280 IOWA DEPARTxMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



I recognize the necessity for amusement. I know that, of course, must 

 be a feature. We all recognize that. I believe in the merry-go-round, I 

 believe in the race, I believe in good clean shows, and we ought to have 

 them, and athletic sports, and all that kind of thing. They are all 

 right, but they ought to have their hours at a fair. The merry-go-round 

 ought to be silent when there is some expert telling about how to raise 

 corn, or how to prepare the ground, or how to do this thing, that thing, 

 and the other thing, that the attention of the people may be upon that, 

 and so that there would not be utter confusion all the time. The State ap- 

 propriates its money to that end, and everything, as I said, and as I again 

 say in closing should be for the common good. That is what it is all 

 for. 



There never can be a great population here or anywhere else without 

 a great production. These county fairs ought to look to that end. This 

 country, this life, will be a failure when the population increases to two 

 millions unless production increases in the same ratio. There simply can 

 not be a great population anywhere without great production, and we will 

 have to double it over and over in Iowa in the next century. We ought 

 to "begin now, and we ought to begin to teach it. There can be no 

 happy or contented people without abundance. It is abundance that makes 

 people happy, that makes them contented, and the abundance must come 

 out of the soil of Iowa as our population increases if we are to have a 

 happy and contented people. There can be no strong, vigorous people 

 without healthful conditions. That is absolutely impossible. Now if 

 these things are all true, if as I say there can be no great population 

 without great production, what should the county fair do looking to that 

 end? If there can not be a happy and contented people without abundance, 

 why should not the fair, when it exhibits of its abundance, teach how to 

 create a greater abundance that there may in the future be a happy and 

 contented people here? And if there can not be a great people, that is 

 not a strong and vigorous people, why not teach them in the county fair 

 and everywhere else the conditions of health and what makes a health- 

 ful people. If we are to become great in these things, then I say they 

 ought to command the attention of the people in just such gatherings 

 as our county fairs. Then, after we have all of these things, there must 

 be good schools at the foundation, — at the foundation or it will all fall 

 down. So then, I think that in these gatherings there ought to be the 

 model school, there ought to be an example showing the people what can 

 be done, saving the waste in a township of nine schools as we waste the 

 money now, having nine teachers and nine buildings and nine expenses 

 where one building would do, and where three or four teachers would take 

 the place of the nine. We will come to see this by and by, and we will 

 reach it by and by. We ought to agitate this question through the fairs 

 by exhibitions given there. I would not favor a compulsory method 

 at all. You can not drive people into doing things. Do the thing and let 

 the man next to you see what the advantages are in doing it that way 

 and he will do it. In Spencer county, to illustrate, where the first con- 

 solidated school was proposed, I went up there to make an address, or try 

 to, when they had the graduating exercises. All the people were there, 



