THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XIII 777 



showing — the strongest they have ever made. In the sow classes most 

 of the big types lacked either quality or fitting to win. The show was 

 hard to judge with the different types, and Harvey Johnston, who had 

 been selected to tie the ribbons, gave up and went home sick after the 

 first day's work. Mr. J. M. Stewart finished the judging. The difficulty 

 in satisfying the adherents of the large and small types made the 

 work of the judge very unpleasant, and this was aggravated by the 

 non-enforcement of the rules, which forbid abuse of the judges. 



Twentieth Century Farmer, Omaha, Ned. 



One of the foremost, if not the leading, exhibition enterprise of this 

 character in the United States, the Iowa State Fair and Agricultural 

 Exposition, was in annual session last week. The planning and pur- 

 pose of this exposition management was the exploitation of the natural 

 and acquired resources of the state to the highest possible degree of 

 exhibition excellence that the agricultural interests and industries of 

 this commonwealth are capable of producing. This annual conventio^;i 

 of sight-seeing gathered tens of thousands of stockholders in this 

 great propaganda of agricultural education, agricultural enterprise and 

 agricultural improvement. All kinds and classes of business were repre- 

 sented at this gathering and all kinds and classes of citizens that go 

 toward making up the population of a great and prosperous community 

 of people, such as the state of Iowa represents and stands for in its 

 varied and various industrial resources and business enterprises. 



• THE IOWA STATE FAIR EXHIBIT. 



The backing that the Iowa State Board of Agriculture has, in all its 

 varied duties and responsibilities as an official body, is abundantly set 

 forth in the strong endorsement that it receives in the attendance from 

 all parts of the state. The people of Iowa have acquired the state 

 fair habit. Many come to the state fair as an annual outing; they 

 come to see the fair in all its aspects of exhibition and entertainment. 

 They have learned to regard the state fair as an occasion that they 

 cannot afford to miss from an educational and social standpoint. Each 

 year they broaden out and become more interested in the features that 

 they are not specializing on in their own homes and on their own 

 farms. It is beginning to dawn on many state fair visitors and patrons 

 that this institution is a isystem of instruction for the broadening and 

 leveling out of intellectual man to a better understanding, a more 

 comprehensive idea of what the farm and home should be; the intro- 

 duction of new methods, to be profitably applied in farm management, 

 and the great object lesson school it has developed into, where the 

 system of comparison is taught on every hand. 



The Iowa State Fair each year demonstrates its ability and demand 

 for greater things, for more space to be occupied in the accommoda- 

 tion of the various departments. Its large fair grounds, that only a 

 few years ago were commented upon as being too large; the depart- 



