THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 445 



BOYS' CAMP. 



Mr. Hansen, Superintendent of the Iowa State Fair Boys' Camp, 

 then read his report as follows: 

 To the State Board of Agriculture: 



Your boys' camp superintendent counted it a great privilege to have 

 charge of your first state fair boys' camp. While there are many other 

 important features of the state fair I doubt if there is any feature so 

 fundamentally important as that of being helpful to the young people 

 of the state. They are the ones upon whom the future success of this 

 great commonwealth must depend, and furthermore, not only will eco- 

 nomic success depend upon them but the future happiness of the homes 

 of this state will depend upon the kind of boys we are raising now. I 

 consider the idea of a camp at the state fair an excellent one. 



It was planned by your committee to have one boy from each county in 

 the state, this boy to be chosen by an essay writing contest in that county 

 and these essays to be judged by a committee made up of the county 

 superintendent of schools, the secretary of the fair and the secretary of 

 the farmers' institute. In most cases this local committee took an inter- 

 est in the proposition but quite a number made no move to have their 

 county represented. We must consider, of course, that this was the first 

 year and we had a reputation to establish in so far as the camp was 

 concerned. Nevertheless eighty-four of the ninety-nine counties sent rep- 

 resentatives leaving but fifteen without representatives. With but one or 

 two exceptions the boys were of the very highest grade and after much 

 boys' camp experience I am willing to say that it was the finest group 

 of boys I have ever seen together for a camp. I do not think that the 

 plan your committee had in securing representation was at fault for 

 not securing a representative from each county in the state but that it 

 was a local lack of interest. I doubt if there will be any trouble next 

 year in securing the full number of boys and I also judge that competition 

 will be much keener in all the counties. 



We were assisted in the management of the camp by a competent group 

 of adult leaders, which is an essential thing in the management of any 

 boys' camp. Three of the county Y. M. C. A. secretaries of the state, 

 namely, C. E. Atkinson of Rockwell City, J. T. Smith of Sac City, and 

 J. H. Abernathy of Jefferson, were present. Ralph Fletcher, an older 

 high school boy of Mason City, came as the official camp bugler and also 

 to help in camp leadership, Messrs. Dunlop, Cave, and Taff of Ames 

 helped for part time. These men worked faithfully to promote good 

 fellowship and to see that the boys got the most out of it and last but 

 not least that the boys did the work of ushering, ticket taking, etc., in 

 good shape. I doubt if there were many men on the fair grounds who 

 worked harder during these days than the men who broke in a green 

 set of country boys to handle the immense crowd in the grand stand and 



