FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 277 



people. The time is coming, wlien tlie results of some of these con- 

 solidated schools are seen, what they do for the people, how they better 

 conditions, and how they make better schools, that other communities will 

 see their advantages, and there will finally be a very rapid movement 

 for consolidated schools all over the State. That time is coming. I think 

 there is no question about that. 



In these fairs I think there is a fine opportunity to see and to teach 

 what the community center in a rural community would be, and what its 

 value and its worth would be. There is more in organization than in any 

 other one thing that I can think of. When there is team work, when men 

 pull together with reference to any proposition, if it is your county fair and 

 you are all interested in it and you all pull together, you have a fine 

 county fair. So it is with anything else; but if you are disorganized, if 

 there is no team work, if there is no leadership, then there will be no 

 success in the county fair, or in the schools, or with anything else. And 

 when the time comes that we have developed in rural communities men 

 who will take hold of these public questions, these problems, and will 

 lead in these communities, then we shall have what you call a social 

 center in them. Then you will have men meeting for the purpose of 

 discussing human welfare, the welfare of the rural conditions in which 

 they live, and the betterment will come on rapidly, and so it may 

 through the county fair. I think that a movement like that could be 

 inaugurated, and the illustration of good roads, for instance, in our county 

 fairs, would be a fine thing. We are coming to such a time, there isn't 

 any question about it at all, because it is the course of civilization, it 

 is simply because that in the progress of humanity there can, in the 

 end, be no help for it. These things will come as men move on and live 

 on, and think about conditions. These things are bound to come some 

 way, somehow, some time, as they have come in other countries. But 

 if we could get in our public gatherings, county fairs and district fairs, 

 lectures and talks upon these questions, we would bring about that day 

 earlier than we will under present conditions. When men begin to see 

 that a good road will enhance the value of the farms from ten to fifteen 

 dollars per acre; when the Lincoln highway is thrown across this con- 

 tinent, entering this state at Clinton, going through the rich portion of 

 the State of Iowa, and landing down yonder on the Missouri River, and 

 men see that the lands on both sides of that great transcontinental high- 

 way through Iowa have increased in value fifteen to twenty-five dollars 

 per acre, meaning millions of dollars along that highway, then the peo- 

 ple of Iowa will begin to see what the value of a good road is. It will 

 do that thing just as inevitably as that the sun will rise and set to- 

 morrow. We need simply some object lessons like that. Then men will 

 begin to take holtl and see and develop along that line, and if our fairs 

 would take up the question of good roads, if they would study it, if 

 they would give examples of them, as is done at the Iowa State fair, 

 these object lessons would make these county fairs of great and inesti- 

 mable value. So that I say that the fundamental idea is, of course, for the 

 benefit and welfare of all the people. 



