216 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



McLaughlin: They were disappointed because they were ex- 

 pecting somebody killed. 



Mr. Pickard: The greatest objection I see to the racing of 

 automobiles on a half mile track is a good deal like the Irishman 

 in the running races, who said: "I don't know whether it is 

 the last horse in the first race or the first horse in the last race." 



Mr. Bennett: We don't have any automobile racing at our 

 fair. We think they are too dangerous to have at a county 

 fair, 



Mr. McLaughlin : They are all right as attractions, but are 

 not safe. 



Mr. Schug, Strawberry Point : Two years ago we had an auto- 

 mobile parade. We did not advertise a race, but there were 

 some thirty or thirty-five cars on the track and among others 

 were some deacons with their wives and children. And before 

 they got four times around the track they were going thirty-five 

 or forty miles an hour and we had a dickens of a time stopping 

 them. It nearly turned our hair gray. If there had been an 

 accident they would have been piled up and possibly there would 

 have been a half dozen killed. We stopped them and we will al- 

 low no more cars on our track. 



Mr. White : We adA^ertised some races, a colt and poultry 

 show and we got rained out twice. I was determined to have it. 

 We had advertised it before the race was to come off and about 

 the fifth of November. That is the very busiest of our corn husk- 

 ing season, and we had a line of children twelve years old or 

 more and we had an automobile parade and had a little over 

 twenty-one hundred people in this parade. We had an automo- 

 bile-motorcycle race and I think we have one of the best tracks 

 outside of Des IMoines. Yet while we have a good track, we had 

 one automobile run off the track and into the fence and turned 

 over three times, and nearly killed three people, and we felt that 

 there was going to be a lot of people killed. The driver under- 

 took to pass the car ahead of him, and go around it, and he 

 crowded one car off the track and we had to divide the crowd — - 

 they were thicker than a drove of sheep — and we had a hard 

 time in getting the automobile out of the way in order to let the 

 others through. That is the experience we had with automo- 

 bile races and I do not think we will have any more of them. 



Mr. Clark : Mason City has thirty thousand dollars in law 

 suits pending today on account of automobile races. However, 



