SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART II s:. 



agriculture, industry, home HKiking", nud all that goes to make 

 prosperity and happiness. As the lale Dr. Henry Wallace, that 

 giant of intellect, once said : 



"The State Fair is a great university, which teaches by- 

 object lessons. It is the state on exhibition. It is a great 

 showing of all methods and processes by which a state has 

 attained its position in the world, and a right to acclaim its 

 greatness. It is the advertising agent of the state. It is 

 the great show window of its store of accomplishments, the 

 exposition center of all interests and industries, and the place 

 and playground for the annual reunion of its citizens. To 

 ALL its people the educational value of the State Fair is 

 unquestioned and unmeasured." 



There was a time when a very wide impression prevailed that you 

 jnust minimize the value of the state fair and cut off from it all 

 state support, in order that county fairs might be built up. Hap- 

 pily, intervening years have solved this problem, until today it is 

 generally understood that the county fair is merely the comple- 

 ment of the state fair, just as the grade schools are the comple- 

 ment of the high schools, and that without the grade schools the 

 scholarship standard of the high school must be low indeed, and per 

 contra, without the high schools the limitations placed upon the 

 more ambitious youth of our land would be greatly curtailed. 



One of the strongest features of the Iowa State Fair is the camp. 

 Here is to be found a tented city for the week, with a population 

 of from three to four times that of the average county seat town. 

 People come from all parts of the state, and even from outside the 

 borders of Iowa. Families and neighborhood groups make up this 

 great temporary city. There you will find those who annually 

 make the pilgrimage to th.e Iowa State Fair, where they have all 

 the pleasures to be derived from an outing in the woods, combined 

 with the opportunity of going to school, with a high-grade, first- 

 class exhibit as the tutor. To my way of thinking, this is one. if not 

 the greatest educational feature of the annual fair. 



Mr. Ray P. Speer, publicity agent for the ]\Ii]inesota State Fair, 

 in a paper given before the last annual meeting of the Minnesota 

 State Agricultural Society, entitled, ' ' The Functions of State Fair 

 Entertainment," coupled up music as one of the essential educa- 

 tional features of a state fair, by quotations from great musicians 

 and philosophers. Bovee said music was the fourth great material 

 want of our nature; first, food; then raiment; then shelter, and 



