : " That the Windsor Meeting 
was not likely to result in an absolute 
profit to the Society was recognised 
by the Council from the first ; and 
the dimensions which the Show as- 
sumed when the entries were found 
to lie so unprecedentedly large neces- 
sarily involved the Society in expendi- 
ture which it was impossible that the 
entry fees and the payments for the 
admission of non-members should 
recoup. The Show being considerably 
more than twice as large as usual, all 
the attendant expenses for shedding, 
fodder, printing, judges' fees, admini- 
strative staff, wages, police, and the 
like, were necessarily increased in pro- 
portion, whilst on the other hand, not 
much beyond the average attendance 
of paying visitors could be looked 
for." I shall not myself readily for- 
get the afternoon of Saturday, May 4, 
a day or two after the entries were 
closed, when I met in a council of 
war at the Showyard the Honorary 
Director, the Secretary, and the Sur- 
veyor, to consider the ways and 
means of accommodating the enor- 
mous number of entries which had 
been pouring in at Hanover Square at 
the rate of many hundreds a day. As 
a result of the decision then arrived at, 
the country was scoured for timber 
of the size we .wanted, almost every 
available bit of canvas was pressed 
into service, and an army of men were 
employed to erect the extra shedding 
found to be necessary ; whilst at 
Hanover Square a considerable ad- 
ditional staff had to be organised, 
and all the officials had to work 
twelve hours a day till the Show 
opened, in order to get through the 
business. 
It is not necessary to go into 
farther details as to this. Those 
who know anything of the organisa- 
tion and administration of Shows will 
have been prepared for the announce- 
ment that the takings at the doors, 
the fees for entries, and the other 
receipts were insufficient to meet the 
cost of building the shedding, paying 
the prizes, and defraying the pre- 
paratory outgoings, and the excep- 
tionally heavy administrative expenses 
of the period of the Show itself. 
We had estimated that if the 
Mansion House Fund which the then 
Lord Mayor. Sir 1'olydore De Keyser, 
was kind enough to inaugurate, and 
which bis successor. Sir James White- 
head, did so much to promote, could 
lie brought up to 10,000/., we might 
be able 'o meet (he expenses. In the 
public appeal for additional funds, 
which appeared in the newspapers on 
our Jubilee day last March, tiie Lord 
Mayor, after referring to the reliance 
of the Society upon the support of 
the City and Metropolis when it 
offered so large a prize-list as 12,000/., 
said that the Mansion House Fund 
then amounted to about 5,000/., and 
that at least as much again — i.e., a 
total of 10.000/.— was needed. 
For various reasons, upon which it 
is not now necessary to enter, only a 
net amount of 5,414/. (after allowing 
for expenses) was collected in the 
City, and as 300/. of this was allocated 
to premiums for thoroughbred stal- 
lions, but 5,144/. remained available 
towards the general expenses of the 
Show. Since the final result, as 
ascertained by the auditors, was an 
excess of expenditure over receipts of 
