Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1899 — About A Street Fair. [ARTICLE]

About A Street Fair.

Last year there was considerable talk of a street fair in Rensselaer, but the project was broached entirely too late in the season, and was wisely dropped. Street fairs, as the experience of many other towns will prove, are good things sometimes, if rightly and most liberally managed. Otherwise they are not good things, and should be let severely alone. For one thing, ample time is needed to work them up. To try to get up a successful and creditable street fair in four or five or even six we-eks, is to make a bigger fake and failure than was our well meant, but too hastily organized Fourth of July celebration, of last year. Another necessary consideration ie that there must be $ practically unanimous Combination of all the conservative business and professional men in organizing and managing the affair, and the sporting element must be kept in the background. Further, if any success is to be acheived that is worth having, or that will be either permanent or creditable, then the fakers and gamblers, and skin games of all kinds must be kept out. Lastly, any idea of “going it on the cheaps,” must be abandoned at once. It takes money and lots of it, to run a street fair right. How much money ought to be in sight before anything else is decided, could probably be ascertained with reasonable accuracy, by consulting towns in Rensselaer’s class which have managed successful street fairs. Delphi, perhaps, would be as good and as convenient an authority as could be named, There was a successful street fair there last year and preparations are now under way for another to be held September 18 to 22. And as a single illustration of what is needed in the way of liberality on the part of the business men in making the right kind of a street fair, we mention the fact that already the list of special premiums offered by the business men there aggregate nearly SSOO in value. In addition to that however, there must be a money subscription, and a good big one, too.