284 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



surely, they must be looked at. If they are not in some manner revived, 

 if some spirit does not arouse our people in that direction, I want to say 

 to you that the outlook is not good from my viewpoint, and I am not 

 pessimistic, either, governor. They tell me that I am a very optimistic 

 gentleman up in my section. I am optimistic, but as God lives, and you 

 and I live, it was meant and intended that there should be in some way, 

 or in somehow such a relation set up as could lead, and leads, to the bet- 

 ter and to the higher life. 



Now there is another problem. I do not know how to reach it. When 

 our people came and began to settle this country from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific they put in their constitutions everywhere, at least every one I 

 ever read, that the state or the nation shall make no laws respecting the 

 establishment of a religion. And I don't know how to get at it without 

 you and I go to preaching. I cannot tell how to get at it, but it has got 

 to come. 



Now when you get down to the county fair, the governor expressed 

 my ideas very well. But if I had my way about it, gentlemen, I would 

 have every county in the state owning its county fair. Is that too radi- 

 cal? Buying the ground and improving it, building places of amusement, 

 building places where people could get together and discuss corn or fruit 

 or hogs or cattle, or where they could visit. Do you suppose now that our 

 counties would come to that proposition? They have got to be made 

 educational centers. The governor is right when he says they should be 

 made educational centers, and when they are made educational centers 

 they must stick by that. But how are the county fairs now entertained? 

 I can speak for nobody except my friend Pickard and his associates. 

 More than thirty years ago they organized their society up there, and 

 they have kept working and working constantly. But he will soon be 

 dead, and we will have to put younger men in his stead. But they 

 worked constantly, steadily, a few dozen citizens, that is all. We came 

 down there and gave them $1.25 to get in for two or three days. That is 

 all they got. Sometimes they went in the hole. If they got anything over 

 and above their expenses they put it on the grounds to make it better. 

 They never get anything for their labor. I don't know whether Brother 

 Pickard is going to get his expenses down here. That is the way it is 

 maintained. I don't know that it is much of a burden. These men are 

 strong and sincere. My idea is that if we are going to reach the gover- 

 nor's ideal, and I hope we may, the institutions ought to be owned by the 

 county, and all the buildings and the ground and everything put there 

 at the expense of the county, so that the people could spend a week or 

 ten days. Why you cannot run your fairs more than two or three days 

 because you run out of money. Don't you know moreover, if it rains on 

 you once you are a goner? That is the way it is fixed. That is not a 

 very safe proposition, and another thing about it, because of those facts, 

 this poorness, and this anxiety to get along, sometimes we get bad things 

 in the fair, like midways, and such things as that. I can't recall their 

 names. I don't go around them very much but what I have Pickard 

 with me to watch. They will have them, but not because they want them. 

 The fact of the matter is they say, "Why, they will bring the people, they 



