PART IV. 



Iowa State Fair and Exposition Press Reports 

 and Live Stock Awards. 



BREEDERS GAZETTE, CHICAGO. 



The state fair is no longer a pumpkin show. It is no longer a stock 

 show. It is no longer a horse race. It is an exposition of the multitudi- 

 nous factors of modem agricultural life. Only the student of this life, or 

 the thoughtful man who views the bewildering diversity of exhibits at a 

 latter-day state fair, can comprehend the breadth of that definition. When 

 fair managers attempt to tap the coffers of a state treasury for additional 

 equipment funds, the financial watch dogs bark at the great aggregate of 

 money locked up for use one week of the year. But if they once viewed 

 the almost unnumbered angles of human interest in the varied displays, 

 and counted the tens of thousands of people that thronged the grounds the 

 week long, ample justification for this unapproached agency of public 

 education would be found. 



Iowa boldly challenges scrutiny of the educational efficiency of its state 

 fair. The evolution of nearly a half century of effort, it embraces in its 

 broad classification a range of human activities that is positively startling. 

 Grounded on the land, its foundations are of the earth earthy, but it rears 

 a superstructure of instruction and exposition of the cultured sides of 

 human existence that presents a full-orbed form. In its exhibits it runs 

 the gamut from the field to the university, from the farmyard to the or- 

 chestral hall. It leaves untouched no one of the cultural agencies of mod- 

 ern life which are evolving the man and woman fitted for economic pro- 

 duction, for intelligent citizenship, for cultured life. This is the epitome 

 of the modern state fair, and no commonwealth more nearly realizes its 

 ideals in this child of the state than Iowa. 



The industrious and efficient managers of the Iowa State Fair closed 

 their week's work with every reason for feelings of satisfaction. For one 

 fair at least it did not rain on their exhibition. It has not forgotten how 

 to rain in Iowa by any means, but it omitted to lay the dust on the fair 

 grounds, or turn the low places into artificial lakes, as it has done in 

 times past. Opening the latter part of the preceding week with perfect 

 fair weather, it gradually warmed up to the seasonable corn ripening tem- 

 perature which characterizes the climate of the maize belt at this time of 

 year — real weather to promote fair-going. Under the stimulus of agree- 

 able temperature, and in keeping with the fair-going habit acquired by the 



