FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 275 



an expert there in every department of the fair to tell and instruct the 

 people exactly how these things are brought about, so that there may be 

 results forthcoming of actual benefit to the people who attend. 



These things have always appealed in that way to me when I have gone 

 to fairs. How many questions arise when you are there? There is the 

 question of soil, and of preparation. There is a fellow who shows some 

 corn. He has a dozen of the best ears of corn, and he gets a premium 

 for them. That does not indicate at all that he has an acre that is any 

 better than any other person's acre. He goes out in his field and selects 

 from parts of it where there were unusually favorable conditions, 

 some unusually perfect ears of corn, but he may not have a ten acre piece 

 that would size up at all with these samples. The question with the man 

 who goes there and looks at it is, if he has produced a ten or a forty 

 acre field of corn like that, how did he do it, and an expert, it seems to me, 

 ought to be there to tell the people exactly how to prepare the seed bed, 

 how to select the seed, how to cultivate, how to till, how to produce a 

 hundred acres of corn like those sample ears that he has selected from 

 a forty acre field that perhaps would not make more than thirty-five 

 or forty bushels to the acre. But what we v/ant to do is to urge and 

 teach the people how to make the whole field like that, how to conserve 

 the moisture, and all that kind of thing. What is a county fair for? 

 What is the State paying out its money as it does for, if it is not to bring 

 to the people just that kind of information? It isn't anything particularly 

 for me to see those things, but the thing for me is to know how to do it, 

 how to bring that thing about, and then the county fair is of actual 

 value to the people, and it is worth the money that they put into it. 

 That would require experts to be there. It would pay to have them there. 

 It would pay, I think, and bring large dividends to the people if, when- 

 ever they look upon any exhibit at all, there was somebody there (per- 

 haps there is. I don't know exactly how fairs are run) to explain to 

 them exactly how this perfection of the thing that is on exhibition, was 

 brought about. There is the question of crop tillage, of drainage, and all 

 that kind of thing. I think there ought to be a model farm house at 

 the county fair. I think there ought to be a model farm there in 

 miniature, and the model farm house in miniature. Are we going to get 

 on in Iowa? Are we going to succeed on the farms in this State beyond 

 the success of other peoples, if possible? Then we must bring our young 

 men and young women to these institutions, show them the perfect thing 

 as nearly as we can produce the perfect thing. Show them the difference 

 between perfection and imperfection. Show them the possibilities of the 

 farm, show them the possibilities of stock growing. Show them the 

 possibilities of what may be done in the house on the farm, and let them 

 contrast it with what is done and what is being accomplished, and let 

 them see the wide difference between the possibilities and that which is 

 actually transpiring upon the farms of the State. These are the things 

 that it seems to me would tend to make these county fairs much more 

 valuable. I saw over there in the Capitol today an exhibition of apples. 

 I do not believe that exhibition can be beaten. You go to the county fairs 

 and you see exhibitions of that kind. Well — somebody has given special 



