1T6 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



hogs, for instance, where there are three thousand hogs on exhibit 

 nothing but the best would be looked at or considered. I delight some- 

 times to think of the stock we used to have in our part of Iowa. It may 

 be casting some reflections upon our part of the state to say that we 

 w ere rather behind other parts of the state in abandoning the old idea 

 of pasturing our stock in the woods, which, of course, meant somewhat 

 inferior breeding; still, it is a pleasure to keep in mind the stock we 

 used to have and then come here and compare it with the stock we now 

 place on exhibition. 



I don't think there is any opposition any more to our state fair. 

 Some may be opposed to appropriations for buildings, etc., but I think 

 the most of the people have come to see the benefits. Every day in 

 the year, from the time the fair ends until the next fair begins, some- 

 body is making preparations for it. It is that that brings us the great- 

 est value. It is the fact that somebody is trying to bring up a steer 

 that is a little better than his neighbors; that some boy is endeavoring 

 to produce corn that will raise over that of some other boy; these efforts 

 and excellence are the things that count. 



I think we ought to begin to interest ourselves a little more than 

 we have been doing in the question of diversification of industries. I 

 have been looking at the apples down stairs, and I never knew before 

 that apple stories were as big as fish stories. I am not going to tell them 

 because I have some regard for what I say. It is marvelous, the profits 

 that some of those men have made out of fruit in southwestern and east- 

 ern Iowa this year. If we can put on exhibit here in the capitol anci at 

 the fair something that will make men turn their attention to these 

 things that will beat the world, we ought to do it. I saw there a tropny, 

 "Open to the World"— and Iowa has it and deserves it. We should turn 

 our attention to horticulture more than we have been doing. I am going 

 to tell one of those stories: One man cleared last year, above expenses, 

 $9,000.00 on thirty-eight acres of land, having an orchard sixteen years 

 old. Now if that is true, why are we not doing more of that kind of 

 work? Someone said to me that we ought to call our people together 

 and begin to boost our fruit interests. Out in the state of Washington 

 they have been holding meetings and lauding themselves in the state over 

 the apple crops that have been produced. Iowa can beat Washington. 

 We ought to be turning our attention to those things, and I am going to 

 make a speech along horticultural lines some day when I get a chance 

 in a gathering where I can do it. The possibilities of this state are un- 

 limited. We ought to be working in that direction. 



Your chairman has said I have always been a friend to your fair. 

 I believe I am entitled to say that I have always been friendly to it. I 

 hope you may be able to make all the improvements that are necessary 

 to keep Iowa the best fair in the union. "We are a conservative people 

 in Iowa, but we are marching along just the same and making great ad- 

 vancement, and I don't know of anything that has made greater progress 

 than the fair. I said at a little meeting the other day that I hoped to 

 see the time when the weather could not spoil anything but the races — 

 and I don't care if you fix it so that it will not spoil the races, for it 



