EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART II 73 



shown are Iowa bred and owned. The extraordinary prices for 

 mutton and wool that have prevailed the last few months have set 

 Iowa landowners, thinking earnestly, a fact made very plain by 

 the interest shown by the very unusual number of visitors that 

 thronged the aisles of the pavilion. 



The Shrops, a general favorite in Iowa and the Middle West, 

 were in the majority, and as like in type and character as peas 

 from the same pod. A significant feature of the Shrop contests 

 was the defeat of imported animals by Iowa sheep in the champion- 

 ship events. Breeders from Nebraska, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Ohio 

 and Kentucky sent their choicest flocks to compete with Iowa. 



Buyers seemed to be numerous, not only ram buyers but men 

 looking for bands of ewes for foundation flocks. Evidently Iowa 

 is taking notice. And while the state has never been listed with 

 the heavy mutton and wool-growing commonwealths, it has, never- 

 theless, continued the "even tenor of its way" and can plead not 

 guilty of any such slump as marks the business in too many states. 

 If the interest shown in the sheep department 'during the fair is 

 to be taken as a criterion Iowa will enjoy a marked growth of inter- 

 est in the production of mutton and wool in the near future. 



STATE INSTITUTION EXHIBITS. 



The exhibits prepared by the various penal and reformatory in- 

 stitutions of the state were among the most interesting on the 

 grounds. Regarded from an educative point of view they were 

 exceedingly valuable and told an eloquent story of the efforts of 

 the superintendents to furnish employment for the "shut-in" 

 population of the state. 



One large tent in the live stock section was filled with a very 

 creditable display of stock, chiefly cattle, in which the Holstein 

 breed predominated. Another tent located at the foot of the hill 

 on East Grand Avenue contained thousands of specimens of the 

 handiwork prepared by the inmates of a dozen institutions. 



Humanity in general confesses to a sort of horror of all such in- 

 stitutions, thinking of them only as places of forcible detention 

 where the inmates are shut away from the great, busy world, even 

 as the beasts of menagerie and zoo are deprived of their liberty. 

 This is altogether an erroneous idea, as more than a few have dis- 

 covered after visiting some of the institutions and learning some- 

 thing of what the state does for its wards in the way of education 

 and training, mental and manual. 



