232 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



building. You go into the schools, you read your newspapers, you go to 

 church, they all hold up before you some man who has made a success in 

 life, and point to him as the ideal. All these are inspirations to boys and 

 girls to try and make their lives meet the ideals presented. 



If you want Iowa farmers to raise good horses, furnish them with an 

 ideal, something they can look forward to. When you have done this 

 you have helped the individual so that he can go back home and go 

 through the drudgery, the hard work and do it as a pleasure, because 

 he has an ideal. When I was a small boy, one day I came along where 

 an old man was plowing. He had a span of old horses and a walking 

 plow. The ground was rough and hard and it seemed to me as though 

 it was hard work to go through that performance. I said to him, "Uncle, 

 tha,t is pretty hard for you." But he said, "My lad, you are mistaken. 

 This is not hard work. When I have hold of the handles of the plow I 

 do not see the black hard soil there. I see next year, the green fields, I 

 see the waving golden grain, I see the shocks, and finally, I see the grain 

 in the bin and so I can go through this all day, because before me there 

 is an ideal, the finished product." What we want to do at our state fair 

 is to bring ideals before the people of Iowa, so that they will catch an 

 inspiration and with this inspiration go back home and go through what 

 to the average man would be drudgery, but to them will be pleasure. 

 The problem is to furnish the ideal and then to scatter the inspiration 

 from this ideal broadcast over the state. How are we going to do this 

 thing? We have not been carrying the thing that is gathered here at 

 Des Moines at the state fair back to the home folks. 



I was down here a couple of years ago. I saw the stock parade. I was 

 in the pavilion, and saw a million dollars' worth of stock in there one 

 evening. One day I saw the horse races. Another day I went down to 

 the various pens and around, then I went home. My neighbor did not 

 attend, but I tried to tell him about it. He could not see the picture that 

 I saw. There is something wrong. My neighbor was entitlv^d to that the 

 same as I was, but he did not happen to be a member of the legislature 

 so he did not have a pass, and he figured more on passes than I did. I 

 came down and got in and that is all right — (you have to educate the 

 legislators). My neighbor hadn't the pass and he didn't get the benefit 

 of the state fair. In the public schools they are teaching geography and 

 other things with moving pictures. It has occurred to me, and I say this 

 in all seriousness, the state of Iowa can well afford to invest money in 

 the necessary machinery to take pictures of the crowds, the stock in the 

 pens, the stock in the pavilion, and all of the other attractions that are 

 on the fair grounds and take these back home to the people of Iowa by 

 showing the pictures out in the school houses and around. Show the 

 people of Iowa what the people of Iowa are doing. It might cost a little 

 money, but what is the difference if it does. Who would not pay fifty 

 cents any time to go into a moving picture show some night in his public 

 school house or in the town hall, if he could see reproduced the state fair 

 of Iowa. Would not this be carrying the ideals of the best people of Iowa 

 industrially back to the folks who did not have opportunity to see this? 



