TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 129 



sunshine, neither is it all rain. In the long run the law of averages works 

 and the note will be paid somehow. Even if you have said, as we all 

 have many times, "This is my last year," you know in your own heart 

 that you want just one more year to pick off the plums that you so nearly 

 got this time. 



As a rule the entertainment end of the fair is one that gives the fair 

 manager the most trouble. You must have all the different kinds of 

 amusement to entertain your patrons in order that you can get them 

 interested in the educational part of the fair. This, in the final analysis, 

 is the worth while part, but we are a strange people and experience 

 teaches us that we want our educational features "sugar coated" with 

 amusement features, so it is up to the fair manager to provide them. We 

 must have all kinds of entertainment for our patrons and the manager 

 that attempts to confine himself to any one particular kind, to the exclu- 

 sion of others, will soon find himself falling behind the procession. 



As I look out over this meeting and see so many practical, experienced 

 fair men present, I am sure that most of you will agree with me that, 

 while you favor all kinds of amusement features, deep down in your 

 hearts you consider the harness racing the backbone of your entertain- 

 ment program, and that if you had to give up any entertainment feature 

 this would be the last to go. Am I right? I think so. And starting from 

 this basis, will assume you want harness racing continued. 



Up to seven or eight years ago, before the day of the automobile, there 

 were light harness stallions standing for service almost everywhere. Most 

 of these were standard-bred horses, and when the colt was old enough 

 he was trained a little, and if he showed promise was kept for racing 

 purposes. If not, he was sold for road use. In this way there was plenty 

 of material to work on and plenty of horses to fill our races. But after 

 the coming of the automobile, the horse slowly but surely was driven off 

 the road. The doctor sold his old mare that used to raise him a fine colt 

 after her road days were over, and bought an auto. The liveryman 

 bought a few Fords and auctioned off his horses. And so it went all over 

 the country, until now a driving horse is a rarity. There are only a few 

 farms in America where horses are bred for racing purposes only. In 

 . - days when standard-bred stallions were common, there were probably 

 fifty times as many colts of this kind bred than at present, and, as our 

 harness races d^-^^d on standard-bred horses, it is easy to see why horses 

 are so scarce and why our races are so hard to fill. 



In the county in which I live, there were at least twenty standard-bred 

 stallions standing for service eight years ago. Now there is not one in 

 our county. It is the same all over Iowa. Another reason for the scarcity 

 of horses is that the great majority of our fairs come inside of four weeks 

 — the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September. 

 On some of these weeks there are as many as twenty fairs operating in 

 Iowa alone. Allowing 30 horses as the smallest number to insure good 

 racing at a meetmg, and multiplying it by 20, the fairs would require 600 

 race horses to supply that week for Iowa alone. I doubt if there are 300 

 race horses owned in Iowa, and they are growing less every year. 



