No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 445 



bership is based upon the county fairs. If a county has a fair, it 

 can send three delegates to our State Agricultural Convention, 

 That is the way our State Board of Agriculture is organized. It 

 has nothing to do particularly with politics. There are State and 

 County Institutes, provisions made for the keeping of statistics and 

 an annual State Fair. We have, as perhaps some of you know, one 

 of the greatest State fair grounds in the world. Our State fair 

 for about forty-five years was migratory. It was what we called, 

 on wheels; but in 1894^ it was located permanently at our capital. 

 A great many other cities wanted the fair and made bids for it. 

 Springfield being the capital, we finally located there. The city of 

 Springfield gave the Board 167 acres of laud adjoining the city limits, 

 and agreed to give them |oO,OUO in cash, and pave the street from 

 the State House to the Fair Grounds, making a boulevard all the 

 way. We finally accepted their proposition, and our State Legis- 

 lature enacted the requisite legislation. 



When we first located this fair at Springfield, I think we had 

 about 190,000 in the treasury, a part of which had been saved from 

 holding fairs, etc., and w^e took hold and went before the Legisla- 

 ture and asked for |0o,000 that year to build ourselves a permanent 

 building, which was called an Exposition Building, and built in the 

 very latest and best style, everything first-class. 



Twelve years ago when we elected a Democratic Governor, Mr. 

 Altgelt, about the first thing he did was to inform us that he was 

 going to abolish the State Board of Agriculture. We said to him 

 that he had better look up the law. He looked up the law and 

 found he had nothing to do with it, and he came to us and said 

 that he found that the State Board of Agriculture of Illinois didn't 

 have to report to God, man or the devil. 



The time came when we wanted some more buildings, and we 

 drew up a bill for $22.5,000 for permanent improvements on this 

 fair ground. We had the specifications and plans all prepared, 

 showing what buildings we wanted built when we took the matter 

 before the Legislature. That year we wanted a machinery hall, 

 500 feet by 200 feet, and we wanted a grand-stand that would seat 

 7,000 and some odd, and we wanted, what would be called an ad- 

 ministration building, and an agricultural building. We got the 

 $225,000 appropriated by the Legislature and built those buildings. 

 The machinery hall cost |65,000; our agricultural building about 

 180,000; our grand-stand |35,000, and we put the rest of it in barns 

 and stables, and so it went on year after year, asking for certain ap- 

 propriations and always getting them. 



Every building, except the stables, is built of brick and steel and 

 stone. Every building on the fair-ground, even to the swine build- 

 ing, has every convenience. |50,000 has been invested in horse and 

 cattle barns; and take it all in all, we have very beautiful fair 

 grounds. Our fair is self-sustaining; but we get about $5,000 every 

 two years to keep the grounds in repair. 



The grounds are used hy Springfield, the capital city, as a park, 

 and it makes a very nice place to take visitors coming from other 

 states. We also have a western fair circuit that takes in the 

 states of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota, and an 

 eastern circuit that starts at Svracuse. And then we have what we 



