PROCEEDIXaS IOWA FAIR MANAGERS ASSN. 199 



So we are learning a little bit of the lesson of co-operation, and I want 

 to tell you a little incident that I have cribbed from ancient history, from 

 ancient writings, and perhaps a little from the book of Daniel which illus- 

 trates co-operation from my point of view and which I think has something 

 to do with the way we are meeting here and in ninety-nine counties and 

 districts men can meet in gatherings of this kind. It is through man's 

 willingness to work together, and I know you have grown to the stature 

 you have achieved only because you have not only been willing to work 

 together, but that you have actually found an answer to the word "co- 

 operation." We are told in the dim days of long ago, some 2300 years 

 before the Christian era was founded the old time city of Ninevah with 

 its successor the great city of Babylon, and with the coming of those days 

 was Nebuchadnezzar with immense slave power in his hand. When he 

 looked upon the ruined city he decided he would build an even greater 

 one such as had never been known hitherto. He drove his large numbers 

 of slaves under the whip, and we are also told that he erected the beauti- 

 ful hanging gardens in fifteen days, and he drove them and drove them, 

 and then says the book of Daniel when the job was finally completed it is 

 said to the Lord of Hosts it was displeasing because the city had 

 been built by such power and he turned Nebuchadnezzar out and the 

 city fell. In succeeding generations again rose up another great monarch 

 known as Belshazzar. He looked upon the ruined city of his fathers and 

 decided it must be rebuilt. He was a great man, broad of shoulder, mighty 

 of sinew, and he was strong-minded as well. He was so strong-minded and 

 self-sufficient that for the rebuilding of Babylon he was the sole architect 

 and designer, with its walls 125 feet in height and broadened out to twenty 

 and twenty-five feet in width, and all the other wonderful features of that 

 great city. Then again the angel reached his hands across the water and 

 it was weighed in the balance and found wanting and another city fell 

 because the Lord of Hosts did not like a one-man town, and that commu- 

 nity fell never to rise again. And the last of these three communities that 

 I have in mind is that of Jerusalem, that ancient city of the early periods, 

 a survivor of the past and that city is supposed to have been built and 

 that community is supposed to have been constructed by each one exerting 

 his full measure of skill, all working and contributing to the building up 

 of the lost cause of his people. And that city was built up through broth- 

 erly love, by each one carrying his fair share of the community burden, 

 and built in such fashion it has endured down to the present time. 



And so I say that you men are working along these lines in building. 

 You are doing much for the education of the youth of this country. It 

 doesn't do us much good to talk to the average audience of men and women 

 who have achieved gray hairs, bald heads and some years, but when we 

 look into an audience of young faces there is hope, there is light, and 

 something comes into their eyes that makes us think we have not alto- 

 gether lived and struggled and worked in vain. And when you men have 

 a good fair, and the young manhood and young womanhood of your dis- 

 trict come in and see the things that can be achieved through labor and 

 brains they are given an impetus to drive forward, to go on. You give 

 them opportunities to think and that thinking impels them to want a 

 little more in their heads. 



