166 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



corn cost him about $10 per bushel. Bowman went out in the field, pick- 

 ing the best corn in the ear and planted two rows to the plat, keeping 

 back the biggest part of that ear. He planted right along side of the 

 corn grown on the farm, and that had been grown for a number of years 

 thereon. While he was out there a man came along and saw him planting 

 that stuff by hand, and found out how he had secured the corn, and he 

 said that was peculiar farming. That made Bowman a little sore, but he 

 was game, and he knows how to keep at it, and he kept at it, and this 

 fall this corn he planted along side of the old-fashioned corn he had been 

 growing made twenty bushels to the acre more than the corn he had been 

 growing on the farm; and I was there when the corn contest was com- 

 pleted and the corn was weighed, and that corn weighed across the 

 scales 109 bushels to the acre, and out of that yield he got 63%, or about 

 seventy bushels, of his good seed, and, a little later on, when the contest 

 was completed, that corn won $200 as being the best acre of corn in 

 Black Hawk county, and the farmers who had accused him of peculiar 

 farming began to sit up and take notice. That is the way the county 

 agent has to take hold of the people of the county, and the only way you 

 can get hold of a big per cent of the people of almost every locality in 

 the state of Iowa is by experiments right on their own farm, or in the 

 neighborhood where they can see results. 



Now, the Crop Improvement Association is a great thing. It is right 

 along the line of the advertising features of the state of Iowa, and a 

 good thing for your fairs and your farm institutes in general, not to say 

 anything of it as a factor of the dissemination of agricultural knowledge 

 first hand to the people living in the county, and you people ought to take 

 hold of that work and help it grow in this state, at least, so Iowa would 

 not have to take second rank. When I heard that some counties had lost 

 out, and that our own county had only got through by a small majority, 

 I thought improvement was made by those living in the city instead of 

 by those living in the country, I wondered if it was not time for the 

 Iowa people to wake up to some of the possibilities. You know what 

 Iowa is. I think that all it needs is development, and I think this is one 

 of the things that will help develop it. 



President : The next paper we have is one I am sure you will 

 all be interested in. Mr. Corey explained to you this morning in 

 regard to this boy, how he came, and the bringing of these boys 

 down to the camp and how we required each boy to go home 

 and write a paper on what he saw and learned at the State Fair. 

 Then, of course, we have judged those papers; and the manage- 

 ment has paid the expenses of this boy down here to read this 

 paper. Now we will have the First Prize Essay, "What I Saw 

 and Learned at the 1914 Iowa State Fair," by Mr. Howard 

 Evans of Webster City. 



