256 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



finally 3-011 look out and you can't see one of the horses. You send 

 a fellow out to tind him and he returns and says he can't find him. 

 After the race you ask one of the felloAvs where he came from and 

 where he raced before and he says, "Why, the secretary just gave 

 us $15 to start here. ' ' Can you hlame people ? Do you wonder why 

 you can't fill the grand stand for that kind of entertainment? 

 People won't stand for it. They want to be amused, and not edu- 

 cated. It is human nature to always be ready to tell somebody 

 else something. These people came there for annisement, and there 

 is no question about that. And I think races and vaudeville and 

 free attractions of that kind are what get the crowd. I heard 

 the man from Carroll, I think, saying that the aeroplane was not 

 an attraction now, etc. AVhy racing was popular sixty years be- 

 fore the Christian era. There may be men in this building who 

 have seen races since boyhood, and they liked them better every 

 time they saw them and wanted to learn something about them. 

 Give men enough money to bring decent race horses. Give them 

 some chance. How many secretaries here today have a barn that 

 if they owned a ten thousand dollar horse they would be willing 

 for him to sleep in over night. If they OAnied a good horse how 

 many have a barn of that kind? How numy here have suitable 

 toilets? How many have a grand stand that they would want 

 their wife to wear her best gown in, and all that sort of thing. 

 We have been up against the worst game in the world. That is 

 the way it goes. You have to make things attractive, and you have 

 to amuse the crowd. It's amusement they want, and the higher 

 class of amusement the better. 



Delegate from Decorah : Along the line just now referred to 

 about charging an entrance fee, the system has got to be changed 

 a little bit. The cost of training horses has increased, and the 

 good horses are getting more valuable all along that line. No, sir; 

 there is no department in the fair charged so much. They chai-ge 

 the other fellows *2.00, while if you have ^:500.00 for racing and 

 a man wins it, it costs $30.00. Tliat is the difference. This free 

 attraction business is, as Mr. IMcLaughlin says, getting to ])e ab- 

 solutely an entertainment proposition. Why do you charge $."50. 00 

 for the horsemen? Why do we have a $300.00 vaudeville act and 

 not take out 10 per cent? We should make this line so popular 

 with the people that they would go there to be entertained by 

 raising the vaudeville and giving the racing men the purse the 

 same as we do the vaudeville. 



