the business of the town. The object of the professional managers of the
fair is to make money for themselves, and this they do thru the
guaranty of the merchants, or a percentage on concessions, or both.

I am told that no town whose business is on an absolutely safe and
secure footing ever resorts to a street-fair. The street-fair comes in
when a rival town seems to be getting more than its share of the trade.
When the business of Skaneateles is drifting to Waterloo, then
Skaneateles succumbs to a street-fair.

Sanitation, sewerage, good water supply, and schoolhouses and paved
streets are not the result of throwing confetti, tooting tin horns and
waiving the curfew law.

Whether commerce is effectually helped by the street-fair, or a town
assisted to get on a firm financial basis through the ministry of the
tom-tom, is a problem. I leave the question with students of political
economy and pass on to a local condition which is not a theory. The
religious revivals that have recently been conducted in various parts of
the country were most carefully planned business schemes. One F. Wilbur
Chapman and his corps of well-trained associates may be taken as a type
of the individuals who work up local religious excitement for a
consideration.

Religious revivals are managed very much as are street-fairs. If
religion is getting at a low ebb in your town, you can hire Chapman, the
revivalist, just as you can secure the services of Farley, the
strike-breaker. Chapman and his helpers go from town to town and from
city to city and work up this excitation as a business. They are paid
for their services a thousand dollars a week, or down to what they can