276 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



attention to that on his farm, in liis orchard. It can be done on every 

 man's farm, and in every man's orchard, but tlie fellow that comes along 

 there and sees that wonderful, that beautiful display, wants to know how 

 it was brought about. How did you spray your trees, and how often? 

 And what did you do it with? If there is somebody there to tell him 

 about how to care for the trees, and all that kind of thing, if a little at- 

 tention and time is given we may have just as much fruit in Iowa, and 

 fruit as fine or finer than is produced anywhere in the west, or the 

 Rocky Mountain States. But there isn't anybody there. We pass by that 

 beautiful display of fruit. How that man was able to produce it, we 

 don't know. We would find it is easier than we thought if we were to ask 

 about it, or if there were an expert on fruit culture there to tell us about 

 it. 



Then there are sanitary conditions. We talk about the conditions on 

 the farm; that is, they are not as they ought to be. They are not up 

 to perfection. There ought to be opportunities for teaching at these fairs 

 with reference to sanitary conditions, and modes of life. How about the 

 water supply on the farm, how about ventilation, how about disinfecting 

 rooms and buildings and stables and all that kind of thing. We talk about 

 these things as being something that would be very fine to know and that 

 we ought to be able to do, and it is simple and easy, and there is noi 

 place better equipped than the county fair, the district fair or the State 

 fair, to teach and instruct the people along these lines. It ought to be 

 a veritable school of living and managing in the country, of farms 

 and of home life. 



At the fairs you may get down to the good roads problem, and you 

 may get to the school problem. We had a lot of school teachers here in the 

 city a month or two ago, and one of those who has given as much atten- 

 tion, probably, as any other man in the State of Iowa to educational 

 matters, one of the professors down here at Grinnell, said that the coun- 

 try school conditions in Iowa were not any better than they were fifty 

 years ago; that they were in exactly the same condition that they were 

 fifty or sixty years ago, and that not a single step of advancement 

 had been made in all that time. We have made advancement 

 in every other direction, we have thought and studied so as to 

 advance in every other department of life, and wonder why it 

 is, if that is true, that we have forgotten our schools. It seems to 

 me that at the county fair, if it does all it should do, it ought to take 

 up that question also. It does to some extent. It gives an exhibition of 

 what the children have done in the way of drawing maps and writing, 

 and all that kind of thing, which is all right and good in its way, but 

 they ought to go further and teach what these schools ought to be. The 

 ideal school in Iowa ought to be presented. We have in this state a law 

 that permits consolidation of schools in the country. I think that the 

 time is coming when it will be seen and felt in this State that this is 

 one of the necessities of our rural life in the way of advancing it as 

 fast as possible. Let our country schools be consolidated. There is noth- 

 ing compulsory about it at all upon any school district or in any part 

 of the State, and perhaps ought not to be. It ought to be left with the 



