118 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



This organization that I am with not only built up this great plant, 

 but they did something else; they built up a field department which has. 

 a budget, raised by subscription, of $70,000 for the next year. In this 

 field department we have a marketing division. This marketing division 

 is divided into two bureaus, one a purchasing bureau and the other a 

 marketing bureau; and then in addition we have a home economics 

 department, and several others. And all for the purpose of educating 

 the people along these lines. 



You must remember that down there state lines are very small, and 

 it has brought us to this point, that the work must be dealt with as a 

 whole and not as one state. Whatever problem interests the Connecticut 

 man also interests the Massachusetts man, or the Maine or Vermont, or 

 New Hampshire man. The college must confine its activities to the pur- 

 poses of its own state, but this organization is working out plans which 

 cover the entire section. 



This same group of men are in earnest about this proposition and they 

 recognize the difficulties they have before them. A lot of those men at 

 one time felt they couldn't see the actual value of the exposition, or the 

 show side of the fair, as they called it. I didn't blame them much be- 

 cause they didn't know a good show from a poor one. Massachussetts is 

 the home of fairs. The first fair was held there 160 years ago, and they 

 are holding the same fair there that they did then. Go down to this fair 

 and you will find prizes listed for the best yoke of oxen. In making up 

 our premium list last year I was asked, "Are you going to put in a work- 

 cattle class?" and I said, "No; out in the country that I come from the 

 only thing we know about work-cattle is the old yoke that my father had 

 that we children fought over to see who got it. I think work cattle is 

 probably responsible for some of the brush and timber that grows upon 

 your land, so we are not going to start a work-cattle class." They didn't 

 understand; they couldn't comprehend the magnitude to which the big 

 shows have grown up in the middle west, and when they had been told 

 something about it they apparently believed me, but can hardly compre- 

 hend it. I talked to one man at Hampton Falls, N. H., who puts his name 

 on for $10,000 a year, about this proposition, but he didn't see the use of 

 the show side. I have gotten another man to do the same thing, but 

 it is hard for them to understand this feature. I told them about this 

 great field work that they had which was nothing new to me, and I said, 

 "Listen here, gentlemen, the work of your field department will die aborn- 

 ing if you don't get something back of it. You must get something to 

 put inspiration in it if you want to continue that work," and so we want 

 to bring the two together. 



I do feel that I ought to say this to you. I have spent a good many 

 years of my life in Iowa and a few in Minnesota, and now I have been 

 down East a year or so. In that time I have visited practically every 

 large fair in America; have investigated about' them and written about 

 them and know their present condition and. status. When I was in Minne- 

 sota I probably wouldn't have admitted it, but I want to say to you, 

 without throwing any boquets at the board of managers or the governor, 

 that the Iowa State Fair is looked upon as the best conducted, the most 

 worth-while organization of its kind in America. And why? There is no 



