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Show THE 0 OLD-T- COUNTY FAIR I Then, after several years in Albany, he suddenly put adven-to ture behind him by moving a farm near Pittsfield. But the country life experiment came too late, his habits, as he said, being settled for city To fill up the void in an life. led me first to conmind active ceive the idea of an agricultural society on a plan different from all others. In the fall of 1807 I procured the first pair of merino sheep that had appeared in Berkshire, if not in the state. I was induced to notify an exhibition of these two sheep under the great elm in the public square in PittsMany field on a certain day. farmers and even females were excited by curiosity to attend this first novel and humble exIt was by this lucky hibition. If accident I reasoned thus: two animals are capable of exciting so much attention, what would be the effect of a larger scale, with larger animals? But Elkanah Watson soon discovered that it wasnt as easy as all that. The farmers would come to see, but feared to exhibit lest they be laughed at. Finally, after three years, he got 26 of them to sign an apThe peal for a cattle show. ice, according to the Pittsfield broke Sun next day, was all squeamish feelings The show came off. buried. An agricultural society was formed, with Watson as president, and next year he began By ELMO SCOTT WATSON T WONT be long now until some of us will be enjoying one of those annual events as disas American tinctively or baseball playing Fourth the celebrating of July or observing Thanksgiving day. No, we dont mean going to the circus or attending a Sunday school picnic or getting ready for the first day of school or even taking part in the of the Presidential campaign which comes to its climax on November 3. We mean going to the county fair I For the last week in August and the first two or three weeks in September is county fair time and somewhere in a county seat town or some other trading center of rural America this great American festival Is in full swing. There are not so many of them as there once were. Back in 1927 it was estimated that ELKANAn WATSON, .FATHER OF THE COUNTY FAIR nearly 3,000 district, state ani on the were held fairs county make you drunk. And then as when New York was New Amcontinent of North America. stroll you you find yoursterdam, but they were modeled That probably represented the self in the alongbarns where that on the European plan. In 1641 hog Then numbers. in along peak litter of sucking pigs seems Governor Kieft established two came the depression and the Come, lets fairs in New Amsterdam, one on very interesting. county fair, along with other have a look. . . . And as October 15 for cattle generalthe felt American institutions, il of the ly, and the other on November you lean on the d pinch of hard times. and look down at them, you 1 for hogs. In 1643 there was pen business men could no can picture in your mind, with- also held in the Dutch colony, longer continue to "go in the out much effort, ham, and t, late in August and at the bered to support them. So in and bacon, and spare-ribginning of September, a Dutch school hundreds of communities and smoked shoulder, and headkermess which was strictly children (to whom county fair cheese, and where the burghers and commercial, of one the was time high spots sausages, and glistening white met to exchange commodities. of the year) looked in the home lard for crullers and The custom was continued even piecrust town newspaper for the anunder English rule and as late Yes, I think pigs are right innouncement of the dates of the teresting. as 1676 had the sanction of Gov. nearest county fair and they done After such things Edmund Andres. looked, in vain. What they found at this youve e fair But the county fair of today (if county instead was an announcement not a lineal descendant of the that the annual county fair at youre lucky enough to find is Dutch kermess, although it Jonesviile will not be held this resemble it in some of its may susand that temporary year features. It grew out of the pension became a permanent in interest which beagriculture one. to manifest itself early in gan in with reduction the Along the history of the new nation. the number of these annual The leaders of that time, such Pigs are right interesting. events has come a change in men as Jefferand Washington so Like their character. many a parade and son, were farmers and farming the fair with other American institutions it was the most important business closed with a pastoral ball. in more modern has gone in the country. Between 1785 There were prizes to the amount Gasoline comways than one. and 1792 agricultural societies of $70. bustion engines have so radically into being in Pennsylsprang By the next year the prechanged the picture of the county New York, Masvania, Maine, miums had risen to $208, and have diffifair that sachusetts and South Carolina Watson, having made the fair culty in reconciling themselves as evidence of the organized in- popular, now proceeded to seal to the great agricultural shows terest in agriculture. These so- it with respectability. He had of the motor age, says a recent Go It! Ye devil, you! cieties began offering prizes for conceived the shrewd notion of Instead of a fair observer. the clergy and women. superior farm products but they ground at every hamlet, our one!), there are two things you held no fairs or exhibitions and enlisting But neither clergymen nor county fairs have become cen- simply have to do or you arent really did but little to stimulate women were obtained without a to in So been. thanks sure tralized, youve right large part better farm production. In 1811 no clergyman struggle. con'motor cars. Hitching rings and says Eugene Wood, who The principal interest seems could be found to officiate for One is to drink a glass to po?ts have disappeared from the tinues: have been in live stock and fear of being ridiculous. The of sweet cider from the of long just neighborhood. In place in 1804 and 1805 three live stock women were still more coy. lines of box wagons and carpress (which, I may say in passexhibitions were held in Washthey sent in exhibits of luxury. ington. At the second one mem- Though riages are serried ranks of mo- ing, is anto be d and sewing, no woman weaving Cider has just the least bers of congress began to take appeared to receive the seven tor cars. The radius of attraction or bit frisky to be good. I dont an interest and subscribed half valuable premiums of silver-plat- e You of the $100 fund which was drawing territory is no longer mean hard, but frisky. to to be awarded. know) and the other is buy raised and distributed as limited to ten or fifteen-mil- e was the crisis, wrote This prizes drives. A hundred miles in all a whip, if it is only the little, for the best lamb, sheep, steer, Watson and I was extremely fifteen-ceOn kind. the milch directions is now covered by a toy cow, jack, oxen and agitated lest the experiment In 1809 should fail. Native timidity and county fairs advertising. Pa- next soap box to the old tofellow horses actually sold. sell comes every year trons come by automobile or air- that the Columbian Agricultural so- the fear of ridicule restrained Bibles and red, was organized in Washingthem (the women). To break plane in thousands and stay for pictorial albums, the old fellow ciety the night show before they start ton and held an exhibition in the down this feeling we resorted talks that home again. The modern fair is in the green slippers city of Georgetown nearby. But to a maneuver which in an hour made by electricity and gas- - as if he were just ready to drop this was not the sort of thing accomplished our wishes. I left off to sleep on the next soap box to him is the man that sells the whips. You can buy one for a dollar, two for a dollar, or four for a dollar, but not one .a W for fifty cents, or one for a quarter. Dont ask me why, for I dont know. I am just stating the facts. It cant be done for Ive seen it tried and if you keep up the attempt too long, the whipman will lose all patience with your unreasonableness, and tell you to go long about your business if youve got any, and not bother the life and soul out of him, because he wont sell anything but a dollars worth of whips, and thats all there is about it! So says the Back Home writer, but in these modern days will make you of the automobile, with fewer drunk whips being used than in the days when the horse was king, A COUNTY FAIR IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS powered machinery . . . Thanks maybe hed be glad to sell you to human and metal machinery, a whip for a quarter If you From a Drawing by A. B. Frost it is the acme of variety and eff- find the whip-ma-n there, ask him and see if he would! iciency." that appealed to the average the hall, and with no small difDespite the swift modernizafarmer of the day for it was ficulty prevailed on my good Amerition of this When you go to the county more or less a society event wife to accompany me to the can institution in recent years. fair this fall, you might give a and, as some one has said, Its house of exhibition. I then disIt is still possible in many parts thought to Elkanah Watson who attendance list reads more like patched messengers to the of the country to find the county was its father and whose perthe social register, headed by ladies of the village, announc- fair as it was described thirty sistence in promoting his idea the President of the United ing that she awaited them at years ago by Eugene Wood in more than a hundred years ago States and his lady and the the Cloth show. They poured his Back Home sketches in resulted in this American insticabinet members. out, the farmers wives and the old McClures magazine and tution becoming so firmly estabIt remained for Elkanah Wat- daughters, who were secretly illustrated by A. B. Frost (some lished that it survives, even son to originate a fair in which watching, and the hall was of whose sketches are reprothough its form is somewhat the common farmer would be speedily filled. This was one of duced in this article). There you modified, to this modern day. interested because he could feel the most grateful moments of can join a group of good judges Incidentally, this institution, that he had a real part in it. my life. of hossflesh as they hang over which had a particular appeal Watson was a Yankee, born in For twelve Wateon the rail beside the racetrack and to rural America, was founded 1758 within rifleshot of Plym- labored endlessly years to his put His natural idea across. yell: Go it! Go it! Go it! by a city man. But he was a outh Rock. By 1819, with the ye devil, you! with your throat man who, tired of city life, reshrewdness was enlivened by aid of Governor Clinton of New all clenched that way and your tired to the country at the age early travel and adventure. At York, he had induced the legisface as red as a of fifty years to enjoy rural twenty-on- e he was entertained lature of that state to pass an felicity and, failing to find it, by Benjamin Franklin in Paris, annual appropriation of $10,000 Or you may find yourself conceived the idea which re- and later at The Hague by John to aid the new societies. From kind of half listening to the sulted in the county fair as we Adams. He made a tour of that time on the idea spread man selling Temperance bitters, now know it. Europe and traveled in Eastern rapidly and the county fair beand denouncing the other bitters The first fairs of any sort held America, setting down his ex- came an established American because they have in this country were those periences in one of the most imInstitution. in them and will sponsored by Dutch governors portant memoirs of the time. C Western Newspaper Union. which are whoop-and-hur-ra- h of Struggle Between Bight anj Anxiously Await Outcome Factions; May Change World History. - By WILLIAM C. UTLEY Left and, naturally, ieavir a Greek kRDINARILY you can take a Spanish revolution as result of hopeless The general custom or" alone. The Right, bewildered!1 it let can you revolution, in the past has been to ing policy, between America in of observers among the laity minute and Fascism the let em alone. credits, paralyzed In Greek revolutions the government changes hands between culture, and hired armed? navies men to annoy the Leftist,, matinee and evening performances and, although whole The ordinary Spanish revo- provoke the government' are captured, no one ever gets hurt. summer of 1932 it all came one distinguishing factor being that and the Right provoked,!! lution is much the same, the murder and mayhem are present, but nobody gets hurt except revolt, but intervention ! 0 ?! $ Spaniards. Ever since Spain lost her last ginning d colonies some years ago, riot, revolution and rebellion have been rife in the sunny land. But because, in the past, these revolutions have been of little consequence outside the borders of Spain itself, other nations, even those on the European continent, have been justified in merely remaining aloof and letting matters take their course until once more a Spanish government of one kind or another is answering the phones. Aloofness often is only official as it is possible to do a neat little business in arms with both warring sides, unofficially. But with this newest and most serious of Spanish revolutions the customary policy of laissez - faire among her neighbors is one difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. For here in Spain is now the ultimate expression of a struggle that is now going on among the peoples of nearly every nation in Europe. See Death Struggle This is not a civil war to determine whether republic or monarchy shall be the form of government Actually it does not involve the question of how the nation shall be governed so much as who shall gov- American no-.- top-ra- Public-spirite- side-mea- s, liver-wurs- t, ern it This Is a death battle between what have come to be called in Europe, and are more and more frequently mentioned here in the United States, the Right and the old-tim- over-rate- Gen. Emilio Mola, Rebel Leader. Left On the Right is Fascism; on the left is Socialism. On the one nt ed tf. .sV. W. J 1 time-honor- turkey-gobbler- s. n of the political disintergra-tioof Spain. It was less than a decade after that when she lost her last American colony. Four years later came the first of a series of uprisings among the people; it was quelled. That was in 1909; in 1917 there was another unsuccessful revolt. When the crisis after the World war came, the Spanish monarchy found itself unable to look after the welfare of its 23,000,000 subjects, who were finding it next to impossible to make a living. An attempt was made to right conditions in 1921 when Primo de Rivera was set up by the Rightist factions as dictator. It didnt work. New Regime Fails Ten years later the republic was voted in and King Alfonso XIIJ was on his sudden way out. Spanish citizens were free men. All the ills of the old times were to be forgotten. Their troubles were over. But, alas, it didnt work out that way. Actually, the new government had been heralded a few months before its inception by a serious general strike and an uprising among the military forces. There was the world-widdepression to be reckoned with, and the fact that in Spain the currency was deflated, Industry frozen and foreign markets for Spanish farmers hopelessly lost. Primo de Rivera had been driven into exile by rising governmental debts and deficits. Political liberty was supposed to rectify all of these things. Of course it didnt When the republic was born 75 per cent of the population was dependent directly or indirectly, upon agriculture, yet so evilly was it h of distributed that only the farm population could make a fair living from it Immense estates, relics of feudal days, held the really fertile land; the poor peasant was doomed to watch thousands upon thousands of acres of rich land carelessly, wastefully cultivated, or even thrown open to pasture, while he, burdened with heavy debts, had to work a tiny patch of poor land. The great hordes of landless farm - hands, working only half the year, and then at meager wages, were steadily growing. Small private industries wallowed hopelessly in debt, while great monopolies were so entwined into the government that when there were losses, the taxpayers made them good, but when there were profits the stockholders got them all. When the republic came into being there were countless and needless bureaus eating the substance of the treasury. A costly and over-larg- e army, with many needlessly officers noted for blundering and extravagant .colonial adventures, was being kept. Unemployment, starvation wages and continued repression from the Right had concentrated the mass of poor industrial workers into a few large cities and had greatly increased their numbers. Expected Drastic Changes The people, rightly enough, expected drastic changes from the Men of the Republic. The economic e one-tent- old-time- rs plush-cover- I j side are the monopolies, the bureaucrats and the big land owners; on the other are the peasant farmers, the small business men, union labor and the proletariat. It may be truthfully said that practically all Europe today is divided into Rightist and Leftist factions. The sharp line of demarcation becomes more apparent with each new heated political debate, with each new spirited election. For that reason every European eye is directly focused upon Spain. Deeply concerned are France, whose new Leftist government has not yet proved the panacea it was heralded to be; Germany, which will find new cause to arm against the Reds if the Left wins and a new 'victory over , communism if the Right wins; Italy would welcome a strong Fascist neighbor, and exclusive of her subtler political interests, Great Britain must protect Gibraltar. While former revolutions in Spain have resulted in only qualified victories or defeats, it is generally conceded that this one will be decisive. It may string along for many months, even years, but it will be a fight to a finish. Europe Watches Struggle Yet what is important about this civil war is not which government, Right or Left, emerges victorious, the choice of the majority of people. It is the fact that there is a serious fight This is a bloody and cruel war. Homes, theaters, . hospitals have become ammunition centers and barracks. Snipers spit death out of store windows, cannon wheels scar the surfaces of plains, tire drone of bombers disturbs the calm of fabled Spanish skies. Right and Left have taken arms against each other. All Europe watches. For years the continent has been a tinder box, awaiting a match to set it off. Crisis after crisis has been passed and another great war has been averted or postponed. sometimes ever so narrowly. May not this develop into the next of these great crises? What will France do if Italy sends aid to the Fascists? What will Germany do if Red Russia interferes on the other side? The Spanish-Americawar be arbitrarily taken as the realmay be n high-salarie- d troops on the part of the! ment quelled it. Economic condition, fajw J prove. There were strike, t demonstrations. The Left in a bad way. The peasant uprising in 1933. So put down, the government', lose the loyalty of the peas kindred classes. When la'el year the Socialists were ISwanal t Women Marksmen 1 Take! from the cabinet and the sumed what amounted to the power, there were scandals and months of unrest followed. In 1934 the volted upon the calling of Gil into the cabinet This wa, successful revolution and m quieted by the employment Spanish Foreign Legion rnd Moorish troops. Never bcia Spanish history had such mi been necessary to protect the emment It was sufficient to i more confidence and comas the Left and to incite the pri riat further against of the Right the govern lie Accordingly the Left forced tions and swept the existing p ment from power. That wai i this year. The same old its has been going on ever has not yet definite!: to one side or the other to pe a continuity of action. But the new revolution, openl; unmistakably a civil war ter end, will leave Spain atiast: pletely Right or completely h completely Fascist or com? Socialist lee as ti Americans Leave Spaa The efficiency of the State ment and the foreign senrieef been strikingly demonstrated I emergency precipitated by to olution in Spain, which require! government to conduct to evacuation of Americans to I European country since to war. When the revolution broke, bassador Bowers was at his mer house at Fuenterrabia, coast five miles from San tian, the Summer capital were stationed Messrs. Johns t Schoellkopf. . Cut off from hiss with nication by telephone mer embassy and prevent ricades and fighting from g! San Sebastian, Mr. Bowers en off by the cutter Cayuga to subsequently established a I c WM1 - ' X - . Scene in Toledo Showing Snipers Fighting theory of the Rightists, nominally second in power in the republic and today represented by the rebelling Fascist generals, was that of repression, breaking-u- p of labor unions, and concentration camps for forced labor all the principles of Fascism. The republic was to substitute higher wages, new and fairer distribution of land, government control of industry, resettlement and rehabilitation projects and a security program. But the early republican government found itself torn between two loyalties. It attempted to steer a middle course, providing legislation only upon pressure from Right og wage-reductio- n Rebels- - to bassy oh the vessel to , as so waters Spanish to Americans. i At the outset the situation Spanish capital was firing in the streets, States embassy stocked it could get and storeds 8 large reservoirs for American nationals to go to the embassy. R- -i went there, including em Puerto Ricans. The received official reques ,enfV't nationals of Belgium, land, Turkey, Chile, soand Austria, and did . -- - Western NewsPP |
