he gods of ancient and innocent days? Is it worth
the cost?

Psychology of a Religious Revival

Traveling to and fro over the land and up and down in it are men who
manage street-fairs.

Let it be known that a street-fair or Mardi Gras is never a spontaneous
expression of the carnival spirit on the part of the townspeople. These
festivals are a business--carefully planned, well advertised and carried
out with much astuteness.

The men who manage street-fairs send advance agents, to make
arrangements with the local merchants of the place--these secure the
legal permits that are necessary.

A week is set apart for the carnival, much advertising is done, the
newspapers, reflecting the will of the many, devote pages to the
wonderful things that will happen. The shows arrive--the touters, the
spielers, the clowns, the tumblers, the girls in tights, the singers!
The bands play--the carnival is on! The object of the fair is to boom
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 t