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 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 get from collections. Sometimes they work on a guaranty, and at other times on a percentage or contingent fee, or both.

Towns especially in need of Mr. Chapman's assistance will please send for circulars, terms and testimonials. No souls saved--no pay.

The basic element of the revival is hypnotism. The scheme of bringing about the hypnosis, or the obfuscation of the intellect, has taken