2l6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



this line could not be up to the standard of a good potato 

 season. 



We had a very fine exhibit of seeds from three of our lead- 

 ing seed growers, and this went a great way toward filling 

 up the space and making a creditable exhibit, and it helped 

 to show a great variety of products grown in our State. 



Possibly a few suggestions would not be out of place here. 

 There is a great deal of hard work in connection with the 

 management of exhibits at a fair like that at Bufifalo, and 

 very little glory or compensation. From the experience 

 which I have had at two of these great expositions, I think, 

 perhaps, what I shall say will be of some advantage to some 

 one at some time. The first suggestion, which is the out- 

 growth of the last exposition, is this : Whenever you go 

 before your committee of the legislature with a bill making 

 an appropriation for an exhibit of agricultural products, I 

 would advise you to word the bill so that the funds will be 

 available as needed, instead of after the money is expended. 

 Attempting to be a banker for the State and carrying on the 

 work of preparing and caring for the exhibits are two things 

 which do not go well together. I found that trying to be a 

 professional banker for the State, and spending my own funds 

 for the work of the State while the same were needed for the 

 support of myself and family, was not altogether convenient. 

 If a man has a large bank account and is perfectly willing to 

 loan it to the State without compensation, that method of 

 receiving and using the appropriation may be all right; but 

 my suggestion would be that the appropriation be made avail- 

 able as needed. 



The next point was strongly impressed upon me at the 

 time of the World's Fair. Just about that time, as you may 

 remember, we had a deadlock in the legislature in this State, 

 so that no appropriation could be made for the fair until the 

 meeting of the legislature just before the opening of the fair. 

 That meant, of course, that there was practically no work 

 done toward getting the products ready for the exposition 

 until the season that the fair occurred. This was a decided 

 disadvantage, as very little material had been saved over from 

 the crops of the year before that could be used for this pur- 

 pose. We were thus unable to get the decorative part of the 

 exhibit into proper shape until along in July, when the grains, 



