TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 231 



annual meeting and you have subjects on the program you wish to 

 discuss, and 1 don't think I can add anything to what you have un- 

 der discussion at this time to aid you much. 



This is the first county fair meeting that I have attended in many 

 years, but I have often thought of the years when I used to attend 

 the county fair meetings, and attend some of the county fairs, and 

 I have thought of what an absolute fizzle I would probably be as 

 a secretary or manager of a county fair. I will never forget one > 

 time about twenty years ago during the year 1898, 1 believe it was, 

 the only year since the Iowa State Fair was founded that it took a 

 vacation, that was during the year of the exposition held at Omaha, 

 and at that time the organization didn't have sufficient funds to pay 

 the salary of both the secretary and the assistant, and the secretary 

 decided that he needed the money more than I did and I had better 

 take a vacation, so I took a summer's vacation, and I went back 

 down home where my folks lived at that time at Knoxville. The 

 secretary of the fair wasn't very active. He carried along the work 

 until fair week and then suggested that I come in and help him out. 

 There wasn't much to do because there wasn't much of a fair at that 

 time, and I started selling tickets to the amphitheatre. I think the 

 admission was 30c at that time. When I got through I was $20 

 ahead, and there was a question in my mind just what I .'hould do 

 with my $20, and finally I decided to turn it over to the secretary, 

 and he immediately engaged me for the next two days. That is 

 about as far as my experience goes as manager of a county fair. 



I presume that some of you have been wondering what I have been 

 doing since I went east, and some of my friends try on occasions 

 to poke fun at me because of the conditions we live in down in New 

 England. I have lived there three years now and T can say with all 

 truthfulness that I have learned to love that part of the country. 

 Conditions are much different there than what 3^ou have out here. 

 Ninety per cent of the population of Massachusetts lives in the cities, 

 but the other ten per cent, I believe, is as happy and contented as 

 any other farm folks you have ever met. And believe me, lands 

 down there — at least some of them, are anything but cheap. For 

 instance, this past summer after I had sold a place I had out in Iowa, 

 I thought that I wanted a farm down there. I went ou' to buy a 

 place one day and they asked me $879 an acre for it, and this place 

 was being rented at that time for $100 an acre cash rent. So you 

 do not find all of the good farms, and all of the high-priced farms 

 in Iowa. 



