374 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



by every up-to-date stockman and farmer in this State; at any rate, 

 they all want the Fair, and why should they want it if they did 

 not concede its advantages? 



It was my pleasure to attend the Madison Square Garden Poultry 

 Show which was held in New York a few weeks ago, and which is, I 

 believe, the largest and best conducted show of its kind in the world. 

 1 found there the leading i>oultry breeders from the Tacitlc Slope; 

 from the ''Sunny South''; from the land north of the Great Lakes, 

 and from New England. The best men and the best birds from all 

 over this great land of ours were assembled in the heart of the great 

 American metropolis. And what for? To catch the improvement 

 of type, conformation and feather, of the past twelve months and 

 carry back to evfry state in the Union "The Standard a little 

 Higher," which creates that enthusiasm and greater effort among 

 all of the Poulterers, to keep pace "\vith the foremost scientific breed- 

 ers of the world. While watching the expert judges scoring the 

 birds, and placing the ribbons, I thought of the great responsibility 

 resting upon their shoulders; setting the standards of improvement 

 for America, and the irreparable loss to the breeders following the 

 standards, in the event of an error or misjudgment. Gentlemen, 

 not one Poulterer, out of a hundred in America, will ever know how 

 much we are indebted, to the twenty years' superior management of 

 the Madison Square Garden Poultry Exhibition or the growth and 

 improvement of the vast poultry industry throughout our land. And 

 I want to say to you, gentlemen, that with all our boasted wealth, 

 and richest country, and all that, Pennsylvania does not compare with 

 the so-called "barren sand lands," scrub oaks and pines of little New 

 Jersey, in the breeding of high class poultry. And why? First, 

 because they have at their doors at Madison Square Garden, the 

 greatest poultry school in the world, and although it is only open 

 five days in a year, they go and take their lessons, and return with 

 higher ideals, and strive to reach the Standard. Second: New Jer- 

 sey has a State Fair — a good one, and they are proud of it. I refer 

 to this poultry exhibition as an example of what improvement can 

 be expected from high class exhibitions when properly conducted; 

 and what is true of this poultry show is applicable to high-class 

 State Fairs. And I want to say to you, gentlemen of the State Board 

 of Agriculture, that the annual fair held by the Royal Agricultural 

 Society of England, known as "ITie Royal," has done more towards 

 putting the livestock interests toward the front than all the schools 

 in that kingdom ; and I want to say, farther, that some of the breed- 

 ers who produced the highest types of the breeds which they repre- 

 sent, never saw the Agricultural School or an Experiment Station, 

 but were tenant farmers, whose only training in the so-called 

 "science of breeding" was the object lessons which they received at 

 the annual show. Is there a man here tonight who dares tell me 

 that Ohio has not made far more rapid improvement since the estab- 

 lishment of her great State Fair than she ever made before? Has 

 New York lost any of its prestige since the establishment of its 

 permanent State Fair at Syracuse? Why is West Virginia coming 

 so rapidly to the front as a stock-breeding state? Because 

 she has a high-class school at Wheeling, called the West 

 Virginia State Fair, where her farmers go annually to see 

 and learu t^^ improyement of tb? past twelve months, an(J 



