I402 • Rural School Leaflet 



to vote money. In fact they voted more than they had the year before, 

 and I was fortunate in ha\dng the same wide-awake committee to assist me. 

 We decided that in each contest it would be wiser to have more prizes of 

 less value. It was also agreed to have not only a potato-growing contest, 

 but com and vegetable contests as well, also a bread-making contest. 

 We were anxious to have the bread and the potato contests a second year 

 because we all felt that doing the work a second time ought to clinch a 

 few facts in the children's minds, and they ought to learn much more than 

 from the first trial. 



We decided, also, to make our exhibit day more especially a school day 

 than it was the year before. Each school was asked to contribute one 

 selection to the program. They were all to sing patriotic songs together. 

 There was to be an opportunity for any pupil to exhibit anything he 

 had made or raised, whether it was entered in the regular contest 

 work or not. There was also to be an exhibit of school work. All these 

 things added greatly to the interest when exhibit day came. The day 

 before the exhibition I felt a trifle uneasy lest the entertainment part of 

 our plans were not carefully enough worked out. So I drove up to the 

 village school and appealed directly to the boys and girls in the academic 

 department to constitute themselves an entertainment committee the 

 following day, to which appeal they responded most heartily. They 

 did much to add to the success of the occasion. 



On exhibit day the hall was as well filled as it could be comfortably. 

 The exhibits were good except that the com was conspicuous by its scarcity. 

 The program was vuiquestionably a success. Aside from the prizes we 

 had blue and red ribbons, which were awarded not only for the regular 

 contest work, but for other exhibits as well. At the close of the program 

 the exhibitors desiring to do so, were allowed to auction off their product?, 

 causing much amusement, and, in some cases, much gratification to the 

 young gardeners. 



Aside from the Turin contest, there were two others in my supervisory 

 district last year. After noticing what Turin had done the year before, 

 the Greig grange volunteered ten dollars in prizes and asked me to start 

 corn-growing and bread-making contests in their township. 



We had an exhibit day similar to those described. Much of the com 

 was not so satisfactory as in other cases because the contestants had 

 trouble in obtaining good seed. Lewis County is not a com-growing 

 county. The season is so short that com is almost always cut by the frost 

 before it ripens, and most of the com raised is used for silos. While we 

 had some very good com exhibits, still there was not a large enough pro- 

 portion of it good. The chief fault was in our not securing good seed 

 early enough and in not starting instmction in com growing earlier. The 



