SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK-PART IX. 



413 



as great as the one held last week; conditions may not always be as 

 favorable; but there is no longer any question as to the position the fair 

 occupies in the regard of the people. It has won this position by being 

 maintained as a high-class institution, clean, wholesome, educational, 

 and as long as it continues so it will have the patronage of the farm 

 folks of Iowa in most liberal measure. And as long as the fair enjoys 

 the patronage of the Iowa farmer it will have no trouble in filling up 

 its pens and stalls and exhibition space of every sort, for the people 

 who have things to sell that the farmer is likely to want to buy know 

 from experience that nowhere in the country will they find people who 

 appreciate good things so much as in Iowa. 



Scene in Machinery Department, Iowa State Fair, 1906. 

 The farmers of the State are not the sole patrons of the Iowa State 

 Fair, Thousands of people come from the towns and the attendance of 

 the Des Moines people is most liberal. But after all the success of the 

 fair rests with the farmers, who make up a greater percentage of the 

 total attendance than at any of the other leading State fairs; it is a 

 more truly agricultural crowd than can be found at either Minnesota 

 or Illinois, the two fairs which nearest approach Iowa. It is for this 

 reason that people from other sections who want to get an idea of what 

 Iowa is and what sort of people live here should come to the State Fair. 

 Here they can see not only the people who have made Iowa the greatest 

 agricultural State in the Union, but also what the State produces and 

 what sort of things her people are interested in. Everything great in 

 Iowa springs from the soil or reaches back to it. 



Some folks who have the habit of looking at things without seeing 

 them sometimes remark, '-Well, it's about the same old fair." That is 

 true in a very limited sense. It may seem the same to the person who 



