SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 291 



make a respectable city, but spread over ninety-nine counties and 

 scattered among nearly 200,000 farms, it is not such a magnificent 

 showing after all, only about one silo to every fifteen farms. The 

 lessons of the last year or two have set stock growers thinking, and 

 silo building is sure to enjoy a boom in the future." It is safe to 

 say that the splendid silo exhibit at Des Moines this week will add to 

 the large number already erected and quicken interest generally in 

 this important farm structure. 



This year"s poultry exhibit was unusually large and worthy, and 

 demonstrated conclusively that more and more attention is being paid 

 to Biddy in Iowa year by year. The poultry building is always visited 

 by thousands, particularly by the farm women, to whom this im- 

 portant branch of the economics of the farm has been assigned in 

 the majority of cases. Because of the growing interest in poultry and 

 the larger exhibits, year by year, the time has come, the poultry en- 

 thusiasts feel, when they are entitled to more consideration and better 

 accommodations. Accordingly, petitions wet-e circulated this week, 

 asking for a new poultry building, located in a more accessible part 

 of the grounds. The petitions received many' signers. It is a fact that 

 the poultry building today is not visited by as many as it would be 

 if it were more accessible and that larger and better quarters are 

 needed. Whether they will eventuate before another fair is prob- 

 lematical, but the campaign started this week will not end until the 

 determined poultry people have won what they are asking for, that is 

 certain. 



Some eight or ten of the large tractor manufacturers displayed their 

 various models, supplementing the interest aroused in the "iron horse 

 of the farm" by the Cedar Rapids tractor show a fortnight ago. A 

 farm was leased and plowing demonstrations were given daily, being 

 witnessed by hundreds of farmers unable to attend the Cedar Rapids 

 show or wanting further particulars and details. The fact is, the 

 interest in tractors was never so great as it is today and every time 

 a tractor is exhibited, either in action or at rest, it is sure to be looked 

 over carefully by as many farmers as can crowd around it. Useful 

 in almost every branch of farming in which power is needed, the 

 tractor is coming into its own in Iowa today, as in other grain-belt 

 states. The display at Des Moines this week was interesting in the 

 extreme and adds to the general interest manifest in this wonderful 

 new factor in increased farm production and farm profit. 



More than sixty acres given over to the display of farm machinery 

 testify to the extent to which time-saving and labor-savipg devices are 

 coming to the cid of the farmer and every class of worker in Iowa. 

 Machinery Hall, a colossal structure of brick and steel, covering three 

 and one-half acres, was crowded to its fullest capacity, while in some 

 sixty acres adjoining was to be found an overflow of engines, farm 

 machinery, ditching machines, shredders, buskers, threshers, graders 

 and a thousand and One other machines and appliances to increase 

 efficiency and to reduce the time necessary to perform the wcrk of 

 the world. No state fair makes such a pretentious and marvelous 



