Constructive program.
Having taken out the obstructions, unnecessaries, and excrescences, I should enter on a constructive program. I should then begin to make a fair. I assume that the fact of a person living in a community, places on him responsibilities for the welfare of that community. We should make the county fair one of the organized means of developing this welfare. Therefore, I should assume that every citizen in the county, by virtue of his citizenship, is a member of the county fair and owes to it an allegiance.
It would then devolve on the persons who are organizing and operating the work, representing the fair association, to develop in him his sense of allegiance and coöperation. I should not discourage any citizen of the county from coöperating in the enterprise, or allow him to escape his natural responsibilities, because he felt himself unable or unwilling to pay an admission fee, any more than I should eliminate any person because of religion, politics, color, or sex.
The financial support.
Of course, it requires money to run a fair. I should like to see the money raised by voluntary contribution in a new way. I should have it said to every resident in the county that he and his family may come uninterruptedly to the fair without money and without price; but I should also say to him that money is needed, and that all those persons who wish to give a certain sum would be provided with a badge or receipt. I suspect that more money could be more easily raised in this way than by means of gate receipts.
I should have this money collected in advance by means of an organized effort through all the schools and societies in the county, setting every one of them at work on a definite plan.
Of course, the state or other agency could contribute its quota of funds as theretofore.
An educational basis.
In other words, I should like to see, in this single experiment, a complete transfer from the commercial and "amusement" phase to the educational and recreation phase. I should like to see the county fair made the real meeting place for the country folk. I should make a special effort to get the children. The best part of the fair would be the folks, and not the machines or the cattle, although these also would be very important. I should make the fair one great picnic and gathering-place and field-day, and bring together the very best elements that are concerned in the development of country life.
I should work through every organized enterprise in the county, as commercial clubs, creameries, coöperative associations, religious bodies, fraternal organizations, insurance societies, schools, and whatever other organized units already may exist.