290 IOWA DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE 



tourists, many of them bringing their camping outfits strapped on be- 

 hind the car, with tonneau, running boards and front fenders all well 

 encumbered with grips, valises, lunch boxes and miscellaneous bag- 

 gage. It has come to be quite the fashion to motor to the fair from 

 all parts of the state, but never did so Large a percentage of the 

 visitors come in their own cars as this year. Ample parking accom- 

 modations were provided in the grounds and it was a liberal educa- 

 tion in automobile popularity and possibilities to pass the thousands 

 upon thousands of cars which lined every roadway of the fair and 

 filled the huge parking space. A drive to Des Moines over the good 

 roads which Iowa already boasts, with a home-cooked lunch enjoyed 

 in the car and perhaps a few days of camp life in the camp outfit 

 strapped on behind the car, these things added to the attractiveness 

 and enjoyment of the fair to thousands of farmer visitors. They like- 

 wise enjoyed looking over the automobile displays, the 1917 models 

 of a half hundred makes being exhibited, with innumerable accessory 

 displays in addition. The automobile has come to the Iowa farm to 

 stay; it is a necessity, no longer to be classed as a mere luxury. This 

 was proved again, most conclusively, at the state fair this year. 



The horn of plenty, or river of corn, which was the central and 

 dominating figure of the Iowa exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition 

 at San Francisco last year, occupied the place of honor in Agricultural 

 Hall and called the attention of every visitor to Iowa's supremacy in 

 corn. The huge mass of corn (5,000 ears in all) was poured from 

 a cornucopia, suspended high in the rafters of the great building, in 

 luxuriant profusion at the feet of the visitors, an immense pile of 

 Iowa's famous product, forty-five feet in height and sixty-five feet wide 

 at the center, with the word "Iowa" spelled in letters of red corn 

 across the middle. No more striking or beautiful exhibit was ever 

 shown at the Iowa fair and the artistic manner in which the corn was 

 arranged brought forth many congratulations from visitors. Corn 

 is supreme in Iowa and Iowa is supreme in corn, to which the horn 

 of plenty testified in wonderfully convincing manner. It is planned to 

 let the horn of plenty remain in its commanding position for two years 

 and perhaps be made a permanent feature of the building in which 

 Iowa's field crops are displayed and exploited. 



Silo Town, as the large tract given over to these structures has 

 come to be called, was crowded with visitors throughout the entire 

 week, for never was interest in the silo so high as today. Several 

 acres are devoted to this exhibit. More than twenty different styles 

 (brick, concrete, stave, tile, metal, and so on) were displayed, some 

 of them in sections, but most of them in their completed form, just 

 as they are found on thousands of Iowa farms today. Alongside the 

 silos were silage-cutting and silo-filling machinery and all manner 

 of time-saving and labor-saving devices for the farmer who has come 

 to learn the value of the silo. According to the figures gathered from 

 the county auditors' reports for 1915, there are 13,251 silos now upon 

 the farms of Iowa. The editor of Greater Iowa, the official organ of 

 the fair, aptly comments: "A goodly number and if grouped would 



