State fair

“ It was fitting that the one hundredth anniversary of a great industrial nation should be celebrated by a World’s Fair. Such a plan was first publicly proposed for the United States in 1870, by an association of Philadelphia citizens. It was adopted by Congress in the following year, when an act was passed creating a Centennial Commission, to consist of a delegate and an alternate from each State and Territory. ”

“ It must supply facilities that are reasonably adequate; it must carry upon reasonable terms; and it must serve without unjust discrimination. These duties are properly called public duties, and the state, within the limits of its jurisdiction, may enforce them. The state may prescribe rules to insure fair remuneration and to prevent extortion, to secure substantial equality of treatment in like cases, and to promote safety, good order, and convenience. ”

“ Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional- such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure publicity from the great corporations which do an interstate business--such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market--these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied classes. For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; ”

“ The vest expansion of this field of administrative regulation in response to the pressure of social needs is made possible under our system by adherence to the basic principles that the Legislature shall appropriately determine the standards of administrative action and that in administrative proceedings of a quasi-judicial character the liberty and property of the citizen shall be protected by the rudimentary requirements of fair play. ”

“ Every segment of our population and every individual has a right to expect from our Government a fair deal. ”

“ My plea, therefore, is that some one somewhere make one experiment with a county fair designed to bring all the people together on a wholly new idea. The present basis is wrong for this twentieth century. The old needs are passing; new needs are coming in. I should have the fair represent the real substantial progress of rural civilization, and I should also have it help to make that progress. It should be a power in its community, not a phenomenon that passes as a matter of course, like the phases of the moon. ”

“ Power given to Corporation to make rules and statutes for the peaceful and quiet government of the fair; and with respect to the building and removing of booths, and the disposition and assurance thereof by will, gift, surrender or otherwise; and also for placing the several arts, occupations, mysteries, merchants, workmen, and others holding booths in the fair in the places assigned and accustomed to the same arts &c. ”

“ The universally standardized solution to the problem of social control is government. The Fair Play system was the answer on this Susquehanna frontier to the need for some legitimate agency of force. [4] This system vested authority in the people through annual elections of a tribunal of three of their number. The members of the tribunal were given quasi-executive, legislative, and judicial powers over all the settlers in the West Branch Valley "beyond the purchase line." ”

“ In course of time the fairs became, as shown by Giles Jacob, in his "Law Dictionary" (4th edition, 1809) , "a matter of universal concern to the commonwealth," as well as a valuable monetary consideration to those who had the right to collect the tolls; and they were, in consequence, subjected to close regulation. No person could hold a fair "unless by grant from the King, or by prescription which supposes such grant" ”

“ Therefore I lay down the following principle: that where a community or a district is not satisfied with the service rendered or the rates charged by a private utility, it has the undeniable right, as one of its functions of government, one of its functions of home rule, to set up, after a fair referendum has been taken, its own governmentally owned and operated service. ”

“ The county fair has not changed its general basis of operation in recent years, and yet the basis of country life is changing rapidly. Many fairs are doing excellent work and are worth to the people all that they cost in effort and money ”

“ There is no magic in the language, though used by a constitutional convention, which can change a private business into a public one, or alter the character of the building in which the business is transacted. A tailor's or a shoemaker's shop would still retain its private character, even though the assembled wisdom of the State should declare, by organic act or legislative ordinance, that such a place was a public workshop, and that the workmen were public tailors or public shoemakers. ”

“ The fairs of the first and second category were mostly fairs established by prescription, the latter were chiefly established by charter. But in the course of centuries the identity of origin becomes lost. Shepheard, in his “Corporations, Fraternities, and Guilds” (published 1659) , says: “It is very usual in these Charters to confirm the old markets and fairs, and to grant new markets and Fairs. Or to change the dayes of the old markets or Fairs. And to grant to the Corporation the [15] Py-powder Court and Incidents and profits of the Fair.” ”

“ Having taken out the obstructions, unnecessaries, and excrescences, I should enter on a constructive program. I should then begin to make a fair. I assume that the fact of a person living in a community, places on him responsibilities for the welfare of that community. We should make the county fair one of the organized means of developing this welfare. Therefore, I should assume that every citizen in the county, by virtue of his citizenship, is a member of the county fair and owes to it an allegiance. ”

“ The argument advanced here would support general prescription of prices for farm products, groceries, shoes, clothing, all the necessities of modern civilization, as well as labor, when some legislature finds and declares such action advisable, and for the public good. This Court has declared that a State may not, by legislative fiat, convert a private business into a public utility. ”

“ Every day in court means the loss of wages and the cost of transportation to and from the county seat for himself and witnesses whom he must reimburse for their losses. The applicant and his witnesses are in constant fear that their enforced presence in court during ordinary working hours may result in the loss of their jobs.
Of what possible value can state and district lines be in a national citizenship matter? Are we a nation or are we a conglomeration of states and districts? ”

“ In every Court, ample and commodious provision is made for the accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all through America. In every Public Institution, the right of the people to attend, and to have an interest in the proceedings, is most fully and distinctly recognised. There are no grim door-keepers to dole out their tardy civility by the sixpenny-worth; nor is there, I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind. Nothing national is exhibited for money; and no public officer is a showman. ”

“ The best part of the fair would be the folks, and not the machines or the cattle, although these also would be very important. I should make the fair one great picnic and gathering-place and field-day, and bring together the very best elements that are concerned in the development of country life.
I should work through every organized enterprise [Pg 170] in the county, as commercial clubs, creameries, coöperative associations, religious bodies, fraternal organizations, insurance societies, schools, and whatever other organized units already may exist. ”

“ Whether thus to allure the people upwards to the light—inciting rather than compelling them to ascend—would not be a measure of policy at once useful to the public service, promotive of popular education, and inexpensive to the State—a measure therefore worthy of this Conference to recommend, and of the Government to carry out—is the question which I now leave this meeting to discuss and determine. ”

“ Has it allied humanity with justice? Has its rule promoted enterprise, fostered agriculture, encouraged industry, and nourished commerce? Has it endeavored to further morality, to promote sobriety, to suppress vice, to punish crime, to abolish drunkenness, and to curb and scourge lawlessness? Has it, in brief, in the discharge of its public trusts, made this State a great, prosperous, intelligent, law-respecting commonwealth, in which every citizen enjoys the largest possible liberty consistent with social order and a due regard for the rights of his fellow-men? ”

“ From the end of the eleventh century onwards, the royal grant of license to hold a fair seems to have implied license also to hold a court of summary jurisdiction for offences committed at the fair itself. ”

“ It is their province to reward and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. ”

“ But the means employed by the government of the Union have no such security, nor is the right of a state to tax them sustained by the same theory.' The safeguard of the influence of the constituent over the representative, is as perfect a protection to the citizen who holds office under the government of the Union as to any other citizen. The court will remark, that all offices or posts of profit are required to be rated. ”

“ The only advantage, if indeed it may be called an advantage, is to give many disputing parties an otherwise unavailable opportunity to choose a Federal forum rather than a State forum. The substantive law governing the settlement of the dispute would not be changed in the least no matter which forum were chosen. ”

“ Every society has a right to the services of its members, in places of public trust and duty. A town appoints, under the authority of the state, an overseer of the poor, or of the highways. He gives, reluctantly, his labor and services; he receives nothing in return, but the privilege of giving his labor and services. ”

“ And upon principle, independently of adjudications, it cannot be otherwise. A structure which promotes the convenience of the public, cannot be a nuisance to it. And the public, whose interests are to be looked to in this case, is not the public of any particular town or district of country, or State or States, but the great public of the whole Union. ”

“ The influence of some men seems to have been strictly confined to the Fair Play territory, either by virtue of their election to some local office or by their prominence in some other phase of community life. ”

“ The democracy of the Fair Play settlers encompassed popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, majority rule, religious freedom, an open class structure, free land, free labor, and a value system whose dominating feature was mutual helpfulness. The democracy of Fair Play was basically the fair play of democracy. ”

“ In every material sense applicable to the practical enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment, railroad corporations, keepers of inns, and managers of places of public amusement are agents or instrumentalities of the State, because they are charged with duties to the public and are amenable, in respect of their duties and functions, to governmental regulation. ”

“ But so are other associations and private individuals given all sorts of special advantages that the State need not confer, ranging from tax breaks to contract awards to public employment to outright cash subsidies. ”

“ The consensus of opinion was that "no world's fair was complete without a jury composed of men and women, a just representation," working in unison and perfect accord with only one end in view—justice to all. ”

“ The relationship of tile service to public welfare, so intimately affected by State and Federal regulation, demands the effective correlation and a concerted drive to meet an insistent and justified public demand. ”

“ Innovations foreign to the spirit and intention of the fair have already wrought its ruin in many places and are threatening it generally.
Of American fairs in the original commercial sense, those held during the Civil War, to aid the work of the United States Sanitary Commission on the battlefield and in the camp and hospital, will always be historically conspicuous. ”

“ Even in the older states, where society is most homogeneous and has fewest of the elements of disquiet and disorder, the state reserves to itself the right to shape municipal institutions; and towns and cities are only formed under its directions, and according to the rules and within the limits the state prescribes. ”

“ Not only do we find no violence done to federal right or frustration of federal intent by the State's construction of its statute, but the evidence is clear that the Federal Government contemplated the continued existence of state jurisdiction consistent with federal functions and invited the cooperation of the State in providing an appropriate exercise of local authority over the territory. ”