Fair
Fair names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Fair an exhibit of wares and productions
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an exhibit of wares and productions. The original fair was a market, a concourse of buyers and sellers who met in the shelter of temporary booths or in the open to sell and buy cloth, china, timber, grain, cattle, oil, or any of the great staples. The name has been taken over by the agricultural societies of English-speaking countries and applied to exhibits, particularly of live stock, produce, and machinery. The typical agricultural fair of the United States and Canada is conducted within inclosed "fair grounds," to which an admission fee of twenty-five or fifty cents is charged. The grounds include usually a race track, a "grand stand," or amphitheater of raised seats for viewing the races, stalls or buildings for the reception of live stock, and buildings for the exhibition of machinery, merchandise, fruits, vegetables, flowers, dairy products, needlework, school work, etc. The buildings of local fair grounds may consist of a few stalls for stock, and single buildings for exhibits that require shelter; or, if for a state fair, they may cost a million. The fair grounds at Hamline, Minnesota, one of the prosperous state fairs in the Middle West, may be taken as a type. The grounds embrace 322 acres. What with barns, a poultry building, a dairy building, an amphitheater for showing and judging live stock, a main exposition building, an agricultural and horticultural hall, halls for the display of machinery, and a grand stand, the property represents a value of over $1,000,000, about half of which has been acquired by legislative appropriations. The management is entrusted to a board whose responsible officials reside on the grounds and give their undivided attention to the interests of the fair. The attendance at this particular fair in 1908 was 326,743; and of this number a full half paid a second admission fee to the grand stand. This fair is twenty years old and has paid out $800,000 in premiums and purses. Most states and provinces grant aid to a central state or provincial fair, and to local fairs. The management is entrusted usually to state and county agricultural societies. County and local fairs are doing much to create wholesome emulation among the farmers. Of late, school exhibits have become a promising feature. Exhibits from rural school gardens and corn-growing contests are made a feature in an increasing number of county fairs. Exhibits of a single product are called shows, as live stock shows, corn shows, fruit shows, apple shows, etc. The fairs are one of the anomalies of the present time. If one is interested in the evolution of institutions and the persistence of customs, he can find here material for long and rewarding study. In great part the fairs are meaningless and are not agricultural institutions. They display the unusual and abnormal. They exhibit the prodigies; they encourage a class of professional exhibitors; they attract the gaudy and the doubtful; they are, in fact, largely exclamational. There is permanent discussion as to the allowing of racing and betting, and of mere performing; but these things are really symptoms after all, and the real solution is to redirect the whole enterprise. County and local fairs might well be part of a thoroughly organized state system, and be taken out of the influence of showmen and racetrack gamblers. The fair should be a kind of school, and its work and influence should exist continuously throughout the year. The fairground itself should not be idle fifty-one weeks in the year. Its facilities could be used for many exhibits and schools at other times; and a good part of the grounds could be utilized by school children or others to grow plants that should stand in exhibition and teach a lesson when the fair comes round. It is not too much to hope that fair grounds may some day contain school gardens. Such an associative organization should go with a fair as will keep intending participants--I do not like the word exhibitors--in a state of preparation and attention for the whole year. The fair should reach all farm children, and the significance of everything shown at a fair should be explained by a good teacher standing on the spot.--L. H. Bailey.
Fair in commercial history
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in commercial history, a market held on a stated day in a particular town or city. The word means a holiday. The fairs of Europe seem to have originated in the offering of wares on the occasion of church festivals. In fact, the Germans call a fair a messe, the exact equivalent of our word mass. Fairs attained importance during the Middle Ages . A great fair sprang up at Mecca and is still held during the annual pilgrimage. Hindu fairs were held on similar occasions. Nijni-Novgorod is famous for fairs. Donnybrook Fair was held near Dublin. Glasgow Fair was noted. Greenwich and Bartholomew fairs grew up at London. Frankfort-on-the-Main and Lyons, France, were noted for fairs. An account of the Leipsic Fair may be read under that title. See Bartholomew ; Nijni-Novgorod ; Gild Much of the buying and selling of the country was done not in the towns but at the fairs. The fairs were gatherings held at various places yearly or oftener. The right to hold a fair was dependent on a charter which had been granted by the king to an abbey, bishop, baron, or even a town government. The bishop of Winchester, for instance, had a charter granted to him by William II, allowing him to hold a fair every year, lasting two weeks. It was held on a hill not far from the town of Winchester. Booths or wooden shops were put up and rented to merchants, who came from different parts of England and from other countries to buy and sell. Tolls were charged by the bishop on everything that changed hands. While it was being held, nothing except food could be bought or sold in the city of Winchester itself or for several miles around. The bishop's officers held a court at the fair for the immediate settlement of disputes that broke out among the merchants, and for the punishment of offenses committed there. This was called a court of "pie-powder," which was an English mispronunciation of the French words pied poudre, "dusty foot." The court was so called because of the promptitude of its action. Men might come to it just as they were, without even stopping to brush the dust from their shoes. There were six or eight fairs in England as famous as that of Winchester, and several hundred of lesser importance, many of them being held in mere villages and only for the sale of live stock or of some special article. More than a hundred charters for fairs were granted in King John's time, and more than two hundred in the time of Henry III.--Cheyney's England. The greatest fair in England was held yearly at Stourbridge from September 18 to October 9, when hundreds of booths or stalls were erected in rows forming long streets, and leased to merchants from Hamburg, Bordeaux, Florence, Bruges, and other European marts. Here merchants and bailiffs procured their annual supply of salt, pepper, spices, wines, arms, etc., and disposed of their wool, hides, grain, and hay.--Walker, English History.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 description of the Minnesota state fair at Hamline still fits: the grounds (now in Falcon Heights, just over 320 acres) host the same livestock barns, machinery halls, grandstand and racetrack, though the twenty-five-cent gate has become roughly twenty dollars and attendance has climbed from the 326,743 of 1908 to over two million in recent years. L. H. Bailey's wish that the fair "be a kind of school" reaching "all farm children" was largely met by 4-H and Future Farmers of America, whose year-round club projects now supply many of the exhibits he wanted. The great commercial fairs fared worse: the Nizhny Novgorod fair, which the article calls famous, was shut down by the Soviet government in the 1930s and only revived after 1991, while the trade-fair function passed to permanent exhibition cities such as Leipzig, Frankfurt and Hannover. The Mecca pilgrimage market and the medieval charter fairs are now studied as history rather than commerce.
Written for this edition, 2026.