Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1911 — STREET FAIRS UNPOPULAR [ARTICLE]

STREET FAIRS UNPOPULAR

Peru Merchants Now Oppose Institution They Once Supported. Peru, Ind., June 24.—Street fairs are no longer popular with the merchants of Peru, and the carnival company here this week is playing at the ball park, after permission to place shows in Broadway was refused. Peru was one of the first Indiana cities to hold street fairs. In . the early nineties the fairs were the means of attracting many strangers to this city. The business men put on the first fair, and they made it a financial success. Every merchant had a booth demonstrating his own wares, and many attractions were scattered along the thoroughfare. Pigs, chickens, cattle, geese and horses had their places, and live stock parades were a daily feature. But these county fairs in Broadway were followed by carnivals which were failures, so far as being money getters for the merchants. No booths were put up by merchants, they took no part in them, and as a result the novelty of the thing wore off. Merchants became disgusted with the noise, and the crowds did not assemble, as every town had a carnival, and people from the neighboring cities could not be induced to come. „ The carnival here now is the first to be ruled off Broadway. It travels in eighteen cars, and yet it has not created the stir in Peru that did 1 the first street fair given by the Merchants’ Association twenty years ago.