234 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



they secure state license? Mr. Rowland was to lead that discus- 

 sion this morning. He is here now and I will ask Mr. Rowland 

 to give u^ a few remarks along this line, if he will. * * -^ 2vJr. 

 Rowland doesn't seem to be in here just now. Mr. Frank Voung 

 is representative in the legislature from Bloomfield, and he is also 

 listed as one of the persons to discuss this topic. I will call upon 

 Mr. Young for his thoughts on this subject. 



Frank C. Young, Bloomfield : I can say this, gentlemen, I am 

 very much interested in this one proposition and I think that it is 

 absolutely necessary. I had hoped that every man here represent- 

 ing a county fair in the state of Iowa would see his way clear to 

 support this measure. I cannot say what in any instance is wrong, 

 or what is right, but I think, in the first place, that it will have a 

 tendency to place our county fairs on a higher plane, and the great- 

 est of all is because we who had our grief this year, it would be tak- 

 ing that responsibility from fair officers which they oughtn't to have 

 to bear anyhow. There has been a lot of discussion with reference 

 to the various claims, and there have been many misunderstandings 

 of what is gambling and what is not gambling, and what will be per- 

 mitted and what will not be permitted. I don't know and I'll frank- 

 ly confess I don't know. I didn't know then and I don't know vet. 

 and I've gone to our county attorney and I had him explain it, and 

 I had an altogether diflferent idea of what was gambling and what 

 was not gambling up to the time I had talked with him. We had 

 everything going along nicely down there at our fair — we thought 

 we had everything smooth sailing, and I guess some fellow went to 

 town and snitched or something, I don't know, but we didn't know a 

 thing was wrong, nobody said a thing was wrong, there wasn't an 

 officer came to us and told us anything was wrong, but there was 

 some fellow down there that made us all sorts of trouble and we 

 lost about $100 in concessions. For instance, one fellow had a doll 

 rack and he had a pin wheel, and we thought they were all right, 

 but the county attorney said some was bigger than the others — I 

 didn't know anything about that, and you would naturally expect 

 that; but right on the other side was a fellow with a cane rack and 

 knives, and you would throw a ring and if you rung one of those 

 canes you'd get a knife, and if you didn't you wouldn't get any- 

 thing, and I said "That's a game of chance, isn't it? You are get- 

 ting something for nothing," and he said : "No, that's a test of 

 skill." I didn't know that ! That is not gambling at all ! And he 

 went an and explained to me the difference between a test of skill 



