372 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



A STATE FAIR FOR PENNSYLVANIA. 



By J. F. LANTZ, Wvebrooki, Pa. 



About eleven years ago, the progressive stockmen and farmers, in 

 connection with the old Agricultural Society, which was established 

 by act of assembly in 1851, with an appropriation of two thousand 

 dollars per annum, with much to discourage them in times past, but 

 with a patience so characteristic of the instinctive improver of ani- 

 mal and vegetable species, made their final rally and attempt at a 

 State Fair, which was held at Johnstown, Pa. This act was the only 

 law which has ever been enacted in this great and ever expanding 

 agricultural Commonwealth in the interest of an Annual State Ex- 

 hibition, and its inefficiency has been clearly in evidence for the past 

 forty years. Year after year under this inadequate law, farmers 

 and stockmen, together with the Fair management, were shifted 

 over the State from one county to another, in their hopeless attempt 

 to get up a State Fair, which would be alike creditable to them- 

 selves and the State. And, needless to say, that year after year 

 they faced disappointment, debt, no money to pay premiums, and, 

 what was still worse, no hope of better things to come. In vain did 

 the Livestock Breeders of Pennsylvania try to induce the creditable 

 breeders and farmers of other states to show their finest grain, and 

 livestock products, within our borders, in order to give our farmers 

 the object lessons, showing them the possibility of improvement, 

 which we have so badly needed all along the line. But our two thou- 

 sand dollar appropriation, our improvised facilities and our uncer- 

 tain premiums, were no inducement for progressive fai'mers, stock- 

 men and showmen to come from other states which were enjoying 

 good, permanent State Fair facilities, under appropriations of from 

 twenty-five thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dol- 

 lars per annum, and without this competition from other states, a 

 State Fair fails of its purpose and loses its usefulness. The Live- 

 stock breeders of our State suffered the greatest disadvantage as the 

 result of these conditions, as the patronage of high-class, pure-bred 

 animals, which should have come to the farmers of Pennsylvania, 

 found its way to our border and farther western states, the natural 

 result of such conditions, and our duplicity. What else could we ex- 

 pect? Such is the natural tendency; the progressive, practical far- 

 mers and stockmen go to the fairs where they can see the best, learn 

 the best, and buy the best of the kind he represents. It has always 

 been so. Before the Old Liberty Bell ever pealed forth its notes of 

 Freedom and Independence, before a charter had ever been issued 

 for this Grand Old Keystone State of ours, the Celts, the Scots and 

 the English, annually wended their way to "The Royal," "The Dub- 

 lin" and "The Bath and West" there to shake hands with their com- 

 petitor winners of "Royal Ribbons and Medals." And to these high- 

 class exhibitions belongs the credit of a market in every known 

 stock-producing country in the world, and they have made improved 

 stock breeding the keynote of agriculture in the United Kingdom. 



