The North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, representing the State Department of Agriculture, the State College of Agriculture and Engineering, the State Agricultural Experiment Station, and the United States Department of Agriculture, is the executive administrating agency for the four organizations in their joint, coöperative work with the Fairs of the State. The funds for the premiums are furnished by the State Department of Agriculture. Judges, lecturers, advisers, and demonstrators are provided by the four organizations.

Under this arrangement the Administrative Division of the Agricultural Extension Service directs the management of the Fair work. The Assistant to Director, as chairman, is in charge, aided and guided by the following heads of Divisions, composing the standing Committee on Fairs:

To assist fairs in determining the basis upon which this cooperation is available, both in the matter of financial assistance for premiums and in the provision of judges, the committee will continue the following definite types of fairs as a basic classification:

A Community Fair may represent a farm community, a school district, a township, a farm neighborhood, or several of these natural, rural areas combined. A County Fair is open to and represents an entire county. When a fair includes six or more counties in its entries and exhibits and offers its premium list to six or more counties, it may be classed as a District Fair, provided such a fair is located in a logical, geographical section of the State. The State Fair represents the entire State in its entries and exhibits. Negro Fairs will be classed in the same way and given the same assistance.

Every fair secretary is urged to study carefully his organization in order to determine what type of fair his association best represents. Applications for State aid for premiums and for provision of judges should be made to the Chairman of the Fair Committee. Fairs will be placed in their proper classification on the satisfactory presentation of certain requirements, specified in the application blank.

The State Department of Agriculture will continue the same financial assistance to cooperating fairs, as it did in 1918. The State Department of Agriculture offers to the 1919 fairs, that meet satisfactorily the rules and regulations of the Fair Committee, the following State aid:Type of Fair Amount Offered by State Dept. of Agriculture1. Community $ 25.002. County $100.003. District $150.004. State$250.00

Fair Secretaries will observe that the premiums listed in this State Premium Bulletin are graded in value according to the type of fair in which they are used. Thus, for example some premiums which have a value of $2 at the State Fair are valued at $1.50 at the District Fair, $1 at the County Fair, and 50 cents at the Community Fair. Insofar as possible, the same gradation should apply to first, second, and third prizes. The purpose of this system of gradation is to encourage the systematic exhibiting of products, first at a Community Fair, later at a County Fair, then at a District Fair, and finally at the State Fair, if the dates of such fairs permit.

In order to make Fair Work a well-rounded program, diversified and representative of all phases of local conditions the following distribution of total local funds is suggested:

Judging contests are designated for young people in live stock, home economics, etc., and are limited to county, district fairs, and the State Fair only. Where such contests are selected, in the general selection of coöperative premiums they should be applied for by the Secretary of the Fair. Such applications for judging contests will have to bear the approval of the County Agent and will have to satisfy the Head of the Division involved before being placed. When finally selected and awarded, the judging contest will be included in the definite type allotment for each fair.

Duo to the fact that the Fair work has grown to such an extent as to make the problem of providing judges impossible in all cases, the Committee on Fairs has decided to continue the limit of the number of fairs with which it will be possible to cooperate. For this season the limitation of coöperative fair work is as follows:

Insofar as possible, judges will be provided to all cooperating fairs, for this season. These judges will do the official judging of both coöperative entries and entries offered by the fair associations. For the larger fairs, such as the State Fair, District Fairs, and County Fairs, the judges will be the workers from the Divisions of the Fair Committee. For the Community Fairs the judges will be the County Farm and Home Demonstration Agents and such local judges as the agents can train and secure.

Fair Secretaries should utilize the judges, while they are in attendance upon the fairs. In addition to judging products, judges may give addresses and lectures, may conduct demonstrations, may supervise contests and may give public explanations of their judging.

Fair Secretaries can aid materially in the judging work by assisting the judges. Each judge should have forwarded to him or to her a complimentary pass to the Fair. (The Secretaries will be notified early enough, before fairs convene, to get in touch with official judges.) Each judge should be provided with a judge's entry book, upon which to place official decisions, and all entries should be clearly designated both as to department and as to character. The superintendent of the department should accompany the judge of such department and should assist in every possible way. The departmental superintendent should place the awards in the official judge's entry book, should attach the ribbons to the winning entries, should be responsible for decorum and order while the judging is going on, and should do everything possible to make the judging impartial, accurate, and speedy.

At the Community Fairs excellent programs may be provided by using the morning of the fair for judging and the afternoon for a Farmers' Institute program. Where such a combination is desired, the secretary of the fair should correspond directly with Mr. T. B. Parker, Director Farmers' Institutes, Raleigh, N. C. All applications for Farmers' Institutes at Fairs should be made to Mr. Parker not later than August 1, 1919.

All cooperating fairs are kindly asked to make application for State aid as soon as possible, after definite and specific dates and localities have been decided upon. Application blanks will be furnished to each Fair Secretary upon request to the Chairman of the Fair Committee, Raleigh, N. C. The Fair Committee has decided that no applications, neither for financial aid nor for the provision of judges, will be accepted after September 1, 1919.

This Bulletin has for its purpose the standardization of the fair work of the State. While the amount of money offered each fair is small and very limited, the function of such financial aid is to act as a nucleus around which each fair association can build its own strong, thoroughly standardized agricultural, live-stock, horticultural, and home economics premium list. The most successful fair is the one which caters to the agricultural constituency of its territory and whose premium list reflects the best agricultural development possible. Any premium in this State Premium List may be made coöperative by being officially designated in the local premium catalogue as “coöperative” under approval by County Farm or Home Demonstration Agent. The sum total at the disposal of any one fair is restricted by the specific allotment, tabulated in this Bulletin. This restriction, however, it is anticipated, will not stand in the way of adopting as much of the standardized premium list as is applicable to local conditions, to be financed by the fairs themselves.

The better the premium list, the greater the interest in the fair. The more interest, the better the exhibits, the larger the number of competitors, the more agricultural education for the spectators. Other publications will be issued from time to time dealing with many phases of fair work, and will be mailed out upon request.

All inquiries and correspondence should be addressed to S. G. Rubinow, Assistant to Director and Chairman Fair Committee.