198 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



If you have any questions or suggestions I wish you would ask 

 them. We have cut down on preserves and preserves and preserves, 

 and I wish you could see how some women have worked and worked 

 and worked to get those unheard of things on the list so as to get 

 that premium. We have given prizes on four classes of jelly so 

 as to build up the exhibit, see? But because a woman may make 

 good apple jelly, is no sign that she'll make good jells of other kinds, 

 and so we have made up four classes ; but we have had apple and 

 pear and peach, and eight or ten or twelve different kinds of butter. 

 If a woman can make one or two really truly good butters, she 

 can make the others, see? The apples we raise in this state; the 

 plum, the cherry we believe in stressing and having the women make 

 the best they can of those. We have tried out dried fruits and 

 dried vegetables, and we think they should be encouraged, and the 

 vegetables that we make soup of, that are especially good ; and then 

 there is canned pork and chicken. We are talking culling chickens 

 all over the state; we are going to cull out the flocks, and if that 

 fowl is properly prepared it can be eaten. I want the women all 

 over the state to know how to can chicken, beef, pork, mutton and 

 then I want them to make hard soap and soft soap. If she is going 

 to butcher and has a lot of food she cannot use, let her turn around 

 and make good soap of it. Sorghum is another thing. And a home- 

 made tray wagon is another thing made of an old kitchen table, at- 

 taching big wheels. Let's have more of those things there that can 

 be made into worth-while things, and home-made vegetable and 

 fruit driers. Put some of the boys in manual training to work on 

 them. And the best bottle of milk, as to cleanliness, flavor and per- 

 centage of butter fat. Davenport has put on the biggest campaign 

 that has ever been put on in the state. We haven't milk enough in 

 this state. We have got to push that thing ! Good wholesome, sat- 

 isfying, suitable milk is the nearest perfect food. Right here in 

 Des Moines they are feeding it to the children a half a pint in the 

 morning and a half pint in the afternoon. Let's have the cleanest 

 and the best milk in the state, and let's give a premium on the good, 

 clean milk, and get the women interested in the milk to feed to the 

 babies. 



I think I have perhaps given you some idea of what I want from 

 the home put into the fair, good or bad. I many times have thought 

 the best lesson is learned from the poorest thing. I have sometimes 

 had some of the worst loaves of bread preach the greatest lesson, 

 and I am going to say to you men to put up premiums on these 



