The engineer Fouad Najjar — bearer of the 'cooperative' message in Abadiyeh — explains his message to President Chamoun
Mrs. Anissa Najjar with His Excellency the President before the women's pavilion
Abadiyeh, that quiet village on the slope of the Metn mountains, was on the seventh of September dressed in its finest attire, vaunting before all its neighbors its message, in its agricultural fair.
Abadiyeh's message to Lebanon is the idea of cooperation, which for twenty years it has been preaching with success. Today there are in Lebanon some sixty cooperative societies.
This fair, which the Agricultural Cooperative Society of Abadiyeh holds every year or two, is a review of what the society's members produce — fruit, vegetables, livestock, and handwork — and, in particular, a review of how they practice the cooperative life: the whole in the service of the individual, and the individual in the service of the whole.
The people of Abadiyeh gathered, headed by the sword-and-shield players, to welcome His Excellency the President of the Republic and his company: the Honorable Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, His Excellency the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of Agriculture, the president of the Municipal Council of Beirut, the commander of the gendarmerie, and the Honorable Sheikh Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah.
Hardly had His Excellency the President cut the ribbon, declaring the fair open, when a car advanced toward him decked with clusters of grapes, as though it were a vine heavy with its load. The Queen of Agriculture stepped down from the car, surrounded by a bouquet of Abadiyeh's beautiful girls, and presented His Excellency with an armful of lilies, which had its effect upon him.
His Excellency the President visited all the sections of the fair, asking and examining about everything he saw, accompanied by the society's president, the engineer Fouad Najjar, explaining as they went.
The Bounty of Abadiyeh: the name of the first section of the fair, where the finest kinds of
grapes, apples, and vegetables were displayed —